The best and most level-headed point for point commentary on that 'event' itself, came from Isiah (though you may want to gird your ears, because Isiah, as he describes it, is commenting from that part of New York City that uses the F'word as a comma). One of the worst features of the issue is that the worst parts didn't come from the pro-regressive Wokesters of the Left & Right ('a turd by any other name would reek the same'), but from the reactions to it from those of the Left, Right, and Center, who've been trying and mostly failing, to be 'Based' in their responses to it.
What nudged me into writing this post, was the responses to James Lindsay's response, to Matt Walsh's response to the video, which is what got me to finally watch the original video. Regarding Lindsay's commentary, aside from a couple minor digs at Walsh in the latter half of the last paragraph that didn't seem necessary, I agreed with his points and with why he made them, as well as with his conclusion that while Walsh isn't 'Woke Right', several of his takes on the issue are wrong in both particulars and principles.
There were three particular issues in Walsh's commentary that caught my attention, the nature of which I recognized from other news cycles before and since. Which can be picked out in Walsh's:
1) The Issue is never about the issue...
- ...opinion of what the 'actual issue' is and is not,
- ...opinion of what contributing cash to unsavory people in difficult circumstances, will and will not accomplish
- ...Miss Manners-like take on the proper usage of the 'n-word'.
The first part of that, begins at the 10.29 mark, where Walsh states what far too many people believe about issues such as this:
'...the most important parameter is that the person is white' [and] '...soley based upon...'It's painful to still have to say this in 2025, but Race is not the issue. Despite all attempts to make it seem like the reason, Race and 'Whiteness', are not that. Not even when the issue is specifically about targeting 'white people' for the need to redress the systemic racism of their 'Whiteness'.
How can I say that "It's not about race!", when they actually say that it's about race? Easy. It's because their issues are never about what they claim to be about. You can see what I mean for yourself by asking yourself this:
See what I mean? Although Race was the vehicle, it was not what drove the Hendrix video, just as it's not what's driving the current news cycle's evasion of the nature of Illegal Immigration (or of "regime change" in the Israel/Iran conflict), and it's frustrating to still be addressing this in 2025, as if people have forgotten Alinsky's dictum:
- Do you see the Woke Left embracing Thomas Sowell on the basis of his race?
- Do you see the Woke Right embracing James Lindsay on the basis of his race?
- Do you think the Woke Left began vandalizing Tesla's because of their sudden hatred for the way Tesla manufactured their electric cars & trucks?
"The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution!", which was the case in the 70s when Alinsky made his point, as has been the case since the Fergusson riots of 2014 here in St. Louis and on through the George Floyd summer of 2020, and it has been the case that has persisted case in education for decades, as I pointed out in these posts on SEL, DEI, CRT in 2021:
Appearances are meant to be deceiving - and destructive
What we are led to believe by all of this, and by the media reporting on it, is that it's all about Race, all about *whiteness*, and all about *white supremacy*, but... believe it or not, it's not really about race. If your reaction is "They're talking about racism, they're calling me a racist, it feels a lot like it's about race... and I'm not going to tolerate it!", that's understandable, and you know what? They understand that that will be your reaction too. Think about that. My dear binary ladies and gents, when the enemy has gone to such great lengths to prepare the ground for you to fight them on, you’d be wise to think twice before fighting them there.
IOW: It's a trap! Seriously. Don’t go there. They go to great lengths to make this appear to be all about race, but it’s not about race, and no matter how many actual racists are involved - and there are many - Race is just the most convenient means of sowing dissension and causing division; the easiest means of putting people on edge; the easiest means of pitting people against each other; which is the easiest means of turning people's good intentions into the means of subduing them, so as to seize more of what this is all about: Power.
Don’t take the bait, don’t bother telling them that you’re not a racist or that they are; don’t tell them they’ve got you all wrong; because those are the very steps that they want you to take, as they will lead you smack dab into the kill zone that they’ve prepared for you...."
You might well ask just how much value there is in knowing that 'the issue isn't the issue', when weighed against the real harm that real people suffer from bearing the brunt of the issue being raised. After all:
Yes, absolutely and undoubtedly. And sure, for the Tesla owners to know that they weren't the reason they were targeted, is unlikely to make them feel a whole lot better. But be that as it may, wouldn't it be at best mistaken, and at the very least foolish & destructive, to propose making it up to those Tesla owners, by vandalizing Ford, GM, Chrysler cars, penalizing their owners, and forcing them to yield to Tesla's in traffic, as if those owners and their Tesla's were the issue?
- Don't Tesla owners have very real cause for anger over the very real harm that's been done to them?
- Don't Tesla owners have a real basis for seeking satisfaction?
Just as that special treatment would do nothing but stoke the same flames of agitation & division which the Wokesters' were intending to enflame all along, treating 'Race' or 'Whiteness' as issues that justify singling the particular targets of the moment out for recompensation, would be far worse than merely pointless and counterproductive.
I understand want to approach the issue logically and make a straight forward response to it, but you need to remember that the fundamental requirement of a logical argument is that your premises be true, and when you attempt to form a logical response that's based upon a false premise that they fabricated to set you up with, it's not going to improve your position at all. When you rush into the argument that they've prepared for you, like Walsh does, with logic, facts, & charges locked & loaded for a clear cut reasonable argument to a point they tricked you into defending, you're going to find that you've brought the proverbial knife to a gunfight as they easily brush your facts, premises, and arguments aside in the most irrational manner possible, while subjecting you to being smeared with charges you won't be able to reasonably understand, and which will leave you with no means for arguing against them.
To repeat, when someone who considers you to be their enemy, carefully prepares a battleground to battle you upon, it is unwise to go meeting them on that ground at the time and place of their choosing!
To borrow a phrase... 'Wake Up!' (ahem).
By allowing yourself to be sucked into angrily treating these issues as anything other than a pretext for screwing our entire society over with, you and those you associate with, are likely to get sucked into helping them advance the Wokester's goals. Don't do that.
2) Ideological incentives trump economic incentives (which undermine your ability to act on what is right)
The 2nd issue I saw was Walsh's hot take on using the power of Economics to shape society closer to his heart (!), in that he believed Shiloh Hendrix getting rich off her crude behavior, would provide *us* with the incentive & means for cancelling Cancel Culture. That begins at the 14.08 mark:
'... effectively ended cancel culture... and I think that's right...', and that the '...only way to disincentivize that behavior is to reward the person who's being targeted...', and that '... the only thing that can stop them, the thing that can make them think twice about doing this again, is if they know that instead of getting their target cancelled, they might accidentally make them rich. And more importantly, even than the money ...they must know that their attempt to isolate, to ostracize somebody, will fail...'Sorry, but on two levels, one being how incentives work, and the other being what ideological people are incentivized by, I answer an emphatic no.
, and that at 15.50
'...that for every person condemning the targeted person to more, will rally to their defense...', and at 16.20 '...with this case, that assumption has been flipped on its head, because now the mob knows, that making them famous, might help them, rather than hurt them, rather than the fame being punished, it's being rewarded...'
Reminder, 'economics' was Marx's means of destabilizing the West, and 'Capitalism' was the term he used to 'polarize it, freeze it' the Free Market with.
In the first case, treating cancel culture as an economic behavior, is at the very least mistaking the nature of economic incentives. Haven't we all seen the Wokester's get publicly skewered in backlashes that financially penalized them for their actions. That happened with the case of Nick Sandman, the Covington High School student targeted by media at the Washington monument, who won millions of dollars in settlements from the Washington Post, NBC, and CNN. It happened in Elon Musk's lawsuit against Media Matters, and Peter Theil/Hulk Hogan's suit against Gawker.
With such obvious economics disincentives involved, have the media changed? No? Gee... it's almost as if something else is motivating them...isn't it? Clearly such 'economic issues' are neither incentives or disincentives for their ideological behavior, but you can be assured that they will double down on continuing to go 'Forward!', if such setbacks mean guaranteeing even more public focus upon the same divisive ideological messages they're using to divide us with.
Of course the Wokesters (Left & Right) would prefer to see the person's life they targeted destroyed - that's in the nature of those who look first to Power - but for them that small bit of destruction is just a 'happy side-effect', of the more destructive revolution they seek. Whatever the issue may have been or soon will be, they are chosen for their ability to stir up publicity and division across society, and they have no meaning for them beyond that (hello: Nihilists!), but so long as their revolution is being served, such small setbacks of prosperity for those they targeted, will be taken in stride as little more than 'unfortunate' collateral damage, so long as it furthers the division & discord that the initial action was intended to ignite in the first place.
So when they see one of their targets like Shilow Hendrix getting a million dollars, which stirs up even more publicity, and stirs up still more division amongst the 'normies' over 'someone like her' benefitting from it, and they take the bait of feeling targeted for 'being white', and that leads them more deeply into 'economic thinking' - then since they are only reaping more of what they initially targeted her for, to begin with - what is there for the Wokesters not to like?!
But to think that someone else - vulgar or not - being economically rewarded or penalized could be even a way, let alone the only way, to deter the ideological fervor behind cancel culture, is to utterly and completely miss what 'this' is all about. On just the 'economics of it' alone, it entirely misreads what 'economic incentives' are - valid 'economic incentives' aren't about what another person receives, but what you personally seek to gain, or avoid losing. And because of the way such incentives actually do work, when people see that those who've been publicly cancelled, could be actually gaining money from Givesendgo dollars because they were targeted, what that's most likely to incentivize is others of similarly questionable character, seeking out similar situations (staged even) so that they can try to appeal to the 'Based' internet and fill up their own Givesendgo's with mega bucks (which seemed to have already happened. Go figure), which, of course, is likely to garner still more of the very same publicity, division, and discord, that the Wokesters sought to inflame us with in the first place.
More importantly, the 'economics' of what 'this' is all about, is that getting you to think about all such issue in economic terms, as Walsh advises, is fundamentally engaging in the act of putting utilitarian ends over doing what is right & best, which cancel culture and everything which makes it possible and probable, fundamentally depends upon your thinking!
Or to picture their words:
Getting you to not only go along with, but to engage in the farcical 'ethics' of 'the Ends justify the means' (which is exactly what the modern field of Economics hinges upon - see my extended post 'Exiting the wizards circle'), is a means of causing your ethical sense to collapse, which is a huge incentive - and primary goal - for them.
James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames
Everything the Woke Left does is in service to its revolution. Every issue it takes up is just a crowbar against the society they hate. This is why you get things like Queers for Palestine and these LA riots. It's also all strategic, which is why a weekend of protest comes next.
The notion of using 'economic incentives' which have no value for the Pro-Regressive Wokester's of the Left or Right (are you using Marx's definition of Value, or Bastiat's?), as a means to end Cancel Culture, can and will have no worthwhile outcome. The Woke are not economically motivated - economics is often their means but it's not their motive - what motivates them is their ideology, and while they will be radically inflamed when they see that those they've attacked are benefitting from that attack - that's not going to incentivize them to back off, it's going to rile them up into going further & faster forward.
IOW, like the Tesla's, the person or issue being attacked is not the target, the narrative & disturbances generated from that attack, is, because:
'The issue is never the issue, it is always the revolution!'They attack whatever particulars present themselves as seeming useful in promoting their ideology and/or the beliefs that they're associating with them, as that's the best means of elevating their ability to cause further divisions, so as to intimidate the 'wrong people', and further their revolution.
So, sorry, but no, Capitalism is not going to solve society's faulty and failing ideology, it's only going to provide its enemies more of what they seek, while producing more fire for the revolution - which actually is the only 'problem of production' that they passionately desire to solve. And prescribing Capitalism to cure a philosophical cancer, is at best philosophical malpractice and economic incompetence, and there will be no cure forthcoming from such a misdiagnosis as that, and no benefits will follow from whatever additional 'cures' might be prescribed based upon them.
3) If you don't use The Master's Tools correctly, they will use them against you
The third point that I saw persisting across the news cycles, is visible in Walsh's 'Miss Manners' approach to the issue of the proper use of the 'n word'.
20.30 '...totally indefensible...' (one side can say n word, other can't) ...' and ''...if it's wrong to say the word, then it's wrong for anyone to say the word, then they need to not say it...'They don't defend using the 'n' word, because that isn't their point in using it. Your reaction to their use of the 'n word' is the point of their actions, and here you are thinking that the best plan is to start using the 'n word' as a means of taking a principled stand? To what?! Do you really think that the way they use the 'n word' is the result of a logical or grammatical error on their part? Do you really think that your principled arguments and logical corrections, are going to... what, correct their accidental logical & grammatical errors, and somehow teach or shame them into the proper usage of improper language?!
Really?! Well... thank you Mr. Helper, but I think you need to pay a bit more attention to what they think about your principles and logic ('Ah! Ahh! AHHH!!!' 😎).
See, for instance (as I noted in this post), how Audre Lord gave their answer to that approach, a great many news cycle ago:
That strategic intent was perhaps most vividly illustrated by Audre Lorde, the Marxist, black, lesbian, feminist, activist (do you feel "the exasperated etc” in that listing?), whose infamous statement has become a rallying cry of what Deconstructionism is all about:"the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."Get it?Whenever their activist followers and functionaries do and say seemingly senseless, illogical, and unreasonable things, from demanding the use of ridiculous pronouns, to claims of being "non-binary!", or labeling you (meaning any Westerner of any color) as a 'White Supremacist', they're not doing so because they're fools, but because those illogical and unreasonable words and actions are the most suitable tools at hand in their Post-Modernist toolbelt, for them to utilize as 'the right tools for the job' of dismantling 'The Master's House', by producing reactions of discomfort and anger in you, which deconstructs its fundamental norms from within you.
- The Master's House that they want to dismantle (deconstruct) is the Greco-Roman/Judeo-Christian West.
- The Masters Tools which they've realized are of no use to them - and which they want to keep out of other people's hands as well, are Reason and Logic and the culture which values them.
Using the 'n word' is not about the word, it's about the attention it so easily inflames, so as to cause anxiety and division amongst Americans, in order to (wait for it...) further their revolution. And Walsh's plan to use such words to make a point and defend the language, is nothing more than accepting their engraved invitation to meet them on the battlefield at the time and place which they've very carefully chosen, for you to fight them upon.
Come on, do I need to say it again? 'Wake Up!' (sheesh).
'the issue is never the issue, it is always the revolution'!!!Everything Woke (Left and Right) goes to sh*t
To think that the Pro-Regressive Woke (Left and Right) are going to act in accordance with the very reality they're revolting against, is foolish. Yet Walsh and most of the Right, fail to recognize that what they think of as being the reality-based perspective they're making their observations from, is not a perspective or conception of reality that the Wokesters are working from.
Your being offended by it, has no other effect than to further their goals. You are, as Stephen Coughlin puts it, reacting to the blast radius of the bombs that their dialectical airplane began dropping on you several news cycles ago, instead of looking upwards note to identify, target, and shoot down the plane that's dropping them (See his posts on the Dialectical Airplane, and xTweets on it being used to attack the Constitution).
If you take a moment to look at matters from a wider & higher perspective (which, BTW, is what modern schooling was designed from its start in the early 1800s to stop you from doing), it'll reveal that the goading particulars like 'whiteness' or 'white guilt' are little more than successful marketing campaigns for selling the woke Kool-Aid, and the 'normies' are putting their money down for it, hand over fist. See the threads on the subject from "Yuri Bezmenov's Ghost", and especially Melanie Bennet's (@finkledusty) excellent post: "Settlers, Colonizers, and the Politics of White Guilt"
"...When Indigenous activists say the land was never ceded, they are saying they did not agree to your presence. If the land was never given up, then you are on it without permission. And if you are there without permission, then you are, in their words, a settler, an uninvited guest, a colonizer. That language is not poetry. It is the language of eviction.While the Woke Left style the concept as "Land Back Movement", the Woke Right style the very same concept as "Heritage American" to do the very same thing. What We The People need to realize, is that both flavors of Woke benefit from whichever way the coin toss of affordance-based narratives (authentic/other, Sex/Genders, Rich/Poor, White/POC) turns out. They are all a means of nudging the populace into the same activist Praxis, and all of their 'competing' aims are used to halt objective thought in those who stop and react to them, so as to instill in the sense in everyone that only recourse we have for deciding our fates are contests of power (AKA: The Revolution).
The Land Back movement is a political engine that lurks behind these acknowledgements. Its premise is simple: land taken, or unceded, must be returned. The implication, however, is far from simple. If the goal is to restore land to its rightful owners, then those currently living on it have a problem. You cannot be both a permanent citizen and a temporary trespasser. If you tell people for long enough that the land they occupy was stolen, and that they have no rightful claim to it, you should not be surprised when they begin to believe it. And once they believe it, you should not be surprised when Land Back activists begin to act on their demands.
The idea that land belongs inherently to a particular racial or ethnic group is not a new one. In another time and place, it was called "blood and soil." The Nazis used the concept to fuse national identity to ancestral land, arguing that a people and their territory were bound by bloodline. Outsiders had no place in this worldview because they did not share the sacred connection to the soil. Land was not just property. It was the vessel of cultural survival. The Land Back movement, while vastly different in moral tone and historical context, mirrors this framework in structure. It binds land to identity, and identity to legitimacy. The result is a form of ethno-territorial politics...."
Left or Right: "...the most intolerant faction will eventually enforce a rigid orthodoxy on its environment " if allowed the chance...".
The fact that Matt Walsh and so many others still fall for the current issues of the moment being all about the same old pretexts of race, economics, language (which are but the same old pro-regressive (Woke) concepts & theories in new clothing), is nothing but a win for both sides of the Wokester's coin being flipped, and a loss for the realist perspective which they imagine they are upholding. Big time. The mayhem of the moment are consequences, not causes. The anti-reality framework of the Pro-Regressive Woke (Left & Right), is what they use to instill, invoke, and utilize the 'benefits' of the chaos we experience from their issues, and our falling for it - pro or con - helps them to fan the flames of their revolution.
Steal their Motte and bomb their Bailey
If you want to fight back against the Pro-Regressive Woke (Left & Right), you first have to decline to be enraged by their provocations, and instead identify the Classical American Liberal principles that they're trying to avoid and subvert (and yes, you need to be familiar with them, to recognize them), in order to strip them of their rhetorical defenses and ability to attack you.
Without going into the details here (which you can find all the details of here and here), what you want to do is to steal their Motte and bomb their Bailey - their Bailey being the wild charges they rush around attacking you with, such as either 'We're being systemically oppressed by your whiteness!' or 'Whiteness is under attack!', and the Motte being the more reasonable sounding defense which they retreat to when called on the ridiculousness of their tactics, with something like 'We're just trying to be fair.'
But if you can manage to step out of the perspective of whichever narrative they've generated, and identify the principle that they're aiming at subverting & distracting you from (which in the case of the 'Race' narrative, whether Woke Left or Woke Right, is that of the equality of individual rights before objective laws of justice), you'll find that their own narratives will provide you the means of unraveling them.
To do so, you need only reframe their narrative in such a way as to put the spotlight back onto what they're trying so desperately to stop you from engaging with, by feeding a completely negative version of it back to them, which brings it to the forefront of discussion. By combining that with clearly withdrawing your support from what they are expecting you to stand up for - fairness and justice - you force them to hold to their own rules (their claim that truth isn't objective and Power is all that matters), which with no support from you to prop them up, will force them to face up to their own pathetic reliance upon what you stand for - and that effectively flips their script.
NOTE: I'm not suggesting anything like using Alinsky's or Gramsci's rules, but only that you withdraw from them the aid of what you believe to be true, which is the only real strength they can count on, and the only strength that their system ever had! IOW: Shrug!
That may sound like a lot, but the explanation is way longer than the application of it needs to be, which can be as simple as something like:
, and then to bring their walls down, ask them to give you a good reason (which they will resist, see "The Master's Tools" above) why 'they' shouldn't be imposed upon with every bit of power you can bring against them?... and say nothing more as you watch them try to squirm around the need to use or mention concepts such as objectivity, individual rights, an objective Rule of Law, and equal justice for all."Well... if objective truth is an illusion and Power is what society uses to say what is right & wrong, and 'we' have the power, then why should we see a problem with systemic racism? "If 'we' have the power, and everything is about power, doesn't that means that crushing the weaker folk, is the 'right' thing to do?"
[You need to realize that this is what they want power over you, to do to you]
This highlights the fact that in a power oriented system that has no concept of fairness (something that's only possible to one that respects what's real and true, and people are able to comprehend), anyone complaining of being oppressed by a greater power through 'systemic racism', is counting on you who believes in Truth over Power, to insist that they be treated fairly. If you withdraw that expectation of support, then the only defense they can give, is one that depends upon a classical Western understanding of what is real and true, along with a respect for individual rights under a justifiable rule of law, and doing so destroys their entire modernist position.
And adding insult to injury, any additional response they might try to make, implicitly counts upon everyone's ability to recognize, and communicate, and understand, what is objectively true (which, it's worth noting, affects them like garlic, crosses, and holy water, affects a vampire).
Personally, I think that it'd be best if we stopped helping them to get away with such narratives. How about you?
Stop the cycle
To close, I do not think that Matt Walsh is Woke (yet, though the adjacency that he's maintaining to those who are Woke Right, puts him on unsteady ground), but his & so many other people's reactions which mistake secondary effects for primary causes, become issues that further the revolution that the Woke (Left & Right) seek. Denying the existence of the Woke Right, which does exist and is using the issue every bit as much as the Woke Left is, for their shared goals of furthering the divisions needed for revolution - is blinding ourselves to half of the reality of what's going on.
Every time we fall for identifying any of their particular issues of the current news cycle, as being about anything other than their ongoing revolution, we enable them to use our issues to pour further fuel on the flames of their revolution. The incentives they seek are not to be found in monetary gains or losses, or in winning debates, but in the divisions & disruptions they think are needed to tear down the Master's house - and again, you need look no further than how the controversies of Matt Walsh, Shiloh Hendrix, and advice on using the 'n word', are furthering their revolution on all sides of 'The Right'.
We should stop doing that. In every news cycle
