The Streets Pub and Grub in Sacramento, California this week issued an apology that raised concerns over the growing intolerance for those with opposing viewpoints or associations. The pub seemed to denounce itself for yielding to the temptations of a capitalist TERF and promising self-improvement. The sin of the pub? It allowed footage from “Harry Potter” video game “Hogwarts Legacy” to be shown during work hours. An activist reportedly associated with Antifa rallied the usual Internet flash mob in response to the reactionary conduct. The left has been trying to boycott the hugely popular game because they disagree with the feminist views of JK Rowling who has been labeled a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist). Rowling has criticized trans policies as inimical to the advancement of women.
The media has assisted in the effort to blacklist this product because it disagrees with her feminist views. Wired.com gave the game a 1/10 rating in part because of its ties to Rowling. The magazine wrote on “standing together” and drew “a direct correlation between how open Rowling becomes about her bigotry, and how flat and heartless Wizarding World media becomes.”
The Streets Pub and Grub declared itself reeducated and reformed. It issued its public apology and pledged “to be more careful” in the future: “Our sincerest apologies to those affected by this incident. Our staff has been informed to closely monitor requests from customers on what to put on our TVs.”
In other words, it will not allow people to see products associated with those with opposing views. These critics are clearly exercising their own free speech and associational rights in pressuring this pub. I have no problem with boycotts as a form of free speech. However, the pub was not using Rawling as a spokesperson or celebrity endorser. It was associating itself with her feminist advocacy outside of her work as an author. This is part of a scorched earth campaign to punish her (and anyone who likes her books or themes) for voicing objections to trans policies.
However, the incident shows the growing orthodoxy on the left and intolerance for opposing viewpoints. Public confessions raise concerns over a type of American Cultural Revolution where the failure to seek public redemption is to invite financial ruin. Keep in mind that this is all about a video game being shown in a pub. Even that level of tolerance is viewed as “hateful.”
The statement is all too familiar to many in academia where such public confessions have become common. Years ago, I expressed astonishment at the display at my alma mater at a public event. In 2020, the acting Northwestern Law Dean declared publicly to “I am James Speta and I am a racist.” He was followed by Emily Mullin, executive director of major gifts, who announced, “I am a racist and a gatekeeper of white supremacy. I will work to be better.” Such public declarations are now routine and meant to convey one’s bona fides as a faithful adherent.
The public confession by the pub was deemed sufficient by @pridewasariot, who tweeted: “Streets Pub and Grub has issued what we perceive as a genuine and authentic recognition of harm, sincerity, and apology. We encourage Trans & Queer community members to recognize this gesture as genuine, in a time when recognition and accountability is rare, especially in Lavender Heights.”
The account continued,
“Thank you to the team members at Streets Pub and Grub for demonstrating solidarity with our communities. As a reminder, Pride Was A Riot, Sacramento documents, tracks and responds to reports of hate-crime activity in Lavender Heights and much of the Sacramento region… We are only as capable as our supporters.”
Indeed, they are “capable.” To maintain speech blacklists, you need a mob and others who will stay silent in the face of such anti-free speech campaigns. The “hate-crime activity” reported here was the showing of a product associated with someone who holds different ideological views. Rowling is a liberal who believes that trans policies undermine feminist values. Rather than engage in debates on such issues, Antifa and other groups are seeking to blacklist and badger people into submission. When it comes to Antifa, this threat has always had a potential for violence, as I addressed in prior congressional testimony.
In Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, Bray emphasizes the struggle of the movement against free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says, ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’”Indeed, Bray admits that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists… From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.” It is an illusion designed to promote what Antifa is resisting “white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, ultra-nationalism, authoritarianism, and genocide.” Thus, all of these opposing figures are deemed fascistic and thus unworthy of being heard. Bray quotes one Antifa member as summing up their approach to free speech as a “nonargument . . . you have the right to speak but you also have the right to be shut up.”
I previously discussed how George Washington University student Jason Charter was charged as the alleged “ringleader” of efforts to take down statues across the capital. Charter has been an active Antifa member on campus for years. Following his arrest, he claimed the “movement is winning.” It is winning. It is winning mostly since people remain silent. Silence kills free speech. Antifa knows that.
To use a Harry Potter term, they are the dementors of the anti-free speech movement. To quote Albus Dumbledore: “A word of caution: dementors are vicious creatures. They will not distinguish between the one they hunt and the one who gets in their way. Therefore I must warn each and every one of you to give them no reason to harm you.”
If gender is a social construct, then there is no such thing as homosexuality.
There is, indeed, a war on women.
The Left attacks women who voice an opinion on what their gender means.
The Left forces young female athletes to share a locker room and shower with male athletes, with male genitalia, who claimed to be female to gain access to those spaces.
The Left claims that my gender is a state of mind, and they will try to impoverish any woman who disagrees.
Women and girls are boycotted, lose scholarships, get kicked off sports teams, jeopardize university admissions, and get fired, for disagreeing that a man can say he’s a woman, and should be given access to women’s changing rooms, showers, battered women’s shelters, scholarships, women of the year awards, and everything else associated with women.
The Left has turned transgenderism into a legitimate mental illness of gender dysphoria, into a gender minstrel show. It relies upon stereotypes. “Female” means someone who dresses, talks, and acts ultra feminine. A man can wear pink, put a bow in his hair, and put on makeup, and visit the White House, as a “woman.” When a teenage girl acts like a tomboy, or is socially shy, she’s told she was just born in the wrong body. She’s told she’ll fit in when she takes medication that will permanently lower her voice and thicken her facial features, and to get a double mastectomy. She can get bottom surgery, become sterilized, and get a makeshift penile facsimile. After she’s butchered her body, she’s often left depressed and at high risk of suicide. Teen boys are encouraged to become chemically and surgically castrated. Puberty blockers were found to carry serious side effects. They are not, actually, totally reversible.
The backlash from future generations is probably going to be extreme. I predict that many of those pushing transgenderism and infinite pronouns, are going to deny any involvement in about 15 years. Kind of like how so many Germans and Poles denied supporting the Na$i party after WWII.
The studies that claimed that surgery prevented suicide were flawed. What’s actually the case is regret setting in about a decade after surgery, if it hasn’t already.
Why in the world would children be allowed to decide to be another gender, when they aren’t allowed to walk around naked, vote, buy beer, or drive? I’d like to ask these Democrats who claim their children just knew they were a different gender if they would similarly support them if they claimed to want to be just like Donald Trump, and attend a Trump rally. Would they let them choose how to live their life then?
https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-study-finds-methodological-flaws-and-significant-risk-of-harm-in-dutch-protocol-for-pediatric-medical-transition
Ben Shapiro re: South Park correctly predicting trans lunacy:
mentally ill spoiled brats
“…KNOW THE ENEMY…”
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
– Sun Tzu
Maybe just laughing in their faces is the way to go…
But it’s perfectly OK to ban anything which is, or is perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be, even remotely “Russian.”
There is nothing that won’t rile up the antifa crowd. They will always find something to protest against. It is up to us to oppose
Peter – the Antifa crowd is a fascist bunch. Their name, meaning anti-fascist, just means they oppose themselves.
Possibly the only organization in modern-day America to oppose itself.
Instead of groveling at the feet of ANTIFA, Streets Pub & Grub should sponsor Harry Potter Month in Sacramento. It’s long past time to go kinetic on these pathetic little wannabee communists and drown them out. They might even come up with a new drink special to mark the occasion. “Potter Punch” maybe ??? Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article.
I wish businesses were that brave
Here is a question I have been pondering, if and or when Biden gets the US into WWIII, are all these ANTIFA types going to enlist? Or those who have the Ukrainian flag in their twitter handles?
Seriously.
@Upstate
That’s the thing – I’m sure they just assume someone else will take care of it, just as mom and dad did with virtually everything in their earlier lives. It’s just my opinion/observation, but it seems to me things like Antifa are the ultimate rejection of actually having to expend effort to participate in functional and equal society. They are essentially the personification of a temper tantrum taken way, way too far on the part of individuals who collectively possess very little sense of adult responsibility or collective consciousness, which to me is the opposite of their conformist ‘hive mind’ tendencies.
I know some would apply that metaphor broadly, perhaps even to (and not necessarily inaccurately) to the hippy generation but there really is something singular about it in this generational instance IMO.
Just my two cents.
No they will not enlist. Have they flocked to Ukraine to fight the Russian? No. They’d rather bully people and riot here where they’re safe from prosecution and consequences than go to Ukraine where they might be killed.
Good on J.K. Rowling for standing up for women’s rights.
To be pro-women’s rights is not to be anti-trans.
To be pro-women’s rights is not to be anti-trans.
This true, but trans activists believe pro-woman means anti-trans. Why? Because of their demands such as that a biological male, who identifies as a woman, be treated as if he were actually a woman for purposes of competing against biological women in sports competitions, using women’s locker rooms, and being housed in women’s prisons.
This has done serious damage to women’s sports, led to trauma among young women having to use the same locker rooms and bathrooms as biological men, and led to rapes in women’s prisons.
Seen in that light, women’s rights and the demands of trans activists are irreconcilable.
Good op-ed piece from, of all outlets; the NYTs. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/opinion/jk-rowling-transphobia.html
I completely agree. J.K. Rowling should be getting a lot more cred for standing up for her gender versus the liberal cowards who dominate the rest of her cohort.
The malcontent groups like Antifa and the Alphabet gangs in this country feel the need to invent issues and problems to be relevant. I wish they would realize what the suppression of free speech and cancel culture in our country is leading to. A brave North Korean defector, Yeonmi Park, describes our current American “woke” culture as on a path eerily similar to that which she escaped from in North Korea. She describes her ivy league degree from NYC’s Columbia Univ as a pure indoctrination camp.
Silence is consent, we must not yield American culture and freedoms to these smallish groups of malcontent troublemakers. As the majority, we must mock and marginalize them, or they will win! Read this news story of Ms Park: https://nypost.com/2023/02/11/north-korea-defector-yeonmi-park-slams-woke-us-ideology/
ANTIFA is simply the new Brown and Black Shirts. You know they are stupid because they can’t even realize that’s this has been seen before on many occasions. These are the people who try push “the revolution” and then try to hijack any moderate revolution that might succeed. It goes back to the French Revolution, to the Russian revolution and their Bolsheviks ( who actually stage a coup) when the moderates outvoted them by a large margin, and then the toppling of the Weimar Republic by a minority party of national socialists who were no better than the communists they fought in the streets. It’s also like the myth of Salvador Allende of Chile who won with a little over 1/3 of the popular vote and tried to turn Chile communist. You remember Allende. One man, one vote, one time. He and his party actually did discuss having no further votes
The best response to Antifa is kinetic.
The transgender cult and its ringleaders couldn’t care less about the rights of individuals, they are not looking out for boys or girls—they have a radical agenda to destroy society.
The big losers (as far as adults are concerned) once again are women and women’s rights. Good for J.K. Rowling for standing up for women and standing against this destructive theology.
Charlie Manson would be so proud of these mindless thugs.
Just when I did not think the world could get any crazier, the world proves me wrong.
There is no such thing as an “antiauthoritarian communist.” By design, communism is led by a small cadre of the “vanguard” that imposes its will on the majority through force and terror. They resort to “revolution” because they can’t wait for change through the ballot box. Anytime a small elite captures the public through force and terror, you can be sure they will be using authoritarian methods to rule and put down dissent. What Antifa and the rest of the woke left, and the Democratic party, represent is the beginnings of fascism American style.
Yes, they are winning because of intimidation and the support of stupid lefties.
But political correctness always morphs into terror.
This pub is an example of the fear that adherents of the left live in.
Antifa, in a stroke of irony, actually remind me more of the National Front or Aryan Youth than what they purport to be. Of course, their membership is largely too young to have had direct contact with those groups, and they have never been taught about what constitutes real fascism or actual privilege. They misunderstand even the pseudo-intellectual Marxism they espouse given their poor education, lack of experience, inability to think critically, and utter lack of human compassion or empathy.
They are (again, largely white, largely affluent) ignorant, spoiled, overgrown children regardless of age. We have seen what the world would look like if given to woke millennials, and it’s time to push back mightily. We can give them the proverbial spanking their parents were too cowardly to provide.
The Human Race has had it right for Tens of Thousands of years….with simple notions of Male/Female and how the population grows. It has only been in the past decade or so that all of this flexible gender looniness has gone on.
For that flexibility to be “natural” and biologically correct….why did Mankind get so wrong for so long….and even our bone structure marks us down to just two genders/sexes?
Mental Problems seem to come in many different forms.
The Loony Left’s attack on Women is destroying the Feminist Movement and not a peep out of them…..which proves that was just another Leftist scheme. that got outdone by the LGBTXYZ movement.
BLM is going the way of the Buffalo along with Wokism….next in line shall be Antifa….and in time the alphabet nazi’s.
To varying extents we are in the early stages of global population collapse.
China, Russia. Japan are all already at a point in which the situation is completely irreversible and the economic consequences are starting and will be devastating in the next Decade.
The EU is following close behind.
The US alone among the west is not facing an impending demographic crisis. Though absent between 2-4M immigrants per year the US would also have some problems.
Regardless, this is real, and it is happening.
Exactly how long do we think it is going to be before abortion, and all forms of non-reproductive sexuality become not merely illegal but criminal in these places ?
How is it that you expect that those who responded to Covid by forced masking. Coerced vaccination. and forced closings are going to respond to dropping standard of living as population declines ?
As I’ve been telling people in person for decades, Do you think just maybe the Herd has been poisoned?
The results are clear as to what has happened to the citizens “Kings/Queens”, as they’ve surrendered up their freedoms for a daddy figure, the US Fed Govt, with authority that it isn’t supposed to have. AKA USDA, FDA, EPA, NIH, NIAID, HHS, CDC, & how many more agencies? A 1000?
Roundup Ready GMO Food & Big Pharma Shots from before Birth & this below is what we get.
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More Than 75% Of Americans Aged 17-24 Aren’t Fit For Military Service: DOD
Tyler Durden’s Photo
by Tyler Durden
Saturday, Mar 04, 2023 – 12:00 PM
As the US military struggles to fill the ranks with new recruits, a new report from the Department of Defense reveals that the vast majority of Americans aged 17-24 are unfit for military service.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/more-75-americans-aged-17-24-arent-fit-military-service-dod
If I see the word ” Antifa” in an article I know insanity will follow. Of course according to poop in his pants Nadler, Antifa is just an idea.
Gender Dysphoria is a mental disease just like Bipolar and schizophrenia. And should be treated as such. I kept hearing ” believe the science” . Especially when it came to Climate Change and Covid. Well Biology is a science. Females have XX chromosomes. Males have XY chromosomes. I know a hermaphroditism exists but that is less than 1% of the population. No amount of lipstick or the use of a chest binder will change your gender.
trans/homosexuals and the politically congruent (“=”), generally, are uncomfortable coexisting with others in the transgender spectrum. To be fair, people cannot change their sex, but they can simulate their gender (i.e. sex-correlated attributes) through medical, surgical, or psychiatric corruption.