Next Cancellation Target: Viking Mascots

Victor E. Viking, the mascot of Western Washington University.

The College Fix reports:

Western Washington University may scrap its Viking mascot and is currently conducting an investigation to help make a final decision on the issue.

The effort was spawned in part from requests asking the public university to remove the names of four buildings on campus due to racism concerns: Huxley College of the Environment, Mathes Hall, Haggard Hall, and the Viking Union.

In December, trustees announced that T.H. Huxley’s name would be removed, citing the scientist’s “white supremacist values that dehumanize and harm many members of the Western community.” The Haggard and Mathes names were spared.

But the verdict is out on the Vikings. A “strong majority” of the university’s Legacy Review Taskforce recommended to trustees to remove “Viking” from the Viking Union.

“The Task Force was concerned about the harm caused by asking all members of the Western community to identify with a figure that is potentially exclusive on the basis of both ethnicity and gender,” the taskforce stated in its report.

“Furthermore, the Task Force found names idolizing conquest as out of line with the university’s contemporary values around honoring local Indigenous communities. Task Force members who did not recommend renaming in this report proposed the building name be evaluated alongside the mascot by a separate committee.”

Trustees directed the university “to conduct a more thorough assessment of the Viking name in the broader context of the University mascot,” the December news release states.

The media and communications team at Western Washington University did not respond to requests from The College Fix seeking comment. …

This is not the first time that a mascot change at WWU has been raised. In 2015, an effort to get it scrapped claimed the Viking mascot is “hyper-masculine” and “aggressive.”

However, the area is steeped in Scandinavian roots. In 1910, 30 percent of the foreign-born population had Scandinavian blood. The National Nordic Museum is also located in Seattle, Washington.

Despite the heritage, the Viking as a mascot, in general, may still be on its way out.

During the current Washington Football Team name scandal, many people looked for other teams that may change their alleged problematic names. The Minnesota Vikings is a major team considered.

A change.org petition argued the NFL mascot is “highly distasteful.” It argued the Vikings thought “they were entitled to anything they want and not living in harmony with groups of people with differing ideologies.”

RTWT

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Robert Spencer, at PJM, notes that the rationale for cancellation is completely flexible. Indian mascots are allegedly demeaning, but white male mascots are complimentary and that too is bad.

[I]t’s hard not to notice that the entire mascot brouhaha, from beginning to end, is not only stupid; it’s incoherent. The Redskins and Indians were forbidden because the use of Native Americans as mascots was supposedly degrading and dehumanizing. The names had to go because they were demeaning and insulting. All over the country, teams at all levels dropped their Indian-related names in order to show their respect and regard for American Indians.

At the same time, however, teams all over the country have dropped their Crusader nickname because they don’t want to seem to be glorifying the Crusaders, which in modern myth (and not remotely in reality) were rapacious, imperialist, unprovoked attacks upon peaceful, wise, indigenous Muslim people. The schools that bore the Crusader name didn’t want to appear to be supporting such actions by white supremacists against innocent people of color, so the Crusaders had to go. And now it’s a similar situation at WWU with the Vikings: Western Washington University doesn’t want to appear to be “idolizing conquest.”

But wait a minute. If the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians degraded Native Americans, why do teams named Crusaders or Vikings glorify racism and white supremacy? If what Leftists have been telling us about nicknames and mascots for the last few years were even close to true, woke WWU should proudly retain its Viking name and declare that they’re doing so in order to demean and insult Vikings and white people in general. After all, if team names actually glorified the group that inspired them, then the Redskins and Indians had no reason to change their name, right?

Related: Woke Mob Puts Out Hit on Notre Dame’s Leprechaun

But the Leftists don’t have to worry about consistency. They know that the establishment media will never call them out on their contradictions. No “journalist” today will ever ask why some team names can be seen as glorifying the group in question, while other team names are degrading.

RTWT