The Culture War Needs to Be Fought

Because cultural change precedes political change, and the Left is currently winning on both fronts, we cannot afford to surrender to it on the culture wars, which include the homosexualist agenda of gay marriage and adoption.

It is true that the anti-Islam coalition is broader than the one against cultural Marxism, and includes homosexualists in it, but the latter are unreliable allies. They are against Islam not because they understand or care about the threat Islam represents to the West, but simply because they are only concerned about their own immediate interest, which is the normalization of homosexuality.

For that reason, because they do not think of the far-reaching consequences of the Islamization of the West, homosexualists are anti-Christianity as well as anti-Islam.

By demanding marriage and adoption for gays, homosexual activists know that they can reach and influence the new generations into their way of thinking.

The number one leader of the UK LGBT movement Peter Tatchell (who incidentally advocates lowering the age of consent, repeatedly defended man-boy sex, supported relaxation of laws against pornography "arguing that porn can have some social benefits, and he has criticised what he calls the body-shame phobia against nudism, suggesting that nudity may be natural and healthy for society") publicly says that, without repression of homosexuality and what he calls "heterosexual proselytising", everyone or nearly everyone in society would be bisexual:

Q: What's the difference between heterosexual and homosexual sex? A: A few inches of flesh...

If homosexual desire is this widespread in a homophobic society, imagine how much more common it would be in a gay-positive culture. With the cultural taboos removed, nearly everyone would savour its delights.

That's where they want all of us to get to.

I wonder how many other "delights" Tatchell has in store for us, once the new situation of the "cultural taboos removed" will give him free rein to imagine and publicly profess support for more of them.

I suspect that many people who support or at least do not oppose same-sex marriage are not aware of the long-term goals of the LGBT movement, and of how its goals are incompatible with those of the majority of the people.

Cultural Change Comes Before Political Change

Assault on the Culture from DHFC on Vimeo.


The Left is winning politically because it has won culturally.

The brilliant Antonio Gramsci, who co-founded the Italian Communist Party in 1921, developed his theory of hegemony: before there could be any radical change or revolution, there had to be first a total change in and control of the culture, so that the new, emerging dominant ideas would lead to the poltical revolution.

The Left has put that into practice, getting control of the media, universities, film industry (particularly Hollywood), education and entertainment sectors and in so doing giving rise to new generations with different ideas.

The real conservatives now must take back the culture or create a parallel one to reach the future generations.

Winning the Culture War —- And the Next Generation, from FrontPage Magazine:

Editor’s note: Below is the video of the panel discussion “Assault on the Culture,” featured at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 2013 West Coast Retreat. The event was held February 22nd-24th at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California. A transcript of the discussion follows.

Mark Tapson: As your mutual friend, the late great Andrew Breitbart, was fond of pointing out, politics flows downstream from culture. And the results of the last election confirm that. Conservatives lost last November in the political arena because for decades the radical Left has laid the groundwork for it in the cultural arena.

There’s no way the radical and insubstantial Barack Obama would ever have been taken seriously as a presidential candidate, much less be elected to two terms in the White House, if the Left had not previously and successfully infiltrated the key cultural arenas — education, the news media and entertainment — and spent decades indoctrinating generations. Our task now is to retake the culture or create a parallel one, deprogram that indoctrination, and seduce subsequent generations to a renewed vision of American exceptionalism.

So, gentlemen, what are the symptoms of the assault on the culture? And what is the cure?

We’ll begin with Ron.

Ron Radosh: As the moderator mentioned — I started out, as David did, as a young Marxist. And let me take a page from Marx. Just [as] people have learned that the Left organizes around the Alinsky playbook, here’s another leftist we can learn something from — the brilliant Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, who developed a theory of hegemony. He argued that before there could be any radical change or revolution, which is what he desired, there had to be first a total change in and control of the culture, so that the dominant ideas that would emerge would be those that would lead to the potential for revolutionary action.

He was really onto something. He realized correctly that you had to wage what he called, in his Marxist terminology, a war of position to demand and create hegemonic control of the culture, so that the majority of people think alike and then would be ripe for and become vehicles for creating a revolution.

Well, the problem is, in this country — to make it very simple — that even if we win elections — and we are winning it in state and local level, but not in the national level — even if we win elections, the culture is at present controlled by the political Left. Have no doubts about that.

The first thing — look at the polls and the studies that have been done in the past year. I meant to bring it with me, but I can just mention it without reading through what this professor found out, from a very finely tuned study. He studied the majority of liberal arts universities and colleges in the United States. And he found out that almost 80, 90 percent of the faculty define themselves as liberal or radical and on the left. And you can be sure that in the humanities — history, philosophy, political theory — the professors there are almost entirely on the left.

Undoubtedly you’ve all seen the recent studies of how many faculty members in the major Ivy universities gave to the Romney campaign. They looked at Harvard and Princeton and Yale. And I think at Harvard, everybody gave — 98, 99 percent gave to Obama. And there were, I think, two faculty members — two people employed by Harvard — who gave to Romney; one was a janitor.

(Laughter)

So, this is the reality we’re facing.

Now, I was supposed to talk — I’ve been on a one-man campaign. And instead of giving you everything I said — because there’s just no time — all you have to do is blog, put it on Google — Ron Radosh on Oliver Stone. And you will have maybe 10 recent articles come up. And I’ve been on a one-man campaign against what I think is a major turning point in the culture. Starting a few months ago, on the Showtime Network owned by CBS, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick have put together a 10-part documentary series that is now at an end, but you can still watch it on-demand. And that is now going to be shown throughout our high schools and colleges — Oliver Stone’s “Untold History of the United States.”

If you have seen any of it — and I don’t know how many of you want to be masochists and watch it — it is horrendous. It is — and I am not exaggerating — the exact KGB Soviet propaganda history of the United States as it was written by the KGB in the 1950s and ’60s.

Indeed, when I was growing up, the first book that said the United States was the evil power in the world and responsible for the then-ongoing Cold War was a little-known book by a Communist — who was one of the Communist Party members of the United States who infiltrated the OSS during the war and was a top officer in the OSS — a man named Carl Marzani, who was a secret member of the Communist Party and later, we found out, paid by the KGB, and actually a paid agent of theirs — he published a book subsidized by the KGB — this is how he got the money to publish independently — called “We Can Be Friends.”

And that book outlined the theory that the United States — there could’ve been peace with the Soviet Union if the United States had done what Stalin wants. Because Stalin was a good guy. Truman, who then President, was a fascist, which –

(Laughter)

You have to remember, the Communists in America called Harry Truman a fascist. Not even a conservative Republican, but a fascist — creating a fascist America. And he outlined the theory in this book.

And, lo and behold — I watched Oliver Stone’s first five episodes; I couldn’t go beyond that. I know what’s in them; I read the [synopsis] in David Horowitz’s FrontPage. I’m not going to torture myself that much. But I watched the first five. It was exactly the argument, with the same quotations and the same facts, in the same order, as this 1952 book by this Communist KGB agent.

And they are — you have to realize this is a turning point. If something like this had been produced and tried to be shown when John F. Kennedy was President, or in the years after Kennedy — even, I think, when Bill Clinton was President — first they would not have been able to get it aired in a major network. It would’ve been attacked all over as outright distortions of history, as Communist propaganda, as an embarrassment.

What has happened? Just the reverse. They have been touring — up to the present, and still going on every weekend — college after college in the United States, where they speak to thousands of students, show them one episode, and then talk and answer questions. They are getting phenomenal attention. Both of them have been on every major TV and radio talk show you can think of, including, I’m sorry to say, Mike Huckabee, who sang their praises and thanked them for doing such a wonderful job in educating our students in the history of the United States. Either Mike Huckabee is dumb or he just got something handed to him by his staff and didn’t really watch it.

So this is what we’re against. Let me just give you one brief example, because I only have two minutes left. The hero of the Stone TV series is the late Vice President — before that Secretary of Commerce — Vice President and then Secretary of Commerce, who Truman fired for being an appeaser of the Soviets, Henry A. Wallace. The theory of their TV show is that had Henry A. Wallace successfully become President, there would’ve been no Cold War, we would’ve had peace with Russia, we would’ve had total income redistribution, we would have an equitable, fair, social democratic America. And everything would’ve been roses. As it was, this was failed because of the political bosses in the rightwing corporations who fought Wallace and stymied him.

Well, who was Henry Wallace? He was a naïve, classic dupe. And just to give you the one incident that says it all — when he was Secretary of Commerce, still in the President’s cabinet, he had a secret meeting with the head of the KGB, the KGB station chief in Washington, DC. And he went to see Anatoly Gorsky. And he said to him — you know, we’re having an internal battle in the administration. Truman and all these advisors around him want to get tough with the Russians, they want to stand up to Stalin. Can you help me out and give us support and ammunition, so we can defeat these anti-Soviet forces?

And he goes to the KGB station chief to ask for help in settling an internal administration dispute, while he’s in the President’s cabinet. The man, in other words, was either a fool or a traitor, or just a total idiot. Or maybe all three.

And this is the man that students and people in America are being told, week by week, is the unsung hero who should’ve been the President of the United States instead of all the reactionaries who followed him.

We have a fight to wage. It’s a fight to change the culture, to change the way the truth about our past is taught. It’s something that has to be carried out. It is extremely important. And if not, you’re going to see a whole new generation mis-educated, as Stone and Kuznick are doing now, with the most vile, old kind of Communist propaganda. And that will be what they think of the United States. They will come out learning the evil power in the world is the United States. And just as we should’ve appeased the Soviets then, we have to now reach out and honor the wishes of the Islamists who have something to say.

I learned yesterday, the great Iranian-American filmmaker who did — what’s the name of the movie about the woman who was stoned? Stoning of Soraya — he told me yesterday that he spoke to Stone and Kuznick, and they saw his movie. And Stone and Kuznick said to him, to Cyrus — you know, your film is very dangerous, because it would have the effect of turning the American people against radical Islam.

(Laughter)

And he then said to them — what, you’re not against the stoning of women? He said — well, that’s their culture, and who are we to oppose it?

Now, that’s the people we’re dealing with. If we don’t fight this, and develop films like Cyrus’s movie — why can’t we develop a counter-series about the history of the United States to sell to HBO or Showtime that tells that truth about our past, rather than the kind of stuff they’re showing now?

And Howard Zinn was on Fox with his special before he died. Now we have Stone. This could not have happened years ago. These guys would never have got contracts for major television time. And this is a crisis that this has been received well. Look at the rave review it got in the Washington Post. This says something about our culture. It’s a dangerous time, and we have to oppose it.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Keep reading, it's a very long article.



Poll: US Catholics Greatly Admire Benedict XVI

A poll just published reveals that American Catholics recognize the Holy Father Benedict XVI's positive impact on the Church, the world and their personal lives.

I am very happy that US Catholics do not believe all the media lies about the Catholic Church and the Pope, and that this marginalized, besieged, bashed and discriminated group, whose symbols are constantly degraded and ideas slandered and vilified - as opposed to fairly discussed - maintains a fighting spirit.

From Zenit:

Just a week after Benedict XVI's resignation, a new Knights of Columbus-Marist poll finds that American Catholics give high marks to the Pope Emeritus.

More than three quarters of Catholics (77%) and more than 8 in 10 practicing Catholics (82%) have a very positive or positive impression of Pope Benedict XVI’s years as pope.

American Catholics have very positive views on Pope Benedict’s impact on their lives, the direction of the Church, and the moral direction of the world.

Nearly 7 in 10 Catholics (68 percent) and more than three quarters of practicing Catholics (77 percent) say Pope Benedict had a “very positive” or “positive” impact on their lives. Only 13% of Catholics and 12% of practicing Catholics saw a negative impact.

Additionally, 70 percent of Catholics and 75 percent of practicing Catholics believe he had a “very positive” or “positive” impact on the direction of the Catholic Church. Only about two in 10 said his impact was negative or very negative (21 percent and 19 percent respectively).

About two thirds of Catholics (65 percent) and about 7 in 10 practicing Catholics (69 percent) said he had a “very positive” or “positive” impact on the moral direction of the world. Fewer than a quarter (23 and 22 percent respectively) disagreed and saw his impact as negative or very negative.

Pope Benedict’s use of Twitter was also very popular among Catholics. Two-thirds of Catholics and practicing Catholics (67 percent and 66 percent respectively), said they “liked the idea” of the pope using Twitter to communicate. Only a quarter of each group disagreed (25 percent for Catholics and practicing Catholics).

Overall, nearly 7 in 10 Catholics (69 percent) and three quarters of practicing Catholics (75 percent) have a very favorable or favorable view of Pope Benedict XVI. By contrast, only 16 percent of Catholics (and 14 percent of practicing Catholics) have an unfavorable view.

“The data indicates clearly that American Catholics have a deep respect for Pope Benedict XVI and a great appreciation for his pontificate,” said Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Carl Anderson. “That so many felt he had a positive impact on their lives, their Church and their world speaks volumes to the good that he was able to do as pope.”

The findings come just days after the Cardinals – gathered in Rome to elect the new pope – sent the Pope Emeritus a note of gratitude for his Petrine ministry and “example of generous pastoral care for the good of the Church and of the world."

The national survey of 2,000 American adults including 515 Catholics was conducted from March 2 through 5. The margin of error for Catholics is +/- 4.3 percentage points.

Sign the Petition to Nominate Ugandan Pastor Umar Mulinde for the Nobel Peace Prize

Uganda's Pastor Umar Mulinde had the incredible courage to convert from Islam to Christianity, and even to become a Christian minister, well knowing the mortal risk he was taking.

Islam prescribes the death penalty for apostates, those who leave Islam.

This is how Islam has conquered peoples and maintained its position: through the sword, waging war against infidels and beheading apostates.

If there were no death penalty for apostasy, there would be no Islam. This is what cleric and prominent leader of the (now the West's ally) Muslim Brotherhood Yusuf al-Qaradawi says, on video: "If they left apostasy (rida) alone, there wouldn’t have been any Islam. Islam would have been finished right after the death of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)".

Muslims in Uganda, who represent only 13 percent of the population, are agitating for Shariah law to be established in Uganda. Mulinde and his supporters worry that such an action will result in the oppression of women and non-Muslims in Uganda, just as it has in Nigeria.

In his campaign to prevent the introduction of Sharia into Uganda, Pastor Umar helped organize a petition that received more than 36,000 signatures. Mulinde is also a potent supporter of Israel. He filled a stadium with 5,000 supporters of Israel a few years back.

These actions did not go unnoticed by the Islamists in Uganda. On Dec. 24, 2011, a group of radical Muslims threw acid on his face and back in an attempt to kill him. The attack left him alive, but horribly disfigured. Upon learning that he survived the attack, his attackers and their supporters sent letters to his church stating that they wish the attack had resulted in his death.

The acid attack was not the first attempt on Mulinde’s life that he’s miraculously survived. He’s been shot at and poisoned...

The ideology that motivated the acid attack he endured on Christmas Eve in 2011 is the same used to justify suicide attacks against Israel during the Second Intifada and the rocket attacks that took place over the past few days. Christians in Uganda are starting to wake up to the fact that many in the West have failed to understand the threat presented by Islamic imperialism.

“What the West is denying they will realize when it has come upon them,” he said.

If somebody deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, it is Pastor Umar Mulinde. Giving it to Barack Hussein Obama has made a mockery of this honour; let us re-establish its true value.

As over 700 people so far, including me, have done, please sign the petition to Nominate Umar Mulinde for the Nobel Peace Prize here.

Melanie Phillips Accepted Media Lies on the Catholic Church

I was very disappointed with Melanie Phillips on the BBC's Question Time the other night (see video above).

Her answer to the question - interestingly coming from a supposed woman with the voice of a man, a man pretending to be a woman hypocritically pointing the finger at the Catholic Church's alleged behaviour of preaching something and doing something else, a bit like a man trying to pass for a woman I suppose - about Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien who recently apologized for "sexual conduct" unbefitting a priest and said that he would play no further role in the public life of the Catholic Church.

The so-called Church abuse scandal is a subject which is not within Phillips' expertise. There is nothing about it in her latest book The World Turned Upside Down (Amazon USA), (Amazon UK) , which covers topics of religion, morality and the modern world, of which this issue has recently been a relevant part.

I suppose Melanie Phillips does not write on things she does not know anything, or enough, about. But on Question Time she did not have the luxury of choice. She was put on the spot and she had to give a reply.

But I think that a better answer would have been to profess her ignorance of the subject.

Instead, her ignorance was revealed by the fact that she repeated the media's favourite inanity about the Catholic Church's celibacy being a contributing factor to the problem.

As far back as 2003, lesbian and former feminist activist Tammy Bruce, in her book The Death of Right and Wrong (Amazon USA), (Amazon UK) , condemned the hypocrisy of her ex-colleagues in the feminist movement, who were accusing the Church of being the cause of paedophile behaviour in its clergymen by not permitting them to marry.

Many of these feminists had been working in rape cases, Bruce said, so they knew very well that sexual abstinence is hardly ever a factor in sex crimes.

The typical profile of the sex offender of any kind is a man who is married or has a girlfriend.

The old-fashioned, Freudian view that there is a libido which must find its outlet is discredited. Psychoanalysis is a false, rejected theory. Freudian concepts like "sublimation" are not accepted any more and I was surprised to hear Phillips using it.

If celibacy were indeed a contributing factor, we would see a lower incidence of these sex abuses among other religions' or Christian denominations' clergy who are not bound to celibacy.

But this, despite the media's almost exclusive attention on, not to say obsession with, the Catholic Church's problems with this issue - obsession that included reporting these events on front pages much, much more often than the new developments warranted -, is not the case.

The rates of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church were in the past the same or even lower than those in other Christian churches, in other religions and in other institutions like schools and children’s homes, as shown by a U.S. Department of Education's extensive study. Now, due to the fact the the Catholic Church is the only one who confronted and effectively dealt with this issue, those rates are much lower.

So, the celibacy causal theory is empirically disproved by the evidence.

Tammy Bruce wrote:

In the world as defined by the leaders of the Left Elite:
... Taking vows, claiming to represent God, and then molesting adolescent boys is the fault of “the Church,” not of the reprehensible gay men who betray their vows, their church, and their community.

This is in clear letters, by a woman who is herself homosexual, exactly the point of the whole "Catholic Church sex abuse": the perpetrators were not acting like Catholic priests, they were acting like homosexuals.

The whole debate over this has been turned upside down not to offend homosexual sensitivities. Nobody cares about Catholic sensitivies, so that was fine.

Reality has been turned outside down, and it is odd how Melanie Phillips' latest book not only has the title "The World Turned Upside Down", but also deals with the many cases in which the Leftist ideology which dominates the West overturns reality, exactly like in this case concerning the Church.

What shocked me was how Phillips passively believed and repeated all the nonsense peddled by the media on this subject.

After having denounced media reporting on Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians which grossly distorts reality, Phillips more than anyone should know from first-hand experience (being a Jew with a passion for Israel) that the media portraying of highly politically sensitive issues cannot be trusted.

The mainstream media are politically overwhelmingly on the Left and, in the way they are prejudiced against Israel, they are also, and even more, prejudiced against the Catholic Church.

How could she have missed that? I believe that, if someone, in repeating the media distortions and even outright lies, had treated Israel as badly as she did the Catholic Church the other night, she would have accused this someone of Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism.

Eastleigh By-Election: 55% Voted for Anti-Gay-Marriage Candidates

The results of the Eastleigh by-election in Southern England have been remarkable in many respects.

Not only the right-wing UK Independence Party triumphed with the best performance in a British Parliament election in all its history, coming a close second to the winners of what was for them a safe seat, the Liberal Democrats, and pushing the not-so-conservative Conservative Party into third place.

But also, 55% of all votes went to candidates who oppose same-sex marriage:

Most Eastleigh voters backed pro-marriage candidates

The Eastleigh by-election was one of the most significant for years, and 55% of all votes cast went to candidates who think marriage should remain as it is.

Numerous people have been blaming the Conservative Party’s third place behind the Lib Dems and UKIP on David Cameron’s push to redefine marriage.

Sign the Petition to the UN for the Recognition of a World Day against Christianophobia

Christians are today by far the most persecuted religious group. The number of Christians killed each year for their faith is so high that it calculates to one Christian martyr's life being taken every five minutes.

This must be stopped. The UN would let down its mission if it did not do what is in its power to stop this abominable form of discrimination and this genocide.

The 2nd of March 2011 is the day when Muslim extremists in Pakistan assassinated Shahbaz Bhatti, the Roman Catholic man who was Pakistan's first Minister for Minorities Affairs.

They killed him for his work to abolish the country's blasphemy law which has been used to persecute Christians and other faith minorities.

March 2nd has now been proposed as the Annual World Day against Christianophobia, with a petition to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for the recognition of a World Day against “Christianophobia”.

At this moment 2272 have already signed it, including me.

You can sign it here:

Let’s promote March 2nd as the Annual World Day against Christianophobia!

This is the petition:

Dear Secretary General!

Present-day persecution of Christians attracted world attention after the cold-blooded killing of 58 worshippers by radical Islamist gunmen inside Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad (Iraq), in October 2010, and the bombing during a New Year’s Eve service of the coptic al-Qiddissin Church, in Alexandria (Egypt), leaving 23 people dead and another 97 injured.

Perhaps even more worrying was the March 2nd murder of Mr. Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s Federal Minister of Minorities in broad daylight in Islamabad, since he was martyred precisely for his opposition to the «blasphemy laws» which are used as a legal instrument to persecute non-Muslims.

Direct killing, however, is not the only form of “christianophobia.” Current persecution of Christians also includes vandalism against churches and discrimination and harassment of individuals, particularly in the West, under the form of unjust representation in the media, unfair treatment by employers, disrespect for the right to conscientious objection, disregard for the right of parents to be the primary educators of their children, etc…

This reality makes the recognition of a World Day Against Christianophobia urgent – to draw the attention of public opinion, social movements, policy makers and the media to this crucial issue and to provide a unique annual opportunity for Christians to defend their rights in society.

A World Day against Christianophobia is the natural next step after recent positive attitudes adopted by the European Parliament, such as its resolutions expressing deep concern over the attacks against Christian communities in Iraq (Nov 25th, 2010), and its condemnation of attacks against Christians in Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Iran and Iraq, as well as the forcible interruption by the Turkish authorities of the Christmas Mass in northern Cyprus (Jan 20th, 2011).

However, words – even if they are pronounced from the floor of a Parliament – are not enough ! No concrete results will come from them if the persecution against Christians is not recognised as the first worldwide emergency with regard to religious discrimination and violence.

Sign the petition here!