Latest news with #wokeism
Telegraph
04-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Sex sells for Sydney Sweeney – and so does being a Republican
It has been a busy few days for people who like getting hysterical about Sydney Sweeney. First came the frenzied outrage in certain Left-wing circles after she starred in a provocative advert for American Eagle jeans; the actress, who is white with blonde hair and blue eyes, was accused of promoting eugenics by riffing on genes and jeans. 'Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,' runs the tagline. Then came reports that the 27-year-old Euphoria and Anyone But You star is a registered Republican, further enraging those who abhor the idea that a young performer could have conservative politics or endorse the liberal bogeyman that is Donald Trump. One particularly hysterical social media critic accused Sweeney of parroting 'Nazi propaganda', while others variously said the language in the adverts were reminiscent of '1930s Germany' and championing 'white supremacy'. A few years ago, during the peak woke era, such stories would taint a star, who would rush to reverse their way out of things and apologise for any offence that they unwittingly caused for fear that they would suffer incalculable career damage. But woke is waning and it is hard to see this as anything other than confirmation that Sweeney is the hottest, most talked-about film star in the world right now. Wokeism's censorious peak has passed as the movement's worst excesses have been curbed by champions of free speech and feminists who refused to accept new orthodoxy on gender, as well as a sense that many find constant culture wars wearying. Being young is no longer a guarantee of holding progressive views: Trump did better than ever with young voters last year (earning 42 per cent of votes from the under-30s), while polls suggest Reform UK would be the second-biggest beneficiary of the franchise being extended to 16- and 17-year-olds. Sweeney is, in many respects, a throwback to an earlier Hollywood era: conventionally beautiful, aware of it, interested in making mainstream hits and game enough to regularly get her clothes off on camera. 'I am always very supportive of nudity, of sexual scenes, if the story of the character warrants it,' she told Vanity Fair last year. Much of her performance on Saturday Night Live in March last year was focused on her breasts – at Sweeney's insistence. She knows that sex sells – and, in 2025, so might being a Republican. It is less than a year since Trump was re-elected and, for the first time in his three tilts at the presidency, he comfortably won the popular vote. Just by virtue of being a registered supporter of the Grand Old Party in Florida, Sweeney is much closer to the median American than, say, her peers who drank the California Kool-Aid. Trump himself was asked by reporters about Sweeney's apparent support of him on Sunday night. 'She's a registered Republican?' he said. 'Now I love her ad. You'd be surprised how many people are Republicans.' Later, on his Truth Social website, Trump contrasted the fortunes of American Eagle with those of Jaguar, which had a botched rebrand in November and whose chief executive, Adrian Mardell, retired last week; Budweiser, which lost billions of dollars in market value after teaming up with a transgender influencer; and Taylor Swift, who endorsed Kamala Harris. 'Ever since I alerted the world as to what she was by saying on TRUTH that I can't stand her (HATE!). She was booed out of the Super Bowl and became, NO LONGER HOT,' he wrote in his characteristically statesmanlike style. 'The tide has seriously turned – Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be.' The American Eagle share price subsequently surged by 16 per cent. Even if Sweeney, who has not commented on her voting record, is a Republican she is hardly an unthinking Maga headbanger. Over the years she has publicly expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement and gay rights, while last year she starred as a novice nun in Immaculate, much of which is an unsubtle commentary on how modern society treats women with unwanted pregnancies. 'I don't like getting into political topics, but I do believe that a woman has the right to be able to decide over her body,' she told Flaunt magazine in 2021. we need to do better. the hate in this world needs to end. #BlackLivesMatter — Sydney Sweeney (@sydney_sweeney) May 31, 2020 This desire to not get into political topics is reflected in the films she stars in, which tend to be firmly in the mainstream and provide escapism from the world beyond the cinema. She and Glen Powell (a Texan who it is also speculated tends towards having conservative politics) basically revived the romcom with Anyone But You, a modern-day take on Much Ado About Nothing. Unlike so many Hollywood stars, Sweeney comes from humble beginnings and is almost as far away as it is to get from being a nepo baby. She grew up in Spokane, Washington state, the daughter of a lawyer mother and hospitality worker father; her brother, Trent, is in the US Air Force and stationed in the UK. Sweeney caught the acting bug as a child, after auditioning to be an extra at the age of 11; two years later, her family relocated to Los Angeles as she tried to make it in Hollywood. Life was hard, with the family spending the best part of a year sharing a one-bedroom hotel room as they struggled to make ends meet. They were forced to sell their home in Washington and, by 2016, her parents had divorced and filed for bankruptcy. That modest background has drilled a remarkable work ethic into Sweeney, who works on evenings and weekends and gets four hours' sleep each night. 'There's 24 hours in a day, obviously,' she said earlier this year. 'But I make sure that there are 26 for me.' Sweeney is just as prolific when it comes to advertising. As well as endorsing American Eagle's jeans, she has shilled for Samsung phones and Baskin-Robbins ice cream, as well as selling soap made using some of her own bath water. She is reported to be launching a lingerie brand with backing from Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos. Her family members, and their apparent politics, have caused her problems in the past. She threw a hoedown-themed 60th birthday party for her mother, Lisa, that became notable when photographs showed that some guests were wearing Trump-style baseball caps with the words 'Make Sixty Great Again' on them. Amid a liberal backlash, Sweeney complained in a post on X that 'an innocent celebration for my mom's milestone 60th birthday has turned into an absurd political statement, which was not the intention'; the following year she said that there had been 'so many misinterpretations' of what had happened. 'The people in the pictures weren't even my family,' she said. 'The people who brought the things that people were upset about were actually my mom's friends from LA who have kids that are walking outside in the Pride parade, and they thought it would be funny to wear because they were coming to Idaho.' For Hollywood the increasingly pugnacious, and litigious, Trump is the 800lb gorilla in the room. There appears to be a tacit acceptance among the entertainment industry's elites that the woke shift that was partly sparked by the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements went so far that it alienated a large swathe of possible viewers. David Ellison, the son of Oracle multi-billionaire Larry, managed to secure US government approval for the purchase of Paramount by his Skydance venture partly by promising to do away with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. Meanwhile, Disney – whose chief executive, Bob Iger, was an outspoken critic of Trump's policies during his first term – has rowed back on its blatantly progressive plots in an effort to appeal to as broad a cohort of viewers as possible. For instance, it axed a transgender storyline in February's animated series, Win or Lose. 'When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognise that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline,' a spokesman said in December. Taylor Sheridan – the creator of Yellowstone and its spin-offs – has become arguably the most successful TV showrunner of his generation by providing an underserved market of people who do not want high-handed lecturing from the series they watch. A ranch owner in Texas himself, Sheridan romanticises America and its frontier history, rather than scorning it as many liberals have done in recent years, and has huge audiences for his Western revivals. Country artist Morgan Wallen is one of the biggest music stars in the world for similar reasons. Other studios are embracing religious stories as a way to connect with more conservative viewers, while the genre has the added benefit of being relatively cheap to make but a cash cow. The changing tastes of Hollywood can perhaps be best summed up with how two Trump-adjacent projects have fared in the past couple of years. The Apprentice, Sebastian Stan's unflattering Trump biopic, struggled to get a distributor last year, but Amazon has spent tens of millions of dollars on a documentary about Melania, the first lady. Harrison Ford, the veteran Indiana Jones star, told Variety last month that this vibe shift was inevitable. 'The pendulum doth swing in both directions, and it's on a healthy swing to the right at the moment. And, as nature dictates, it will swing back.' Lest we forget that Ronald Reagan, the president who originally coined the 'Make America Great Again' slogan, was a Hollywood star who served as leader of the Screen Actors Guild for almost as long as he was in the White House. For Sweeney, it appears unlikely that her apparent outing as a Republican will do much, if any, damage to her career or cost her industry friends. Her first film set to be released next year is directed by her Euphoria co-star Colman Domingo, who is gay and black, in which she stars as actress and artist Kim Novak. Appropriately enough, it is called Scandalous!
Telegraph
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
JK Rowling has exposed how desperate the gender extremists have become
Long used to riding roughshod over anyone who dared to challenge them, gender extremists are now beginning to lose the battle. Could that be the reason their arguments seem to be becoming even more ridiculous? Consider the latest example. A bookstore in San Francisco – a city known for its adherence to transgender ideology and extreme wokeism – has declared that it will no longer sell any of JK Rowling's books because of, wait for it, her role in supposedly 'removing transgender rights'. Announcing this brave and stunning move on Instagram, Booksmith explained that the final straw was a legal fund recently established by Rowling for the purpose of defending and protecting women's 'sex-based rights in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.' Yes, that's right – protecting women's rights apparently now amounts to bigotry and prejudice towards the transgender community. The fact that this fund is necessary only because women on both sides of the Atlantic have been bullied and hounded out of their jobs and off college courses, and prevented from applying for promotions if they are deemed 'anti-trans', seems irrelevant to these people. The bookstore is a commercial enterprise that seems quite happy to forego certain profit by refusing to stock such hugely popular titles as the Harry Potter series and Robert Galbraith Strike novels; virtue-signalling is clearly considered much more important. But when it comes to identity politics and gender nonsense, publishing is one of the worst-affected institutions. During a tour in the US to promote my book on feminism, one bookstore cancelled my event at the last minute because a trans activist customer had complained. This was despite the fact that it had sold out. The revenue from JK Rowling's books probably funds a good chunk of the publishing industry worldwide, yet these for-profit enterprises would rather have huge display tables groaning under the weight of books by trans activists that barely sell at all. A new report on this kamikaze phenomenon was launched just this week in the UK by Sex Matters. Written by Matilda Gosling, it highlights the fact that several female authors have had contracts broken, manuscripts rejected, and even been pushed out of the industry, because of accusations of transphobia. Rowling herself, with her stratospheric success and wealth, need not worry about pointless gestures such as the one by Booksmith – but the careers of other authors have been left in tatters. This is exactly why Rowling's women's legal fund is so necessary. The fund is the first of its kind: many women, and some men, have found themselves in a terrible situation for merely stating scientifically correct facts on sex and gender, and expressing a view with which the vast majority of people agree. It would be interesting to know whether this particular bookstore will be ploughing through its thousands of titles to check that all of its staff agree politically with the premise of each and every author and the contents of each and every book. It looks very much as though this so-called civil rights movement is actually a witch hunt against women – for the crime of daring to assert our rights rather than rolling over and capitulating to misogynistic bullies. As it dawns on the extremists that they are going down with a sinking ship because they overreached on their demands and bullied and cajoled refuseniks, their rising desperation only makes them look more ludicrous. Some time ago, when yet another trans activist announced on X that he was burning Rowling's books, she had the perfect riposte: 'I get the same royalties whether you read them or burn them. Enjoy your marshmallows!'
Telegraph
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
I was ordered to post 30 apologies on X for calling trans politician a biological man
When Gabriel Quadri criticised two transgender politicians for winning women's seats in Mexico's House of Representatives, he did not think it would spark a three-year legal battle that would upend his political career. In an extraordinary sentence, the conservative opposition politician was convicted of being a 'political violator against women' and ordered to apologise for his actions on X twice a day for 15 days as part of his punishment. He has since been chased through the courts and threatened with having his right to stand for office taken away. Now, Mr Quadri, 70, has warned that 'wokeism' in Mexico is veering towards authoritarianism and has appealed to Donald Trump for support. 'This ideology is being used to repress free expression and I think it is part of a broader process in which Mexico is rapidly becoming an autocracy,' he told The Telegraph. 'I hope the Trump government will make a statement about suppression of freedom of speech in Mexico out of concern as a neighbour and our closest trading partner.' In 2021, two transgender politicians for the country's ruling Morena party, Salma Luevano and Maria Clemente Garcia, were elected to Congressional seats assigned to women. Since 2019, Mexican political parties have been required to put forward equal numbers of male and female candidates in order to tackle a historic gender imbalance. Mr Quadri, of the conservative National Action party, posted about the election result on X, warning that biologically male politicians were taking advantage of the law to gain access to political positions designated for women. In response, one of the Morena politicians, Ms Luevano filed a complaint to the National Election Institute (NEI) accusing Mr Quadri of 'gender based political violence' on the basis of 11 posts. The social media posts claimed that assigning biological males to women's seats in the House was sexist. They also criticised the participation of transgender athletes in women's sports and likened the suppression of voices speaking out against transgender ideology to fascism. Although Mr Quadri's tweets did not mention the Morena politician by name, Mexico's electoral court in April 2022 found him guilty of 'gender-based political violence'. The judgement read: 'The expressions analysed were intended to deny the identity of trans women, thus they violate the right to identity, which in turn is a form of denial of equal dignity, thus the tweets are discriminatory'. As a result of reform to candidate selection, female representation climbed from 15 per cent in 1994 to 50 per cent in 2023. For Mr Quadri, who describes himself as liberal and supported legislation on gay marriage and quotas to boost female representation in politics, the ruling was a slap in the face for women. 'Women are now being displaced by men who identify as women, and in my opinion, that's a terrible injustice and a setback of the feminist agenda in Mexico,' he said. Mr Quadri also warned Mexico has become 'one of the wokest countries in the world'. The former presidential candidate has become the first Mexican politician the justice system has ordered to apologise on social media as part of his sentence. Besides deleting his original posts, he was also ordered to complete two courses on gender-based violence and transgender violence, and be registered as a gender-based political violator. This final charge would prove to haunt Mr Quadri and almost cost him his job. Ahead of Mexico's congressional elections in June 2024, the Morena party made a filing to the electoral court demanding his removal from the ballot because of his conviction. However, the court upheld his right to run and he went on to win the race thanks in part, he says, to the media furore surrounding the decision. In May, Mr Quadri filed an appeal to the Intra-American Court of Human Rights, the equivalent of the European Court of Human Rights, where a decision is expected later this year that could pave the way for him to be absolved of any wrongdoing. For Mr Quadri, his case is symptomatic of a wider issue of freedom of expression in Mexico coming under threat. A recent report from the Atlantic Council warned about an 'authoritarian shift' taking place in the country, whereby its ruling party has undermined the NEI, weakened checks and balances and centralised power in the executive branch. Mr Quadri confesses to be no supporter of the Trump administration, but said the president is 'on the right path' with his 'crusade to end wokeism in the US'. At a time when the US has made upholding freedom of speech a condition of signing trade deals with its allies, the congressman urged the Trump administration to take action against the Mexican government.
National Post
21-06-2025
- National Post
Michael Higgins: The woke ideology that allowed authorities to sit back as children were raped
The horror of what can befall a society in the sway of wokeism's toxic ideology was revealed in England this week, with a report detailing how children as young as 10 were raped on an almost industrial scale by predatory gangs, while authorities did nothing. Article content Social workers, police, judges and politicians were so afraid of being called racist, they allowed this evil abuse of society's most vulnerable to flourish for more than a decade and a half. Article content Article content Article content What those in authority refused to acknowledge was that children — some mentally or physically disabled, some in the care of social services, many from working-class homes, nearly all white — were being serially abused by men, with a disproportionate number of predators being of South Asian origin. Article content Article content The opening paragraph of the report, 'National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse' by Louise Casey, says that, ' 'Group-based child sexual exploitation,' rare though it may be, is one of the most heinous crimes in our society.' Article content But 'group-based child sexual exploitation' is too sanitized a phrase, writes Casey, when what is involved is 'multiple sexual assaults committed against children by multiple men on multiple occasions; beatings and gang rapes. Girls having to have abortions, contracting sexually transmitted infections, having children removed from them at birth.' Article content The reports says that, 'To prevent it we have to understand it,' but 'we have failed in our duty to do that to date.' Article content Article content Evidence from media, police and local inquiries about 'grooming gangs,' operating particularly in northern England, go back almost two decades. Article content Article content Many police forces did not keep data on the ethnicity of the perpetrators, but Casey found there was enough evidence to 'show disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation.' Article content A review of local inquiries and prosecutions showed that, 'These cases indicate a wide geographical spread of cases involving Asian/Pakistani perpetrators across the country.' Article content 'More often than not, the official reports do not discuss the perpetrators, let alone their ethnicity or any cultural drivers. There is a palpable discomfort in any discussion of ethnicity in most of them. Where ethnicity is mentioned, it is referred to in euphemisms such as 'the local community,' or it is buried deep in the report and only vaguely referenced in any contents index or executive summary,' reads the Casey report.
Fox News
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
The Party Of Disorder
As seen on Gutfeld!, Greg mocks the latest attempts of Democrats trying to distance themselves from wokeism. Plus, Greg calls Democrats for continuing to downplay the LA riots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit FOX News Radio
