National Public Radio took a second bite out of a rancid liberal apple of a story from June 2022, part of its homegrown series “Life Kit -- Tools To Help You Get It Together," with an update spurred by a new TV series: “'Adolescence' is a parental nightmare. Here's what to tell kids about online extremism.” What did NPR tell the kids? Don’t make jokes, and heed the advice of discredited race-baiter Ibram X. Kendi.
Barrie Hardymon and Michelle Aslam authored the original 23-minute radio story about “online extremism” (right-wing variety only) and an updated version was published online Thursday, taking on board the new British series drama “Adolescence.”
The four-episode series follows Jamie, a baby-faced 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of a female classmate. Viewers observe early that Jamie is guilty, having slid into the online quicksand of the "manosphere," a catchall phrase for a network of online communities populated by the aggressive misogynists we sometimes call incels. Peddling a deep sexism and a belief that men are treated unfairly by society, these groups, made up of influencers like Andrew Tate, at their worst promote violence and celebrate mass murder.
Meanwhile, outlets like the New York Times do their best to downplay actual violence problems in Britain involves grooming gangs dominated by recent Muslim refugees.
In 2022, I interviewed Christine Saxman, a consultant who talks to parents and teachers about radicalization among young people. The conversation followed a wave of anxiety after a rash of mass shootings by young men in Buffalo, N.Y., and El Paso, Texas, when my boys were in middle school.
Saxman’s top tip: No joking around! As if adolescent joking is the first step on the path to massacres in Walmart.
Here are some of Saxman's top tips from our Life Kit 2022 interview.
It's really important to know when your kid might be falling down the rabbit hole. What are the signs you should be aware of?
Saxman told me to really keep an eye out for the kinds of jokes your kids are reacting to and making. Be particularly aware if they are beginning to engage with humor that dehumanizes others, in particular gay, transphobic and sexist jokes. Disguised as humor, it gives people with racist agendas plausible deniability, because it's "just" a joke.
"Joking around LGBT issues," Saxman says, "... is a very common entry point for many different conspiracy theories. So the jokes get worse and worse, and then the content gets worse and worse ... almost like a Venn diagram, if you can imagine — the ways in which they can use each of these different levers to pull you in. Because once they've normalized this kind of dialogue that it's OK to dehumanize gay people, it's OK to dehumanize women, that we believe that there's this Jewish cabal running things, that's the stepping stone to go deeper and deeper."
The story ended with a lecture:
….all of this means nothing if you aren't raising kids who are fluent in the language of racism and antiracism.
Worst was the reading list recommendations tacked on at the end, dominated by the discredited “Everything is racist” hack intellectual Ibram X. Kendi, who held the media spotlight during the nightmare summer 2020 of Black Lives Matter.
Here are a few resources:
- Ibram X. Kendi's 2022 book, How to Raise an Antiracist.
- Here are some of Kendi's book recommendations on helping your kids understand race.
But it’s not 2020 anymore (except at NPR), and his lavish “Center on Antiracist Research” at Boston University is already shuttered and Kendi himself has been unmasked as a thin-skinned “intellectual lightweight” even among some of the white liberals who previously hailed him.
