In a world that appears to be tottering off its axis with sheer lunacy ruling the day, here is a small sampling of the dangerous ideas gaining traction and the cowardice displayed by so many.

• In Great Britain, where grooming gang crimes exist, "British women who drew attention to 'Asian' [Pakistani and South Asian] sex grooming gangs, are also being attacked by the 'woke' establishment" because "if the victim is white and the rapist is not, she is no victim at all; worse, she is a 'racist' and 'hater' who, if anything, apparently deserves what she got and more."  In fact, far-left extremists and radical feminist academics "don't care about anti-white racism, because they appear to believe that is doesn't exist."  Thus, the idea that "Western women are to blame for being raped by Muslim men" gets a free pass for fear of Islamophobia.  The "Left validates Islam's sexual fantasies and victimization of Western women."
• Critical discussion of Islam is now deemed hate speech, so when Ortega Smith of Spain expressed concern in 2019 about the "Islamist invasion" and the application of sharia law, prosecutors worked to determine whether he was guilty of a hate crime. 
• The City of Seattle's Office of Civil Rights sent an email inviting "White City employees" to attend a training program to help white workers examine "their complicity in the system of white supremacy" and "interrupt racism in ways that are accountable to Black, Indigenous and People of Color."  
• Administrators at Princeton banned such words as "fireman," "chairman," and "mankind" because they omit the 32+ genders the left now asserts exist.
• College students support socialism even though they can't explain what it is. 
• An adult coloring book titled "I Am So Sick of White Guys" is "a full-throated attack on white privilege and power."
• University of Connecticut student government leaders resign because they are white.
• The vast billion-dollar infrastructure of organizations that are Jewish in name only willingly support anti-Semite Chelsea Handler, who told "Jews to go f--- themselves."
• Despite the fact that "America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have you," as explained by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who fled Somalia and now lives in the United States, the School of Architecture at the University of Texas maintains that "the legacy of slavery and a prolonged history of social segregation and economic and political disenfranchisement of African-Americans continues to undermine the power of urban diversity."  Thus, "socially just" architecture is needed to fix it.  Apparently, white skin privilege means "being held responsible for slavery when white America accounted for less than 1% of the African slave trade globally."  In fact, the slave trade "was mainly run by 'people of color,' while white America led the world in abolishing slavery, an institution which still exists in non-white Africa today." 
• "Intersectionality" is the latest academic craze sweeping the American academy.  Consequently, "[f]or the intersectional activists, the U.S. is the world's biggest oppressor.  Not Saudi Arabia or Iran."  In July 2020, David Bukay highlights intersectionality — the leftist plague where "people should never be exposed to contrary point of views [sic], which is one of the basics of scientific research, since it might upset someone else's identity and/or sensibilities and/or personality's ambitions."
• A communist-style power-grab is occurring at the National Book Critics Circle as the left continues its nonstop infiltration into every cultural arena it can overwhelm.
• Hofstra University might as well move to Cuba now that its president has no understanding of what the Declaration of Independence means for liberty and freedom.
• Black Lives Matter (BLM) rioters have targeted a 9/11 memorial in Washingtonville, N.Y. honoring fallen firefighters who lost their lives as first responders g the World Trade Center bombings.

What is the social justice endgame?  David Azerrad explains.

After confronting us with the injustices visited upon women, black people, homosexuals, and any number of other victimized groups, social justice arbiters then claim for themselves the exclusive right to mete out justice. On one side are the baddies, who are at best unaware of America's structural inequities and their own unearned privilege, or at worst just plain bigoted. On the other side are the good guys, the identitarian coalition of the woke and the oppressed fighting for social justice. You're either a racist or an anti-racist. 

The progress of social justice, it turns out, always comes at the expense of certain core natural and civil rights. Freedom of association [has] to be sacrificed to end discrimination.  Free speech will suffer the same fate if hate speech is to be eradicated.  More 'rights' for more people means fewer rights for some people.

Universities are now working on "creating a closer match between the ethnicity of the faculty with the ethnicity of the students."  Does this mean that a black instructor cannot teach Isaac Bashevis Singer's stories because she is neither white nor Jewish?  Libby Emmons maintains that we "are now living through a climate of identity culture" where "white writers who write outside of their ethnic or racial background will be skewered on long sticks and roasted over the fires of social media." 

Crucial to the rabid ideas of the left is Critical Race Theory, which is an "academic discipline that maintains that society is divided along racial lines into (white) oppressors and (black) victims, similar to the way Marxism frames the oppressor/victim dichotomy along class lines.  Critical race theory contends that America is permanently racist to its core, and that consequently the nation's legal structures are, by definition, racist and invalid."

Thus, "members of 'oppressed' racial groups are entitled — in fact — obligated to determine for themselves what traditions have merit and are worth observing."  Such ideas as "meritocracy, equal opportunity and colorblind justice are just empty slogans," and "favoring blacks in employment and higher education is not only permissible but necessary as a means of countering the permanent bigotry of white people[.]"

Ralph de Toledano ([1]), author of Cry Havoc! The Great American Bring-Down and How It Happened, wrote of Karl Lewin (1890–1947) who laid "the groundwork, lecturing world-wide and solidifying the advocacy of violence as long as it was directed at white society."  Toledano asserts that Lewin was one of the theoreticians for the obliteration of all who disagreed with Critical Theory.

Toledano asks, "How can the radical faction of the establishment, though it controls the educational establishment and the foundations with their vast funds, create the kind of society which will collapse of its own stupidity?"  He responds by explaining that Lewin's "contribution was to take the idea of 'democracy' and to redefine it to include every left-totalitarian concept, every aberrant behavior, every form of anti-social violence, and every 'multicultural' and 'diversity' cause, thereby transmogrifying it into 'the permanent cultural revolution.'" 

Now consider that on October 3, 2003, former Colorado governor Richard D. Lamm gave a speech titled "How to Destroy America."  His prescience is frightening.

• First make America a bilingual/bicultural country. History shows ... that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.
• Then invent 'multiculturalism' and encourage immigrants to maintain their own culture. Make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal ... there are no cultural differences that are important ... and the black and Hispanic dropout rate is only due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out-of-bounds.
• Make the United States a 'Hispanic Quebec.' The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity.
• Encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. Make our fastest-growing demographic group the least educated and add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population.  [Consider the no-go zones that Muslims have now established.]
• Get the big foundations and Big Business to give these efforts lots of money. [Consider that in 2016, "the Ford Foundation was pledging to raise $100 million over six years for the Movement for Black Lives, a self-described 'united front' of the original Black Lives Matter."]
• Invest in ethnic identity, and establish the cult of victimology. Start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population. [Think Al Sharpton and company.]
• Establish dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties.  'Celebrate diversity.'  It stresses differences rather than commonalities.  [Read Dennis Prager on diversity.]
• Place all subjects off limits — make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult of 'diversity.'  Find a word similar to 'heretic' in the 16th century — that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking.  Words like 'racist' or 'xenophobe' halt discussion and debate.

Sound chillingly familiar some 17 years later?

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.