News Briefs #2

The Threat from Within

On Friday February 14, at the Munich Security Conference, Vice President J.D. Vance warned the U.S.A.’s European allies that they were threatened not by Russia or China, but rather by “the threat from within,” Heather Cox Richardson in her February 20 post explains: “by which he meant the democratic principles of equality before the law that right-wing ideologues believe weaken a nation by treating women and racial, religious, and gender minorities as equal to white Christian men”.

HCR Feb 20  https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-19-2025

Foreign Election Interference program cut

This week the Trump regime dismantled an FBI program that monitors and flags foreign interference in U.S. elections. All the agents that were working on this were reassigned. For example in the 2024 presidential election the teams tracked and publicized many influence operations from Russia, China and Iran. Apparently Trump thinks that because Russia helped him win in 2016 and 2024 that foreign influence in elections is just fine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/business/trump-foreign-influence-election-interference.html

The Woke Right

John McWhorter is one of my favorite authors on books about the English language. In his weekly NYT column today he discussed the history of the word “woke”. The original term goes back to at least the 1930s in Black American slang meaning to be awake to, or aware of, social injustice, particularly against people of color. Sounds to me like being woke is a good thing.

In the 2010s woke became mainstream and then quickly underwent perjoration (similar to “politically correct”). It was now used as an insult by people on the far right. This was how I first heard it from my wife (who you will recall from the Introduction post binge-watches Fox News videos). I had to ask her what it meant. As I understand it, from the Right (not right) perspective, it means being too considerate of poverty, race or gender minority issues. Using that definition, I am proud to be woke. I believe that Jesus was woke too – by both definitions – He was well aware of injustices and had compassion on poor, sick and crippled people.

The libs have now turned the tables on them and started using the term “Woke Right” to refer to extremists at the other end of the political spectrum. The “woke right” believes in the conspiracy of a “deep state” that is destroying the country. They are opposed to DEI programs which they believe discriminate against white male Christians. They believe there are only two genders, that sex is determined at conception, and that people have no business trying to change their sex. They oppose any government program that benefits the poor (working or otherwise) as Socialist/Communist/Marxist and resent their tax dollars going to people too lazy to work.

Woke is used by the Right as a form of “dog whistle” to refer to Black people without sounding overtly racist. The big fuss about the DEI programs is similar. Waj Ali on a recent Mary Trump Nerd Avengers podcast explained that “DEI is the new N-word”; racists can use it to oppose people of color without appearing obviously racist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/opinion/the-long-strange-trail-of-woke.html