Year: 2024

Before jumping into this, I want to make a note about my background in political sociology and the great works of that and related fields, two of which I referenced yesterday C. Wright Mills and Sheldon Wolin. Additional works of note are Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s 1988 Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media, Steven Lukes’ 1974 Power: A Radical View, and Franz Neumann’s 1942 Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933-1944, and, of course, Marx Weber’s various writings, which are foundational to the sociological study of power.

I am a political sociologist who has read these and many other works on power and social structure and incorporated them into my thinking. I am noting this because one reflex I encounter in people is the accusation that my analysis of authoritarianism in the American system is exaggerated or paranoid. Those who say this are well prepared to talk about the horrors of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, but when it comes to the regime they serve blind themselves to the reality of authoritarian and cast aspersions. Of course, they’re ignorant of the works I just cited. At the same time, it probably wouldn’t help them if they weren’t. The reflex is the typical fascist reflex. The well-read are not immune from it. By responding in this way, they betray an authoritarian personality. It is the nature of authoritarianism to accuse those who stand outside of power of being the problem.

Fox News ran this piece yesterday: “Harris lacked confidence, presidential demeanor in first TV interview: body language expert.” “Susan Constantine tells Fox News Digital that Vice President Kamala Harris needs to make ‘tweaks in her body language to appear more confident.’” But you don’t need an expert to see this. Harris’ nervousness is obvious. It’s what lies behind the manic laughter and her general affect. Deep down she knows she’s not up to the task and wears it on her sleeve. Those around her know this, too, which is why they protect her.

Moreover, this is why she frequently appears drunk, slurring her words salad and honking snotty with vocal fry. People say she’s an alcoholic, but what I am seeing is benzodiazepine abuse (recall Anna Nicole Smith, the slurring and tonality). Harris couldn’t use benzodiazepines for the sit-down because when a person regularly uses the drug it becomes very noticeable when they are using, slurring and losing the thought train. Occasional use can actually increase confidence and lucidity (even if the person doesn’t recall the moment later). Habitual use has the opposite effect.

I have some sympathy. Those who suffer from anxiety will know what I’m saying when I confess that I have avoided opportunities because I feared my nerves would get the best of me. I’m small potatoes. Harris is running to be the president of the most powerful nation in the world. That’s way beyond any role I could step into. She lacks the self-awareness to know she should avoid this opportunity. Combined with her narcissism, we have in front of us a person who lacks the character and judgment to hold this office.

But what explains the Democratic Party’s reckless in putting her forward? This is the same party that installed a man with obvious dementia and concealed his cognitive decline for nearly three years. Could it be that this is no accident? Here’s the answer: The Democratic Party doesn’t want a leader who exercises her or his own judgment. They don’t want this because the apparatus doesn’t want this. This is why they hate Trump so much and are desperate to keep him out of office.

I have been listening to an interview with HR McMaster’s (conducted by Victor Davis Hanson on his Blade of Perseus podcast) and Trump was definitely in charge as president. McMasters understood that his role as National Security Advisor was to provide options and act as a sounding board for Trump’s decisions, but he was not in charge of policy and when Trump made the decision, McMaster’s job was to make it fit in the framework of executive action. Those around McMaster—all those who have publicly turned against Trump and endorsed Harris—believed their job was to control the president.

This is what they think about Biden and Harris, too. It’s not just Trump. For the power elite, presidents are constructs stood up to beguile the electorate. The real power lies in what I wrote about yesterday—the power elite. The president’s role is to be a puppet, the big wizard head projected on the wall of the palace in Emerald City. The power elite don’t care if the president is a potato, corrupt, or a drug addict. They worry if the commander-in-chief is his own man and not part of the establishment. This is why the deep state went behind Trump’s back, even sabotaged policy and action, thwarting the will of the people for the designs of the elite.

It’s also why Bush Senior went behind Reagan’s back. People forget this, but like Trump, Reagan was also a populist president that the Washington elite viewed as a vulgarian. I know those of us who remember this election remember being told that Reagan was going to end the world in a nuclear holocaust. He was “Ronald Ray-gun.” Remember that? They had their guy in there—Trilateralist puppet Jimmy Carter and his NSA Zbigniew Brzeziński. They were hoping to get Bush Senior in there (former head of the CIA and Trilateralist alum), but Reagan beat him out. (So they made Bush Senior VP, in charge of Black Eagle and other covert operations. Reagan did in fact have plausible denial because they kept things from him.)

I often say that those who govern us are untethered from reality. The signs that the power elite is untethered from reality is apparent in the expansion of NATO and the march to WWIII, opening the borders to Third Worlders bearing cultural norms and values antithetical to that of Western Civilization, and disordering the common sense of our youth. I say untethered not because they don’t know what they’re doing but because the consequences of what they seek—a post-democratic transnational corporate order with vast police and surveillance powers—will abolish human freedom. Moral reality is their problem. They know what they want like a psychopath knows what he wants.

The Republic is in peril and it’s not because Harris is unfit to be president. However, recognizing that she is, and understanding why it doesn’t matter to the elite who govern this nation, will help you see more clearly the structure of power in America and why America is in peril.

How do you know the Harris-Walz ticket is neither communist nor socialist but state corporatist? Because the ticket is endorsed by the power elite, the administrative apparatus, the national security state, and the military-industrial complex. The warmongering neocons know who advances the interests of the globalists and military-industrial complex. The fact that they obsess over and so pathologically loathe Trump tells you a lot about the situation. It’s effectively an endorsement.

If you haven’t read C. Wright Mills’ 1956 The Power Elite and Sheldon Wolin’s 2008 Democracy, Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, then you should take some time before now and the election to understand who hijacked the American Republic. To whet your appetite (or if you haven’t time), here are synopses:

The Power Elite analyzes the structure of power in the United States, showing that a small group of elites—comprising corporate, military, and political leaders—control the key institutions of American society. Mills contends that these elites are interconnected, forming a cohesive ruling class that operates above the democratic processes, thereby diminishing the influence of ordinary citizens—and even Congress (especially the House). He is describing the corporate state and its administrative apparatus.

Democracy, Inc. extends this critique by arguing that the United States has evolved into a form of “inverted totalitarianism.” Unlike traditional totalitarian regimes, which exert power through overt force, this system maintains a facade of democracy while being dominated by corporate interests and a technocratic government. Wolin asserts that what elites call “democracy” is really manipulating public opinion through ideology and propaganda, what is called “managed democracy.” Managed democracy undermines the foundational principles of democratic governance, leading to a system where power is concentrated in the hands of a few.

Mills and Wolin are not speculating. This is not an abstract theory of the situation. Mills and Wolin are describing reality and giving you the conceptual tools to convey the truth. There is no cabal operating in shadow. All this is in your face. The deep state is only deep in the sense that they hide the smoking guns (occasionally offering “limited hangouts” to appear to come clean); you can see it for yourself—and you know what it’s doing because you can see what it does. Things don’t happen by accident. Things happen because people in power are in a position to pull levers. Toto has already pulled back the curtain. You only need to see the Great and Powerful Oz for what he is: a charlatan.

Knowing all that, you can all now know this: if you want to know who to vote for (presuming you’re a patriot who believes in America), then look at which candidates and figures get the support of the apparatus and which candidates and figures are condemned by it. The establishment wants you to believe that the threat to democracy is not the power elite who have replaced democracy with technocracy. The threat to democracy, they tell you, are the outsiders who are striving the restore the American Republic—Trump, RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Naomi Wolf, and all the patriots the media smears as “conspiracy theorists,” “fascists,” “racists,” etc.

The elite and their subalterns (not in the Gramscian sense but in the original meaning) have inverted reality to perpetuate Wolin’s inverted totalitarianism. But your brain is sophisticated. It is a camera obscura that rights the upside-down images light presses onto your retina. All you need to do is elaborate that facility to right the upside-down images the apparatus presses onto the masses. Cultivating this ability is the ideology killer. (See Inverting the Inversions of the Camera Obscura. See also Stripped of its Historically Bounded Features, What is Fascism?)

And the people are waking up to it. Growing numbers of Americans see what they see—what the kings and prophets cannot because they will not. They see that men cannot be women. They see that progressives are authoritarians. It’s an exciting time. But it is also as race against time. The sprint to November 5 is about more than restoring the Republic. It’s about revitalizing the Enlightenment so future generations may enjoy the freedoms we enjoyed growing up.

The prospect of Trump’s second term looming and the recognition that the popular vote is not what wins presidencies, the calls are going up all over social media to deconstruct the Electoral College and put the vote to the national population as a whole. Progressives, seeking the centralization of power in administrative apparatus see the Constitution as a major impediment to establishing one-party rule. They ask why the majority is not allowed to determine who sits in the White House, After all, the argument goes, isn’ this a democracy? And doesn’t democracy mean majority rule? The Electoral College reflects the complexities of balancing the principles of federalism, the protection of smaller states, and the desire to prevent the potential dangers of direct democracy. So, no, this is not a democracy in the majoritarian sense. It is a republic founded on federalism. It is, after all, called the United States of America. (A Scheme to Thwart Mob Rule.)

A common complaint is that it’s people who vote not land. But it’s not as if majority rule doesn’t exist in the fifty states. Except for Maine and Nebraska, the majority of each state determines the electors, doesn’t it? And don’t bigger states get more electors than smaller states? Indeed. Then, because the country is vast and diverse with different ideas of how to live the good life, these majorities engage in a relationship with one another based on federalism—not majoritarianism—where the voice of minority states is respected and represented. In this system, the will of the people is not snuffed out by densely populated urban areas run by cosmopolitan elites.

The Senate is balanced by the House of Representatives, the latter determined on the basis of population count. So, whereas California and Wyoming have two senators each, California gets 52 representatives, whereas Wyoming gets one (presently, six states have only one representative). The branches of government are separate and coequal (although the House is given a tilt because it’s close to the people). Mapped over the entire system is a federal civil rights code, with each state having at least that or more if it chooses as long as it doesn’t contradict the former. (CNN Gaslights Its Viewers Over the Republican Character of the United States of America; Normalizing America Again.)

It is a beautiful arrangement. The Electoral College gives each state a number of electors equal to its total number of Senators and Representatives in Congress, which helps ensure that smaller states are not completely overshadowed by more populous states in presidential elections. The Electoral College reflects the federal structure of the United States by involving both the national and state governments in the election process. It recognizes the states as integral components of the Union, giving them a role in selecting the national leader. It balances the influence of the people, the states, and the federal government in the election process. Finally, it requires candidates to appeal to voters across a wide range of states and regions rather than focusing only on densely populated urban areas. 

The main problem today is not the Electoral College. The main problems is twofold: big corporate donors control politicians, policies, and the regulatory apparatus; the emergence of the administrative state—an unconstitutional, unelected, and largely unaccountable fourth branch governs by agency rule and technocratic control well beyond the executive. Eliminating the Electoral College on top of these developments would allow the very forces that have corrupted the system to rule by tyranny of the majority steered by a powerful minority of the opulent, i.e., corporate state actors, and the bureaucratic strata that administers their affairs. To be sure, this is already the substance of the contemporary arrangement, where progressives have captured the administrative state—even at the local level by controlling the distribution and management of funds. But eliminating the Electoral College will lead to even more thorough-going one-party rule.

The worst possible reform we could make to the American system is getting rid of the Electoral College. The reforms we need to make follow from what I just identified: get corporate money and influence out of politics and deconstruct the administrative state. If you care about the American republic, those are the ends you seek. Put another way, the ends progressives seek is telegraphed by the reforms they propose. Are they calling for deconstruction of the administrative apparatus? Of course not. Look at the way they’re demonizing the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. (Attempt at an Albatross: The Manufactured Hysteria Over Agenda 2025; Project 2025: The Boogeyman of the Wonkish.)

As some of you know, one of areas of expertise is the problem of child sexual abuse and child sexualization. I have a peer-reviewed article and an encyclopedic article in the literature, as well as several essays on Freedom and Reason helping parents identify the signs of grooming and resisting the normalization and public displays of paraphilic desire. In this essay, a primer on pedophilia and paraphilias, I prepare the ground for a future essay on the intersection of anarchism, paraphilias, and queer theory. Another essay will follow that one exploring the misogyny underpinning anarchism and fascism (in both its secular and clerical strains). Central to this future essay are the problems of nihilism and postmodernism.

These ideas and associated politics and practices have in common the objectification of women and children. This puts women and children at risk for sexual exploitation and violence. They are moreover homophobic and misogynistic, erasing both categories through suppression and simulation. As such, they are species of anti humanism. It’s no accident that the mobs in our cities, encouraged and defended by woke progressivism, the praxis of the corporate state, which is near-hegemonic, simultaneously press for the subversion of youth, the undermining of women’s rights, the erasure of gays, the disintegration of families, and the Islamization of Western societies. All this is fueled by a manufactured loathing of Western Civilization and the nuclear family. And it is aimed at our democracy and liberal institutions.

All the things I describe here are in front of our eyes. As moral animals, we are obligated to see them. The nihilists tell us that morality and its social arrangements are arbitrary and without inherent meaning, purpose, and value. If we see what we see we are the oppressors. This is a lie designed to paralyze us. There are eternal truths. We are natural beings. The reality is that the extent to which we act without regard to one another is a metric indicating the degree of alienation from our species-being. Sociopaths seeks estrangement for the unleashing of Freud’s das Ich (the Id). They want no moral order precisely because anything goes without one—and it creates the space necessary for fascist politics and transhumanist desire. Any person or group or praxis that transgresses the boundaries that safeguard women and children is dangerous. We feel this in our gut for a reason. It is a result of natural history. The nihilists are subverting our instincts by disrupting common sense. This is the existential struggle of the present epoch.

* * *

Pedophilia and other paraphilias lurk at the core of queer theory, shaping its development over the twentieth century. I have an essay pending on the paraphilic character and origins of queer theory, its anarchist roots, and associated praxis known as “queering.” Queering, for those who don’t known, refers to the practice of challenging and subverting identities, normative boundaries, and social structures that define and regulate gender roles and sexual relations and interactions. The practice is associated with the grooming of children, which I have written about extensively on Freedom and Reason (see, e.g., Seeing and Admitting Grooming; Child Sexual Abuse and Its Dissimulation in the Rhetoric of Diversity and Inclusion; What is Grooming?). Readers will better understand that future essay, which will link back to this one, if they have a working vocabulary of queering and the paraphilias this praxis seeks to depathologize and normalize. In the present essay, I explore queering (saving the larger discussion for the pending essay) before discussing the various paraphilias.

As noted, queering as praxis involves disrupting conventional norms to expose and dismantle the power dynamics that sustain them. By queering activities, discourses, and spaces, movement activists aim to create alternative ways of understanding and engaging with the world, often in ways that are fluid and inclusive of diverse experiences and identities, including those that are pathological and perverse. Queering is not only about challenging heteronormativity (problematizing the observation that heterosexuality is the most common sexual orientation is typical), but also questioning any fixed category or norm that constrains human expression, however detrimental those expressions are to pro-social relations. For example, queering a space involves creating a situation where the boundaries between public and private behaviors are blurred, which may manifest in paraphilic displays with children present. That queering has its roots in anarchism and nihilism is obvious in such displays.

Dereck Jensen, whose observations I will note in that pending essay, uses in passing Diogenes of Sinope as a paradigm embodiment of the principles of anarchist thought by referencing the infamous cynic’s radical rejection of hierarchical authority and social norms. Diogenes’ acts of public defecation and masturbation, disrupting plays and lectures, etc., can be seen as a form of resistance to the imposition of what Diogenes considered arbitrary rules and social conventions. By deliberately flouting the expectations of orderly society, Diogenes sought to expose the artificiality and arbitrary nature of social constructs, like modern-day anarchists challenge the legitimacy of social boundaries and norms.

Diogenes emphasis on living in accordance with nature, free from the constraints of custom and law, parallels the anarchist ideal of a society where individuals are liberated from “oppressive structures” and live according to their desire, sublimated in egotistical fashion as their own principles. But Diogenes was oblivious to the order nature and trans cultural/historical social relations convey. And you must have by now recognized the fact that living according to one’s desire regardless of social norms is never recognized by the narcissist as oppressive to others. This is the defining characteristic of sociopathy from its standpoint. Anarchism and queer theory cancel empathy. They are antisocial at their core.

Such is egocentrism. I want to elaborate this point because it’s crucial. Diogenes’ emphasis on living in accordance with nature, unencumbered by societal norms or laws, reflects a form of radical individualism that anarchism valorizes. At its heart lies nihilism, which holds that life is without inherent meaning, purpose, or value, rejecting established moral and societal structures. It follows that individuals should be free to act according to their desires, without being bound by externally imposed structures. Taken to its extreme—and it is has already taken itself there—, anarchism overlooks the inherent social responsibilities individuals have toward others, inherent in that anthropological fact of species-being—sans estrangement. When personal desire becomes the guiding principle, as in the case of Diogenes’ public defiance of social decorum, it descends into egocentrism, where one’s own needs and wants are prioritized over the wellbeing of others.

This unchecked pursuit of individual desire—Freud’s das Es—leads to behavior that is indifferent to the harm it may cause, where a disregard for social norms and the welfare of others defines one’s actions. This is the mark of the worst criminality. The reality is that living solely according to one’s desires, without consideration for the social fabric that binds communities together, is oppressive to others, creating a paradox where the pursuit of absolute freedom for the one imposes constraints on the freedom of many. These constraints are unjust.

For philosophers, this raises questions about the balance between collective responsibility and individual autonomy, a tension that anarchist thought must address if it seeks to create a society that is truly free from oppression. But in the material world, anarchism cannot resolve this contradiction in a way that does not unjustly harm the many; so it is never addressed. In my last essay, I provided an instance of the problem: Roxanne Tickle’s desire to impose his manufactured identity upon the community of women. His desire came at the expense, not only that community, but of women’s rights generally. (See Internalizing Misogyny: The Case of Tickle v Giggle).

Tickle’s legal victory was celebrated by the queer movement. In her statement, Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody laid the tension before the world without addressing the contradiction (italics added for emphasis): “Gender equality means equal treatment of all genders, including trans people. When we recognize trans rights, we recognize the worth and dignity of every person and reject the harmful stigmas and stereotypes that lead to discrimination. We stand with trans communities and will continue to advocate for their rights and the rights of women. No one in Australia should face discrimination or exclusion based on their sex or gender identity.” The contradiction is resolved in favor on the one—Tickle’s gender identity, an entirely fallacious construct—at the expense of an entire objective class of human being, which Cody skirts by declaring both to lie at the heart of concern.

The explicit goal of the queer movement is to reconfigure social relations in a way that diminishes prejudice and fosters inclusivity, which the public is told fosters a more just society. In reality, prejudice against women is institutionalized when men are included in activities and spaces exclusive to women. This is what groups like the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), and more broadly the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Amnesty International, strive to promote: they are hard at work depathologizing and normalizing attitudes and behaviors that are harmful to safe and stable social relations, especially those safeguarding children and women. Queering is an extreme praxis that reimagines and reshapes the world by embracing normative pluralism and relativism in order to legitimize and open spaces for paraphilic behavior.

Transgressing the normative boundaries that safeguard children is, alongside disintegrating the community of women, the main focus of queer praxis. As I have shown in several essays, the sexualization of children is ubiquitous in those spaces organized by woke progressive and corporate ideology, such as in public education and the medical industry. Public school classrooms are festooned in queer propaganda, their librarians curating pornographic books and videos (The LGBTQ Lobby Sues Florida; Ideology in Public Schools—What Can We Do About It? Whose Spaces Are These Anyway? Political Advocacy in Public Schools), as well as promoting Drag Queen Story Hour (Clowns are Scary; If All This Strikes You as Perverse, You’re Right. It is). The terminal end of the praxis is medical atrocities (The Gender Hoax and the Betrayal of Children by the Adults in Their Lives; California to Hand Children to the Queer Lobby and the Medical Industrial Complex; Luring Children to the Edge: The Panic Over Lost Opportunities)

We need to be blunt about this: the desire that lurks here is pedophilic. While a distinction is often made between having pedophilic inclinations and acting on those inclinations, the former provides the latter its motive. It is therefore vital to know the signs of pedophilic desire when they are present. An intense or unusual focus on the sexuality of children, especially if it involves inappropriate behavior and discussions, such as about their fantasies and genitalia, raises red flags and is very likely to be indicative of pedophilia.

Pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder characterized by an adult or older adolescent’s sexual attraction to or fascination with prepubescent children, typically under the age of 13 (hebephilia, a subset of pedophilia, involves sexual attraction to early pubescent children, typically between the ages of 11 and 14, with a focus on early development of secondary sex characteristics). This attraction may involve fantasies or urges that are harmful and inappropriate when manifest in behavior. Illegal in most parts of the civilized world, pedophilia is recognized as a psychiatric condition in diagnostic manuals, such as the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), where it is classified under paraphilic disorders.

Indeed, an intense or unusual focus on the sexuality of children could be indicative of various underlying issues beyond pedophilia, as well. Some individuals develop obsessive thoughts or compulsive behaviors that manifest in unhealthy ways, including a fixation on taboo subjects like child sexuality. Certain personality disorders, such as those in the cluster B category (e.g., antisocial, borderline or narcissistic personality disorder), might lead to inappropriate or boundary-violating behaviors, including an unhealthy interest in child sexuality. There are other paraphilic disorders that involve atypical sexual interests, which might manifest as an interest in the sexuality of children, even if the individual is not sexually attracted to children in the way defined by pedophilia. This is why the normalization of fetishes and kinks, such as autogynephilia, autopedophilia, BDSM, and supply play are inherently problematic.

The movement to depathologize pedophilia and other paraphilias has contrived a debate about the ethics of medicalizing certain conditions. This discussion has become more prominent in recent years, particularly with the introduction of terms like “minor-attracted persons” (MAPs) to describe individuals who are sexually attracted to minors. The term MAPs is used to reduce the stigma associated with pedophilia by focusing on the person rather than the disorder. Advocates of this terminology argue that reducing stigma could encourage individuals to seek help before acting on their attractions. However, the term normalizes and sanitizes a condition that is inherently harmful and dangerous to children. Sexual attraction to minors should be stigmatized and those who take a sexual interest in children kept from organizations and institutions where children are present. Normalizing it is a form of defining deviance down (to borrow Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s alliterative phrasing) that socializes the idea that pedophilia is acceptable and therefore increases the behavior (I will have more to say about this in the conclusion of this essay). If thoughts and behaviors have to be normalized then more often than not, they are not normal thoughts or behaviors.

The broader depathologization movement seek to challenge the classification of certain paraphilias as mental disorders in order to mainstream deviant behavior. Advocates argue that these conditions should not be understood as psychiatric conditions, as deviant or pathological, but rather accepted as variations of human sexuality. They often compare this movement to the successful efforts to depathologize homosexuality, which was removed from the DSM decades ago. But to compare paraphilias to homosexuality brings homosexuality into ill-repute. Homosexuality is merely same-sex attraction, which is natural and normal across human history and many animal species. Pedophilia is deviant and dangerous in contrast. To suggest that pedophilia is like homosexuality is precisely the false association gay men have been fighting for decades to overcome.

Paraphilias are conditions characterized by atypical sexual interests that may involve non-consenting individuals, inanimate objects, or situations not typically associated with sexual activity. Other paraphilias besides pedophilia associated with sexual arousal include coprophilia (contact with feces), exhibitionism (exposing one’s genitals to an unsuspecting person, often in public spaces), fetishism (non-living objects, e.g., shoes, underwear, or specific non-genital body parts, e.g., feet, sometimes called partialism), frotteurism (rubbing or touching a non-consenting person, often in crowded places like public transportation), masochism (subjected to pain, humiliation, or suffering, whether self-inflicted or imposed by another person), necrophilia (sexual attraction or sexual activity with corpses), sadism (inflicting physical or psychological pain, suffering, or humiliation on another person), scatophilia (making obscene phone calls or engaging in sexually explicit conversation with an unwilling participant), transvestic fetishism (wearing clothes typically associated with the opposite sex, often linked to cross-dressing, sometimes referred to a autogynephilia), urophilia (urine and urination), voyeurism (secretly observing others who are naked, undressing, or engaged in sexual activity, without their consent), and zoophilia (sexual attraction to animals or engaging in sexual activities with them). This is list is not exhaustive.

Paraphilias are often recognized in clinical settings when they cause significant distress or impairment to the individual or involve non-consenting parties, thereby posing ethical and legal concerns. Not all paraphilias lead to harmful consequences (if safely practiced), but when they do, they are rightly subject to legal restrictions and societal condemnation. However, as suggested earlier, depathologizing pedophilia and many other paraphilias poses inherent risks to others, particularly children, and therefore should remain generally disallowed in public. Depathologization leads to the normalization of harmful behaviors, weakening legal and social protections for vulnerable populations.

There are clinicians and scholars who argue for a more nuanced understanding of paraphilias, suggesting that not all individuals with these attractions pose a risk of offending and that some may benefit from supportive, non-judgmental therapy. However, if pedophilia or other paraphilias were to be depathologized, it would affect criminal justice approaches, the availability of treatment programs, and societal attitudes toward these conditions. We are often told that there is a tension between advocating for the dignity and rights of individuals with paraphilias and ensuring the protection of children and other vulnerable groups, however the necessity of safeguarding these groups outweighs whatever dignity and rights of individuals with these perversions claim (apart from the fundamental rights of all people)—just as the rights of the women who use Giggle outweighs whatever rights we might imagine Roxanne Tickle has to intrude upon women’s only spaces. What consenting adults do behind closed doors is one thing, but that is not what the queer project seeks; queer politics seeks the right to engage in paraphilias in public, which is obvious every June when Pride celebrations roll around.

The extent to which psychiatric disorders are linked to cultural and social forces and trends is crucial to consider in mitigating the harm caused by pedophilia and other paraphilias. There is concerning evidence suggesting that the sexualization of children in a society is associated with the prevalence of pedophilia. When a society increasingly portrays children in sexualized ways—through advertising, fashion, or other cultural products—it contributes to a normalization of seeing children as sexual objects. Normalization influences societal attitudes and reduces the stigma associated with pedophilic desires, which is especially damaging to children whose moral understandings are still under development. Research in media psychology suggests that repeated exposure to sexualized images and narratives influence attitudes and behaviors. Objectification theory, for example, suggests that when individuals are repeatedly objectified, i.e., treated as objects rather than as people, it can influence how the objectified person is perceived by others and how they perceive themselves. The sexualization of children contributes to their objectification, altering how they are perceived by those with pedophilic and other paraphilic tendencies. This is hardly surprising. This can be particularly concerning in relation to children, as it desensitizes viewers to the inappropriate sexualization of minors. It moreover, arouses those who harbor pedophilic inclinations (see The Elite Obsession with Prepubescence).

* * *

Regular readers of Freedom and Reason know that I have written a lot on this subject. I did not fully grasp how dangerous queer theory was until I took a deep dive into the literature a few years ago—and then I had to work up the courage to publicly share what I had found. This predictably upset some people, but I have no regrets and will continue to write about it, including in this pending essay (publication date uncertain, as the fall semester is underway). I want the public to understand what’s going on and I especially want to arm parents with the knowledge they need to better safeguard their children and challenge the normalization of harmful paraphilias.

The good news is that there are signs that we are winning. Whereas only four states had moved to ban or restrict minor access of so-called gender affirming care, that number rose to 23 states by January 2024 (see above). Europe is ahead of us on this front (they do not suffer the same as we do from the presence of privatized health industry), but we are making progress. Moreover, as I point out in Bubbles and Realities, in 2022, the number of Americans who believe that a man cannot change his gender had steadily increased since 2017. The number have risen event more since then. According to a June 2024 Pew Research poll, nearly two-thirds of registered voters (65 percent) say whether a person is a man or woman is determined by the sex assigned to them at birth, whereas only about a third (34 percent) say whether someone is a man or woman can be different from the sex at birth.

“It is a legal fiction that Tickle is a woman. His birth certificate has been altered from male to female, but he is a biological man, and always will be. We are taking a stand for the safety of all women’s only spaces, but also for basic reality and truth, which the law should reflect.” —Sal Grover

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” —George Orwell

Roxanne Tickle, an Australian man who says he is a woman, has scored a victory in the Federal Court, Justice Robert Bromwich finding him to have been the victim of unlawful discrimination after being banned from the woman-only app Giggle for Girls. The founder of Giggle, Sal Grover, has been ordered to pay damages to Tickle, as well as court costs. Giggle for Girls was marketed as a safe space for women to share and discuss personal experiences. Court filings indicate that the platform had about 20,000 users in 2021. The app has been suspended since 2022.

In 2021, Tickle downloaded the app knowing that it was marketed as exclusive to women. Tickle, who underwent “gender-affirming surgery” in 2019 (presumably breast augmentation, orchiectomy, and vaginoplasty), was banned a several months after joining. Giggle’s AI filter determines the gender of users, a policing function necessary for maintaining female-only spaces. In time, it correctly identified Tickle’s gender (AI is quite good at this) and removed his profile. In Australia, however, a man enjoys the privilege of falsifying primary documents—his birth certificate, passport, etc.—so that he is a woman in the eyes of the state. Legally, it did not matter that Tickle was actually a man; it only mattered that Tickle possessed documents saying he was.

As someone who identifies as a woman, Tickle argued, he was legally entitled to use services meant for women. Moreover, Tickle claimed, Grover’s “persistent misgendering” had prompted “constant anxiety and occasional suicidal thoughts.” For its part, Giggle’s legal team, led by former Liberal candidate Katherine Deves, argued that sex is a biological concept. Giggle freely admitted that Tickle was discriminated against on these grounds; refusing to allow Tickle to use the app therefore constituted lawful sex discrimination, since Tickle is a man. Lawful sex discrimination has been a valid legal construct across the West for decades, enlightened populations finding it necessary in the light of intrinsic differences to establish equitable circumstances for girls and women, as well as safeguard them from male sexual predation. The app was designed to exclude men for this reason.

Tickle’s attorney, Georgina Costello, asked Grover, “Even where a person who was assigned male at birth transitions to a woman by having surgery, hormones, gets rid of facial hair, undergoes facial reconstruction, grows their hair long, wears make up, wears female clothes, describes themselves as a woman, introduces themselves as a woman, uses female changing rooms, changes their birth certificate—you don’t accept that is a woman?” Grover replied, “No.” Costello responded that the facts of Tickle’s surgery and her female birth certificate mean “it is clear that Ms Tickle is a woman.”

The corruption of truth at work in Australia (and there are other countries that corrupt truth in this way), represents not only a threat to women specifically but a threat to fact-based law generally. Surgery and a birth certificate don’t change the sex of a person. If one operates from a reality-based standpoint, which one should, Tickle is a man, i.e., an adult male human. Sex is binary and immutable. A man cannot be or become a woman. This is an impossibility. What Tickle’s attorney describes is not a woman but a simulated sexual identity, a simulacrum of a woman.

Crucially, Grover and her legal team did not deny the construct of “gender identity.” A woman who identifies as a man could be on Giggle, since trans men are women. The problem was that Tickle was a man. It was that basic. However Justice Bromwich, agreed with Tickle, ruling that Grover and the Giggle app had “discriminated” against Tickle, thereby effectively ruling that women do not have a right to women-only spaces. The argument that the judge merely affirmed the law’s arbitrary redefinition of men as women is specious; the premise of the ruling is false on its face, as it asks the court to accept as true the equivalent of 2 + 2 = 5. The judge ordered Grover and Giggle to pay $10,000 in compensation plus legal costs.

“The law is supposed to reflect reality & in reality this person is male… To be punished for acknowledging biological sex I think puts all Australian’s at risk of being punished for having human instincts.” pic.twitter.com/wQCfQ9mPir

— Sall Grover (@salltweets) August 24, 2024

“This decision is a great win for transgender women in Australia,” said Professor Paula Gerber at Monash University’s Faculty of Law. Since gender ideology is designed to confuse the public about what is actually being said, we need to translate: Gerber is saying that this decision is a great win for men in Australia. Although I doubt the majority of Australian men believe this was the correct decision or intend to take advantage of it, some will and appeal to it when assuming activities and resources reserved for women and trespassing upon their spaces. Tickle did and will certainly do it again.

“This case sends a clear message to all Australians that it is unlawful to treat transgender women differently from cisgender women,” Gerber continued. “It is not lawful to make decisions about whether a person is a woman based on how feminine they appear.” This term “cisgender women” is a propaganda construct designed to convey the possibility that there are different types of women. There is only one possible type of woman—an adult female human. The point about appearance is beside the point; a man is a man no matter how feminine he appears. To be sure, gender ideology works from stereotypes, but law should be based on fact and reason not stereotypes.

Tickle found Grover’s public statements about him “distressing, demoralizing, embarrassing, draining and hurtful.” What about the distress, demoralization, embarrassment, and so forth, provoked by a man’s presence on a women-only app? How does it make a woman feel to have divulged an intimate matter to a man she presumed to be a woman? Betrayed, deceived, violated—these and other feelings come to mind. Do women matter? Their feelings? Their safety? To they have a right to community of women? Should women’s rights be shredded to accommodate a man who has deluded himself into believing is not one? There’s a word for people who believe a man’s desire takes privilege over the rights of women. The word is misogyny.

The assault on the truth about the sex binary, not only in Tickle v Giggle case, but in a myriad of other cases, most recently in the IOC’s decision to allow permitting males to complete in women’s boxing, and the inclusion of Hailey Davidson in LPGA Tour (Davidson stand only two steps from becoming a member), should concern everybody who believes in the right of girls and women to have the same opportunities boys and men have enjoyed for millennia.

Human dignity and freedom is at stake for all of us when our institutions accept such an obvious falsehood as the claim that human beings can change their sex. Orwell wrote in Nineteenth Eighty-Four, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” The inverse is equally as true.

“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.” —George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Pavel Durov, the co-founder and CEO of Telegram, was arrested in France on Saturday, August 24, 2024. He was detained at Le Bourget Airport near Paris after arriving on his private jet from Azerbaijan. French authorities issued an arrest warrant for Durov on charges related to his alleged failure to prevent illegal activities on Telegram, including drug and human trafficking, as well as fraud. Why Telegram could be responsible for the conduct of those who use the service makes no sense. It’s akin to arresting the owners of rental properties because tenets use them for stashing contraband.

In reality, the arrest is connected to Durov’s refusal to cooperate with law enforcement regarding the moderation of content on Telegram. The situation has sparked concerns that politically-motivated detentions are becoming common, in this case as a means to access Telegram user data. Elon Musk has expressed concern about this and there are voices calling for Musk and X to be treated in a manner like Durov and Telegram. Moreover, regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), are investigating services like Rumble, an alternative to YouTube that eschews political-ideological moderation of content.

pic.twitter.com/Q0Og7KkWES

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2024

Here’s the reason French authorities arrested Durov: the transnational elite want to monitor everything we say, send, and share. That there is a system that allows us to hide information from government authorities drives them up the wall. Users of systems like Telegram are like Winston Smith in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, standing off to the side of the telescreen and keeping secrets with himself. This is intolerable from the point of view of authoritarianism.

Update (8-27-2024): When I said the fake politics of joy I did not mean to suggest that the “Strength Through Joy” (Kraft durch Freude, KdF) campaign was fake. “Strength Through Joy” was a propaganda tool, projecting an image of a benevolent and caring government. It was designed to foster a sense of pride and unity among Germans, aligning them with the Nazi ideology and goals. The concept of the “people’s community” (Volksgemeinschaft) was central to the campaign, which sought to create a cohesive and ideologically unified society. The program was one of many ways the Nazi regime sought to control and influence the daily lives of German citizens, blending social welfare with political indoctrination.

Update (08-24-2024): In her speech at the DNC, Kamala Harris said Donald Trump is not a serious person. Of course he is, and yesterday it all got even more serious, as Trump welcomed to the stage Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who just suspended his own presidential campaign and endorsed Trump. It is well-known that I have been waiting all my life to vote for Bobby Kennedy and to see him unite with the populist-nationalist movement reclaiming the American Republic was a powerful moment in my life. I knew it was hard for him, but he did the right thing. His candidacy was helping Harris, and the single most important thing to accomplish in this moment is the defeat of the Harris-Walz ticket. It is no exaggeration to say that another four years of progressive rule will likely by the dirt that fills the grave of the greatest experiment in democracy and liberty the world has ever known. We can’t let this happen. We have to fight like hell for the United States.

UNITE AMERICA.#RFKJr #trump pic.twitter.com/f5NXgxdRJs

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 24, 2024

“This decision is agonizing for me because of the difficulties it causes my wife and my children and my friends,” Kennedy said on Friday. “But I have the certainty that this is what I’m meant to do. And that certainty gives me internal peace, even in storms.” Bobby Kennedy did the right thing by endorsing Trump. Tulsi Gabbard did the right thing by offering to serve as Trump’s running mate. Naomi Wolf did the right thing by working with Steve Bannon to expose the corporate state’s pandemic lies. These are patriots. The Democratic Party is the party of corporate power and administrative rule. Indeed, there is nothing democratic about the party at all, as these four progressive elites laugh about in discussing how the Party sacked Biden and installed Harris (who has yet to hold a press conference or sit down for an interview with the media).

WOW. Watch Gavin Newsom basically admit that there was a coup to replace Joe Biden with Kamala.

"We went through a very open process, a very inclusive process, it was bottom-up… that's what I've been told to say." [laughs]pic.twitter.com/Qdew1DVo76

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 23, 2024

* * *

Remember Hubert Humphrey’s “Politics of Joy” theme? His campaigns manufactured the construct as a hallmark of his political identity, particularly during his 1968 presidential campaign. The theme was pitched as Humphrey’s “optimistic vision for America,” emphasizing “positive government action” to improve the lives of citizens, especially the downtrodden and resentful. Humphrey believed that government should play an active role in creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive society. Sound familiar? His campaign stood up the theme to contrast Humphrey to the divisive and turbulent politics of the time, particularly the proxy war on the other side of the planet, as well as crime, disorder, and riots in cities at home. Humphrey was Vice-President to Lyndon B. Johnson, who, as President, declined to run for a second term. Starting to sound even more familiar now?

During the 2022 Minnesota gubernatorial campaign, Tim Walz, the incumbent governor, ran for reelection on the “Politics of Joy” theme. Did you know that Humphrey was also from Minnesota? He served as the US Senator from Minnesota from 1949 to 1964 before being tapped as the Vice President under Johnson following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. When Humphrey run for the presidency in 1968, he represented Minnesota’s progressive values on the national stage. The Walz campaign focused as well on positive messaging that highlighted his achievements in Minnesota and a vision for a better future. This approach contained a concealing rhetoric of decidedly not focusing on divisive issues, instead emphasizing empathy. The goal was to build a coalition of diverse supporters who felt included in the political process (not that they actually would be). The campaign engaged with voters through a positive and uplifting tone, encouraging “civic participation” and fostering a “sense of community.” This approach aimed to manufacture a joyful experience that simulated popular empowerment.

Before continuing, I want restate the obvious: Joy is a feeling of great happiness and pleasure that comes from good fortune, success, or wellbeing. Events, people, and things bring one joy. Joy is emergent from conditions, relationships, and situations. Joy cannot stand as a valid politics to cover the failures of past administrations or the perils of future ones. To be sure, something that looks like joy may be simulated, but it is an illusory state of gladness—a fool’s paradise. Dissimulation is the act of pretending to feel a certain way, such as happiness, when you don’t actually feel that way. This is the joy of the Harris-Walz campaign. It’s fake joy. Like the Clintons and the Obamas, Harris and Walz are constructs. They don’t care about you or your country. They only care about themselves.

Like Walz today, Humphrey’s “politics of joy” was a cover for his lifelong commitment to progressive causes. Humphrey was a key figure in the social welfare programs during the Great Society era that undermined by the black family in America’s central cities by promoting idleness and dependency on paternalistic government. Humphrey was also a strong advocate for mass immigration, arguing for removing “discriminatory quotas.” He was a supporter of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, which abolished the national origins quota system that had been in place since the 1920s. This act, signed into law by President Johnson, opened up US immigration to people from all parts of the world, rather than favoring European immigrants whose cultures were similar to those of America.

Humphrey’s optimistic message was betrayed by the political and social unrest of the late 1960s, making it challenging to resonate with voters who were increasingly disillusioned by the ongoing conflict in Vietnam and domestic issues. America would find out later the dreadful consequences of open borders, but they were rightly suspicious then of the direction progressives were taking America, and as the 1968 campaign unfolded, the return of populist and nationalist sentiment and the desire for a return to the traditional values that created safe and stable communities became ever more apparent.

Humphrey was up against Richard Nixon in 1968, who ran on a platform of “law and order” and a promise to bring an end to violent foreign entanglements. Nixon’s law and order politics extended to his views on immigration. He was concerned about the border security and the enforcement of immigration laws; Nixon believed in maintaining strict control over immigration to prevent illegal entry and ensure that immigrants adhered to US laws. Nixon’s campaign capitalized on the growing discontent with the Johnson administration, particularly over its handling of the war and the civil unrest at home. He appealed to the “silent majority,” the majority in America’s heartland and in its suburbs, who were fed up with the social upheavals of the 1960s—the anti-war demonstrations and urban violence.

Nixon’s strategy to position himself as the candidate of order and stability, contrasting with the more progressive image and legacy of Hubert Humphrey, was a successful one. The campaign appealed to Southern voters who, in the wake of the abolition of Jim Crow segregation, were increasingly embracing republican ideals of federalism, limited government, orderly community life, and safe streets. Nixon won the election, taking 301 electoral votes to Humphrey’s 191. The populist campaign of George Wallace drew significant support from voters likely to vote for Nixon, especially those concerned with federalist principle, law and order, and small government, which dampened Nixon’s popular vote count (43.3 percent for Nixon to 42.7 percent for Humphrey).

In 1972, Nixon, emphasizing successes in foreign policy, particularly the opening of diplomatic relations with China and the ongoing Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) with the Soviet Union, as well as the strength of the economy and declining crime rates, won in a historic landslide, winning all but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, capturing 60.7 percent of the popular vote. His Democrat opponent, South Dakota’s George McGovern, ran on a platform of guaranteeing every American an annual cash payment. (McGovern has beat out Ted Kennedy for the Democratic Party nomination. Kennedy’s campaign was complicated by a car accident on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, which occurred in 1969, that resulted in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign worker. Kennedy had been the driver of the car.)

McGovern’s running mate, Maryland’s Sargent Shriver, was well known for his joyful demeanor. His charisma and upbeat personality were considered significant assets, Shriver’s energy and optimism were palpable in his public appearances, which helped him connect with people and inspire them to engage in the cause of social justice—as defined by progressive elites. Shriver was a key figure in Johnson’s War on Poverty, a set of initiatives ostensibly aimed at addressing inequality and poverty which in effect created widespread dependency on the government among ghettoized blacks and undermined the integrity of the black family, which fueled a historic increase in inner city crime and violence. In fact, Shriver played a central role in creating and leading the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), which oversaw the various programs.

* * *

Recalling this history is compelling a digression, one that I think is relevant to the dynamic of today’s politics, which are eerily like those of my formative and teenage years. One of Nixon’s great failures at President was his attempt to reign in inflation—a legacy of Johnson’s Great Society programs and the prosecution of an unwinnable foreign war—by instituting price controls. In August 1971, Nixon announced a series of measures known as the “New Economic Policy,” which included a 90-day freeze on wages and prices. This policy was designed to stabilize the economy. The freeze was thus part of a broader strategy that included devaluing the dollar and suspending the gold standard (with implications that require a separate essay). While the controls temporarily stabilized prices, they created more problems than they solved, including shortages and disruptions in the supply of goods. The Harris-Walz campaign is promising to reign in the inflation resulting from Bidenomics with price controls. It’s one play from Nixon’s playbook they ought not play.

Nixon’s other great failure was his attempt to gain control over the CIA and reign in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. To be sure, from the standpoint of civil liberties and human decency this was a laudable goal, but it was a failure in the sense that it undermined Nixon’s presidency—as it had John Kennedy’s. With respect to the CIA, Nixon was critical of the agency’s activities and its role in various covert operations, especially after revelations about the CIA’s involvement in domestic spying and other controversial activities (assassination being the most obvious). Nixon attempted to limit the CIA’s activities and to increase oversight of its operations. What is more, Nixon and his advisors sought to use the CIA in ways that aligned with their political objectives, which is appropriate for the Executive; however, in its role as part of the administrative state apparatus, the CIA resisted.

Richard Nixon did an extremely long and detailed series of interviews in 1983 with his former aide Frank Gannon, who also became a TV producer. All, or most, appear to be on YouTube — they're fascinating. Here is Nixon addressing whether there was a CIA conspiracy against him pic.twitter.com/B0NDJThPig

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 8, 2024

As for the FBI, Nixon was worried about directly challenging or reforming the FBI under Hoover’s leadership. However, the Watergate scandal brought FBI operations into the spotlight (which, along with the CIA, was later dimmed with the dramatic albeit limited hangout orchestrated by the Church Committee in 1975). The FBI’s investigation into the break-in and subsequent cover-up became a central focus of the scandal, which the media portrayed as an attempt by Nixon to interfere with the FBI’s investigation. At least Nixon wasn’t assassinated, indicating a change of Deep State tactics. Nixon resigned from office on August 9, 1974, becoming the only US president to do so.

Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned the former president on September 8, 1974. Ford had been a major figure on the Warren Commission, which cleaned up the assassination of JFK by penning the crime on a sole assassin, a patsy named Lee Harvey Oswald, who was subsequently murdered by Jack Ruby in the basement of the police station two days after Oswald had allegedly fired upon Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. President Johnson tapped Ford to serve on the commission. Ford would publish Portrait of the Assassin in 1966 based on his work on the commission, which he would vouch for the rest of his life. Smart move.

Upon speaking with the CIA, Trump reversed a promise to release all the files on JFK’s assassination, saying that potential harm to US national security, law enforcement or foreign affairs is “of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.” That didn’t stop an attempt on his life. Trump now campaigns behind bulletproof glass.

And we can’t ask Thomas Matthew Crooks anything about it.

The corruption of science by totalitarian regimes serves as a warning that the pursuit of truth must remain independent of political and moneyed power. As history shows, when science is subordinated to the interests of the state and the corporation, it can be used to justify the most horrific of policies. Therefore, it is essential to remain critical of scientific claims, especially when they align closely with state and corporate power, and to defend the independence of the scientific enterprise and the autonomy of scientists to vigorously interrogate the claims and conclusions made by others. Only by maintaining this autonomy can we ensure that science remains a force for good and progress, rather than a tool of exploitation and oppression.

Those of us who are skeptical of queer theory and gender ideology have often heard the line that there’s a broad scientific and medical consensus, supported by numerous professional bodies like the American Medical Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), and others, that gender-affirming care (GAC) is beneficial for those experiencing gender dysphoria (see Fear and Loathing in the Village of Chamounix: Monstrosity and the Deceits of Trans Joy). This care, based on crackpot psychological, endocrinological, and radical surgical interventions, are not universally seen as pseudoscientific, nor are the associated practices seen as atrocities, but rather as humane treatments for a recognized medical condition. What determines this false perception is the legitimacy of power in the present moment. It’s hard to see the corruption of science and medicine when one is inside the regime and believes the regime is good and its people free.

Antonio Gramsci noted that organic intellectuals play a crucial role in maintaining control over a population, not through force, but by engineering consent (to borrow a phrase from propagandist Edward Bernays) for the regime’s rule. The organic intellectual emerges from, or seeks to align himself with, specific social classes or groups, deeply rooted in the cultural, economic, and social conditions of that class or group. As leaders and organizers, organic intellectuals do more than just think about things; they actively work to articulate class interests and shape society around them.

In capitalist societies, where the primary concern is the accumulation of property and wealth, regime intellectuals produce and promote ideologies that justify and normalize exploitative structures. By framing these structures as natural or inevitable, good and necessary, they ensure that capitalist values permeate cultural norms and practices, influencing public opinion through cultural production, education of various types (i.e., indoctrination), and mass-mediated belief. Ideological hegemony makes things endorsed by the regime appear normal and participation in them voluntary, even desirable. Indeed, the fact of their normality proves they are legitimacy—that so many doctors and scientists defend GAC must mean that the practice is warranted and beneficial.

Throughout history, totalitarian regimes have co-opted and corrupted scientific inquiry to serve ideological ends. When one observes scientific inquiry serving these ends totalitarianism is indicated. Again, this is easy to see when the regime in question is not the one in which the observer resides. To be sure, some insiders see it—and some of those who see object. But, as Max Weber famously observed, legitimacy plays a significant role in covering power as authority and all that is required in mass thought control is a critical mass of believers. Authority is used to justify terrible things that many applaud and others fear to criticize. When scientific knowledge is distorted to align with the interests of those in power, the result is not only the suppression of truth but also the justification of atrocities in the name of progress; those who disagree are suppressed.

Nazi Germany stands as one of the most extreme examples, where the ideology of racial purity led to horrific practices justified under the guise of science. However, the manipulation of science by totalitarian regimes is not unique to the Nazis; similar patterns can be observed in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and in contemporary contexts. This essay, which expands on an essay published earlier this week (Chicken Sexing—Science or Ideology?), explores how pseudoscience and medical atrocities indicate the presence of a totalitarian regime, emphasizing the need for skepticism and vigilance in the face of scientific authority that aligns too closely with political power.

Nazi Germany indeed provides a terrifying example of how science can be twisted to serve the most inhumane of ends. The regime’s obsession with advancing the species led to the widespread adoption of eugenics, a pseudoscience that sought to apply principles of selective breeding to human populations. Eugenics, which had already gained traction in other parts of the world, was taken to its most extreme in Nazi Germany. The regime used eugenic theories to justify euthanasia programs, forced sterilizations, and ultimately, the extermination of ethnic, political, and religious groups, as well as sexual minorities. The Nazis framed their atrocities as scientific research. In concentration camps, doctors conducted horrific experiments on prisoners, often under the pretense of advancing medical knowledge. These experiments, which included forced sterilizations and the testing of experimental drugs, were driven by a perverse ideological commitment to Aryan supremacy.

The Soviet Union under Stalin provides another stark example of the dangers of state-controlled science. Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet agronomist, rejected genetic science in favor of a pseudoscientific theory based on dialectical materialism, or dia-mat, which he claimed would revolutionize agriculture. Lysenko’s ideas were appealing to the Soviet leadership because they aligned with Marxist-Leninist ideology and the application of dia-may to all things. Lysenkoism was promoted as official state doctrine, despite its lack of empirical support. Soviet agriculture, already struggling under collectivization, suffered further as Lysenko’s methods were implemented on a large scale. Famine and crop failures followed, leading to the suffering and deaths of millions. Moreover, the suppression of genetics as a field of study in the Soviet Union, along with the persecution of scientists who opposed Lysenko, demonstrates how scientific discourse can be controlled by the state to impose ideological conformity. Lysenkoism illustrates how political power suppresses legitimate science in favor of pseudoscience that serves the regime’s interests.

In Maoist China, during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, ideological conformity was prioritized over empirical evidence. Mao’s insistence on unproven agricultural techniques led to widespread crop failures and famine. Like in the Soviet Union, these policies were justified by pseudoscientific claims that aligned with the regime’s ideological goals, leading to catastrophic human suffering. In the Cultural Revolution, the rejection of established knowledge extended beyond agriculture. Intellectuals and scientists were persecuted, and scientific research was subordinated to the whims of political leaders. The result was a further degradation of scientific integrity and a deepening of the regime’s control over the population.

In contemporary times, we see instances where scientific and medical knowledge is manipulated by authoritarian governments—and governments not widely perceived to be authoritarian. Whether it’s the suppression of information about pandemics or the appeal to medical science to justify human rights abuses, the pattern remains the same: pseudoscience becomes hegemonic under often inverted totalitarian rule, with scientific truth replaced by politically-ideologically narratives. When we see this, what we are seeing are the signs of totalitarianism’s presence. Under conditions of monopoly capitalism, corruption is deeply rooted in corporate state arrangements that are masked by an ideology of consumer choice and free markets. Here, in addition to the corruption of science by ideology, the profit motive and oligarchy pose a significant threat to the integrity of scientific inquiry.

In a profit-driven system, the pursuit of wealth distorts scientific research, as moneyed interests prioritize profits over truth. Corporations and powerful elites fund and disseminate pseudoscientific ideas that serve their material interests. Ideology serves as a veneer to justify these deeper materialist motives. Powerful interest groups are able to colonize the organizations and institutions of power, which corporate and state actors use to entrench power. Thus when pseudoscience and atrocities appear in such a system, they are not just indicators of ideological influence but also of the concentration of power in the hands of those who benefit from them. The interplay between ideology and profit demands we recognize when scientific authority is being wielded not in the pursuit of knowledge, but in the service of maintaining and expanding corporate power.

How are elites able to persuade so many people that pseudoscience, detectable by the common sense that precedes it, is legitimate? In part, by disrupting common sense through propaganda, what today we call advertising, marketing, and public relations. Blurring the line between persuasion and manipulation, advertisers wield immense power in shaping public perceptions, beliefs, and desires.

Bernays, noted earlier, understood this power and applied it to the art of propaganda. Bernays pioneered techniques that used psychological insights to craft messages that could subtly influence mass behavior, turning consumer goods into symbols of social status and personal identity—turning people themselves into commodities. Through strategic marketing, corporations manufacture consent for their ideas and products, embedding them into the cultural fabric as if they were natural or inevitable. This manipulation extends beyond consumerism; it influences public opinion on political and social issues, often serving the interests of those in power. Bernays’ work and its proven effectiveness reveal how propaganda can serve as a powerful tool in the hands of elites, shaping societal norms and values to align with their interests, while disguising these manipulations as organic expressions of public will.

Another factor is education, which when distorted into indoctrination, functions much like advertising, marketing, and public relations by systematically shaping perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors to create a generation of individuals with disordered common sense—people who are easily manipulable. Through centrally controlled curricula, the repetition of certain narratives, and the exclusion of critical perspectives, indoctrination instills in the population a narrow set of ideas and values, much like how advertising creates brand loyalty or how public relations shapes public opinion. Just as marketing tactics manipulate desires and choices, indoctrination distort the ability to think independently, making it difficult for individuals to question authority or recognize propaganda. This is why it is so important for elites to get control over textbooks and compel teachers to teach from them; elites decide what goes in and what stays out of texts and curricula. This process produces a populace that is not only susceptible to manipulation by those in power but also lacks the intellectual tools to challenge the status quo, thereby perpetuating systems of control.

The rhetoric of science enjoys a unique authority that legitimizes and drives the consumption of commodities and services, often by cloaking commercial interests in the guise of objective truth. By invoking scientific authority, endorsement, jargon, and studies, the corporate state manufactures a perception of credibility and reliability, making their products or services appear not only desirable but also necessary for health, well-being, and societal progress. This scientific veneer is frequently employed in marketing strategies, where phrases like “backed by research,” “clinically proven,” or “scientifically formulated” are used to persuade consumers of the efficacy and safety of a product.

In reality, these claims are often exaggeration and based on dubious or selectively reported studies, funded by the very industries that stand to profit from them. By leveraging the trust people place in science, in conditioned reliance on faith-belief and avoidance of critical thought, companies effectively manipulate consumers, transforming their goods and services into essential components of modern life. They control workers using the same methods.

In totalitarian regimes, science is not a means of discovery but a tool to legitimize authority and suppress dissent. When scientific inquiry is subordinated to the needs of the state or to the corporation, it loses its objectivity and becomes a vehicle for regime propaganda. This corruption of science is not just an academic concern; it has real-world consequences, from the justification of atrocities to the perpetuation of ignorance and suffering. Pseudoscience becomes hegemonic under totalitarian rule because it serves the regime’s interests. By promoting false or misleading scientific narratives, the regime creates a facade of legitimacy, presenting its policies as fact-based and rational. The hegemony of pseudoscience stifles dissent, as those who challenge the regime’s scientific orthodoxy are persecuted or silenced. We see this in the West in the atrocities public relations have euphemized as gender affirming care—and in the discipline, harassment, intimidation, ostracization, and punishment of those who question the practice and its ideological justification.

* * *

One of the developments over the last century has been the shift from transcendence of mundane life through traditional religious means to transcendence of bodies by mapping onto them technological advancements made possible by science. Fascism, particularly in its Italian and National Socialist forms, was deeply invested in the idea of human advancement through modification of bodies and the species, often through a lens that merged racial ideology with a belief in the power of science and technology to reshape humanity, especially in the case of the Nazis, but also in the case of Italian fascism. This belief is closely connected to transhumanist desires. As I have noted in previous essays, Italian fascism, under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, was heavily influenced by the Futurist movement, which celebrated the power of technology and the potential for human transformation through scientific and technological means.

Futurism glorified the idea of a hypermodernity and sought to break with the past, envisioning a future where humanity would evolve beyond its current state. The Futurists, led by figures like Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, embraced the idea that humans could be remade through technological advancement. Futurism’s fascination with technology and the idea of transcending human limitations aligned with Mussolini’s vision of a new Italian state, one organized around corporatism. An ethic justifying the modification of bodies was necessary to meet the possibilities inherent a modern, technologically advanced society. This vision of human advancement required the masses embracing the machine age and the possibilities it offered for transforming human existence.

National Socialism under Adolf Hitler took these ideas further, combining them with a pseudo-scientific belief in racial purity and superiority. The Nazi regime was deeply invested in eugenics, grounded in a perverse interpretation of Darwinian evolution, where the technocrats accelerate the process of human evolution by controlling reproduction. Eugenics in Nazi Germany involved programs aimed at promoting the reproduction of individuals considered racially superior while preventing those deemed inferior from reproducing. This included forced sterilizations, the euthanasia of individuals with disabilities, and the horrific medical experiments.

Transhumanism today, in the context of the corporate state, is focused on enhancing human capabilities through bioengineering and cybernetics. Transgenderism is a subset of transhumanism, where individuals are modified to produce simulated sexual identities, which is portrayed as progressive, even transcendent (The Selective Misanthropy and Essential Fascism of the Progressive Standpoint). The connection between these ideologies lies in their shared vision of human advancement and transformation. Fascist regimes sought to forcibly modify the human race to fit their ideological goals; transhumanism envisions a future where individuals are made to believe that they are freely choosing to enhance or liberate themselves through medicine and technology. The dark history of eugenics and medical atrocities in fascist regimes tells us a lot about contemporary transhumanism and the dangers of using science and technology to pursue an ideological vision of humanity. (See The Body as Primary Commodity: The Techno-Religious Cult of Transgenderism.)

* * *

The historical examples of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Maoist China serve as powerful reminders that the endorsement of an idea by scientific or medical authorities does not make it inherently true or ethical. In totalitarian regimes, the positions of doctors and scientists reflect the power structures of the regime, rather than objective truth. But we also see this corrupting power reflected in the science and medical practices in the West, power cloaked in authority no less manufactured as it was in the historical regimes, albeit more highly sophisticated.

This is why I push so hard the importance of skepticism when evaluating scientific claims, especially in politically charged and corporate controlled environments. Independent scientific inquiry is crucial to resisting the corruption of knowledge by political and moneyed power. When science is free from state control, it can serve as a check on authority, challenging false narratives and exposing the truth. However, when science becomes a tool of the state, it loses its ability to fulfill this role, leading to the distortion of knowledge and the justification of inhumane policies and practices.

In light of all this, something must be said about the power of religious ideology in shaping science. This is obvious in the Islamic world where religion and science are integrated in that scientific inquiry is conducted within a framework that is consistent with Islamic doctrine. This integration inevitably leads to the subordination of science to doctrine, where scientific practices are shaped by the pursuit of fiction rather than the pursuit of truth. The same is true for societies that fail to separate church and state; the state inevitably becomes subordinate to the dominant religion and its actors must seek direction from the clerics. In the Islamic tradition, the natural world is viewed as a creation of Allah, and understanding it is seen as a way to appreciate Allah’s creation. This is the apologetics. What this actually means is that scientific explanations that contradict Islamic teachings must be rejected or reinterpreted to fit religious narrative. When religious narrative guides scientific research, areas of inquiry become off-limits and drawing certain conclusions forbidden, and those who pursue and draw them punished.

I am closing with this case because what we see today is science operating within the confines of a corporate state-backed neoreligion and the laws that supports it. If an evolutionary biologist or geneticist stands in front of a classroom and lectures about the science of gender, and there are trans identifying individuals or trans allies in the lecture hall, they will object to the lecture, since it contradicts the doctrine of their ideology. They may speak up in class, or they may report the professor to her chair or to the dean. They may draw up and circulate a petition to see the professor disciplined or fired. The authorities may ask to speak with the professor about the content of her lecture and ask why she is not teaching the doctrine. If she defends herself, she will say that the doctrine contradicts the science of gender and, as a traditional intellectual, she has an obligation to teach what is known to be true. But those prosecuting the case are organic intellectuals. Their role is not to defend enlightenment and her freedom to pursue this end; their role is to advance the interests of the corporate state.

Somebody asked me yesterday why I would say that genderism is part and parcel of corporatism. I am always a bit astonished by such a question given how obvious the answer is. The pseudoscience of transgenderism generates billions of dollars annually for the medical-industrial complex. Many of the students attending colleges and universities will in some capacity serve the medical industry. Their faith in doctrine and institution is essential for obedience in and perpetuation of the system. Indeed, the reason they come to the university is to learn how to be an integral cog in a system that will reward them for their fealty. Even if our professor is not disciplined for her heresy, she will nevertheless feel the chill in the air and probably hesitate to present the lecture again, at least not in the same way. (See my fictional case: Kessler’s Cowardice in the Face of Transhumanism.) Others will see this and revise their lectures, as well, so as not to incur the wrath of administrators and students, who, as Hannah Arendt told us, is how power is actually manifested, namely through action. Grants, tenure and promotion—these are many other things are at stake. Most people police themselves and reform their own thought.

The chill is yet another sign of totalitarianism’s presence.

One of the arguments that those defending mass immigration are fond of making is that immigrants commit less crime than the native-born. I have written about this before (see Crime, Immigration, and the Economy; Obscuring the Crime-Immigration Connection). The argument has returned and offered as proof is a 2020 article published in PNAS, “Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas,” by Michael Light and associated (edited by Douglas Massey of American Apartheid fame).

The authors admit that “[t]he limited information we do have about undocumented criminality is not only conspicuously scant but also highly inconsistent.” The authors cite two studies: “A 2018 report from the Cato Institute found that arrest and conviction rates for undocumented immigrants are lower than those of native-born individuals. Research by the Crime Prevention Research Center in that same year, however, reached the exact opposite conclusion.” They comment: “Neither of these studies was peer-reviewed, and thus, their data and methodologies have not been subject to scientific scrutiny.” Why the need for peer review is unclear. Peer review is a historically recent device for establishing pseudo-legitimacy. Perhaps it is to obscure the fact that the second study, “Undocumented Immigrants, U.S. Citizens, and Convicted Criminals in Arizona,” was conducted by John Lott, a very serious scholar whose work I recently summarized in Corporate Media and Democrats Distorting Crime in America. Peer review does nothing to enhance the validity and soundness of Lott’s work.

I will argue in this essay that the point of Light and associate’s exercise is irrelevant to the question that prompts it, namely public concern about illegal immigration and crime. I will argue further that a conclusion they reach is rather obviously wrong. The conclusion: “Our findings help us understand why the most aggressive immigrant removal programs have not delivered on their crime reduction promises and are unlikely to do so in the future.” To deal with this claim forthwith, if, say, ten million illegal aliens were removed from the United States, this would result in a significant reduction of crime. How could it not? As for the point of the study, I will address this by asking the reader to engage with me in a thought experiment: the introduction of a thousand immigrants into a small community with a population of a thousand people. Some might find this example unrealistic, but by way of real-world experience, only last year 400 immigrants were relocated in the small village of Upahl, Germany. Upahl’s native-born population is only 500.

For this demonstration, let’s use arrest rates, since this is what Light and associated use. This is useful for Light’s purposes because, with arrest, the authorities can determine immigration status. If crimes reported to the police were used, then immigration status will remain unknown for a significant proportion of crimes reported. An immigrant in the country illegally has already committed a crime, but let’s put that aside and agree that the crime in question is an Index crime—aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, murder, rape, and robbery. Light and associates include felony drug crimes. Doing so, Light and associates find that, for the period 2012-2018, “[t]he gaps between native-born citizens and undocumented immigrants are substantial: US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes.” 

So let’s consider our small community of a thousand citizens. Fifty of them have each committed a crime in which there is an arrest. That’s fifty arrests. The arrest rate among citizens is 5 percent, which is rather substantial. Citizens in this community are already heavily burdened by crime and other social ills. Now suppose a thousand immigrants move into the community and twenty-five of them each have committed a crime leading to an arrest. The arrest rate is 2.5 percent. In other words, the rate of arrests among immigrants for crime commission relative to citizens is half as much, albeit still significant. With the introduction of the immigrants, the incidence of crime in the community as measured by arrests has increased by 50 percent—whatever the relative rates for the different groups. That is a substantial rise in the number of arrests for serious crime.

We might reasonably expect that citizens will be among the victims of immigrant crimes, so whatever the relative rates for the two groups, the presence of immigrants has increased the risk of victimization for citizens. (You might wish for me to note that immigrants may be the victims of native-born perpetrators. If the immigrants weren’t there, then they wouldn’t face this possibility.) In addition to greater susceptibility to criminal victimization, citizens also experience greater competition for jobs and resources (housing, for example). The taxpayers of the community also shoulder a greater burden, as the immigrants use public infrastructure, public services, etc. As noted, the community is already burdened by a range of social problems. The presence of the immigrants compounds these problems.

The relevant question to ask about the quality of like for the citizens is a rather straightforward one: How is the lower arrest rate for immigrants relevant to the experiences of the native-born? How does it matter to imperiled citizen in the real world they have to navigate that immigrants are less likely to be arrested for crime? Why should the citizens of the community endure even more crime and additional and exacerbated burdens? Those defending immigrant crime aren’t suggesting the government kick citizens out of the country, are they? (I have actually heard this said.) Citizens have a right to be in their own country whatever the degree of criminality. However, the government can deport immigrants or keep them out of my country in the first place, thus effectively reducing the arrest rate. After all, immigrants aren’t supposed to be in the community—or even in the country.

Moreover, immigrants have children, and whatever one might say about the relative prevalence of offending between native born and first generation immigrants, by the second generation, the prevalence is the same as native born. The above graph depicts the age crime curve. Note when crime peaks. We know that the age crime curve is generated from criminal behavior by males, as males are drastically overrepresented in serious crime. This means that the more males in the population, the greater the prevalence of criminal offending. Who the illegal immigrants are is therefore important to consider. If most of them are young males, then this will have a greater impact on public safety than if they were families or young women. I believe readers have a pretty good understanding of who have been illegally crossing the southern border.

The relative arrest rates may be some interest if one is trying to understand crime causation. But to do this we first need to have accurate statistics, and arrest rates aren’t going to tell us how much crime there is but only how many people were arrested. Moreover, immigrants could be committing more crime than citizens even if more citizens are arrested for crime. I have good reason to suspect that immigrants are underrepresented in crime statistics. If true, our imagined community is in an even worst situation.

Those of us who study crime are frustrated by reporting bias. Not all victims report crime to the police. We know that the number of crimes reported to the police is less than half of the number crimes victims will report in scientific victimization surveys. Not only are not all crimes reported to the police, not all crimes lead to an arrest, not all reported crimes are recorded by police, and not all recorded crimes are reported to the federal government who publishes these data. Crimes committed by immigrants may be underreported because victims are also immigrants and fear interacting with authorities who may determine their immigration status and deport them. This will lead to fewer arrests of immigrants who commit crime. New arrivals are unknown to police and are not among the usual suspects. As a result, they are therefore harder to identify and find. And with the population increase, there are fewer cops per capita to deter crime. 

That there are persons unknown to police and that police are struggling to control crime in their community is of relevance to the citizens who must endure more crime in their community. The average citizen is not interested in conducting a study of crime causation. He is interested in safe streets, and he knows crime has increased with the increased presence of illegal immigrants in his community. In other words, the relative rates of offending between different citizens and immigrants is only relevant because the statistics confirm that increase in crime is due to the increase in immigrants. It was bad enough as it was. He doesn’t want to see it get worse. So he will rationally and rightly oppose the increase of immigrants in his community. And if his government does not reflect his interests, as it should, then his government has failed him.

There is an occupation one may take up determining the sex of chickens called “chick sexing.” The experts who perform the task are “chick sexers” or “poultry sexers.” They are very good at what they do, with accuracy rates typically ranging between 95-98 percent. This high level of accuracy comes from extensive training and experience. Crucially, chickens are not “assigned” a sex at hatching, but rather the chick sexer only identifies what nature has determined. Why it is necessary to sex chicks is because male chickens do not produce eggs but fertilize them, and since the egg industry seeks unfertilized eggs, all male chicks must be identified and disposed of.

Female and male chickens have gender roles, these roles determined by natural history. They also have a gender identity. Gender identity in all birds is determined by chromosomes, a system known as ZW, which is different from the XY system found in mammals. Female birds have two different sex chromosomes: ZW, with the W chromosome determining the female sex. Male birds have two identical sex chromosomes: ZZ. In this system, which is the opposite of mammals, the sex of the offspring is determined by the female, since she can pass on either a Z or a W chromosome, whereas the male can only pass on a Z chromosome. Since chickens do not have belief systems, the expectations and norms that establish the roles rooted in gender do not result from socialization and social pressure. Nor do chickens think they are the gender they are not.

As readers of Freedom and Reason know, I am always thinking about how we should understand and explain things. That’s my task as a social scientist employed by a comprehensive university. Crucially, enlightenment doesn’t ask us to disregard fiction. Rather it asks us to be able to distinguish fiction from fact, i.e., what is not real from what is real, and to teach our students how to do the same. For example, if one reads a story about talking chickens, one knows he is reading an allegory. Recall Animal Farm by George Orwell. When animals are used to personify human characteristics or societal roles, this technique is known as anthropomorphism. Children often think that animals can think and talk. Sometimes they think they are animals themselves (they are, but not the animals they pretend to be). In reality, the only animal who can have ideas are human beings. Only human beings can create religions and other systems based on fictional entities, relations, and situations. Only human beings can think they are something they are not. (See Judith Butler’s Gender Gibberish.)

The role of the scientist at the comprehensive university is three-fold: develop a curriculum and teach and evaluate students on the basis of it; make sure the university functions through committee work; and generate and evaluate ideas. As for generating and evaluating ideas, which involves analysis and synthesis, scientists write and rehearse lines to determine which are more compelling in light of fact and reason—not to advance or defend fictions. For administrators or colleagues to demand scientists toe certain lines obviates the autonomy and freedom required to make objective determinations concerning the validity and soundness of those and others lines. The scientist must enjoy autonomy to research and publish what interests him or else the task becomes corrupted. When administrators circumscribe the parameters of what the scientist can research and on what he may publish, they are asking not for enlightenment, but for the adherence to and dissemination of ideology. They do the same when they establish a committee to select textbooks, which is something that occurs all the time in k-12 education, but also occurs in some colleges and universities.

I recently had a back and forth on X with transactivists who insisted on sharing with me their college textbooks claiming that gender and sex are different things and that both are more complex than my describing of gender in chickens. I told them they were wasting their time since any college textbook that made these claims was corrupted by ideology. I have explained this several times on Freedom and Reason, but it might be helpful to summarize the problem of ideology in gender science here before critiquing ideology in science.

The standard version of the queer doctrine is that “sex” is biological, determined by physical attributes such as reproductive organs and chromosomes, while “gender” is cultural and cultural, involving identity and roles that may or may not align with an individual’s biological sex. More recently, sex itself has become a target of problematization, which is the postmodernist technique of undermining materialist science. As I have shown on Freedom and Reason, sex and gender are synonyms, both referring to sex chromosomes, gamete size, and reproductive anatomy. So a trick has been played here. The trick involves leaving out important words, namely “identity” and “role,” and then assuming them into the argument thereby avoiding defining them. It is not that there is no definition in operation. It is that the definition is not defensible when the assumption is made explicit.

Identity, according to ideology, is a deeply personal sense of one’s own gender that may or may not align with the person’s gender (or sex). It encompasses how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves—such as male, female, a blend of both, or neither. However, if we are working in the domain of facts, identity is not what a thing thinks of itself (almost nothing in the university possesses this capacity), but what the thing is. Only humans can be confused about this. A queen is not in possession of an ideology that will make her think she is a tom. She is not a tom because she is female and toms are male. Her gender identity is queen.

Roles refer to the expectations and norms that societies establish regarding the activities and attitudes deemed appropriate for individuals based on their gender. These roles are deeply ingrained in cultural, social, and historical contexts and can vary significantly across different societies and time periods. All this is true and general knowledge in anthropology, psychology, and sociology. However, these roles ultimately attach to the biological reality of gender, for example, in the fact that men cannot perform the role of carrying the fetus to term, or in the fact that men do not lactate. There are many facts like this that differentiate males from females. This is because our species, like every other mammalian species, is sexually dimorphic. (For more about this, see Gender and the English Language.)

What has happened here is that science has been corrupted by ideology. This is not a conspiracy theory, as the corruption of science has happened in many places and times and everybody accepts that this is a problem—just not when it is their favored doctrine on the operating table. In the Soviet Union, this phenomenon was most notably exemplified in the social sciences and biology, where Marxist-Leninist ideology imposed constraints on research and scientific development. Under the Soviet regime, scientific inquiry was expected to align with Marxist-Leninist ideology, which claimed that all social and natural phenomena could be understood through dialectical materialism. This framework, which emphasizes the dialectical process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis in historical and material conditions, was applied beyond the social sciences to the natural sciences, including biology and, to some extent, physics.

In biology, the most infamous example of this ideological corruption was Lysenkoism. Trofim Lysenko, an agronomist who rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of a theory that aligned more closely with Marxist principles, gained prominence under Stalin. Lysenko’s ideas, which included the inheritance of acquired characteristics and the rejection of genetic determinism, were embraced because they seemingly supported the Marxist belief in the malleability of human and natural conditions. The result was a devastating impact on Soviet agriculture and biological research, as Lysenko’s theories were implemented despite their scientific invalidity. Scientists who opposed Lysenko were persecuted, imprisoned, or even executed, illustrating how ideology can stifle dissent and lead to disastrous consequences for scientific progress. Physics, being more resistant to ideological distortion due to its empirical rigor, was less affected than the biological and social sciences. Nevertheless, the overarching ideological pressure sometimes led to constraints on scientific freedom, particularly in areas where research could potentially contradict state ideology.

The corruption of science by ideology is not unique to the Soviet Union; it has also occurred in corporate systems. In capitalist societies, the primary ideological force is often the market, where scientific research can be directed by corporate interests rather than pure inquiry. For example, pharmaceutical companies may suppress research that could harm their profits, or fund studies that promote their products, regardless of the potential harm to public health. The tobacco industry’s efforts to discredit research on the dangers of smoking is a notorious example of how capitalist interests can corrupt science. In fascist regimes, a more extreme form of corporatism, science was often subjugated to ideologies.

Nazi Germany is the most extreme example, where scientific research was distorted to support the ideology of racial purity and Aryan superiority. Eugenics, which sought to apply principles of selective breeding to human populations, was used to justify horrific practices, including forced sterilizations. The Nazi regime’s corruption of science illustrates how ideological goals can lead to the gross manipulation and misuse of scientific knowledge to justify inhumane policies. However, one must remember that eugenics was practiced in the United States long before the Nazis were in power (and don’t forget about lobotomies and other medical atrocities). There it was an expression of progressivism and technocratic desire, all signs of the corporate state. Today we see the corporate corruption of in gender affirming industry, which uses the pseudoscience of sexology beamed through the prism of queer theory to justify practices that generate billions of dollars annually.

It stands to reason, and this should be obvious (but its not because of the problem of ideological hegemony), if textbooks are corrupted by ideology or centralized power, then they may not be the most reliable sources of knowledge, especially in the natural sciences. Big textbook companies, such as Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Cengage, have increasingly aligned themselves with ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) criteria and other scoring organizations like HRC (Human Rights Campaign). These companies are not only evaluated on financial performance but also on their commitment to sustainability, social responsibility, and governance practices.The social piece of ESG emphasizes diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their hiring practices, content creation, and educational initiatives.

Textbook content is being updated to reflect more inclusive perspectives, aligning with broader social goals such as gender and racial equity. HRC metrics pertain to cultural alignment, that is how well a company’s culture aligns with societal expectations, including support for LGBTQ+ rights. Textbook content may be scrutinized to ensure it aligns with these cultural values. If a textbook presents the science of gender in a valid and sound way, because this contradicts queer theory, the company may receive a poor rating by HRC, and they need a high rating to draw investment. Thus textbook companies are under pressure to produce content that aligns with ESG and HRC criteria. This can result in the inclusion of topics like climate change, social justice, and diversity in curricula, sometimes leading to controversies over perceived biases or ideological slants. (See The Politics and Purpose of Affirming the Person; The Function of Woke Sloganeering; The Struggle for Gay Liberation and Threats to Its Achievements;

The science of gender is corrupted in other ways, as well. Several professors have faced significant challenges for teaching the biology of sex and gender in ways that conflict with queer theory, which emphasizes the fluidity and social construction of gender over biological determinism. Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy who left her position at the University of Sussex after being accused of transphobia for her views on gender. Stock argued for the importance of biological sex in understanding gender, which led to significant protests and her eventual resignation in 2021. David Bernstein, a law professor at Georgetown, faced backlash for questioning the legal implications of redefining sex and gender, particularly in relation to Title IX. While he was not fired, he was subject to considerable public criticism and student protests. Colin Wright, whose work I have cited on Freedom and Reason, was an assistant professor go evolutionary biology at Penn State. He publicly criticized the push to redefine gender in ways that downplay or deny the biological basis of sex, which led to intense backlash. As a result, Wright experienced ostracism from colleagues, lost research opportunities, and eventually felt he could no longer continue his academic career due to the increasingly hostile environment. (Visit his platform Reality’s Last Stand.)

Wright and many others are concerned about the definition of these terms because they can harm women in a myriad of ways. Most recently, Wright (and Your’s Truly) criticized the inclusion of males in women’s sports at the Olympic Games. (For my writings on this see The IOC’s Portrayal Guidelines—a Real-World Instantiation of Newspeak; Misogyny Resurgent: Atavistic Expressions of a Neoreligion; The Ubiquity of Fallacious Reasoning on the Progressive Left; Sacrificing Equity Upon the Altar of Exclusive Inclusivity; Dignity and Sex-Based Rights; Supper in the Spectacular Café.) In the following post on X, Kellie-Jay Keen explains why the propagandistic language around sex and gender by queer activists is so dangerous. She takes up the case of rape.

Let Women Speak are like a magnet to extreme misogynists. 🧲
Trans activists can't resist any opportunity to pull their masks on to go and shout obscenities at women.🤬 https://t.co/uaRzADRGuw pic.twitter.com/GzqVSIbKTM

— Biology Rules Ok (@OkayBiology) August 19, 2024

These aren’t abstract exercises. Those of us who are critical of gender ideology are concerned about the real effects on society when our language is corrupted by corporate and other elites with the power to disseminate manipulated definitions (see Manipulating Reality by Manipulating Words). When ideology, whether socialist or corporatist dictates what is included or excluded in scientific education, the integrity of the information presented is compromised. In the Soviet Union, biology textbooks were distorted by Lysenkoism, promoting scientifically invalid ideas that aligned with state ideology, while dissenting voices were silenced. Similarly, in corporatist societies, textbooks distort, downplay, and omit information that conflicts with moneyed interests. Therefore, telling someone to read such a textbook to “get their head on straight” is like asking them to read the Bible or Dianetics to find objective truth; if the source is known to be ideologically corrupted or is an ideological project, it cannot be considered authoritative—or really even useful except to demonstrate how corruption works. In this light, critical examination of arguments and texts is essential to avoid the pitfalls of indoctrination and to approach a more accurate understanding of scientific truths.