Murder at the Museum Part Two

We the People are losing the new class war

The National Post, one of Canada’s national papers, finally picked up the Woke Murder of the Royal BC Museum on June 15/22, showing a nice picture of the recently dismantled Old Town gallery at the RCBM. Removed by provincial order because of our common ‘systemically racist’ past.

The Christmas exhibit at the Museum; always a favourite.

The exhibits were so popular that there was a stampede of people wanting to get one last look before they were unceremoniously torn down. People in Victoria were unhappy and taken aback: after two years of a dreadful pandemic, nobody expected this body blow. But it went ahead without public consultation and those galleries have been empty for months. Then the other show dropped: this was just the first part of a bigger, secret agenda to tear down the entire Museum and resurrect it in the name of the Woke Cult. But for some strange reason, four out of five people are against this hugely expensive project. The NP article concluded that

A new Angus Reid Institute Poll has found that a vast majority of British Columbians are firmly against the BC government’s decision to tear down the attraction in favour of a “modern” alternative costing nearly $1billion. 69 percent of BCers opposed the redevelopment, with most reporting they would prefer that Premier John Horgan instead focus on one of the province’s many crises (housing, doctor shortage, etc.)

If you want further proof that BC and indeed, all of Canada, is now some kind of illiberal democracy, consider this: The Times Colonist reported on June 9 that the Museum

…is removing its most iconic exhibit, a giant Woolly Mammoth, to the Vancouver Airport, where people stuck in endless queues might enjoy it. The paper noted that ‘Despite an intense backlash over the province’s surprise plant to tear down the museum…. it’s all systems go…’

It’s all very ‘exciting’

Other exhibits are going to other places in the province but not to worry, they are ‘consulting’ with ‘cultural groups’ in the provinces to loan the huge inventory to smaller museums over the next several years. And so, one of the most iconic, beloved, and also, lucrative, museums in Canada, is simply going to disappear. Because we have to prove to the world that Woke is a thing here, and that is really the bigger issue.

You may think that the entire Woke Cult is just a passing phase, and that the pendulum will soon kick back in the other direction, towards some kind of sanity. Maybe. The trouble is, a lot of ordinary folks don’t really ‘get’ what Woke is and besides, they’ve got bigger worries, like the price of gas or the lack of housing, or not having a doctor. So, who is going to do the necessary pushback if not the average person? The elites, our Dear Leaders are the ones captured by this virus, and so far, they are winning. Let me just cut to the chase and say it; we’re in the midst of a poorly understood but vicious Class War. What we are witnessing is nothing less than a modern version of the days of Marie Antoinette. This is not a widespread idea and I had to look far afield to find others who agree. Edward Luttwak, a veteran gadfly who at the age of 79 is still the Pentagon’s enfant terrible, is one. In a recent Tablet article, Three Blind Kings, he characterized the Woke Cult thus:  

…you have a so-called elite that spit hysterical contempt for the people in whose name they ostensibly rule, denouncing them as a pack of racist, sexist, white supremacist, transphobic, gun toting disease spreaders who will hopefully soon die out and be replaced a more obedient class of servants……The last aristocracy that showed this kind of contempt for its own people and popular folkways was the French in the days of Marie Antoinette. (my bolding)

Couldn’t have put it better. Here in Canada, we have our very own version of that painted lady who wanted us all to ‘eat cake’ when bread was becoming scarce: it’s none other than Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister.

Trudeau’s enforcer, Chrystia Freeland

She was had to endure unwelcome questions about the Truckers Freedom Convoy and why Trudeau invoked the Emergency Act. With an air of contempt that is surely unique, she simply refused to answer, stonewalled, evaded, and astounded even veteran government watchers with her arrogance and refusal to give a matter of national importance its due consideration. According to her, invoking the Emergency Act was simply about economics and loss of income flowing from the US, not freedom or any such strange ideas. The loss of income isn’t true. But that has never stopped her before and likely won’t in future.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8920882/emergencies-act-freeland-freedom-convoy-blockades-ottawa/

But this is what is happening everywhere. We have a new Class War, waged with words, cancellations, Twitter sliming and good old-fashioned bullying.  Nothing about this is ‘normal’ and there are few signs that it is waning. Indeed, after reading Douglas Murray’s excellent analysis of the Woke Cult in his latest book, The War on the West, there is no way that interpretation holds up. The real-life consequences are extreme, painful and ongoing.

Murray has documented its excesses and overall lunacy in great detail and neatly filed each one in its proper category and chapter. Here they are, in order:

Race. Interlude: China. History, (or the lack of it). Interlude: Reparations. Religion. Interlude: Gratitude.Culture. Conclusions.

There’s no way I can summarize each chapter or interlude, but I can try to give an impression of how Murray has gathered his evidence and the conclusions he has reached. And I would urge everybody to read this book; it is a landmark study of madness in our times.

The chapter on Race is perhaps the most damning and telling. He says that at the heart of so-called Critical Race Theory is someone who doesn’t consider facts but sees the world

through a set of attitudes. This, says Murray, has marked a significant shift in the manner in which people were expected to prove assertions…If a person’s ‘lived experience’ could be attested to, then the question of ‘evidence’ or ‘data’ had to find a place further back in the queue, if at all. As in, if I say so, it’s true and you have to believe it. Which to most people’s minds sounds absurd, childish, and Orwellian.

Notably, Murray doesn’t get into the gender re-assignment wars but our very own Canadian Guru to the World, Jordan Peterson, summed it up this way: It’s identity totalitarianism; totally dominated by emotion…they’re all two years old insisting that they can be whatever sex they want to be. Peterson gets visibly angry when talking about the lasting damage being done to young, confused people trying to figure out who they are in a partisan, toxic medical environment. So, there is one area where public and persistent pushback is vital if we want to look forward to continuing the species, among other things.

At the moment, we can’t even stop the Woke Cult from destroying our beloved Museum, let alone stop the damage done to our institutions of higher learning. That is where the origins of the Woke Virus can be found. Murray does a fine job of identifying the intellectual roots of Wokism in such figures as Sartre (avowed Communist), Foucault (liked to rape bought boys on beaches in Algeria) and others. The more interesting question is this: why is the West so receptive to this toxic brew? Why are we so passive in the face of the ongoing self-flagellation in the name of ‘reconciliation’ and ‘unconscious racism’? One historian I talked to told me that as far as western history is concerned, this has never happened before. It’s an act of monumental self-destruction without precedent. Normally, when we talk about the demise of an entire civilization, the drivers are climate change, environmental destruction, famine, and futile wars against stronger neighbours. It’s never been a case of self-hatred so serious that we attempt cultural self-immolation.

While Murray tries to get under the leprous skin of Wokism, it is not entirely successful because he neglects the Class Warfare aspects. Instead, he delves into the psychology of the Woke Brigade. He says that when the Wokesters scream about ‘Social Justice’ they actually mean retribution and vengeance. They want to make everyone as miserable as they are, he says. And they are miserable because of deep, bitter resentment, also called ressentiment. He brings in Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, and this is all true. This is a brilliant and alarming book. A must read if you want to understand the world we currently suffer from.

In his Conclusions he discusses the problem of a society that has ditched God and substituted an entire set of individual gods, with rather devastating results. He quotes a distinguished friend, Deepak Lal, who told him that

“Everybody claims that after the age of Christianity, we are going to enter an age of atheism. Whereas it is perfectly clear that we are entering an age of polytheism. Everybody has their own gods now’.

And the one we are all being forced to worship is the God of Woke.  Murray makes the point that it was Nietzsche who predicted this cultural catastrophe. The problem is that reading N is rather laborious; I have tried it. It’s like reading Sartre; just very heavy going. There’s got to be something more accessible out there. And there is.

If you are looking for a few well-chosen words to say to self-important, bullying Wokesters, at work, on the street and even with your circle of friends, Murray quotes Jodi Shaw, who quit her job at Smith College, Massachusetts, over diversity and inclusion initiatives (also beloved by the Museum). She said they had created a racially hostile environment and her resignation letter is a classic. I am going to memorize this:

I ask that Smith College stop reducing my personhood to a racial category. Stop telling me what I must think and feel about myself. Stop presuming to know who I am or what my culture is based upon my skin colour. Stop asking me to project stereotypes onto others based on their skin colour.

https://www.iwf.org/people/jodi-shaw/

She refused a generous money settlement from the college to shut up, saying that the ‘importance of telling the truth’ was greater.

Jodi Shaw is my hero, and her words could become bywords for all of us fighting for our sanity. She won simply by having the courage to stand her ground and refused corrupting money and position. I can only hope that there are more like her out there.