Happy Thursday readers! For those interested, I’ve uploaded a new t-shirt design to my Redbubble “store.”
Link below.
©Rod Lampard, 2021.
Archives For Cancel Culture
Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison has rejected identity politics and cancel culture in a speech delivered to the United Israel Appeal Dinner, in Randwick, NSW.
Morrison’s April 29th address wasn’t a thunderous “no,” but it was an encouraging reiteration of comments he’d originally made during an informal speech at the Australian Christian Churches conference held on the Gold Coast the previous weekend.
One that inadvertently triggered a meltdown amongst the radical leftist vanguard because a) he seemingly didn’t ask their permission, b) didn’t officially schedule it on his Prime Ministerial calendar, and c) a Christian Prime Minister giving a speech at a Christian conference, was a bridge too far for the “Australia is supposed to be a secular country” blusteringly bigoted, anti-Christian belligerents.
The essence of his speech reinforces a commitment from the 3rd highest office in the land, after God and Governor-General, that Australia won’t be led by extremists on the left, who are demanding total conformity to their divisive ideological agenda.
This all sounds promising, but there is a caveat. Morrison’s words are dimmed by the Liberal National Party appearing to follow the direction of Australian Labor’s virtue signalling vote grab, by implementing gender quotas.
With this in tow, we’d be fools to not ask whether the Prime Minister was fully committed to his convictions?
If the Prime Minister’s commitment to tackling the toxins of identity politics and cancel culture is an authentic “hell no – full stop!”, we are seeing a watershed moment in Australian politics.
Morrison’s boldness wasn’t a Menzies sonic boom, heard when the Liberal founder, and Prime Minister, stood in the gap for all Australians with ‘The Forgotten People,’ and his perceptive, if not over-the-top-at-times, consistent defence of Australia’s [Classical] Liberal Democracy, against the totalitarianism of Communism at the height of its insidious power.
This said, Morrison’s address was, in many ways, a Menzies moment.
Scott Morrison, drove home the message of community, and individual responsibility; of offering grace towards our neighbours through the Biblical Christian emphasis on an ‘inherent dignity’ handed to humanity by way of the being made in the image of God (Imago Dei).
Liberty, the Prime Minister said, ‘is not borne of the state but rests with the individual, for whom morality must be a personal responsibility.’
He adds,
‘This is not about state power. This is not about market power. This is about morality and personal responsibility…That is the moral responsibility and covenant, I would argue, of citizenship. Not to think we can leave it to someone else. ‘
‘Community begins with the individual, not the state, not the marketplace…to realise true community we must first appreciate each individual human being matters.
Then Morrison qualifies his meaning stating that,
‘In this context, we must protect against the social and moral corrosion caused by the misuse of social media, & tendency to commodify human beings through identity politics.’
‘We must never surrender the truth that the experience and value of every human being is unique and personal. You are more, we are more, individually, more than the things others try to identify us by, you by, in this age of identity politics.’
‘You are more than your gender, you are more than your race, you are more than your sexuality, you are more than your ethnicity, you are more than your religion, your language group, your age.’
Finally, and with justification, Morrison solemnly nails the fascist nature of identity politics, cancel culture, and by extension Critical Race Theory/Queer theory, asserting:
‘Throughout history, we’ve seen what happens when people are defined solely by the group they belong to, or an attribute they have, or an identity they possess. The Jewish community understands that better than any in the world.’
Cancel culture and identity politics are birthed from same DNA found in Communism, Nazism, and Islamism. They are totalitarianism proper.
That Australians have a Prime Minister publicly moving against this new authoritarianism, is, to lean on the sentiment expressed by CDP leader, Lyle Shelton, a gift.
This, Shelton said, ‘has been Morrison’s finest hour as PM. For a politician who is known more for his pragmatism, this is a welcome and necessary shift.’
I’m a little more cautious. At the moment Morrison’s words are just that, words.
They come from the same Prime Minister whose Communist Chinese inspired anti-COVID counter measures hurt civil liberties, and came without any promise of preserving those liberties, hand-in-hand with his Government’s fight against the Communist COVID virus.
They also come from a P.M. who entertains the hysterical dogma of apocalyptic climate change catastrophisers.
Hopefully, Morrison’s new speech suggests a new direction.
Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister that no one seems to be able to box in, pin down, or label, no matter how hard they try, has gone into bat, shouldering his fair share of the burden for the sake of our civil liberties.
As such, Morrison has delivered one of the best speeches of his time in office, and is to be commended for it.
First published on Caldron Pool, 5th May 2021.
©Rod Lampard, 2021.
Dr. Kevin Donnelly’s Wilkinson Publishing new release, ‘Cancel Culture & The Left’s Long March,’ is an Australian first.
Aussie academics have teamed up to produce a long overdue scholarly rebuttal of the influential Radical Left’s Maoist inspired Culture War (p.62).
Connelly’s authors aren’t numb to the stresses of everyday life, or ignorant of the chasm between the non-fiction of real life, and fiction over facts life of social media netizens. Its content isn’t long-winded, verbose, nor does it come from a group of high-minded ivory tower theorists.
His compilation of essays comes from a broad spectrum of professionals who’ve directly felt the impact of Cancel Culture in their respective fields.
Some of whom have lived some of their professional life staring down the barrel of Cancel Culture’s fully locked, and loaded “fall in, line up, goosestep in unison, or else!” gun.
With contributions from the more well-known personalities such as Geologist Ian Plimer, Former Prime Ministe Tony Abbott, Sky News host Peta Credlin, and Independent scholar Dr. Stephen Chavura, the book introduces other ‘culture war warriors’ Kevin Donnelly, Gary Marks, Jennifer Oriel, John Steenhof, Anthony Dillon, Patrick Byrne, Dr. Fiona Mueller, and Kristian Jenkins.
For all that ‘Cancel Culture & The Left’s Long March’ teaches, it is a well-informed push-back, as much as it is a group of concerned academics drawing a powerful line in the sand.
The book has left me somewhere between anger at Western apathy, disappointment with society’s quick surrender, and being buoyed by its impassioned intellectual plea to step up the fight in a war no one wanted, but were forced onto fighting because the Radical Left will not tolerate an opposing viewpoint, or any viewpoint that doesn’t enhance, deify, or support their own.
What this means is actuating a firm “no” to the totalitarian Left’s imposition of new cultural law; laws that are designed to cancel out civil liberties, the family unit, science, and Biblically Christian based constitutional democracy.
As such, my overall response to ‘Cancel Culture & The Left’s Long March’ is this: every discerning voter needs to read this book as soon as they can.
At the centre of Cancel Culture’s black heart is a manufactured reset of society, that’s part of a broader new paradigm which measures good and evil by the yardstick of ‘safe versus dangerous, instead of true versus false.”
It’s why ‘those who value Western Civilisation must be vigorously opposed to the never sleeping militant left’s totalitarian agenda’ (p.30).
One of the significant features of Donnelly’s work is the depth of knowledge its authors have about their subject matter.
Gary Marks, for instance gives a strong overview of the New Left’s, Marxist Frankfurt School, its origin, mandate, and founders.
Donnelly runs through the tactics of infiltration used not for the purpose of educating children in Australia, but re-educating them.
For example, he says, ‘instead of being an impartial and balanced pursuit of knowledge, wisdom and truth’, education curriculums emphasise ‘politically correct language, ideology and group think.’
He grimly adds, ‘where English once involved teaching clear thinking and the importance of logic and reason when evaluating arguments and differing points of view as a result of [Marxist/New Left] critical theory and post-modernism, students now judge arguments according to how they feel’ (p.35).
Similarly, ‘beauty’, writes Jennifer Oriel, ‘is replaced by a simulation that is culturally impotent.’ University ‘leaders have so diminished freedoms that the miseducated are taking the uneducated into a realm of darkness’ (p.51).
Her examples include the cancelling of non-leftist speakers on campuses, to booting academics for expressing leftist wrong-think with whip statement terms like the ‘thought-terminating cliché Islamophobia’; manufactured for the ‘purpose of beating down critics’ (p.59).
As Oriel writes, the New Left’s ‘neo-Marxist colonisation of the university’ replaced ‘the pursuit of objective truth and classical liberal education with revolutionary education that taught students what to think’ (p.57).
Dr. Fiona Mueller concurred calling the new cultural-left’s triumph over our education institutions, and the ‘ideological intimidation epitomised by cancel culture’ (p.75), the ‘closing of the Australian mind’ (p.67).
‘Cancel Culture & The Left’s Long March’ indicates a significant cultural shift; it’s a watershed proclaiming the counter-culture, though forced underground by radical leftist jihadism and its Cancel Culture crusaders, is a thriving community, determined in their resistance to stop a resurgence of bloodthirsty 20th Century authoritarianism.
As Daintree said, while noting that this takeover of the masses was a consequence of post-modernism’s rejection of objectivity, there are ‘signs things will improve.’
The emergence of ‘small liberal arts institutions like Sydney’s Campion college’, for instance, as well as ‘the Ramsey foundation’, and intellectuals in the same calibre as Sir Roger Scruton, and Jordan Peterson, encourage us to ‘reverse the darkening influence’ of those who fixate on identity, gender, and sexual preference (pp.93 & 94)
Speaking of the COVID-19 response, Tony Abbott adds ‘it’s vandalism to demolish anything when there’s nothing better to replace it with’; society has ‘gone beyond accommodating people’s fears to the point of playing on them’ (pp.102 & 104).
It’s this well-ordered, plainly stated insight that allows ‘Cancel Culture & The Left’s Long March’ to take its author’s much needed objective message beyond the corridors of the academy into the colossal subjective Thunderdome of post-modern society.
Cancel Culture is the culture of death equivalent of “life unworthy of life.” The same issuing of demands for ideological conformity under both Nazism and Communism, which forged a legal wall of silence around Stalin’s Gulags, and purges; and euthanized contemporary criticism of Auschwitz, Dachau, Ravensbruck and Buchenwald (among others).
As John Steenhof points out ‘Australian laws are being weaponised to silence religious voices, and to cancel religious Australians who express ideas that are discordant with the atheistically secular ideological fashions’ (p.109).
Israel Folau being the primary example of how weaponised ‘vilification laws are abused.’ Dr. Jereth Kok a Victorian G.P. is another.
Jereth was ‘suspended from practicing medicine after an anonymous complaint from an activist triggered the Medical Board to suspend his licence, alleging that his conservative Christian political views made him a menace to his patients. Despite his patients ‘never complaining about his professionalism’ (pp.114 & 115).
This should send a chill up and down the proverbial spine of Western society. The same callous hands which gripped Europe in the 20th Century, are wrapping its cold, dead, bony fingers round the necks of Western society.
Perhaps the greatest outworking of this cultural-leftist toxin is the Left’s vile misuse of Aboriginal Australia, where ‘fuzzy sounding and emotive words or phrases – like “first nations people”, “connecting with country”, “institutional racism” – that have no precise meaning, are used to bolster an argument to make an opponent look sinister, or make the one using the rhetoric sound intelligent and morally superior.” (p.126)
Anthony Dillon writes, ‘such [CRT] rhetoric is a smokescreen’ used by “whinger ninjas” [sic.]. They turn attention away from the ‘fact that very often the worst offenders in treating Aboriginal people badly are other Aboriginal people’ (p.129).
Critical Race Theory [CRT] and Queer theory share the same genetic origins in New Left Critical Theory, formed by the reduction of society into an oppressor and oppressed class, with related post-modern, historical revisionism to justify it.
Queer theory, says Patrick Byrne, opposes the ‘biological worldview.’ It cancels criticism on the false moral relativist view that biology is a social construct.
Byrne compares gender dysphoria to anorexia, where the ‘anorexic female’s perception of her body as obese is in conflict with the reality.’ If we’re forced to affirm gender dysphoria, because not to do so is labelled “transphobic”, will they also ‘insist on supporting a person with anorexia nervosa’ to ignore their biological fact for subjective fiction? (p.143).
Ian Plimer and Stephen Chavura conclude the book.
Plimer impressively argues it’s the ‘sun that drives the surface temperature of the planet’, not carbon dioxide. Writing, ‘it has never been shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming’ (p.162)
He also explains how the ‘Climate cult’ has manufactured the “Climate Crisis;” Stating that ‘science is tribal, is politicised, and because science is government funded, has a tendency to follow the party-line.’
Adding, this ‘Climate change cult is part of the ‘cancel culture community masquerading as science.’ We know this because basic questions such as “how do we know what we know?’ is considered a seditious and offensive question (p.164).
Cancel Culture’s biggest tool says, Chavura, is Social media. It’s ‘virtual mobs’ are unlike anything seen in history; and the ‘only speech they tolerate is that which conforms to the leftist social agenda.’
He writes, ‘at the end of the day cancel culture thrives on timidity, and codes of free speech,’ as opposed to Cancel Culture’s obsession with arbitrary, and ambiguous “hate speech” rubrics, that often are used to silence speech the Left hates.
The power of Cancel culture’s effectiveness is limited by the attention we feed it.
‘Cancel Culture & The Left’s Long March’ a book of criticisms, and observations.
I’m confident in saying that it is one of the most important books I’ve read in a while.
Donnelly’s well put together compilation isn’t a manifesto, it’s a response to, and exposition of demonic false doctrines, deceptively emerging from the hegemonic leftist swamp as a liberating, benevolent force.
May we see more academics follow these courageous few.
First published on Caldron Pool, 24th April, 2021.
©Rod Lampard, 2021.
Australian academic, author and public speaker, Dr. Stephen Chavura has given his strongest message to date on the dangers of apathy in the face of virulent cancel culture.
In his essay from Kevin Donnelly’s ‘Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March’, abridged by The Australian, Chavura argued for what he calls, ‘courage culture’ to meet and ‘remedy cancel culture.’
Central to cancel culture, writes Chavura, ‘is an emerging therapeutic totalitarianism, which seeks to outlaw speech and practices deemed “unsafe” or “harmful.”
This is evidenced by the emerging police state in the West, which from behind a wall of fearmongering narratives, ambiguous legislation, and EULA’s headlined as regulating “hate speech,” the Left arbitrarily polices thought and speech that it hates.
By extension, we also see the cancelling of livelihoods, personalities, places, and conservative platforms the Left hates, which are now becoming too numerous to mention.
For instance, cancel culture’s ‘woketivists’ have seen to the ‘termination of careers and punishment of free speech of ordinary Australians working in education, health, the public service, and private corporations. In Australia the Human Rights Law Alliance represents dozens whose religious views – particularly regarding sexuality and gender – have resulted in them losing their jobs or being disciplined in their workplaces.’
The upside to this, says Chavura is that there are a growing number of people, corporations, and institutions who recognise that Cancel culture is fascism proper. That it’s a direct domestic threat to civil liberties, and constitutional democracies.
In thanking them for their courage, Chavura acknowledges the limitations these groups face in the struggle to be heard within the Leftist echo chamber that violently opposes opposing viewpoints, with often manipulative lawfare, and intimidation through false claims on the moral high ground, and a consensus from the majority.
These groups see Cancel Culture’s inherent negation of life, its hypocrisy, and absolute hatred of anything its “feelings first” yardstick renders as life unworthy of life.
What’s needed, said Chavaru, are ‘more organisations defending freedom of speech and other liberal rights [to] emerge to fight back against cancel culture.’
If so, then ‘more brave individuals will stand tall when the cancel mob comes for them.’
Along with this community uprising will come support for those holding the line against the fire on the horizon, stoked as it is by the darkness of another world-shattering gathering storm.
He writes, ‘Cancel culture is itself a test of how committed citizens in comfortable and prosperous liberal democracies are to their freedoms of speech, religion, and, conscience.’
This storm can be stopped, ‘but only by courage culture.’
If, he adds, ‘our freedoms are cancelled because of our apathy and fear, then we’ll only have proven that we forfeited our right to those hard-won freedoms long ago.’
Closer to home, Chavura has long held the view that the Church in the West faces a Kairos moment; built for a time such as this, a time for choosing, of risking, of meeting the task handed to it as Christ’s hands, and feet on earth.
This is a time for defending society where freedom is governed by objective morality, against a phantasmagorian utopia governed by nothing other than what has been prescribed for us by mob rule, an unelected bureaucratic elite, and the nihilistic abandonment of individual responsibility, God and the obligation of reciprocity His grace commands of us.
Those who deny the existence of Cancel Culture are usually part of the “resistance” pushing Cancel Culture.
These groups are all too ready to throw other Christians under the bus for personal gain.
Buying permission to speak into politics, they purchase privilege with the blood of saints they’ve slain on the altar of their own self-righteousness.
It’s a political play for influence, power and an audience. It has nothing to do with building up the body of Christ; and everything to do with maintaining the Left’s hold on the body of Christ. Man’s lordship over against Christ-as-Lord.
Its therefore not hard to see why these goats are quick to attack others for calling a spade a spade.
Cancel Culture represses free speech, demands heart allegiance, and imposes new cultural laws in order to pursue the erasure of civil liberties.
The goal is to replace Classical Liberal societies, and their Biblical foundations, with Marxist Promethean wokeness (my definition for Cultural Marxism.)
Chuck Colson called barbarism, ‘inhumanity done in the name of humanity; the killing of people for their own good.’
Cancel culture is fascism proper. It’s barbaric, and this barbarianism is punching its way through the gates.
Flawed, anti-Nazi theologian, Karl Barth, saw this first hand. His faith in Jesus Christ led him to reject the deification of the state, and its sycophants in the German Church. As a result, he was booted out of Germany by Hitler.
His resistance is summed up with one sentence:
‘Christianity is the protest against all the high places which human beings build for themselves’ (C.D IV/II p.524).
It’s why the Barmen Declaration that he helped forge was a founding document of the Confessing Church.
It sought to stop opportunistic clergy, and their congregations, from subsuming Christian theology into the service of Nazism, boldly proclaiming:
‘We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords–areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.’ (Barth, 8.15 second thesis, Barmen Declaration 1934).
Heed Chavura’s call, because he’s right: ‘Courage is the only way forward.’
In the spirit of the movement supporting cancelled Star Wars actress, Gina Carano, of The Mandalorian, ‘Welcome to the Rebellion!’
First published on Caldron Pool, 9th April 2021.
©Rod Lampard, 2021.
Despite Big Tech’s efforts to present themselves as platforms for freedom of speech, they seem bullheadedly determined to build an iron curtain of silence around critics not aligned with their preferred ideological paradigm, or political party.
Following on from Silicon Valley’s ongoing wall-to-wall de-platforming of President Donald Trump, including pulling the kill-switch on competing social media platforms such as Parler, and Gab, the monolithic golden gods of the information age are engaging in Soviet-Maoist tactics in the way they gag dissent, and cancel unapproved opposition.
Big Tech’s reassuring words which attempt to calm increasing concerns over their new collaborative monopoly that decides what news gets shared, and who gets to share it, when matched against their praxis, suggest that these reassurances are nothing more than the soothing platitudes of empty rhetoric.
Put simply, they aren’t delivering on what they promise.
Actions speak louder than words.
For example, Rebel News reported yesterday that YouTube has suspended them for a video talking (ironically) about Big Tech censorship and cancel culture.
This means that Rebel News cannot upload, or post any of its news content on YouTube for one week.
The suspension, according Editor-in-Chief Ezra Levant, also came with a warning from YouTube stating that the next breach of the “rules” will be met with a longer suspension, followed by the deletion of the Rebel News account.
RN pointed out that the double-standard by reminding people that while Big Tech bans, blocks or boots those not aligned with Leftism or the current political narrative of Globalists etc, ‘accounts for Nicolas Maduro, the Communist dictator of Venezuela, or Ayatollah Khamenei, the theocratic ruler of Iran, or numerous Chinese Communist regime propagandists are permitted to remain.’
YT’s suspension of RN, was trailed by Twitter locking out Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe for what Ben Shapiro said was a violation of Twitter’s rules regarding “spam.”
The most probable reason for their censoring of O’Keefe is connected to him reporting the truth about CNN’s anti-Trump electioneering propaganda, where he revealed CNN’s vicious, utter contempt for their viewers.
Shapiro agreed, writing in response, ‘I’m sure this has nothing to do with O’Keefe’s latest investigation, in which he utterly humiliated CNN by exposing its rank bias. The timing is probably just a coincidence!’
He’s right. The timing is too convenient.
Shapiro was also right to state that ‘this should concern everyone – left, right, and center. It is becoming easier and easier for Big Tech to silence people they view as “problematic.” This problem is going to get worse before it gets better.’
As ex-New Left foot soldier, David Horowitz has noted in his somewhat informal confession ‘The Black Book of the American Left (2013)’, anyone aligned, or appearing to be aligned with the leftist ideological hegemony is beyond reproach, those deemed unworthy of life, however, are easy prey, targeted with ‘defamation and then quarantine.’
Progressives, he said, ‘disconnect from reality in the service of a destructive illusion, and are blind to the human consequences of their ideas and actions.’
Thus, with one hand Silicon Valley can say they stand for civil liberties, while with other they denounce, then guillotine anyone considered to be a threat to their increasingly centralised power base.
This is, as Horowitz explained, ‘the common tack’ of the Leftist regime. Revisionism, and an ‘inability to face up to the past, a penchant for rewriting it, resistance to historical truth, and the deliberate suppression of facts or inversion of facts in the service of a political cause.’
Big tech’s behaviour personifies the culture war. That battle, as this new iron curtain proves, isn’t left vs. right, black vs. right, it’s truth vs. falsehood.
Those would benefit from hiding the truth, profit from lies. Which is why there’s no room for self-reflection in a room full of self-righteous romantic revolutionaries.
Beware the auctioneers.
First published on Caldron Pool, 16th April 2021.
©Rod Lampard, 2021.
Dr. Suess Enterprises appear to have threatened to take legal action against the online home of Christian satirists, The Babylon Bee.
The alleged offending article entitled ‘In New Dr. Seuss Book, Cat In The Hat Gives Kids Puberty Blockers While Their Mother Isn’t Homewent’ went live on March 5th.
In it, the double “B” took a satirical look at Cancel Culture’s recent cancellation of six classic Dr. Suess books. Books such as ‘And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street’; ‘If I Ran the Zoo’; ‘McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!’; ‘Scrambled Eggs Super!’; and ‘The Cat’s Quizzer.’
The Left’s “woke” revolutionary vanguard have seen to it that each title is ejected from Dr. Seuss printing runs because, according to them, the content is ‘hurtful and wrong’, as it has images ‘containing racist stereotypes of Black people, Asians and Arabs’; woketivist speak for “I say it’s politically incorrect, therefore it is, so burn it!”
The Bablyon Bee was drawing attention to the double standards by which humourless Cancel Culture operates; illustrating the dissonance between moral relativist “politically correct” Leftist revolutionaries, who demonise everything they don’t like as “harmful, wrong, and politically incorrect”, but then in absolutist terms promote adult “entertainment” as wholesome, and helpful for children, such as transgenderism, and out-of-place LGBTQAAI+ Drag Queen Storytime in public libraries.
The Bee wrote:
“I have some new drugs,”
said the cat in the hat.
“A lot of good drugs!
I’ll inject them in you.
Your mother will not mind at all if I do.”
Adding, ‘the children learn a lesson in intolerance, too, as their goldfish ignorantly tries to stop them from taking the drugs, warning them of permanent side effects. The goldfish is then killed and flushed down a toilet.’
The only real crime here is that the Bee’s piece doesn’t rhyme the way Dr. Seuss books actually chime.
Nevertheless, Seuss Enterprises have responded to the piece, sending a sloppy email to the double “B’s” CEO, Seth Dillon, (who shared it on Twitter):
“Your article, satire or not, is a copyright infringement and breaking multiple defamation laws. Remove this or we will proceed accordingly.”
Dillon asked people to respond in rhyme, then reshared the piece, commenting,
‘Unfortunately for them, this piece was a work of satire, which is fair use. We will not be taking it down the way they took down several of their own, perfectly harmless titles to score worthless virtue points with insatiable leftists.’
Among the best rhyme responses were:
‘I would not could not cease and desist. I could not would not when you say resist. I do not like your litigious suits I do not like them Dr. Suess’ – @RoyceMcCutchoen
‘We will not comply with your outlandish request. Spend all you want of your benefactor’s bequest. We shall win the day and win by a lot! You’ll rue the day. Satire or not.’ – @kchessor
Due to the shoddy nature of its grammar some have questioned the authenticity of email. With one Twitter user quipping: “Reason: Complain” Apparently Seuss Enterprises is located in the same area as the deposed Prince of Nigeria.’
Until it’s authenticated, we can safely assume it’s legit. Suess Enterprises have joined the joyless “woke” revolutionary vanguard, and murdered original classics to appease the humourless, Leftist mob.
Filed under: Cancel Culture is fascism proper.
First published on Caldron Pool, 19th April 2021.
©Rod Lampard, 2021.
Great Barrier Reef Marine Scientist Dr. Peter Ridd has halted donations to his GoFundMe page, after it reached the necessary financial target, allowing him to seek an end to a long running court battle over freedom of speech.
The scientist was sacked from James Cook University after the University claimed he’d breached “codes of conduct” by criticising other scientists for being too ‘emotional and not objective’ enough.
Ridd challenged the decision, and originally won his case of unfair dismissal, but that ruling was overturned by the Federal court, and is now being challenged in the High Court of Australia.
The cancelled (alleged) “climate denier’s” crime was challenging groupthink assumptions about Climate Change which hinders the scientific method, and taints research.
Since then, offended activists, whose apocalyptic climate change beliefs were challenged by Dr. Ridd, have been falling over themselves to reduce damage done to apocalyptic predications (read: narrative) which they say justifies cancelling Dr. Ridd.
Ridd’s opposition to the standard hegemonic Climate Change party-line is summed up in an article for The Australian in 2020, where Dr. Ridd criticised a report from The International Union for Conservation of Nature which he said, ‘blames climate change, agricultural pollution, coastal development, industry, mining, shipping, overfishing, disease, problematic native species, coal dust — you name it, [for allegedly] killing the reef.’
The report didn’t take important factors about the life of the reef into account, such as that,
‘The reef occasionally conspires to give the impression it is dying. All these events are entirely natural and are part of life on the reef. Sixty years ago, when these cycles of death and destruction were first being discovered by scientists, it was legitimate to be concerned about whether they were unnatural. But there is now abundant evidence, almost totally ignored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, that the reef is fine. The coral always recovers vigorously after major mortality events.’
The Marine Scientist damned the report as a ‘rehash of old, mostly wrong or misleading information produced by generally untrustworthy scientific institutions with an activist agenda and no commitment to quality assurance.’
The Leftist cancel Ridd campaign hasn’t subsided.
Witnessed by responses to his criticisms, chief among them being his assertions in The Australian, that ‘the amount of coral, while fluctuating dramatically from year to year, is about the same today as when records began in the 1980s.’
An AAP Factcheck, funded by the NGO, Australian Conservation Foundation and published by The Courier, claimed Ridd’s statement was “partly true,” but emphasised that ‘annual surveys of the reef show significant fluctuations in coral cover, and for this reason it may be difficult to assess the reef’s future health based on the readings alone.’
Consequently, the Factcheck accused Ridd of making “baseless” generalised statements, because he only ‘provided figures which combined the three regions in the annual surveys to show the coral cover on the reef as a whole.’
Thus, Ridd’s claim was written off as “mostly false” based on what they asserted was a consensus among “experts and officials” whose counter-claim is that while ‘average coral readings for the past decade have been well below both long-term averages and those from the 1980s. In sum, the condition of the reef [suggests] its health had deteriorated and continued to decline.’
In addition, the AAP Factcheck seemed to imply that Ridd’s professional assessment was reckless because it took the spotlight (the cynic in me reads this as potential funding) away from those who claim that ‘climate change was predicted to negatively affect the growth and recovery of the reef. Its likely impacts included more frequent storms and bleaching events.’
In his defence Dr. Ridd pointed out the problems of statistical data: it can be loosely applied to forge an image that misrepresents the reality.
In response, the AAP Factcheck tu quoque’d Dr. Ridd, suggesting that he has ‘made similar comparisons in his column when he argued that there had been essentially no change in reef cover since the 1980s.’
The AAP Factcheck’s conclusions appear, in the end, to be based on confirmation bias regarding apocalyptic climate change predications, and only loosely on the historical data Dr. Ridd was referencing.
Historical data that Jim Steele’s expositional piece ‘Coral Bleaching Debate’, published on Judith Curry’s ‘Climate Etc.’ in 2016 appears to back up.
Peter Ridd faces the same ready-made Leftist gallows as cancelled Climate Scientist, Judith Curry, and Australian Geologist Ian Plimer, who’s against-the-stream facts, and straight talk threaten the gargantuan amounts of dollars being plunged into NGOs, from people who’ve been conditioned by the Climate Change Apocalypse narrative, to fear the worst, and “follow the science.”
Fear easily separates a fool from his or her money, and the well-oiled (no pun intended) marketing machine that is today’s fashionable “climate emergency,” is big business.
It’s no wonder “follow the science” activists are so eager to cancel Scientists for doing that very thing.
As Dr. Ridd explained, I was ‘fired for saying that, because of systemic problems with quality assurance, work from JCU coral reef centre, which also publishes extensively on climate change, was untrustworthy. I believe what I said was true and have given plenty of published evidence to support that statement.’
He added, ‘the case has already demonstrated a major problem with Academic Freedom of Speech at a university. This may be the most important long-term implication of the case.’
Peter Ridd’s case is set to be heard by the High Court of Australia at 10:00am on Wednesday, 23 June 2021 in Court No. 1, Parkes Place, Canberra, with the final judgement being handed down sometime after.
First published on Caldron Pool, 16th April 2021.
©Rod Lampard, 2021.
