by Emanuele Mastrangelo and Enrico Petrucci
Initiative against censorship censored
As you know, Centro Studi Machiavelli has joined the iSpeak - ioParlo initiative against censorship. Well, two of the social networks on which this platform is offering its program censored it immediately. It happens on Facebook, where the page (totally empty and without even a post) did not even last 2 hours after its creation, and later on TikTok. On the latter social, however, the prompt reaction of the profile administrators allowed the content to be restored, which, on the other hand, had no effect on Zuckerberg's social. There, quite simply, it is reported without possibility of appeal that an anti-censorship page... “violates community standards.”
UK. Away with “Anglo-Saxon,” it's too nationalist
Remember the affair of the Cambridge academic journal that had changed notes from “Anglo-Saxon England” to “High-Medieval England and its Neighbors” because Anglo-Saxon was too nationalist? We had discussed this in Bulletin No. 14 pointing out how along with those who finally realized the disasters of cancel culture and wokeshit there was no shortage of only well-wishers who dismissed the academic journal issue to clickbait: “What's wrong with you that they rename a journal? It's not like they delete the word from the dictionary!”
Q.E.D. just three months after that affair, the University of Nottingham decided to rename the course "Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies" to "Viking and Early Medieval English Studies", because "Anglo-Saxon" sounds too nationalistic and we need to decolonize. And the term "Viking" doesn't fare well either. It remained in the title of that course, but was removed from other programs because of the Norse connections to “race, empire, Nazism.” In fact, as the Telegraph recalls the hunt for historical Anglo-Saxonism has been going on since 2019 when the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists renamed itself the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England. We suggest at this point that the name “Eng-land” also be updated to “Mediev-land” and then everyone will be happy.
USA - In San Francisco an orgy of cancel culture
The city of San Francisco, California, is launching an ambitious $3 million plan to mow down monuments in the public square. Starting with a survey of statues and memorials published last year, a committee will assess which of the 98 monuments “no longer represent the values that we say the city stands for”, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports. According to the first report published last year, those unwelcome monuments “achieve a public space lacking balance by privileging colonialism, white supremacy and patriarchy”.
No further details are known at this time. Among the 98 statues surveyed is a bust of Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, unveiled in 2018. Given Newsom's woke attitude, it is plausible that he will have his monument removed as well to set a good example. We note that San Francisco statues at risk include a plaque dedicated to Guglielmo Marconi (a figure disliked by wokeists, see Bulletin No. 19) posted in 1938 and a head of Leonardo da Vinci on a campus, unveiled in 1941.
After all, San Francisco is quite accustomed to cancel culture: a few years ago the local superintendent's office had planned to rename schools named after Lincoln, Roosevelt, Edison and Louis Stevenson, but the coup had fallen through because of the threat of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit brought by a group of well-organized parents.
USA - Feminists trump Marilyn Monroe
Still on the topic of California's statues, "Forever Marilyn", the nearly 8-meter statue of Marilyn Monroe near the Palm Springs Art Museum that depicts Monroe in the famous fluttering skirt pose from "The seven year itch", will be displaced to a more secluded location. Officially this is a decision as a matter of street visibility. Basically, it was given to the right to the hard-line feminists, who considered the monument a "sexualization" (Duh!) and branded it "misogynistic." We, however, know that they will not be satisfied with its displacement, we bet?
Caribbean - away with caravels, better with bongos
The Caribbean state of Trinidad and Tobago is debating whether to remove Christopher Columbus' three caravels from its coat of arms. Prime Minister Keith Rowley proposed this at his party's annual convention. In their place would be placed steel drums, the metal percussion instrument native to Trinidad. For now it is only an announcement, but the people would seem quite divided.
Canada. No pork at KFC, heaven forbid the Muslims get fed up....
Multiculturalism should enrich and increase variety and possibilities. This is in theory, because in the end you run the risk of having to reduce options to only those allowed by the loudest minorities (minorities for a little longer). Such is the case in Ontario where the famous fried chicken chain KFC is not only offering halal chicken menus for observant Muslims, but has decided to ban pork from its menus. Bacon will remain a permitted option only for Taco Bell franchises and the Ottawa and Thunder Bay city areas. If you think this only affects a country pooped to the last stage under the Trudeau regime, remember that in Lodi last April, the liberal mayor eliminated pork from school meals.
Wales. Even the buildings and towns are racist!
The Welsh crusade against whiteness continues to being more and more ridiculous: now it is the turn of racist buildings. In the last bulletin we had covered the anti-racist program for librarians in Wales, now it emerges that training meetings will not be allowed to be held in buildings to which a racist or colonial past is connected. That is, buildings named after or made by historical figures who had something to do with the colonial past (practically 99.9 percent of British historical figures...). The blacklist had already been made with a 2020 census in which an entire village of 4,600 was branded a “racist place”- Nelson in Caerphilly County. Then it had emerged that the village is called Nelson not because of Trafalgar's one-armed admiral but because of the historic pub and inn dedicated to Lord Nelson, and it had been partially restored.
Admiral Nelson aside, the fact that an anti-racist course should be held in a place devoid of connections to the colonial past is yet another testament to Wokeist magical thinking. It is not about historicizing, but about performing rituals.
Australia. Rain damages trans, poor things!
Facing the fury of the elements are all human beings equal? Not at all! According to woke ideology there are those who suffer more than others. Women and non-binary people are affected by a factor of 14 times higher than average. So reports a research conducted by Women's Environmental Leadership Australia relaunched by Il Fatto Quotidiano, research that focuses on heat waves and forest fires.
A similar article had made headlines last April, How climate change is hitting vulnerable trans sex workers, , authored by a Reuters correspondent. The article explained how the lengthening rainy season is undermining the incomes of trans people prostituting themselves on the streets. So, visit trans prostitutes, but by electric car, to save the planet.
UK. Mandatory to ask a male before x-rays if he is “pregnant”
In England, new NHS guidelines force all patients between the ages of 12 and 55 to be asked if they are “pregnant” before proceeding with X-rays. Question to be asked regardless of biological sex. Raising the issue Angus Dalgleish, a British medical luminary with sympathies for UKIP) from the pages of the Daily Mail..
Editor of the Centro Studi Machiavelli “Belfablog,” Emanuele Mastrangelo is editor-in-chief of “CulturaIdentità” and has been editor-in-chief of “Storia in Rete” since 2006. A military-historical cartographer, he is the author of several books (with Enrico Petrucci, Iconoclastia. La pazzia contagiosa della cancel culture che sta distruggendo la nostra storia e Wikipedia. L'enciclopedia libera e l'egemonia dell'informazione).
An essayist and popularizer, his publications include "Alessandro Blasetti. The forgotten father of Italian cinema" (Idrovolante, 2023). And with Emanuele Mastrangelo "Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia and the Hegemony of Information" (Bietti, 2013) and "Iconoclasm. The contagious insanity of the cancel culture that is destroying our history" (Eclectica, 2020).
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