When radical leftists make a massive U-turn, we better stand up and take notice:
When people come to see that they are living a lie and pushing false agendas, many will just act as if it never happened. They show no remorse. Some however will be willing to admit that they were wrong and even offer a public apology. In the new book by celebrated American writer Naomi Wolf, we have examples of both responses. Let me speak to each.
For much of her life Wolf was the quintessential woke leftist who bought all the PC nostrums, be it a dedicated devotion to the Democrats, a hatred of Trump, a refusal to accept the Second Amendment, and an unwillingness to speak about God in public (she was a secular Jew for most of this time).
All this has changed big time however as can be seen in her just-released book, Facing the Beast: Courage, Faith, and Resistance in a New Dark Age (Chelsea Green, 2023). I have already spoken to this important volume – see here.
They need to apologise
I want to look at two areas where a big apology is needed: one is by the authorities, governments, media, Big Pharma, the medical establishment and others in terms of their horrific mishandling of the Covid crisis. If anyone needs to apologise for getting things so very wrong, it is them. Yet there has been no apology forthcoming. There have been no mea culpas whatsoever.
The grave injustices and wrongs committed earlier this decade MUST be dealt with. Justice demands it. She speaks of the deaths, the injuries, the ruined lives, the lost businesses, the dehumanisation, the economic damage that the lockdowns and forced jabs resulted in. It was horrific.
She also endured so much of this. In an opening chapter, she describes the many wrongs she personally went through, including much lesser things such as being banned from seeing films to missing out on gatherings with friends, because she was not jabbed. She then says this:
I forgive them because my soul instructs me that I must. But I cannot forget. Are we supposed to just pick up again, as if emotional limbs were not crushed, as if emotional hearts and guts were not pierced, as if with sharp objects? And that, again and again?
As if there has been no savagery, no massacre here?
All those people — now that athletes are hurt and dying, now that their own loved ones are sickening and hospitalized, now that the “transmission” is known to be a lie and the vaccines’ “efficacy” itself is known to be a lie – are they — sorry? Are they reflecting upon themselves, on their actions, on their consciences; on their immortal souls; on what they have done to others; on their part in this shameful melodrama in American and world history – a time that now can never be erased?
I don’t hear it. I don’t hear any apologies.
I don’t see signs on the Millerton movie theatre saying, “Dear Customers. We are so sorry we treated many of you as if we were all living under Jim Crow laws. We did so for no reason at all. There is no excuse, of course, for such discrimination, then or now. Please forgive us.”
Nothing. Have you seen anything like this? I haven’t. Not one conversation. Not one sign. Not one article. “My friend, I was a beast. How can you forgive me? I behaved so badly.” Have you heard that? No, nothing.
Instead people are reacting to the fact of their awfulness, of their profound wrongness, of their foolishness, of their ignorance and credulity, like sneaky, guilty dogs. They are sidling up.
She continues:
Without accountability, and truth and reconciliation commissions, and terrible, commensurate levels of justice served to suit the crimes committed, as South Africa, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Germany have all learned to their cost, there is nothing at all to ensure that the exact same crimes won’t be committed again.
And yes, I write this with a clear memory of COVID mania apologist Emily Oster’s ignorant, self-deluding and dangerous plea in The Atlantic for “amnesty,”… It’s not about a “scorecard.” It is about a series of crimes. Let there be no misunderstanding. “Amnesty” for crimes of this severity and scale is not an option. There was no group hug after the liberation of Auschwitz.
She apologised
While we all await an apology from all those who stole away our freedoms, trashed our human rights, and have blood money on their hands (all nicely documented by Naomi), this former veteran of the left HAS apologised – and often in this book. She fully admits she got things quite wrong.
Let me look at two areas here. Wolf actually has an entire chapter on the Second Amendment of all things. As a daughter of the left and a child of the peace movement, she has always hated guns. But not anymore. She has had a massive rethink.
Indeed, she is now a firearm owner! As a survivor of rape herself, she now knows the importance of ensuring her own children are protected. As to the Second Amendment she says this:
I believe that we are at a moment that our Founders, in their nearly-prophetic wisdom, knew might come to pass. We are at the kind of moment for which the Second Amendment may have been written in just the clear, unequivocal way that it was. You know that I see tyranny descending all around the formerly free nations of the world. I say these days that the coup in America has already taken place — a stealthy, sneaky coup, mounted without a shot being fired….
You can hate guns. I have hated guns most of my life. I hate violence. I hate gun violence. I hate the slaughter of innocents. I am a peaceful person. But it is becoming obvious even to us pacifists, vegans, and tree huggers, that formerly free people who are unarmed are defenseless against the criminal tyrannies exerting massive violence and control upon them.
And it is becoming obvious that similar tyrannical moves against the people of the United States have been thwarted in advance or deterred – and only state by state — pretty much only because the people of the United States have the right to own and carry weapons, and because many do so.
She looks at Australia (often) in this book and recounts how peaceful citizens in Melbourne were fired upon with rubber bullets, and she mentions the other horrific Police State tactics that took place here. She now knows firsthand that tyranny is always just around the corner, and the Founders rightly understood how this could be kept at bay.
She also has an entire chapter titled “Dear Conservatives, I Apologize.” Again, more mind-boggling admissions from the former leftist wild child. She now realises that those who put ‘America first’ were the real heroes – not the villains: “I owe them a full-throated apology.”
She says she had believed mountains of lies and falsehoods, but as she got to know ordinary hard-working Americans (having been shunned by almost all of her leftist elitist ‘friends’ – she found them to be what makes America great. The more she got to know real people, and not the bogeymen and women attacked by the NYT, NPR, MSNBC, etc. the more she saw who the real good guys were. Consider this:
I don’t like President Trump. (Do I not? Who knows? I have been lied to about him so much for so long, I can‘t tell whether my instinctive aversion is simply the habituated residue of years of being on the receiving end of lies).
But I like the liars who are our current gatekeepers, even less.
The gatekeepers who lie to the public about the most consequential events of our time—and who thus damage our nation, distort our history, and deprive half of our citizenry of their right to speak, champion and choose, without being tarred as would-be violent traitors—deserve our disgust.
I am sorry the nation was damaged by so much untruth issued by those with whom I identified at the time.
I am sorry my former “tribe” is angry at a journalist for engaging in—journalism.
I am sorry I believed so much nonsense.
Though it is no doubt too little, too late—
Conservatives, Republicans, MAGA:
I am so sorry.
Wow. That is some turn-around. The horror of the Covid years has certainly shaken up her world. And now she does not just go along with the narrative. She now asks hard questions. She actually speaks to normal people – those the secular left and the media regularly pillory and demonise. She now sees what is really going on – and she is rightly mad as hell about it all.
The more she sees the world as it really is, the more she is sorry. Bless you, Naomi. There are many like you who have awoken from their deep sleep. Keep these books coming – we sure do need them.
Stay tuned for more articles on this valuable volume.
