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Mike Antonuccis Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

The National Education Association has a long tradition of finding hidden cabals behind groups that place themselves in opposition to the unions agenda. In 2019, I chronicled the history of NEAs efforts, going as far back as 1998, and its report The Real Story Behind Paycheck Protection The Hidden Link Between Anti-Worker and Anti-Public Education Initiatives: An Anatomy of the Far Right. That report featured this elaborate flow chart.

The unions latest dispatch is a 3,000-word piece posted on its website, headlined, Who is Behind the Attacks on Educators and Public Schools?

It characterizes protests over critical race theory and COVID-19 safety measures as manufactured outrage by small groups whipped into a furor.

Whos holding the whip? Its a web of dark money and right-wing operatives looking to exploit culture war grievances for political gain by spreading disinformation.

But while NEA seeks to warn us of the actions of these conspirators, it has a typical blind spot about its own record of manufactured outrage, dark money and disinformation much of it present in its own article.

It quotes NEA President Becky Pringle: We must reject false narratives that distract and divide us, and come together to ensure that students have what they need to succeed. We should focus on addressing the educator shortage that has only grown more severe during the pandemic.

But an educator shortage that has only grown more severe during the pandemic is itself a false narrative, to the point that even an NEA state affiliate president noted that there is little evidence suggesting a mass exodus. To the contrary, most of our colleagues are staying.

To support its conspiracy theories, NEA cites a number of specialists and experts. One is Tim Chambers, who works for the Dewey Square Group.

The anti-CRT effort is textbook disinformation, manufactured and funded by right-wing think tanks and boosted by programmatically targeted ads to inflame users, Chambers said. It is from well-funded orgs working with suspect local groups on the ground, and with the ever-present background push from Fox News on broadcast and cable behind it all.

Unmentioned in the article is that NEA paid the Dewey Square Group $283,650 last year.

The article also cites the Center for Media and Democracy and Media Matters. Both have received six-figure grants from NEA, though not last year. The article omits the unions previous financial arrangements with these organizations.

NEA is also upset with efforts to recall school board members, particularly in the state of Wisconsin. It cites a researcher from the True North Research firm in Minnesota.

Left unsaid is that True North Research has its own transparency issues. The firm is headed by Lisa Graves, former executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy. NEA and Graves were not always so put off by recall efforts, since both of them were instrumental in the failed recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in 2012.

I dont believe people are chess pieces moved around by the high and mighty, but if they are, certainly there are players on both sides of the board.

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National Education Association Post Blames 'Dark Money' for School Culture Wars But Is Silent About the Funds It Pays Its Own Experts - The 74

Spains bullfighting season traditionally kicks off in February in Valdemorillo, a small town located approximately 40km outside of Madrid. It wouldnt usually attract big names, but in 2022, star matador Morante de la Puebla has confirmed his appearance. In a profession characterised by internal divisions, there is a growing sense that the coming season needs to be a success if bullfighting is not to disappear altogether.

Bullfighting has been banned in Catalonia since 2011, but in the rest of the country, the conversation has switched since the onset of the pandemic. Where once the debate focused on prohibition, the question now is whether a lifeline ought to be granted to this ailing cultural industry. The current left-wing coalition government appears not to have the political will to explicitly prohibit what was once known as the national fiesta, or, conversely, to provide support to keep it running. Hence, for example, tickets for corridas were pointedly excluded from a scheme announced by prime minister Pedro Snchez in October last year, whereby young people would be given 400-euro cultural passes to prop up various sectors.

Bullfights are reviewed in the arts rather than the sports sections of Spanish newspapers and fall under the purview of the Ministry of Culture. Declared illegal by the Spanish constitutional court in 2016, the Catalan ban was as much about political grandstanding as protecting animal rights. In the wake of the 2017 illegal independence referendum, the xenophobic and anti-immigration Vox party exploited anti-Catalan and pro-bullfighting sentiment in its campaigning and has become the third-biggest force in Spanish politics. Morante de la Puebla often joins party leader Santiago Abascal on the campaign trail.

But Vox has more to gain from the relationship than bullfighters, especially in rural areas where Abascals party has successfully attracted single-issue pro-bullfighting and hunting voters. The far-right has provided some protection for the profession, but it has also turned it into a more highly prized target. An increasing number of progressive citizens have a visceral dislike of bullfighting because it is seen as the last bastion for reactionaries with no place in a 21st-century European democracy.

In the cultural wars of contemporary Spain, the anti-bullfighting lobby is often too quick to brand aficionados as the cigar-smoking relics of the Francoist regime. Defenders of the national fiesta, meanwhile, preclude any debate on its future by dismissing all potential objections out of hand as manifestations of puritanical censorship. As a result, it is virtually impossible to have a serious debate on bullfighting, an emotive subject which has been weaponised by politicians across the ideological spectrum.

At the local level, city councils have no legal jurisdiction to issue a blanket ban, but they can withhold licences. In the northern coastal town of Gijon, socialist mayor Ana Gonzlez has announced the municipal bullring will from now on be used for live music rather than corridas. Her decisions came after, in her words, a line was crossed: two bulls killed last summer were named El nigeriano (The Nigerian) and another El feminista (The Feminist). The presence of Morante de la Puebla at the event gave this the look of a deliberate provocation, but was probably a coincidence. Fighting bulls inherit their names from their mother, so these monikers will have been handed down to the bulls from previous generations rather than having been thought of afresh. That said, exceptions have been made in the past. The first bull faced by the legendary Manolete as a fully fledged matador in 1939 had been baptised El Comunista (The Communist) under the short-lived Second Republic (1931-36). Such a name was anathema following General Francos victory in the Civil War (1936-39) and The Communist was diplomatically renamed El mirador (The Viewer).

Either way, the case is an example of how the bullfighting lobby has become something of an echo chamber. There is often a failure to understand how it is perceived from the outside. An open letter by the president of the Fighting Bulls Association was a gift to satirists, with its claims that the closure of the Gijon venue was somehow comparable to the destruction of religious artefacts by fundamentalists:

The Taliban, much like the Mayor of Gijon, forget that neither the Buddhas of Bamiyan nor the bulls belong to them, but are rather common heritage of mankind.

In Gonzlezs view, aficionados have had their way for too long, and now is the time to listen to the many citizens of Gijon who oppose bullfighting. In recent years, animal rights activists have organised large demonstrations outside of the bullring. During the pandemic, they have taken the moral high ground by staying at home while accusing the impresario of posing a danger to public (as well as animal) health.

Even ignoring the abolitionist movement, bullfighting is a broken business model. It faces particular challenges that will make survival even harder as the pandemic lingers. Spains premiere bullrings (Bilbao, Madrid, Pamplona, Seville, Valencia, Zaragoza), have been largely inactive for two years. But with an ageing audience and some social distancing measures likely to remain in place, the return of corridas requires a sacrifice from matadors and breeders. They will have to significantly reduce their fees if impresarios are to break even.

There are fixed costs associated with bullfighting that make it difficult to do on a smaller scale. Tales of the demise in popularity appear much exaggerated when major corridas can attract 10,000 plus spectators, but a handful of elite matadors aside, fewer contracts are on the table as provincial rings close. Much like the pandemic, there will probably not be a specific day on which bullfighting ends, but it seems unlikely to thrive in its current guise for much longer.

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Coronavirus and culture wars: Spain's bullfighting industry faces a crunch point in 2022 - The Conversation UK

France is in deep, deep trouble. Hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic and just a few months before the presidential election, the country or rather, the French language is under threat. Whos the culprit? The terror of political correctness imported from across the Atlantic, also known as wokeism. We know too well that America exports its culture to the whole world: movies, music, Anglicisms and now its obsession with gender-neutral language too.

There seems to be no other explanation why the esteemed French-language dictionary Le Petit Robert has included the gender-neutral pronoun iel (pronounced yell) in its online edition. This combination of the male pronoun il and the female pronoun elle can be used for people who dont identify as male or female, or whose gender is unknown. These three small letters have been causing a ruckus in France for weeks now.

While transgender organisations have welcomed the decision, there was little enthusiasm to be found elsewhere. First Lady Brigitte Macron explained that there are two pronouns: il and elle and on Twitter Franois Jolivet, a member of Frances governing party La Rpublique en Marche (LREM), in his outrage, denied Le Petit Robert its status as a reference.

In a letter to the Acadmie Franaise, supreme guardian of French linguistic integrity, Jolivet called on the body to prevent the imminent destruction of the French language by woke ideology. He was applauded for this by his colleague, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, who declared that inclusive spelling is not the future of the French language.

Oh well, theres hardly any better place on Earth to argue about language and its future than France! The venerable Acadmie Franaise keeps a close watch on compliance with grammar rules to in the country, contesting anything that appears to be too English or modern. Conversely, the literary group Oulipo is trying to modernise French through playful writing exercises, for example by writing an entire book without the letter e. A variety of the language spoken by young people known as verlan joyously swaps the syllables of a word to create something new. And there has been a debate going on for years about whether the French language is sexist or too male, and if so, to what extent.

Positive discrimination, quotas, inclusive language... France says non, merci.

This criticism is not unfounded. There is a rule in French that the male form takes precedence over the female. It was invented in 1676 by Jesuit priest Dominique Bouhour, who proclaimed: When the two sexes meet, the more noble must prevail. And the more noble is, of course, the male. There can be 99 women and one man in a group and, grammatically speaking, this group would be classed as male, taking the male plural form ils. Because the male takes precedence over the female.

At the moment, though, American-style political correctness seems be taking precedence, brazen enough to not even stop at the French language and all of its beautiful centuries-old rules. This isnt the first time wokeism has rubbed conservatives up the wrong way, though. For them, woke represents a left-wing ideology, identity politics, and a victim mentality. It means pandering to the interests of individual groups, which they claim is unwarranted and incompatible with the French principle of universalism that states that all people are equal, have the same rights, and should therefore be treated exactly the same. Positive discrimination, quotas, inclusive language... France says non, merci.

The dispute about iel is causing such a stir because this goes beyond language alone. The French language is seen as an expression of French values too, an expression of what constitutes the Rpublique. As early as 2017, Blanquer said, there is only one French language, one grammar, one Republic. Incidentally, the word Rpublique is female in French. So too is Marianne, its personification, seen on the French government's official logo, French euro coins and on French postage stamps. And apparently thats good enough for Blanquer to demonstrate the inherent feminism of the French state and its language. Poor Marianne must get used to being portrayed as a feminist symbol for absolutely everything.

Perhaps those politicians who are so easily triggered by three little letters should take a leaf out of Charles Bimbenets book, the director-general of publishing house Le Robert.

But yes, its about more than language it's about the future of the country! And who can save the country? Only the Acadmie Franaise of course, whose verdict on the iel dispute is eagerly awaited. Its long been clear where the Acadmie stands on trying to make the French language more inclusive and more gender-neutral: in May 2020, it published a statement declaring that inclusive spelling is harmful to the usage and comprehensibility of the French language.

The Acadmie is not entirely wrong: inclusive spelling makes a Romance language with two genders like French more difficult to write, speak, and understand. Gender-neutral language may have its place in social circles where its not only what is said thats important, but also how it is said. But everywhere else, no. Well, not yet... because language is alive, it is constantly changing. And also, language is a matter of habit. The more often you say something, the easier it rolls off your tongue. Feminist organisation Nous Toutes commented that it is not for ministers or dictionary authors to decide the future of a language. Those who can change the language are those who speak it: you, us, everyone.

Perhaps those politicians who are so easily triggered by three little letters should take a leaf out of Charles Bimbenets book, the director-general of publishing house Le Robert. He remained astoundingly calm in the face of the perhaps manufactured outrage that he and his team had instigated.

In a statement, he wrote that although usage of the term iel is still rather rare, it has been sharply increasing for several months, as the in-house documentalists have noted. So, they deemed it useful to clarify the meaning of this term for people to understand and decide whether to use it or not. Bimbenet welcomed the controversy surrounding the French language, its development and its use, as it at least shows how alive French is.

Lets hope so. Perhaps those three small letters dont mean the end of the Republic, and the situation in France isnt as bad as it seems well, linguistically at least.

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France's culture wars are going into the next round - IPS Journal

As summer rolled into fall I had thought the worst of the culture wars on Critical Race Theory (CRT) was over, or that at least it would never make it over the eastern border of California. But I was wrong. In mid-November Asian American leaders demanded that the vice mayor of Cupertino Liang Chao issue a formal apology for saying in an e-mail that the Chinese Exclusion Act was not about race since it only excluded Chinese laborers. She asserted that it was to protect American jobs, similar to the H1B visa process. Chao made this statement to illustrate her opposition to CRT. According to Chao, incorporating CRT in K-12 education would incorrectly reduce the origins of Chinese Exclusion Act to racism.

Ironically, historians have long agreed that the Chinese Exclusion Act was in fact motivated by racism. In fact the very authors of the Chinese Exclusion Act would also have readily admitted that it was to prevent specifically the reviled Chinese from entering the United States, since in the 1880s being racist was de rigueur. For California in particular, being anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese was almost a requirement for a successful career in politics throughout the early 20th century. Indeed the Issei lived through an incredibly difficult time, even in San Francisco.

According to Reuters, opposition against the teaching of CRT in schools first began after May 2020, when white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis. Four months later, in the midst of mass national outcry against white supremacy, journalist Christopher Rufo went on Fox News to denounce anti-bias training happening in federal agencies as an example of critical race theory, a radical ideology that he claimed sowed racial division through education. Then-President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to cease these trainings which he called divisive, un-American propaganda. And in the year after Trumps executive order, conservative politicians then used CRT as a galvanizing alarm, inciting parents to flood school board meetings to oppose discussions of race that would indoctrinate impressionable children. Critical Race Theory has now been banned in eight states, which notably never had CRT curriculum in the first place.

This past summer as the nation became embroiled in what Time Magazine called the history wars, I finally realized that CRT was being used as stand in for ethnic studies curriculum. It seems all courses discussing race were being labeled as CRT. Critical Race Theory, however, is in fact a very specific disciplinary field that originates in legal studies. While many ethnic studies scholars rely heavily on CRT scholar Kimberl Crenshaws theory of intersectionality that its important to think at the intersection of gender, race and class as consequentially different few of those same academics would actually assign readings from critical race theory in an ethnic studies classroom. Why not? First because critical race theory engages often in legal constructs that are not familiar and therefore less accessible to an undergraduate. Second because CRT focuses largely on how structural apparatuses destroy communities of color. While Ethnic Studies does indeed discuss structural racism, it more adamantly focuses on how BIPOC folks (Black, indigenous and people of color) organized and transformed a society that deliberately sought to undermine them.

Indeed an ethnic studies filled entirely with CRT would be illuminating, but also utterly demoralizing. And, a class that does not empower students would work against the fundamental purpose of ethnic studies as transformative education that inspires people to become change agents.

As arguments against CRT have grown in intensity and efficacy leading to the state bans, there have also been notable advances for ethnic studies in K-12 education. In May 2021 Gov.Gavin Newsom signed AB 101, making California the first state to require ethnic studies courses for high schools. Two months later in July 2021, Illinois became the first state to require Asian American history after Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the TEAACH Act (Teaching Equitable Asian American History Act).

As conservative whites and apparently some people of color oppose CRT, the overwhelming evidence in countless publications on education illustrate how ethnic studies courses boost student engagement. A study at Stanford University concluded that students enrolled in an ethnic studies course had improved attendance by 21% and an increase in GPA by 1.4 grade points. At San Francisco State University our Office of Institutional Research found a correlation between taking ethnic studies courses and a rise in a students graduation rate by 70%. Notably, ethnic studies courses appear to have the biggest positive impact on white students who have less often thought about race than BIPOC students, according to Christine Sleeter of the National Education Organization.

Amy Sueyoshi is dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University with a joint faculty appointment in Sexuality Studies and Race and Resistance Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in history from UCLA and has authored two books titled Queer Compulsions and Discriminating Sex. She is also the founding co-curator of the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco. She can be reached at sueyoshi@sfsu.edu. The views expressed in the preceding column are not necessarily those of the Nichi Bei Weekly.

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Nikkei Q: The CRT Culture Wars - Nichi Bei Weekly

Have you seen Dont Look Up? Surely youve watched that hilarious work of biting satire studded with earthly stars such as Streep and di Caprio as Trumpish gargoyles, grinning cable news idiots, billionaire tech narcissists and everything else that stands between the common man and his understanding of man-made apocalypses or in this case, a gigantic asteroid plunging towards earth as metaphor for climate change?

Or perhaps you remember the movie as that two-and-a-half-hours you can never retrieve, the clunker in which the targets are set up like a coconut shy whose in-your-face demolition will astonish absolutely no-one familiar with the culture wars and the cesspits of Fox News over the past 20 years?

Nothing about Dont Look Up is surprising or thought-provoking beyond raising the question about whether a single one of them deserves to be saved from the apocalypse. And yes, thats partially the point. Characters are set up to be sneered at and despised, most of them plotting their own survival at the hoi pollois expense of course.

But its just a movie in the end, so stands or falls on its merits right ? Nope.

For a few days over Christmas, Dont Look Up became another grenade rolling around the Christmas slippers, opening up an odd new flank in the culture wars. There was Us (after bingeing on the extraordinary, genuinely eye-opening Dopesick) anticipating the promised laughs wrapped in some hard-hitting satire about an extinction-level event, performed by a glittering assembly of Hollywood A-listers.

And there was Them who possibly anticipated something similar but mistook the movie for the gospel on climate change, the definitive doctrine that would finally force people to sit up and care.

Somewhere in between were the knotty issues of whether anyone should be looking for laughs from such serious-minded art in the first place and whether it was actually as funny as publicised. Those who thought it extremely funny (as some did) also tended to take it extremely seriously as socio-political commentary.

Movie critics who heartily disliked it for the most part were accused of panning it because it attacked their kind, who could only have been the TV presenter clowns masquerading as journalists. Or maybe they panned it, someone suggested, because it made them feel uncomfortable. Clearly, the accusers had never met an actual movie critic or stumbled over some of their frankly weird and depressing viewing (apologies to Donald Clarke).

Trumpier than Trump

Then again, its satire, much of which comprises gross caricature and decent mimicry but not a lot of laughs. Some viewers enjoyed the movie in an uncomplicated way how often do you get to see Meryl Streep as Trumpier than Trump? while others were maddened by the waste of that remarkable array of talent and a worthy theme.

Will it open up a single recalcitrant mind to the money-grubbing, short-sighted, instant gratification culture speeding us to our destruction? The people depicted as regular folks the parents of a distraught scientist refuse to let their daughter in the house without first informing her that they are in favour of the jobs the comet will create. Its stupidly funny of course but what are the chances they will recognise their stupidity in a movie and undergo an epiphany? Are climate scientists giving it standing ovations, just grateful that someone cares enough to satirise their frustration?

Art is subjective by definition and thrives on opinion and commentary. What distinguishes this one however is the binary attitude of some fans: that the artists intention is all that matters, not the art. That if you agree with the worthy points made in the movie and you will because youve chewed on them for years you must also believe in the greatness of the movie itself. To do otherwise is to be a useful idiot or enabler in the climate denial industrial complex. In short, as one commentator put it, never before had he seen such a response to a film where those who didnt think it was great were assumed to have missed the point by many who did. Quite ironic, he added, given one of the themes in the film.

The frustrating aspect of the Us vs Them skirmish is the futility of it. It could be a metaphor for all the time and energy squandered on tiny, bad-tempered battles, snarky comments and offensiveness just for the hell of it. As is often the case, they are probably on the same side in the things that matter (assuming its not all about personal brand-building). All the rest is self-sabotage.

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Kathy Sheridan: Don't Look Up opens odd new flank in the culture wars - The Irish Times