Reheated (30)
For newcomers, four more items from the archives.
Leotard, heels and coloured puke. It’s a vision of loveliness.
In this 34-minute milestone of cultural enrichment, Ms Brown “explores the relationship between music and performance art via self-induced vomiting.” The word explores is of course obligatory and, given the context, entirely devoid of meaning. Unless we’re to believe that the fruits of this alleged mental activity will redefine human knowledge and shake the world when finally, dramatically revealed to the public.
The Observer’s Barbara Ellen oozes socialist benevolence.
While any use of the term chav is denounced by Ms Ellen as bullying, “posh-bashing” is considered protest and an artform. This is the logic of identity politics, according to which, you must always treat people as social categories, as examples of some put-upon victim group, or conversely, some notional oppressor group. To which, various contradictory and patronising assumptions must be applied regardless of the particulars in any given instance. By this reckoning, when opportunist oiks at my old comprehensive school picked on a new arrival who was well-spoken, polite and somewhat studious, the people doing the bullying were righteous, entitled and “responding to oppression.” Their shoving and sneering was apparently “an instinctive protest against inequality.” But my calling them oiks for doing so is practically a hate-crime. You see how it works?
“Shut up,” they explained.
Actually, some of our budding intellectuals do declare their censorious urges out loud and in public, as if such urges confirmed their own unassailable righteousness: “We no longer need to listen,” say these mighty radical thinkers. Nor will they permit others to listen to ideas and arguments they, our betters, deem improper – on our behalf, of course. Let’s not forget the equally progressive efforts to shape young minds at Queen’s University, which decided that students’ private lunchtime discussions were in need of monitoring by hired eavesdroppers called “dialogue facilitators.” Eavesdroppers whose uninvited “interventions” would “encourage discussion of social justice issues” and “issues of social identity, power and privilege,” as defined by them and whether welcome or not. “Positive spaces and mindsets” would of course be created.
Playing in the Dirt with Occupy.
Bongos, bombs and ersatz farming.
Here we have a movement whose “non-hierarchical” founder says Occupy is “about antagonising people and slapping them around a little bit.” A movement whose favoured “non-violent” tactics rely on mobs and coercion – and the moral anonymity that mobs make possible. A movement that’s explicitly premised on the seizure and violation of other people’s property, and which measures its impact by the disruption and distress it inflicts on others. And oh yes. A movement whose cheerleaders tell us that mobbing random retailers and intimidating their customers is “a perfectly justifiable form of protest.” And whose apologists and hagiographers have told us, repeatedly, that they “have no problem with principled, thought-through political violence,” that property damage is “not the same thing as violence,” and that setting fire to occupied buildings isn’t “real” violence. For members of this movement to then affect “shock” when that same thinking is taken one notch further requires colossal dishonesty. But hey, that’s who these people are.
There’s more to be had in the greatest hits.
Leotard, heels and coloured puke.
I think that’s a body stocking.
I stand corrected. Clearly, I need to brush up on my knowledge of ladies’ exercise garments.
The University of British Columbia in Vancouver had a scheme where trained “equity officers” were supposed to attend meetings of any student group. Just what they were supposed to do and how they were supposed to do it remains a little vague, but “creepy” hardly describes it.
It was dropped in April 2010, but not without social justice advocates complaining loudly.
What was surprizing was how few public objections there were over the equity officer program. Students will put up with anything so long as they can get their degree.
rabbit,
What’s interesting to me is that there doesn’t ever seem to be any apology for the repeated overreach, no matter how condescending, humiliating or creepy the behaviour may be. Of the dozens of examples I’ve cited over the years, I don’t recall any of those responsible being reprimanded or fired. As I’ve said before, for some it’s a fiefdom. It’s as if the educators involved don’t think of students as customers with minds of their own but rather as test subjects whose political views and bourgeois habits are in need of correction.
It’s as if the educators involved don’t think of students as customers with minds of their own but rather as test subjects whose political views and bourgeois habits are in need of correction.
But teachers are the clever ones.
David:
I’m sure you know of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education).
I follow their cases from time to time. The offending administrations or student governments never seem to apologize, even when they’ve caused terrible hardship. They might be convinced to reverse their decisions, but saying “We were wrong and we’re sorry” is as rare as hen’s teeth.
It’s as if the educators involved don’t think of students as customers with minds of their own but rather as test subjects whose political views and bourgeois habits are in need of correction.
I think this is an extension of the idea that every child is born without a personality and only acquires one through socialization. Conveniently, this leaves children as clean, fresh little blank slates on which progressives may write whatever they wish. It’s a historically recent idea, but it seems to have caught on like hookworm.
The continued prolonging of childhood and adolescence is also prolonging everybody’s well-meaning efforts to shape their human putty.
rabbit,
Right now I’m drinking coffee out of a FIRE mug.
The lack of comeuppance is quite striking. It’s idiocy with impunity – idiocy given license. In this Kafkaesque example, in which a student was deliberately intimidated and found “guilty of racial harassment” for “openly reading a book,” the people responsible faced no discernible censure. Behaviour that in any other professional context would be met with outrage and protest, and possibly prosecution, seems par for the course. When FIRE intervened on the student’s behalf, the “charges” evaporated, but the university’s Chancellor wouldn’t concede the abuse of power or apologise for how the matter was mishandled throughout. The faculty closed ranks and no-one would admit the obvious systemic problem and how it invites abuse by idiots, liars and bullies. And the university’s Director of Media Relations continued to make accusations he couldn’t support with evidence of any kind, despite being pressed repeatedly. It’s as if such people are impervious to normal propriety and basic decency. These aren’t just random errors; there’s a widespread sense of entitlement among leftist educators, a common mindset.
Anna,
But teachers are the clever ones.
I was tempted to make some crack about unionised teachers and incompetence without consequences. But given that idiotic propaganda is presumably aimed at children, among others, it’s actually quite despicable. To paraphrase AC1, it’s economic creationism taught by moral delinquents.
This is a good mash-up of previous articles, David, and has given me the idea that the Progressive(tm) community is really organized in a way that is very similar to the way that labor unions organize workers in companies. They group together (not suprisingly) some people to handle the environmental issues, some to handle economic re-distribution, some for education, others for sexual freedom matters, and others to deal with nanny-issues (“Don’t touch that donut, young man! It is bad for you!”).
With this division of labor, they try very hard to avoid having any groups poach on other areas of interest, so that you rarely see enviros talking about encouraging the economy to grow, unless it is thru the building of extremely inefficient solar/wind generation, or re-fitting houses with insulation. They don’t talk about the aesthetic effect of insulating old buildings, but leave that to the architectural preservationists. “It is not my job to work in that area.” is what your typical union worker would say.
And this allows they to proffer conflicting “solutions” to the problems that they self generate, while not appearing to be hypocrites, because it is different groups that are making the arguments.
One side of the progressive movement works hard to increase the cost of energy, in order to encourage conservation and support the development of “sustainable” generation, while another wing complains about the harsh effect on the poor and working class when the price of electricity and gasoline goes up. One wing has achieved a near complete success in ensuring that anyone can put anything they want into any orifice during sexual activities, while another is busy drawing up lists of things to prohibit ingesting as food, in the name of “public health”. The creative wing is all atwitter about exotic cultures – at least with regard to their music and art (usually) and food (mostly) – but they don’t like to talk about how those cultures demean women, because that sort of dialogue is not very progressive. The ACLU is all in favor of freedom of expression, except when students on campus want to talk about issues that cause “offense” or “hurt others’ feelings”. And, of course, we have affirmative action, where all people are supposed to be treated equally, except that some people are supposed to be treated a bit more equally than others.
Conspiracies are one of the big bugaboos of the left, and if one were inclined to look for them I think that a good circumstantial case could be made here, but I prefer to say that they are all just sharing a common vision of the future.
Usual right wing bullshit. Lies and smears.
We Will Occupy You,
Usual right wing bullshit. Lies and smears.
Noting and illustrating some obvious patterns, using Occupiers’ own words, hardly constitutes a smear. Think of it as a kind of… cultural anthropology. In the archives you’ll find dozens of posts on the subject, covering Occupiers’ arguments and actions, and each quote is verbatim and sourced, often with video. You can follow each link and see for yourself who said what, and then marvel at the pantomime of shock and disapproval when that same rhetoric, that same psychology, that same delight in coercion, is taken just one notch further. Maybe you believe these events are cherry picked aberrations and nothing at all to do with the psychology so often in play. But there are nonetheless an awful lot of cherries. And how might we explain that? To what kind of urges does that psychology appeal, and appeal very strongly? To what does it give license? Or are we to believe that trying to smash glass onto coffee shop customers is perfectly okay, and that trapping and then taunting a disabled woman is what heroes do?
Oh, and you may want to reflect on your chosen alias and how that sits with pretensions of benign intent.
We Will Occupy You
They’re so good to us.
We Will Occupy You,
“Usual right wing bullshit. Lies and smears.”
Should be easy to refute it then. Go on, have a go.
Just in from guess who:
“My book’s going to be about feminism and activism and gender anarchy and socialism and sexual deviance and basically all the things I like.”
I can hardly wait!
rxc: The ACLU is all in favor of freedom of expression, except when students on campus want to talk about issues that cause “offense” or “hurt others’ feelings”.
Actually, the ACLU is one of the few left organizations which opposes campus speech codes; they generally line up with FIRE in these cases. Credit where credit is due.
performance art via self-induced vomiting
In the words of the incomparable Samuel Goldwyn: Include me out.
Tom,
It is quite odd to see people trying to ignore and deny what it is they’re actually participating in, and where it generally goes, given enough rope.
If a so-called ‘activists’ try to shower random people with broken glass, and are prepared to block fire escapes with small children and trap a disabled woman in a lobby while triumphantly chanting “this is what democracy looks like,” then some kind of line has been crossed. This isn’t protest in any meaningful sense; we’re in the realm of sadistic psychodrama. Likewise, when ‘activists’ paint on their own fake injuries then assault police officers for no reason whatsoever, beyond hoping to be photographed while being arrested and thus claim victim status, this doesn’t invite sympathy or suggest moral gravitas. When the ‘activists’ in question have repeatedly shown delight in the mob dynamic, their favoured tactic, and have filmed their own acts of thuggery and intimidation proudly as if these were badges of radical virtue, it isn’t clear to me what normal moral limits would apply to their behaviour. These are ‘activists’ who, in their own words, wish to “slap us around a little bit” and who claim that people being trapped and frightened without light or heat is “freedom.” Yes, the enlightened leaders of tomorrow.
My book’s going to be about feminism and activism and gender anarchy and socialism and sexual deviance and basically all the things I like.
That’s because Laurie is so incredibly deep and radical. No really, she is. She tells us so often enough. The mere whisper of her name can topple empires.
Barbara Ellen belongs to that curious branch of socialist ‘thinkers’ who believes that badly-behaved lower-class people have valid (and laudable) reasons for their rejection of society and violence towards even their own kind, but any sort of upper-class people, badly behaved or not, have no valid reasons for what they do. They are simply privileged so there can be no depth to them, no reason for any action.
Curious how the acquisition of money simply removes any human qualities and removes any need for understanding. Unless, of course, they have publicly said they are in favour of the tormented lower-classes, and in which case they can behave as nastily or badly as they wish because their socialist heart is automatically ‘in the right place,’ removing them from criticism.
Is right wing bullshit the same as left wing cowshit? Do tell.
Drive-by trolls are soooo boring.
Oppressors! Shut up or you’ll be first against the wall!
“Rich Rostrum: Actually, the ACLU is one of the few left organizations which opposes campus speech codes; they generally line up with FIRE in these cases. Credit where credit is due.”
Thanks for the note and the comment. I seem to have remembered that they did not support FIRE, but it appears from the FIRE website that the ACLU actually does support them. With the large number of controversies that are popping up, the ACLU seems to be less directly involved (maybe it is a resources thing), and since FIRE is doing a lot, the ACLU can spend its resources elsewhere.