The Weekly Peak
A bonanza propaganda pot, legal Lysenkoism, KKK kiwis, and Slovak sex defined.
Flood the zone: €10 billion on the way for (even more) NGOs, culture and ‘news’
The European Commission will spend between €8 billion and €10 billion on ‘non-governmental’ (a misnomer) organisations, as well as art, media, and culture projects, starting in January 2028. It’s part of a programme called AgoraEU.
The description of AgoraEU is cozy and reassuring: it’s all about promoting those beloved EU valyooz that we all supposedly share. You know, the air we breathe. But it’s more accurate to describe AgoraEU as the European Commission’s way of outsourcing the creation of EU policy propaganda, in some cases concerning very controversial social issues that have never even been discussed openly, never mind agreed upon. In other words, AgoraEU will create the illusion of a consensus that doesn’t exist, and you can either get on board or you can get called a Nazi.
This is not a new tactic, it’s just robustly-funded one. As Joseph Stalin (probably) said: "Quantity has a quality all its own”.
“Promoting democratic values” or just plain old public procurement?
I find it hard to see how AgoraEU is any different from public procurement — meaning a competition that is open to any service provider who will produce EU comms products and services on demand. The granting process is organised in such a way that applicants essentially copy and paste official policy into their application and get points for how well they match it.
People need to eat, and lots of talented Europeans are quite happy to bend their professional and artistic inclinations in the direction of the biggest bag of cash. But EU money leads inevitably to policy-aligned ‘art’, ‘science’ and ‘news’ that is moralistic, ideologically constrained, and frankly, often crap.
The EU organises its big budget in 7-year increments, and you can see how ‘civil society’ programming has swollen dramatically with time (it was worth approximately €5 billion in 2014). The final figure for AgoraEU has not been settled yet — the European Parliament asked for €2 billion on top of the initial €8 billion proposal, and the ultimate amount will be the topic for negotiations, overseen by the Irish government (yikes), due to be finalised by the end of this year.
Science research funding — and the UK — will not be spared
The hard-science research funding budget is separate to the civil society stuff, luckily, and still does pay for excellent research. But there are very worrying signs that that the bureaucracy that surrounds it is getting increasingly ideologically tainted. Perhaps the biggest red flag is the “evolving” gender equality plans that are being made intersectional and inclusive. And yes, that means: troon everything, with the goal of “institutional change”. Rien que ça.
Also yes: if the UK wants any of that EU-UK research collaboration/cash to come back, their public and academic bodies will have to follow EU gender rules. Is it overreach to think that this, and similar scenarios like it, might be having an effect on Labour’s sluggishness in implementing the UK Supreme Court ruling about biological sex?
Read the position paper from the advisory group on intersectional gender faff in future EU research
Thomas Fazi has a new book on on coercive consent, EU-style
You will eat ze bugs and you will believe ze implausible film plot
Here’s a good example of the kind of slopoganda the AgoraEU programme will produce: ‘intersex’ is not a real thing — rather, it’s a fun queer identity label that has nothing to do with the rare medical conditions it piggybacks off for legitimacy. Yet the creation of this film, My name is Lily, was ‘supported’ by the European Commission for the express purpose of blackmailing you into accepting intersex as a real thing that actually exists.
Why would the Commission do this? Because they are under pressure from rainbow activists (who are also on the EU payroll) to introduce an intersex law, and it’s also just part of the dogged and perverse commitment to stupid gender identity theory that academics and policy dorks just cannot wean themselves off of.
This softly-softly strategy of funding tear-jerking films works to emotionally lobotomise the public into thinking biological sex can be discounted as an organising principle in some areas of day-to-day life. And for most EU citizens, day-to-day life is all we’ve got. Pretending sex isn’t real and/or doesn’t matter has serious second order effects that go far beyond men in women’s sports. Erasing or downgrading sex in law and policy leads to things like men raping old ladies with dementia in care homes, because we can no longer insist on sex-based (female-only) intimate care for ourselves and our family members. This is a real phenomenon. Intersex is not.
People are freaking out about Orban’s funding of, uh, civil society
Viktor Orban, the rascal, tried to copy the model described above, but because his politics are illiberal (and unpopular, as it turned out, womp womp), the money he spent on building up his own brand of Visegrad-ist values is said to have been stolen from the Hungarian people, and that his civil society apparatus was even illegal.
Some of the funniest claims to this effect came from people who literally suckle at the superstate funding tit: check out this guy, whose rent is paid by ‘cross-border investigative journalism’ grants from the Commission. He wants to rally other journalists to help trace the money Orban spent promoting MAGA-with-goulash-characteristics conservativism.
Sure looks like he’s putting out feelers on another cross-border journalizzm grant:
The Court of Justice of the EU used the term “non-cisgender individuals” in a judgement
At the 1948 session of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Trofim Lysenko gave a speech in which he declared that “the Central Committee of the Communist Party has examined my report and approved it,” which everyone understood to mean that his (batshit, ideological) version of biology had officially been accepted as state orthodoxy.
Well this is that, but for gender: in a judgement released yesterday, the EU’s highest court used the term “cisgender” four times. That’s mental because cisgender is basically an internet meme that grew legs. It’s a bit like seeing a reference in a geography book to “non-flat Earth theory”, or “the humours” in the DSM.
We’re on the dark side of the moon right now, and the president of a serious institution using the phrase “non-cisgender individuals” convinces me we may never make it back.
Court of Justice of the EU rules that Hungary can’t ban LGBTIQ topics for kids
Pileup at the intersections: French gays vs immigrants
Who do you think would come out on top in an oppression deathmatch between two immigrant rapists and a gay man? If you guessed the immigrants you would be correct.
A young French guy was raped and tortured by two Algerians in his home in 2018. Due to the homophobic nature of the crime, a prominent LGBTIQ NGO offered to act as a civil partner in the court case and even to pay his legal fees. However, the NGO changed their mind when they found out that the rapists had deportation orders, according to the victim, which meant that the case no longer aligned with their extreme-left politics. The story is only circulating now because the victim contacted a new anti-Islamist, anti-woke gay rights activist group, Collectif Eros, who are sharing it widely.
The leftist LGBTIQ NGO in question appears to be the same one that brought a criminal complaint against a gynaecologist for refusing to treat a man pretending to be a woman, and also went after Dora Moutot for calling a man “a transfeminine man” on national TV.
German school kids given gay porn images by socialist youth group
It’s a really bad idea to invite random ‘queer’ activists into kids’ schools because the entire queer project is about removing boundaries, including sexual ones. TERFs keep saying this, but everyone insists on learning it the hard way.
In Germany, a socialist youth group was invited to give a workshop to 14- and 15-year-olds on the theme of ‘courage’. The kids were tasked by two ‘non-binary’ facilitators with creating photo collages using cuttings from gay porn magazines. It rightly caused a brouhaha, and I’m happy to report that German commentators have begun to join the dots between this incident and a much bigger problem of third party providers of sex ed being invited into schools, which is now common in countries that adopted the UNESCO comprehensive sexuality education programme.
Read more about the German gay porn in school scandal
France: government withdraws support for conference after backlash
A conference on the ideological brainwashing of kids, initially supported by the children’s commissioner, was cancelled after the government got spooked by activists (French trans activists are particularly ghoulish and violent). The agenda was to cover detransitioners and other trans-related phenomena. A new venue has been found, but it’s not until 22 June so it might go through a few venue changes between now and then, if it takes place at all.
Follow the Obsevatoire de la Petite Sirene for updates
Germany: kiwi fruit emoji is a symbol of the far right
If you didn’t know about the incredible story of what happened to my lovely TERF acquaintance, Marie-Luise Vollbrecht, then I urge you to read up on it. She was one of the early European victims of attempted social and professional annihilation for saying publicly that there are only two human sexes. During the conference that got her de-personned, she had showed an image of a kiwi fruit because kiwis have two sexes, or so I’m reading. As a result, the kiwi became a bit of an internet meme, and TERFs started using it as a way to signal to each other. And that’s why the kiwi is now officially listed by anti-extremism professionals as a hate symbol of the far right, right up there with swastikas and the 14 words. It was even presented in the Bundestag as such. Totally normal behaviour.
Slovakia in trouble over definition of sex
Last September Slovakia changed its constitution to assert its right to make decisions relating to matters of identity. The updated text now declares that there are only two sexes, mothers are female and fathers male, and it also restricts adoption to male-female married duos. It gives parents more control over their kids’ sex education, which has been totally queered elsewhere in Europe thanks to a decades-long UN-led campaign.
But the new text also says this: decisions about these sensitive issues belong to Slovakian people alone, and won’t be overruled by outsiders. This is an explicit rebuke of creeping EU efforts to macro-manage sex-related issues via case law (like the Hungarian example above), and it puts the country on Brussels’ legal warpath.
In response, the EU launched an infringement procedure against the freewheelin’ Slovaks in November (“infringement procedure” is EU-speak for breaking the rules). I asked the Commission if they’d received a response and they said yes, but won’t reveal any more. All we know is that the PM, Robert Fico, came out swinging in response to the EU’s warning last year: no NGO is going to tell us many genders there are, he said (what a boss).
There’s an interesting thing going on here: the Commission didn’t actually address the identity stuff head-on, but rather carefully framed it only in terms of whose law supersedes whose law. But ultimately it’s globohomo, disguised as rule of law, removing it from the messy realm of culture war into democracy tout court. Clever, honestly.
Finland: parliament has to discuss non-binary markers on ID documents as if non-binary is a real thing
A petition in Finland gathered over 50,000 signatures so now the parliament has to review a proposal for a third, non-binary marker on citizens’ legal documents. Non-binary is a queer identity label, just like intersex, and it’s not real. But MPs now have to pretend it’s real.
Berlin Greens would rather not Name The Problem
Berlin Greens are pushing for friendly spaces on public transport without ever identifying who it is that’s doing all the homophobia (it’s Muslim immigrants who hate gays. Muslim immigrants who hate gays are doing the homophobia).
French male players snubbed for MVP trophy
Here’s a nice story to warm your cold TERF heart: the highest scoring players in the French second division women’s basketball league have been snubbed for the title of the season’s best player award. Why? Because they’re men.
The trophy went to (drumroll) the best female player in the league, the official number three. The selection was made by coaches and captains across the sport league, including former women’s international player Audrey Sauret, who said this in response to the controversy: “Let's be clear, there's no transphobia on my part, and I respect the life path these players have chosen; I certainly don't want to be disrespectful. Simply put, the result of this vote confirms that something is wrong. It reflects the coaches' and captains' discontent. We lacked courage from the start; the decision (to allow them to play) wasn't made collectively. As a result, we gave them something that we're now taking back, and these two players are also suffering an injustice at their level." Nice.
One of the lads is very unhappy about it.
End gender
Anna Zobnina doing angry rants in her car is one of the best things to happen to women’s rights in decades:
In other news…
The Belgian Sports minister doesn’t like the IOC’s decision to protect women’s sports: “I am particularly opposed to it”
Drama in Rome school as teacher refuses to pretend a girl is a boy
Norwegian (terfy) LGB group warns against academic queer guide
Strap in: Europe’s first Pride of the season takes place in Paris next week
Spanish serial killer transferred to a women’s prison: Reduxx has the full story
Man caught giving advice to undercover ‘asylum seeker’ on how to be fake and gay is a hijra
The IOC had to come out and clarify: no trans people are being excluded from the Olympics
Shitlib con mega-conference took place in Barcelona and I had serious FOMO
Well-known French LGBTIQ activist, Frederic Hay, charged with the rape of five asylum seekers.
Send me your stories, I’m all (t)ears: roisinmichaux@gmail.com. I’m also on X/Twitter: https://x.com/RoisinMichaux
I love your writing, the way you make your point succinctly but with real meat to it: " ‘intersex’ is not a real thing — rather, it’s a fun queer identity label that has nothing to do with the rare medical conditions it piggybacks off for legitimacy." Thanks.
Thanks for another great round up, Róisín.
Have cross posted
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-lives-of-others-part-1
Dusty