Inclusive art
The news coming out of Sadikh Kahn's London sounds like a meme, as it represents the classic Social Justice Warrior attempt in which emancipation rhymes with stereotyping.
The famous Trafalgar Square is home to the Admiral Nelson column (already the target of suffragette bombings since 1913) monument that has four lions and four plinths at its base. But only three of these house a statue: George IV, Charles James Napier and Henry Havelock. The fact that the latter two were little-known figures and there was an empty plinth has always caused debate, so much so that back in 2000 the then Socialist-inspired Labor mayor Ken Livingstone proposed replacing the statues with someone more popular.
Operation failed, but in the empty plinth from 1999 onward temporary biennial installations of all stripes of style and civic engagement have been placed: Nelson's ship in a bottle, a statue of a thumbs up, a giant blue chicken, a bronze horse skeleton until the cover of faux-cream mounted with cherry, fly and drone in the 2020-2022 period. But now the era of disengagement is definitely over; starting in fall 2024, the fourth plinth will house a series of 850 casts of trans activist faces on display. As quoted in Wikipedia, the "life masks" will be arranged around the plinth in the form of a tzompantli, a skull rack from Mesoamerican civilizations. But beyond the not-so-inclusive parallel of the Aztec skull pyramid, the winner of the 2026-2028 biennium has been announced: for two years the plinth will house the Lady in Blue statue that pays homage to the young, metropolitan woman of color, and that looks like a disco queen version with heels and a tight lapis lazuli blue dress of the classic Lost Cause Confederate mami. And here comes the polemics. When emancipation rhymes with stereotyping.
Oikophobia between Fish&Chip and landscapes
Lets stay in London, city that gives so much satisfaction to the editors of this column. An absolutely minor affair but perfectly in line with the oikophobia of which the UK is the first victim. It involves a mural at a Fish&Chips store celebrating the famous street food along with the British flag. It seems the city council has received several complaints that the mural is "inappropriate" after the store was forced to remove a corner sign with the same image, despite the fact that historically there had always been signs posted in that location. So it is unclear whether it is the mural itself or it is all that Britishness exuded by the combination of the Union Jack and the words "A Great British meal" that is inappropriate. When in doubt, the store ownerhas unwittingly become a symbol of British pride. Ah, he is of Cypriot descent.
The previous news story might lead one to believe that we indulge in blatant sensationalism when we excite oikophobia over the insignia of a British deli. The story reported by The Telegraph proves the axiom instead. News that comes from Cambridge, another place known for rainbow unicorns frolicking in the countryside, outrageously white casts and activists destroying paintings (see Woke Weekly Bullettin #5). But if hungry rainbow unicorns graze in the countryside, the countryside remains a nationalist regurgitation. Indeed, in the new layout of the Fitzwilliam Museum (which reports directly to the university) next to the landscape section is remarked:
The countryside was seen as a direct link to the past, and therefore a true reflection of the essence of a nation. Paintings showing rolling English hills or lush French fields reinforced loyalty and pride towards a homeland. The darker side of evoking this nationalist feeling is the implication that only those with a historical tie to the land have a right to belong.
And the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum is keen to point out, however, that this is not not a wokeshit.
After all, as the Telegraph recalls a month or so ago a British charity, Wildlife and Countryside Link, had declared in a report for British MPs that "the British countryside is a 'racist and colonial' white space."
It goes without saying that if Constable's landscapes are nationalist at the Fitzwilliam Museum, the portrait section is classified directly as a symbol of British imperialism. Clearly a bad case of oikophobia. Perhaps incurable.
Inclusiveness is never enough
But beware of online complaints about too much inclusiveness, perhaps that of your own gym, they may cancel your membership. That's what happened to a lady in Alaska who complained about finding a male busy shaving in the women's bathroom at the famous ultra-woke gym franchise Planet Fitness. The gym banned the customer, claiming the choice to create a safe space for all identities, and that photographing the man engaged in shaving violated regulations.
News that harkens back to the California affair where a 90-year-old elderly woman for decades an active member of a voluntary association who was expelled for not understanding the issue of which pronouns to use. Unlike the Alaskan citizen, the English lady was luckier because after the voluntary association became the target of a violent campaign it preferred to make amends and condone the pronoun issue.
More Muslim than the imam
And we come to Germanistan. Frankfurt went big for Ramadan this year, putting up dedicated luminaries. But some have taken the issue of the Muslim holiday too literally. The German populist right-wing online newspaper Nius reports that a class of 10-year-olds was forbidden to drink water because there are also Muslim children in it. Individual initiative of the teachers and not related to the school management, but there was no official statement or denial from the institution.
News that could ideally pair with the one coming from Pioltello in the Milan hinterland and the institute that given the presence of a large number of Muslim schoolchildren, 40 percent, in order to avoid the massive absences of the end of Ramadan holiday directly preferred to anticipate the return to school in September to introduce the holiday. As it had already done in 2023. Unlike Frankfurt, nothing to argue with: it is just an example of Milan pragmatism (if anything, it should have been thought of before arriving at that percentage of foreigners), although the regional school office has opened a procedure for irregularities in the holiday decision. Certainly the case of Pioltello represents the confirmation that that phenomenon of "replacement of the native and/or its facilitated extinction," i.e., the Phenomenon Who Is Not to be Named, but has already been in place for a while. Whatever, Noah was a conspiracy theorist then it rained.
The world upside down
That was the title of the summer best seller in Italy. And an edge that comes from the New York Post is a perfect description of a world going backwards. Owner of an occupied apartment calls the locksmith to change the locks, the occupants call the police, and the lady is arrested. That's because if the occupants have been there for at least 30 days in local law they enjoy certain rights, such as not having their locks changed. Meanwhile, New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams first deployed 750 National Guard men in the subway to try to tamp down rampant crime (their job is to check bags) and then limiting hospitality in homeless shelters (of which many are immigrants) to a maximum of thirty days. Inadvertently agreeing with those bad boys from Texas, who prefer to use the National Guard for prevention on the border, a concept that in post-pandemic times seems to have become alien to this world).
The Sense of Crime
Still on the subject of the world going backwards. In Pittsburgh, for "non-progress and non-emergency crimes", the dispatcher will refer people to the nearest station during business hours.
So writes local media site WPXI Channel 11, which broke the news:
That essentially means that calls for criminal mischief, theft, harassment and burglary alarms, just to name a few, will all be handled by the telephone reporting unit or online reporting.
Things are no better in Toronto, Trudeau's Canada, where police are suggesting that car keys be left in plain sight (perhaps directly in the car) to prevent violent home break-ins by car thieves. Indeed, the once-beautiful Canadian city is experiencing a surge in car thefts: 2024 has already surpassed 2023. And there is no shortage of local newspapers explaining why this is a great idea, even though it may seem like nonsense.
Defund the police and everything will be fine, they said.
The WPATH Files Scandal
In recent weeks the Pandora's box of disclosure of internal discussions has opened at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the international association that de-facto defines (and dictates) procedures for gender affirmation in minors: puberty blockers, hormones is surgery for sex reassignment (or worse nullification).
On the blog we have already dedicated an in-depth article to the disclosure of content from chats, forums and even video conferences of doctors and practitioners involved in the field has finally revealed everything critics of the gender and dysphoria phenomenon already knew: much ideology and little science. From the devastating side effects to the purely ideological approach. From the evidence that often neither minors nor their parents are aware of what is being proposed by doctors and practitioners. There is no point in talking about consent. Not least because, and this has been known for years as evidenced also by the reality show around the case of J, MTF transitioned boy in the spotlight and seen as a symbol, their procedures are a pure contradiction: puberty blockers first and opposite-sex hormones later limit the development of young people undergoing these procedures. And surgically intervening on an undeveloped and unripened organism to create a vagina in place of an undeveloped penis is Japanese guro movie stuff.
Yet WPATH was always seen as the "trust science!" of gender affirmation procedures. This is what it says, for example, on the website of the Careggi University Hospital one of Italy's vanguards in the "treatment of gender dysphoria": "The center operates in accordance with the guidelines of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). More information is available at http://www.infotrans.it/"
Thus the well-balanced Il Post spoke about WPATH in 2020: "of the guidelines considered most advanced today: those of the WPATH, World Professional Association for Transgender Health, that is, the organization with the most consistent tradition of studies on the subject. The guidelines issued by WPATH (the Standards of Care, S.O.C.) have reached their seventh revision. They are currently applied in Italy by two centers, in Genoa and Messina."
Or further, on Open not even a month ago you can read: "In addition, the use of these drugs has been approved by the standards of care of the world's leading scientific associations in the field, including the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the Endocrine Society, and numerous Italian Societies dealing with endocrinology, gender identity and health."
Small and dutiful press review because what is important to point out is that while abroad the issue of the WPATH Files and its implications has also been brought to light by the progressive press, in Italy the matter has been largely ignored.
Here is a brief review of how the issue has been treated by three newspapers far removed from the vision of a conservative right.
The Washington Post headlines: «When treating transgender youth, how informed is informed consent?»
The Economist wrote: «Leaked discussions reveal uncertainty about transgender care», then remarking:
Yet the discussions show that the provision of so-called gender-affirming care is riddled with far more doubt than WPATH’s message that such treatments are “not considered experimental”.
And it goes a step further than The Guardian, which has the intellectual honesty to tackle Pandora's box head-on by calling it "disturbing": "Why disturbing leaks from US gender group WPATH ring alarm bells in the NHS".
Coming later in the body of the article to define WPATH as:
Despite its grand title, WPATH is neither solely a professional body – a significant proportion of its membership are activists – nor does it represent the “world” view on how to care for this group of people. There is no global agreement on best practice.
In short: WPATH, more activists than scientists. It is to be hoped that the Italian media will also begin to ask themselves some questions, because if we search for WPATH on many sites today, the search provides no results after the last articles in January and February in praise and glory of puberty blockers. Not least because in recent weeks Careggi in Florence has been the subject of a ministerial inspection regarding its observed procedures. To speak ill of WPTAH today would be like agreeing with the Meloni government. Better to pretend otherwise, but in the meantime for those who have the guts to know in detail the gallery of horrors of WPATH files we refer to the YouTube channel The New World 2.0
Two pieces of good news to close and a looming shadow
The WPATH scandal in the Anglo-Saxon world comes at a time when the climate is favorable for a possible change of course. In the United States, sixteen female athletes are uniting to sue the National Collegiate Athletics Association against its decision to let biological males compete in the women's category. While in the United Kingdom, nationwide prescription of puberty blockers in NHS facilities to which activities on gender dysphoria were delegated after the closure of Tavistock in 2022 ceases.
But there is no point in being optimistic because if even on some issues the wind seems to be changing, in next week's wokeshit we will have a dedicated focus on all those legislations that put at risk not only freedom of speech but also freedom of thought, such as the Irish case to which we devoted an in-depth article last year.
Editor of the Machiavelli Study Center's blog "Belfablog," Emanuele Mastrangelo 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).
Essayist and popularizer, among his publications Alessandro Blasetti. Il padre dimenticato del cinema italiano (Idrovolante, 2023). With Emanuele Mastrangelo Wikipedia. L’Enciclopedia libera e l’egemonia dell’informazione (Bietti, 2013) and Iconoclastia. La pazzia contagiosa della cancel culture che sta distruggendo la nostra storia (Eclettica, 2020).
Italiano 
English
Scrivi un commento