Make Way for the Mao-lings
Speaking, as we were, of campus intolerance and the Clown Shoe Left, here’s something that may be worth half an hour of your time. In the following short film by Steve Brulé, Professor Janice Fiamengo of the University of Ottawa talks about the assumptions and effects of doctrinaire feminism and the censorious tactics of self-imagined radicals. Tactics that are illustrated quite vividly throughout.
Professor Fiamengo also discusses campus censorship here. Via Joan in the comments following this.
From near the start of the film:
Wickedness!
Pertaining to your linked article… Rachel Decoste tends to make for a pretty interesting troll.
The University of Toronto protest footage (from 5:05 to 8:28) is particularly revealing, though not at all uncommon. Note the enthusiasm for thug tactics – blocking doors and fire escapes, the harassment and physical intimidation of random strangers, attempts to humiliate them, and a complete lack of empathy and curiosity. As illustrated by the smug refusal even to hear someone explain why they wished to attend the talk in question.
Note too the casual projection that we’ve seen so many times. The protestors are eager to use force and mob coercion against their bewildered victims, but immediately cry victimhood and squeal in pretentious outrage when the police belatedly intervene. And then, having successfully initiated a scuffle with police, the assorted harpies and Mao-lings immediately blame the people they’d been threatening, and whom they continue to harass, and who just wanted to listen to someone speak.
It’s not politics we’re seeing, it’s a kind of sociopathy.
It appears that these students need an ethics course to explain the concept of rights and obligations. Free speech isn’t a right,it is an obligation, you fulfill your obligation by allowing your worst enemy to speak, they fulfill their obligation by ensuring that you can speak. If you only support those you agree with, and label everything you disagree with “hate speech” you have not fulfilled your obligation and have no right.
It also appears that a lot of “anti bullying ” money has been wasted.
It also appears that a lot of “anti bullying” money has been wasted.
I suppose what’s dismaying isn’t just the self-righteous harassment of random people about whom they know nothing, or the pretensions of victimhood, or the gleeful use of thug power. It’s the fact the protestors and activists – these supposed intellectuals – seem so extraordinarily dense. When Fiamengo invites a class to consider reversing the genders in a particular scenario, basic logic confounds them, and when confounded they get angry. These are people who’ve been led to believe they’re the thinkers of tomorrow, smarter and more righteous than the rest of us; yet they don’t seem at all equipped for having their conceits tested. Or even temperamentally suited for a place at university.
It appears these people can diagnosis racism by looking at skin color, and sexism by knowing gender, it also appears they can spot rapists just by knowing what meetings they go to. Pretty perceptive for a gang of thugs. Imagine men acting like that to protest a women’s center, I can’t.
We know they’re horrible. We know they’re not nearly as smart as they think they are. We know they use horrible tactics. We know that their goals are ultimately horrible.
So why are they winning?
Why have they taken over all education from nursery school to post-doctoral work? Why have they taken over all media from church newsletters to global news networks? Why have they taken over all Western governments?
Why aren’t we fighting them? Blog posts aren’t fighting, no matter how clever you are. YouTube videos aren’t fighting. Tweets aren’t fighting. Doing an end-zone dance and calling it a victory when something temporarily delays their horrible plans isn’t fighting.
Ultimately, fighting means . . . fighting.
It appears that these students need an ethics course to explain the concept of rights and obligations.
While on the one hand I completely agree with this, on the other I think the same applies to Faculty staff – I was rather disturbed by the display of head-wobbling nincompoopery from Professor Adele Mercier (though honestly not totally surprised after having read David Horowitz’s One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy – yes of course, that was about universities in the US, but it applies to the UK and, I’ve no doubt, Canada, Australia and New Zealand if not elsewhere too).
“She loves teaching logic” it says here – somewhat implausibly given her performance in that video – and goes on to modestly claim that she “is currently at work on what she aims to be the most user-friendly-yet- philosophically-sophisticated logic textbook ever written.”
I’ve no doubt she’s simply charming and lends an encouraging ear to diverse opinions and views in her classroom.
So why are they winning?
I’d imagine the imminent collapse of the higher education bubble will see much of the above bollocks in retreat, if not swept into irrelevance. Tens of thousands of dollars for worthless degrees – or degrees of negative value – isn’t a sustainable model, even among the vain and credulous types who typically take the bait. Though by then a great deal of damage will have been done.
Ultimately, fighting means . . . fighting.
I did wonder whether the security guards would at some point turn a blind eye to anyone wishing to enter the hall who just happens to come with a baseball bat. But I expect the real reason is that anyone with the balls to fight is either at a different university or oblivious to all this nonsense.
Prof. Adele Mercier’s accent was definitely foreign. I wonder, is it normal for people to seek academic postings in foreign lands where a rape culture prevails?
I began to wonder what it must be like to be a young man at university, sitting through course after course after course, whether it was an English course, a history course, a philosophy course, or sociology, whatever . . .
Funny how courses like Linear Algebra, Intro to Geophysics and Materials and Mechanics are not among those listed.
It’s not politics we’re seeing, it’s a kind of sociopathy.
That.
Believe me, Women’s Studies is a lot like a cult.
Believe me, Women’s Studies is a lot like a cult.
Watching the male students dutifully apologising for their whiteness, maleness and “privilege,” I wondered if any of them were even aware of the historical precedents for such displays. I’m guessing not.
That final clip where members of the audience ask why they shouldn’t try to shut down opinions they disagree with is perfect, the precise dividing line between liberal democracy and fascism.
Tim,
Isn’t she Quebecois? That makes her notionally not-foreign to mainstream Canada.
I wondered if any of them were even aware of the historical precedents for such displays. I’m guessing not.
Evidence of more widespread amnesia among the list of signatories here.
What Trimegistus said.
Isn’t she Quebecois? That makes her notionally not-foreign to mainstream Canada.
Ah, quite possibly. I didn’t think of that.
Funny how courses like Linear Algebra, Intro to Geophysics and Materials and Mechanics are not among those listed.
Anything with a strong literary component seems to be at risk of this blight. Art school fares no better due to literary theory being made such an essential component of
acquiring genuine artistic skillsflipping the bird at beauty and the evil white male hegemony.Good to see that irrational man-hating feminists are just a myth.
Good to see that irrational man-hating feminists are just a myth.
There are, I fear, one or two candidates for the attic. The charming young lady jabbing her finger at any random male within reach and calling them “fucking scum,” for instance.
She’s a keeper.
“She’s a keeper.”
Preferably in formaldehyde.
40 years ago university campuses were 60/40, men/women and it was a crisis that needed addressing. Much money and effort has been spent to address this inequality. Today university campuses are 70/30 women/men and yet the women feel threatened? Why are campuses dominated by women and other genders so dangerous to women and other genders? How can men possibly be to blame? Many women used to meet their husbands in school, now they don’t want men on campus at all.
Yet again I’m forced to observe that the undeniable connection between left-wingers and appalling personal hygiene. The woman screaming “scum” looks as though she’s not washed her hair in a month and has a face full of angry red zits, and the one with the army jacket, stupid attention-seeking haircut and nose ring who thinks everyone should be out smashing capitalism looks in desperate need of a good bath. The men who are hanging around them look the same too, greasy, straggly hair and beards. It was the same when I was at university, those who though they should be running the country couldn’t manage to wash their clothes or even keep themselves clean. Say what you like about Nazi stormtroopers, but at least you got the impression they’d start the morning with a shower and a clean Hugo Boss uniform.
Say what you like about Nazi stormtroopers,
Note the protestors’ Nazi salute, aimed at the police, when the nearest thing to a fascistic mentality can be found much closer to home.
Those damn bike-helmeted Nazis preventing us from infringing on other people’s rights…
They’re the worst.
Adele Mercier has a typical quebecois accent, I would know, I have lived in quebec all my life and it seems I am stuck here and will die here.
Quebecers are a strange bunch, they have very strong opinions but are often shockingly under-informed on many issues. You know kind of like Obama voters…is it any surprise quebec is a leftist/feminist paradise?
>Watching the male students dutifully apologising for their whiteness, maleness and “privilege,”
“I apologise for my superior genes, superior sex and superior culture, you may continue..”
Would that go down ok?
@AC1
You forgot to add the fact that you’re probably not lactose intolerant. Milk is, after all, a creation of The Patriarchy, inasmuch as it comes from women and is used to nourish male babies. The horror of it all.
When we read about freedom-hating students it’s funny. But to see it is really shocking – and depressing.
How do you advocate for free speech when opponents are thugs?
I’d imagine the imminent collapse of the higher education bubble will see much of the above bollocks in retreat, if not swept into irrelevance.
Possibly. But I fear a serious case of “evaporative cooling”. Evaporative cooling is a process in which the most energetic molecules in a fluid body break away, thereby lowering the average particle energy and reducing the temperature. The human-affairs analogy is a group with a shared belief, such as a cult. Now suppose the cult experiences a shock which challenges the shared belief. The members with the least commitment to the credo are the most likely to leave, and the cult group becomes smaller but more fanatical.
I think we’ve seen something like this in the mass media. The massive contraction of the newspaper and magazine industry has pushed out a lot of people; those remaining seem to me to be the most ideologically committed; the press has thus become even more biased.
If there is a major dieback in the academy, who will leave? Senior staff, who are proportionately less tilted to the left, will retire (or be retired). People with skills usable in other fields will find work in those fields. People who aren’t comfortable in left-wing hives. And people who are not protected by alliances with the left majority. the The academy will be distilled down to a purified hard core of Social Justice Warriors.
That will accelerate the dieback somewhat, but as long as the endowments and the government funding remain, even at a reduced level, actual reform of the institutions will be put off.
The members with the least commitment to the credo are the most likely to leave, and the cult group becomes smaller but more fanatical.
Yes, I think that could happen, perhaps it already is. We’ve already seen that the academics who advocate and defend student thuggery tend to be those whose subjects of supposed expertise are disreputable. And I doubt it’s a coincidence that the faculty agitators have been lecturers in joke subjects with little if any market value.
For instance, Alexander Vasudevan, a lecturer in “cultural geography” and advocate of theft, and Priyamvada Gopal, a postcolonial studies lecturer who equates arson and attempted manslaughter with “hypocritical language.” Or David Graeber, a Marxoid anthropologist who says he’s “very proud” of the thugs who smashed windows onto random people, showering them with glass. And of course the Marxoid philosopher Nina Power, a woman who doesn’t think competence is necessary because it’s unfair, and who describes riots, arson and vandalism as “uplifting.”
When students are obliged to choose their degrees wisely, because they can no longer palm off the bill on some other sucker, politically tendentious and all-but-useless courses will start to disappear. Without the taxpayer as the eternal rube, postcolonial studies, “anthropology and anarchism” and “magic as a tool of politics” won’t look quite so attractive in the harsh light of day.
40 years ago university campuses were 60/40, men/women and it was a crisis that needed addressing.
It was an imbalance certainly, but this alone didn’t mean it was a crisis.
How do you advocate for free speech when opponents are thugs?
This is a very good question particularly given that those in authority too often seem reluctant to stand up to and to punish thuggery. And even, some cases, bend over backward to accommodate it.
So why are they winning?
If they are winning that’s a very pertinent question. If the MRAs were any use they’d spend their effort finding an answer to this.
Politicians want women’s votes. Perhaps they think they can get this by appearing to back “equality”. Then there is the unfortunate fact that too many women have heard simplistic drivel about the pay-gap, domestic violence etc. The kind of politicians who campaign on gender issues are (or have been manipulated by) the spiteful morons Fiamengo fights against.
…showing that politics is easily “won” by 24/7 propaganda, moral panics, and the behaviour you see in the video – more easily than by logical argument, anyway, which the masses don’t respond to.
I suppose part of your question translates to “why is there so little effective opposition to feminist extremes”. Who knows? But men are, as a group, being rather slow to see the attack on them. They also want women to like them, and are afraid of looking bad. Feminists exploit this ruthlessly
Best answers I can come up with.
Close all non-science university courses. Sack the profs without a penny compensation and confiscate their pensions. Blackball them from re-employment in teaching anywhere. Boot the students out and they still have to repay any loans they have had. That should shut the show down.
One of the obvious strengths of Feminism that can help explain its stunning success is that it is taught as a de-facto truth of the true nature of society. Imagine a gender studies student arguing strongly in their thesis that The Patriarchy and notions like the The Male Gaze are complete bunkum, thereby undermining a central pillar of Feminist theory and by extension those who teach it as gospel. How likely is it that they are going to obtain credit for that course?. They might even be singled out for re-education. To deny Feminism is to attack women and minorities, and that’s frowned upon. Only bad people do that.
How do you advocate for free speech when opponents are thugs?
They’re not thugs though, that’s the problem. They are simply allowed to engage in thuggish behaviour but – crucially – nobody else is. If somebody who wanted to enter that talk found his way blocked and simply smacked the person in his way right in the mouth, the security, police, and college authorities would crucify him. But they stand idly by and allow these groups a monopoly on what is effectively physical violence. This doesn’t make the perpetrators thugs, it makes them cowards. Thugs wouldn’t go bawling to the dean if they got in a proper ruck. The disgraceful thing about all this is the university has given one group a free pass to engage in violence while denying it to everyone else.
But they stand idly by and allow these groups a monopoly on what is effectively physical violence… The disgraceful thing about all this is the university has given one group a free pass to engage in violence while denying it to everyone else.
Quite.