Elsewhere (127)
Franklin Einspruch on the new censors:
For a long while I’ve been trying to interest my friends in the art world to get behind freedom of speech in a bigger way, to recognise that the very health of the marketplace of ideas depends on its openness to entry and its freedom of transaction… This usually doesn’t persuade anyone who isn’t already liberty-minded to begin with. So next I resort to self-interest. We creative types rely on that openness to function. If we don’t stand in defence of hate speech — not the content, just the right to express it — any mechanisms for cutting it off will eventually be used against us. If injured feelings take on the seriousness of injured bodies, we will become a society that pulls art off of walls, cancels performances, and strikes essays from public view. Sadly, this usually doesn’t work either, because the targets of accusations of hate speech typically lean right, and the art community leans left.
Franklin also links to this Pew survey of social media use, which suggests that self-described progressives are statistically much more likely to ban or block people with whom they disagree. A finding that may not be entirely shocking to regular readers.
And somewhat related, Greg Collins on the unremarked privileges of the self-appointed privilege police:
The paramount privilege at universities is not race, class, or gender, but intellectual soft despotism… A student whose worldview clings to that of university administrators and professors has the advantage of accessing university resources, money, and time to drive his cause. These instruments are far more powerful in granting benefits to politically preferred groups in higher education than subconscious biases in favour of particular races or classes. It is a privilege when your views conform with those of more than 90 percent of your professors. It is a privilege when your worldviews are blessed by a proliferation of like-minded commencement speakers and guest lecturers. And it is a privilege when you have university resources, money, and time within fingertips’ reach to wield to advance your political cause.
As an illustration of this leverage, Collins mentions one of many sabotaged speaking events – a talk by the conservative writer Don Feder at the University of Massachusetts in March 2009, the subject of which was, or would have been, free speech. Within 20 seconds of opening his mouth, Feder had been interrupted, shouted down and called a racist, before being screamed at repeatedly and assailed with epithets about his daughter. Despite his pleas for civility, Feder was unable to speak for more than three minutes without further, often deafening interruption by members of the International Socialist Organisation and Radical Student Union. Footage of the disruption can be seen here. Despite the students’ prolonged attempts to intimidate Feder and prevent the intended discussion taking place – a goal they accomplished – campus officials later claimed that Feder “chose to discontinue his speech.” An interesting, and revealing, choice of words.
Such displays are hardly uncommon on “progressive” campuses. The following month at UNC Chapel Hill, retired congressman Tom Tancredo tried to begin a discussion on the subject of illegal immigration. Again, students refused to let him speak for more than a few seconds. Collective hissing gave way to banging on the walls and windows, and chants of “No hate speech!” The university’s geography professor Altha Cravey – whose interests include “critical thinking,” “gender, race and class,” and “progressive social change” – saw fit to add her own voice to the chanting, thus signalling her approval of the students’ vehemence.
Determined to express their disapproval of what might at some point be said, leftwing students began to physically harass Tancredo, holding a banner up against his face, preventing him from speaking at all, while others chanted, “Yes, racists, we will fight; we know where you sleep at night!” One shocked student filmed the disruption with a phone camera, only to be obstructed by an indignant young woman who warned him, “You don’t take pictures of racists.” Tancredo tried to calm the situation by offering to address the protestors’ complaints at the end of his lecture and asking them to respect other students who’d come to listen and debate. At which point protestors shattered a window, spraying shards of glass into the classroom and onto two nearby students. Fearing further escalation, campus police escorted Tancredo from the room, then, hastily, from campus. He was in effect chased away, like someone who’d blundered into a street gang’s territory.
Video of this disruption can be found here and here. If you can, watch both parts for a flavour of modern progressive discourse. Interviewed by the Raleigh News and Observer, graduate student Tyler Oakley, the protest organiser, said he was pleased with the disruption and its outcome: “He was not able to practice his hate speech.” This was immediately followed by a defence of the protestors’ censorious thuggery: “You have to respect the right of people to assemble and collectively speak.” Apparently, the “collective speech” of dogmatic and arrogant leftists, our would-be overlords, trumps that of anyone else. Because they care so very much.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments.
“Time for some tar and feathers.
Well, there’s something to be said for a good old fashioned sack beating. When the prospect of paid eavesdroppers was revealed to the public and reluctantly abandoned amid an avalanche of derision, those responsible for it weren’t at all apologetic. Quite the opposite. Presumably, they saw nothing improper or intrusive or downright creepy about what they wanted to do.”
Yes. It’s not enough to get these people to stop any particular attack on our freedom. They need to be destroyed. Anyone who tries to pull this sort of Stalinist (expletive> should be subjected to a sustained and merciless attack on their reputation. They should forever after be known as scum, at work, at home, at church, wherever they spend their time. And their employers should suffer the same until they decide that employing thugs is not worth the pain. Really, it’s way past time to apply a zero-tolerance policy to these creeps. It is no more reasonable to tolerate these creeps as it is to tolerate a rabid dog.
Wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt doesn’t mean you have the stones to murder your enemies like Che did.
I very much fear that the sort of people who feel privileged enough to openly commit vandalism and assault will indeed have the stones to murder like Che. All for a good cause, of course.
Now that “feelings” have been identified as a physical body part or something, the state can intervene in this case of violence.
This sort of tyranny is inevitable result of the feminist slogan “the personal is political”. Hurting somebody’s feelings is now of government interest. Make no mistake, it is still the case that only certain people’s feelings count. If she had sent him that email nobody would have cared.
how we dance in and out of these impossible gender binariesu
Impossible? Last I checked humans still had only two sexes. A woman can pretend to be a man, but that doesn’t make her pretense any less binary.
Really, it’s way past time to apply a zero-tolerance policy to these creeps.
We can also point out that Mafiosos are criminals, but they don’t exactly respond well to shaming. In fact, they’ll make sure you only attempt to shame them once.
These latter-day Brownshirts are doing only what it takes to achieve the goal at hand, which is preparatory to the next goal, which may require
violencedirect action, their cause being just that righteous.Now Minnow will invite us to see the violence inherent in the system, just prior to the fish-slapping dance.
“fish-slapping dance”
I’ll bring a saw-fish. 🙂
We could also let the leader of the firing squad yell the order to fire, and let the riflemen find out the hard way that they’ve formed a circle.
Of note here is that the attacks hail from the left even upon the left. Dan Savage is as liberal as anyone. Birgeneau, who was hounded out of the Haverford commencement, is on the record supporting BDS against Israel and like causes. Epistemic closure tends to expose your dorsal side to attack – see Cantor, Eric – and we’re looking at the left descend into the kind of internecine disagreements that cause it.
I still think we should fight them just for fun.
I still think we should fight them just for fun.
What’s extraordinary is the extent to which this kind of pantomime is indulged by administrators and faculty. In December last year, these fits of leftist psychodrama were kicking off on various campuses, including the local university, where one of my relatives works. She, like 200 others, was unable to get to work for several days, countless projects were interrupted at considerable expense, deadlines were missed, and dozens of classes had to be cancelled.
Meanwhile, members of the Socialist Students group and Revolutionary Socialists Society – a gang of delusional wannabe communists and would-be anarchist ninjas – “occupied” an entire building, claimed ownership of whatever they pleased, imposed on whomever they pleased and made the usual absurd demands. Chief among which being that they didn’t want to pay for anything, including their own tuition or the bill for clearing up after them. They wanted a world without consequence.
And in many ways, this is exactly what they were given. So far as I can find out, none of the masked wankers causing the disruption faced any serious sanction. None of those who’d delighted in thwarting and intimidating staff and other students faced any consequence for their actions. No-one was expelled. No-one was given a bill. And so these balaclavad tossers are being taught that they can act with impunity. Their Marxoid power fantasies have no consequence for them, only for others. The general attitude among staff and administrators was one of resignation. As if it were something one just had to put up with every few months.
And so it happens. Every few months.
If she had sent him that email nobody would have cared.
Quite. Can you imagine a guy walking into a police station complaining of harassment over the emails of a jilted lover? He’d be laughed out the door. A woman does it, the police launch into action.
“So far as I can find out, none of the masked wankers causing the disruption faced any serious sanction.”
Not only are most college administrators and professors cowards, they secretly agree with these communist parasites.
Can you imagine a guy walking into a police station complaining of harassment over the emails of a jilted lover? He’d be laughed out the door. A woman does it, the police launch into action
If that’s true – and I tend to agree with you that it probably is – we have to ask why. It’s not because police are naturally anti-male, I think, but because of considerable pressure put on them to lock up specifically men who are supposedly harrassing women.
Similarly, there are measures, both in the UK and in some states in the US, to respond strongly if anyone makes any suggestion to them that domestic violence might be happening. So a neighbour hearing a loud argument followed my a bang (possibly the woman throwing a saucepan at her spouse, as my sister once did)
The police might well know that if they ignore a report of a man being hurt in an incident, they will not get into anywhere near as much trouble as they would were the putative victim a woman. Similarly with reporting it as domestic violence.
It’s not the police themselves so much as the pressures put on them (from more political persons higher up the ladder) that are serious examples of sexism against men. But it somehow doesn’t make it onto the scrupulously unbiased Everyday Sexism site. Funny that.
If you think about it, there are probably quite a few parts of the law where the theory, interpretation and application discriminate to men’s disadvantage. A man throws sauce over his ex-girlfriend, and gets a worse sentence than a woman who has kneed her ex-husband in a nasty area and reportedly said afterwards “I hope I’ve stopped him having any more children”.
In the case of rape one might understand why the law treats men and woman differently. But if you look at just how differently the world treats us all, you have to doubt whether anyone in the country truly believes in “equality” – a left-winger’s favourite word – or whether some people simply want equality where it suits them, and not where it doesn’t.
Is “equality” in fact just a politicians word that people like to throw about – so they can appear righteous – while having no serious intention of thinking about the consequences?
(hint: yes)
China Mieville- I gave up on him after page 5 of “Perdido Street Station”. You know how Martin Amis described the late Elmore Leonard as being “incapable of writing a dull sentence”? Well, China is Dutch’s antithesis.
“I think we should fight them just for fun”.
I think we will end up fighting them anyway, and it will be anything but fun.
Luckily, Mr Miéville’s politics are much more entertaining.
Thank you, David. I am very much entertained by Mr. Dalrymple’s essays. More power to your blog. I’d rather live in Heinlein’s universe than Mieville’s. “The Roads Must Roll”.
Readers here might enjoy knowing that the above post of mine was recently discussed in approving terms by Mark Steyn.
Well get you.