After almost being burned alive for saying that “trans women” are biologically male, JK Rowling has doubled down on her belief that being a woman is more than just claiming to be a woman, and has now joined 150 celebrated authors in an attempt to defend whatever free speech is left on the internet.

These people should have publicly defended the right of the Daily Stormer to say mean things online when this “cancel culture” thing started. Now the censorship machinery is well oiled and it will be totally impossible to stop.

But at least they’re trying.

Daily Mail:

150 celebrated authors, academics and journalists including Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and Noam Chomsky have signed a letter slamming ‘cancel culture’ after JK Rowling was attacked for speaking out about trans women.

Ms Rowling has also backed the movement spearheaded by Pulitzer-prize winning writer Anne Applebaum who warned that ‘Twitter mobs’ including Donald Trump were placing ‘very important restraints on freedom of speech’.

She told the BBC today: ‘There are a lot of writers, artists and journalists who are afraid of approaching certain subjects, afraid of crossing lines or even lacking sufficient zeal for particular subjects because they’re afraid of their peers.’

Margaret Atwood, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, has also added her name despite publicly disagreeing with the Harry Potter author and the letter is signed by household names from the left and right-wings of the political spectrum who have united around the cause.

The letter, published in Harper’s calls for: ‘The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted’ and demands that they want to ‘uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter speech from all quarters.’  It later adds:  ‘It is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.’

…

Anne Applebaum has also signed the letter, she told BBC Radio Four today: ‘We’re worried about pressures that come at the moment from both the right and the left.

‘In the United States we have a President who denounces by names the owners of newspapers and seeks to restrain them and seeks to actually use tools of government to stop them.

‘At the same time we have the phenomenon of social media panics and Twitter mobs that seek to silence people who veer from one orthodoxy or another. These are both very important restraints on freedoms of speech and also on people’s sense of risk aversion’.

The journalist says the letter’s purpose is to ‘put some spine’ into universities and other institutions who ‘have become afraid of Twitter mobs’.

She added: ‘It wouldn’t hurt younger people to go back and listen to arguments that were made 20 and 30 years ago in order to understand some of the context and some of the discomfort that people feel now.’

That may be the grossest alternate reality statement not about coronavirus or Black Lives Matter that I’ve read, so far, this year.

The idea that Trump is somehow a threat to free speech, when virtually all of his supporters are banned from social media and companies like Twitter openly censor him, is really beyond preposterous.

Margaret Atwood voiced her support for the trans community on Monday, tweeting: ‘Biology doesn’t deal in sealed Either/Or compartments. We’re all part of a flowing Bell curve. Respect that! Rejoice in Nature’s infinite variety!‘

Both authors, joined by the likes of Salman Rushdie, who was accused of blasphemy by the some members of the Muslim faith when his book The Satanic Verses was published in 1988, have supported an open letter published in Harper’s Magazine.

The letter opens by praising a ‘moment of trial’ cultural institutions face trial’ in the midst of mass protests for racial and social justice, but warns open debate risks being weakened.

It reads: ‘As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy.’

It goes on to say: ‘The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.

‘While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.

‘The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.

‘The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.

‘We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes.’

These authors are obviously just trying to save their own skin now that the jig is up and the mob is out for them, but it may be too late for that. This censorship thing has been ramping up for years, and people have come to think it natural for these internet platforms to ban people for expressing thoughts that could offend what’s perceived as a minority or protected group.

People didn’t do anything when all of their rights were taken away because of the flu, and they won’t do anything when the internet ban hammer shatters, right before their eyes, whatever freedom they thought they had — and they certainly won’t do anything to defend people whose net worth was, at some point, a billion dollars.

I almost, almost feel bad for the guy.

It’s the same feeling that I have for all old-timers and formerly important people who are trying to figure out clown world.

They open their mouths and just can’t help but be rayciss, no matter how hard they try and even if they consider themselves to be liberal or progressive.

BBC:

Veteran NBC News presenter Tom Brokaw has been criticised for saying on the network that Hispanic-Americans should “work harder at assimilation”.

He told NBC’s Meet the Press he had been arguing for some time that Latinos in the US should be ensuring their children speak English.

…

Brokaw began by sharing the views of some Republican voters, whom he said had told him: “Well, I don’t know whether I want brown grandbabies.”

He added: “I also happen to believe that the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation.

“That’s one of the things I’ve been saying for a long time.

“You know, that they ought not to be just codified in their communities but make sure that all their kids are learning to speak English, and that they feel comfortable in the communities.”

But his fellow guest on the roundtable, PBS NewsHour’s Yamiche Alcindor, said: “The idea that we think Americans can only speak English, as if Spanish and other languages wasn’t always part of America, is in some ways troubling.”

Brokaw later posted a series of apologetic tweets.

See, this used to be the liberal position way back when.

At some point, this became the standard Conservative talking point – I think it was sometime in the aughts. “Speak English! This is America! Habla Ingles!!!”

As conservatives shifted to the “please just assimilate” position, liberals shifted to the “don’t even bother to learn English, just form a completely parallel society where not even your kids learn English, we won’t require them to speak it in school or in government offices” position.

And then it just became verboten to say anything at all about Mexicans and immigrants in general that wasn’t glowing with praise. I guess Moslems started catching more flak instead of Mexicans because they were an easier target and because the GOP was doing its retarded pivot towards Mexican voters.

But yeah, you’d think Brokaw would know better.

These are very outdated talking points.

But I guess as you get older, the new software just won’t run on your brain. Brokaw is 78 years old. This is like trying to Crysis 3 in 4k on a Windows 95 machine with 512mb RAM.

Tom Brokaw is offering a lengthy apology for his comments on Hispanic people and is having trouble with his Twitter account. pic.twitter.com/gmID3CMwo4

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) January 28, 2019

APOLOGIZE, BIGOT!

What is up with these people and their pussy apologies??? Does it ever work?

They must see that it doesn’t work by now. Which means, logically speaking, that if it’s not necessarily to get the liberal hyenas off their backs, that they really do feel this Boomer guilt and they feel compelled to say sorry.

On a deeper, more religious level, I suppose they need a priest in their lives. To be more specific, they need someone to confess to occasionally.

In lieu of having an organized religion/priest/friends to facilitate this, they have to resort to Twitter and the Facebook to write out their… tear-jerker story with the Customary bad boomer GRAMMAR!!

my twitter acct failed me at the worst time.
i am sorry, truly sorry, my comments were offensive to
many. the great enduring american tradition of diversity is to be celebrated and cherished. yamiche, thank u for your comments.
let’s go forward together.

— Tom Brokaw (@tombrokaw) January 28, 2019

Seriously, why do they not hire interns to type their tweets for them? Do they feel no shame? 

That’s usually what nails them. People from Brokaw’s generation (he’s actually Silent Gen, but they’re even worse and usually considered to be honorary Boomers for the purposes of Neon-Nazi propaganda) usually spill the beans about what they really feel on social media in an almost endearingly, but naive fashion and then they get e-mobbed, which eventually leads to groveling apologies and confused old person whimpering.

The exact same thing happened with Brokaw. He had a Boomer Moment. Daily Stormer defines a Boomer Moment as when a Boomer reveals how clueless they are about the state of America mid-virtue-signal by stating what they believe is an acceptable liberal talking point from at least a decade ago only to then get eaten alive by modern liberals. Usually, this culminates in a tearful apology and a forced retirement so that an ambitious Millennial can finally take their job.

Tom Brokaw is just unique in that he has a mass audience so his Boomer Moment was broadcast for all to see.

finally, i am sorry – i never intended to disparage any segment of our rich, diverse society which defines who we are.

— Tom Brokaw (@tombrokaw) January 28, 2019

Tom Brokaw even gave off his customary sign-off before gracefully bowing off the stage.

it worked!

i got your attention.

‘night

— Tom Brokaw (@tombrokaw) January 28, 2019

A fitting epitaph for the great American newsroom anchor.

Here lies Tom Brokaw: ” I got your attention. ‘night”

Andrew Anglin contributed to this report.