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Whomever ZHPL is, his writing reads like a crazy political grifter. There was a lot of text, but what was all that text even trying to say? I feel like he barely even tried to tie thought threads together. For example, he went from "in 1968, leftism was taking over the world", then in the next sentence said that almost a full decade later, French intellectuals baned age of consent. Am I supposed to think something about this? Am I supposed to think that one event led to the other? Can he even try to convince me of this instead of just assuming I already agree? 9 years later, people in France did something. Okay. Maybe there's a connection I'm not seeing. If so, prove it.
I won't defend this writer, but I think sometimes you leave steps out because they're fairly obvious and well connected.
It's pretty well known that the sexual revolution of the 1960s led to a lot of pedo stuff. Alan Ginsburg was a member of NAMBLA. Lolita was considered a classic. Roman Polanski was Humbert Humbert in real life and the French celebrated and protected him.
At some point we had a rollback on underage sex towards a new Schelling point focused on consent but it took a couple decades to get there.
Today, of course, we see a strange bifurcation where 23 year old women are incapable of consenting to sex with a 40 year old man, but its okay to subject young children to intense discussions and demonstrations of sexuality. Perhaps he's trying to invoke all of that. I don't know. His writing is vile.
That seems kinda like consensus-building, to me. That's clearly what ZHPL is trying to say, but it's a very controversial statement. Very many people around here are trying to connect both present-day and past leftism to pedophilia, and even though I can't stand the left, I can't stand when people try to make that connection even more. I find it insulting that ZHPL justs waves his hand in that general direction and is like "people got into leftism in 1968, and than all of a sudden 9 years later: BAM! age of consent was revoked (in France)". It's almost comical.
There are pedophiles everywhere. You know the arguments: The plural of "anecdote" isn't data. Chinese Robber Fallacy, etc.
I hate when people try to say the Right is full of pedophiles because some priests molest kids and some backwoods rednecks are inbred, so I also hate it when people gesture at the left for similar things.
I have no argument with you on most of this paragraph, especially with regards to the strange bifurcation existing in leftist thought.
Though I may slightly disagree with you about whether most leftists are okay with "demonstrations" of sexuality for minors. They definitely are okay with "discussions" with minors, and I think they go too far there, but I don't know if they're really mostly down with "demonstrations". Other than the aforementioned pedophiles, who as I mentioned before are everywhere and on all sides.
It's not about the pedophilia. It's about the acceptance of pedophilia. Obviously, actual practice of pedophilia is not tied to any particular political orientation.
Furthermore, I am not talking about the modern-left which (drag queen story hour aside) is strongly anti-pedophilia.
I am talking about the confused atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s where there was sort of an anything goes atmosphere. Hip people thought it was sort of okay for a 13 year old girl to explore her sexuality with Roman Polanski. Alan Ginsburg was a non-ironic member of NAMBLA and a celebrated member of leftist society. At the time, the left was pushing the sexual frontier in all areas, and children weren't off limits.
Where you see any "acceptance" of pedophilia?
Yes, and these people lost as decisively you can lose.
Laws about age of consent, underage sex and child porn are tightened every day, pedophiles are the most hated people in the world, anyone accused of being "pedo" is considered to be devil in human form and treated likewise.
The future is not free love hippy commune where anything goes. The future is "age gap" enshrined in laws and total internet and AI censorship/ban to protect children. If it saves one (pixelated) child, it is worth it!
Well out of the intellectuals of the 20th century, I believe American college students are a lot less exposed to Hitler's ideas on men, women and children than on those of Foucault, Deleuze, Sartre, Beauvoir, etc.
Why all the outrage about the so-called 'don't say gay' Florida bill then? Why do teachers feel entitled to talk about sex with children? Why are kids getting brought to drag shows?
Why are kids made to make decisions about their genitals and whether they should undergo normal puberty or not?
Why such concern about books banned from school libraries ? No, they are not talking about Henry Ford's or Charles Murray's writings, but here is an example :
Why do school libraries need explicit sexual material?
The current year is 2023. 20th century is over, and ideas of French intellectuals (at least concerning sexual liberation) are as popular and influential as Hitler's ideas.
The teachers do not want children to have sex, they want them to explore their "gender identity", possibly all the way to gender transition, which is the most thorough desexualization since the Skoptsy were a thing.
David Cole (of impeccable alt-right credentials) puts it here much better.
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To own the cons. Hard to imagine something less sexually arousing and stimulating than "drag queen hours."
Because it is, in our digital age, completely pointless political football on both sides. 90% of children are not going to read any books, and the 10% who want, can have any book in the world at their fingertips.
BTW, in the good old times in the fifties, after hunting Soviet spies, libraries were one of McCarthy's concerns. Looking for unamerican books in libraries was one of his pastimes.
"CITIZENS! Do you know there are COMMUNIST books in AMERICAN libraries? What are you going to do about this menace?"
This is forgotten now, but this was the major thing he was known for in his time and what elicited such strong reaction among the public.
Well, the reaction was less "I am American, I will never read any unamerican books!", and more "I am American, no Irish drunken swine is going to dictate to me what books I can read!"
Some don't, some do. The teachers harping over gender theory certainly got their ideas from people who at least studied under people who were either kiddy-diddlers of the kind of Gabriel Matzneff or very close friends of them. The fact that these ideas come from these people is not unrelated to the fact that adults are reaching out to children to sensitize them to these behaviors.
Yes, totally normal behavior. If you see a group of Nazi war criminals dressed up in Nazi garb playing war with plastic guns and the neighborhood's children, should that concern the average Jewish pacifist?
The history channel seems to think it should. Idk about the gender theory academia and the people in charge of the 'LGBT youth' groups.
It appears to me that McCarthy was right. Where else but libraries did the teachers get their ideas of transidentity?
Amazon and other platforms are definitely removing different books depending on who is in charge.
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