Co-conspirators will recall when Guido reported back in November that Arwa Mahdawi – a Guardian columnist who claimed “toxic masculinity kills“, and Ivanka Trump’s haircut “should make us very afraid” – was scheduled to deliver a lecture to troops at the Centre for Army Leadership. Although the MoD rescinded the invite of an Extinction Rebellion activist, Arwa’s lecture went ahead as planned…
The talk lasted 25 minutes, and contained plenty of useful lessons and musings for our troops to reflect on as they head into the new year:
“Everybody has unconscious bias… in every organisation [it] creeps in in different ways… it is drummed into us from a very young age that men are brilliant, and women are nice.”
“Does anyone think Elon Musk would be considered a genius if he was a woman? Absolutely not… he makes boob jokes on Twitter…”
“We should be moving from a masculine-coded style of leadership to a more female-coded style of leadership.”
As important as it is that the armed forces know “gender equality is about more than political correctness”, Guido struggles to believe it’s the top priority for troops stationed at Sandhurst. At the start of the lecture, Mahdaw did at least show off Guido’s first story in front of the entire audience, claiming “Army’s Loony Left Lecturer [has] a very nice ring to it”. Another happy reader…
Yesterday, two hours after Guido reported the MoD had invited an Extinction Rebellion activist to their annual leadership lectures day, the Army rescinded the invite. Unfortunately for Her Majesty’s forces, they’re still set to be lectured by The Guardian’s Arwa Mahdawi:
🎉New speaker announcement🎉
— Centre for Army Leadership (@Army_Leadership) November 9, 2021
We are excited to announce that Arwa Mahdawi will be presenting at our Culture and Leadership Conference on Wed 1 Dec 21. Arwa is a journalist for @guardian and author of 'Strong Female Lead'.
Sign up here: https://t.co/OfMVAWY3xg@ArwaM #culture pic.twitter.com/LS2TcsOu0R
Some co-conspirators may know Mahdawi best for her infamous flip-flop op-eds, in which she notoriously accused “toxic masculinity” of killing people via refusal to wear facemasks, then opined that people shouldn’t be shamed for not wearing facemasks. She also wrote that Melania Trump’s new hairdo should “make us very afraid”, then wrote a scathing riposte when AOC’s barnet came under the spotlight.
Just the sort of consistent, strong-minded leadership from which our troops need to learn…
Among her other work, perhaps the Army will be surprised to learn she’s not too keen on the military. In 2017 she slammed the Israeli actress Gal Gadot as she’d “happily spent time in the Israeli army kicking Palestinian ass and supports the IDF”.
She also wrote an op-ed on the BLM riots in the US under the headline, “If violence isn’t the way to end racism in America, then what is?”; and another in which she lamented that Britain’s now “embarrassing” and that Priti Patel is a “ghoul” – all of these opinions no doubt perfectly suited to a day at Sandhurst lecturing the Army. Still, maybe one of our boys will be keen to ask about how to avoid their barrack thermostats being “constantly set to a ‘sexist’ temperature”…
