When Bedlamites Gather
Following his appearance at a “white privilege” conference, a white male sociologist corrects a small factual error – and is promptly denounced.
You see, politely correcting a factual error – and thereby revealing an insinuation of “white supremacy” as absurd – is somehow proof of “defensiveness,” “white fragility,” and, by implication, latent white evil.
Via Damian, who adds, “It doesn’t matter how actually correct you are; you will never appease the politically correct.” Quite. Because the drama, indignation and passive-aggressive spite must go on indefinitely. How else will people know their place in the egalitarian pecking order, and to whom they should defer, always and forever?
I must say, I take a certain delight in seeing these clowns being torn to shreds by the very tactics they are happy to deploy against others.
Holy crap. These people are in need of professional help.
I must say, I take a certain delight in seeing these clowns being torn to shreds by the very tactics they are happy to deploy against others.
Note that the polite correction doesn’t inspire any apology or rethinking of assumptions; it merely, and very quickly, prompts more denunciation and further attempts at character assassination. They’re clowns, yes, but not the jolly kind. I don’t think they exist to make children laugh.
“How DARE you defend yourself?!”
“How DARE you defend yourself?!”
That does seem to be the basic dynamic. Habitual vindictiveness wrapped in habitual bad faith. I think it’s fair to assume that, despite their affectations, these are not good people.
My grandparents spent some time in Communist Europe post WW2 and this sort of behaviout is exactly what they saw then
And remember, this is the kind of worldview, an incoherent pile of attitudes, to which tens of thousands of students are being steered, deliberately, by people like those above.
Frighteningly, she describes herself as an “educator”.
These guys make the Red Guards look like amateurs
The incremental rarefaction of political correctness- I remember when we were taught calculus at school and I began to grasp the implications. The dy/dx of PC grievances still has a way to go I reckon, but for now its practitioners in the Clown Quarter™ are behaving and using language such that they are not partaking in or describing a shared human experience that anyone outside of this cabal of hysterical silliness would recognise.
Um…there’s a book by her and her husband. They’re both social justice activists.
http://www.amazon.com/VITAL-Torch-Social-Justice-ebook/dp/B019ULXBFU
It’s very serious stuff. Very good reviews, too.
At first I thought it had to be a parody account.
How DARE you defend yourself?!
It is rather an exercise in futility. It almost seems that, the endless litany of often confected or imagined transgressions notwithstanding, there are certain types of people who are despised for what they are regardless of what they do. Beyond redemption are we.
At first I thought it had to be a parody account.
It’s getting so hard to tell now, I don’t think there’s any room left for amusing parody. Following the conference hashtag, the uniformity of dysfunction is extraordinary. Every tic is on display – the ugly racial fixation, the smug disregard for facts, the chippiness and projection, the ‘see my pronouns’ game, the blatant double standards, the utter failure of logic and reciprocal courtesy. And so the hapless chap is not only being scolded for something utterly trivial that he didn’t do, but also being scolded for pointing out that he didn’t do it, which somehow proves his culpability. And that’s before we get to the absurdity of the alleged sin itself and what it supposedly signifies.
No earthly force could untangle that kind of mental wreckage.
100% 5* reviews
Why, it’s almost like the result of an election in a dictatorship. Certainly nothing fishy about that. Nothing fishy at all….
I don’t feel sorry at all for James Loewen.
It was his decision to become a walking doormat, so he shouldn’t moan when people start wiping their feet on him.
We do have the option of telling the SJWs to go and fuck themselves.
I don’t feel sorry at all for James Loewen.
Well, no. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for someone who attends a “white privilege” conference unironically. But the dynamic is, I think, telling. I couldn’t see anyone else disputing how long he spoke or confirming that he ran over time. They just seemed annoyed that he’d dared to reject the fatuous accusation, dared to answer back. It’s as if they regarded him as the uppity white guy who needed slapping down.
“Since reading the book I have often called on the VITAL strategies outlined in the book to encourage authentic conversation through the power of storytelling in my work as a group facilitator.
Which is all one needs to know.
A white woman telling a black woman to close the door at a workshop session. Another example of #WPCsowhite #PHLWPC17 @got_privilege
— Aeriel A. Ashlee (@aerielashlee) April 16, 2016
From the daily caller link above. She must know how absurd that sounds even as she tweets it. Is it just signaling, or are they truly insane?
That’s a Kafkatrap, right? Being denounced for something you haven’t done, and providing evidence that you haven’t done it being further proof of your guilt?
All of this nonsense has to reach a critical mass eventually. I’m starting to see signs of it in terms of the bog standard mainstream media reporting on it.
Is it just signaling, or are they truly insane?
That presumes that the former is not a subset of the latter.
Is it just signalling, or are they truly insane?
Well, if it’s an affectation and these people are spending so much time and energy pretending to believe things they don’t in fact believe and indulging in a kind of bad faith role-play, then how sane is that?
Eric Raymond on Kafkatrapping.
Wait a minute. Haven’t we already learned that fidelity to punctuality is, in fact, an aspect of white privilege designed to oppress all other individuals on the planet? Yet, the denunciations come fast and furious for an alleged violation of time limits. Gee, one is almost tempted to believe that Ms. Ashlee–who is paler by several shades than I, BTW–came to the conference pre-loaded with accusatory tweets for any occasion, real or imagined.
Let’s just call it what it is: “Recreational Outrage.”
Let’s just call it what it is: “Recreational Outrage.”
More like professional outrage.
It is interesting to note, however, that the winsome Mrs. Ashlee has taken her husband’s last name with nary a hyphen or anything else that would suggest expected SJW like rejection of the cis-heteronomative patriarchal narrative. OTOH, perhaps Mr. Ashlee just drove her round the bend.
Indeed it is professional outrage – I give you Ashlee Consulting – “FOSTERING BRAVE SPACE FOR BOLD CONVERSATIONS”.
The fees of Mr. and Mrs. Ashlee are not quoted, but you may buy their book at the link, but getting back to Mrs. Ashlee’s original beef, please note that Mr. Ashlee is a whiter shade of pale.
Wait a minute. Haven’t we already learned that fidelity to punctuality is, in fact, an aspect of white privilege designed to oppress all other individuals on the planet?
Ah, no. You would think so, but, unlike Mrs Ashlee, you are (thankfully) not an ardent and committed racist who can sniff out wrong-thought at a 1,000 paces.
When a white man is not on time, it can only be a sign of his assumed superiority (demanding others afford him unearned respect) or cultural appropriation of non-Western or ‘African’ concepts of time.
More like professional outrage.
There’s no question that a number of these SJWs have parleyed their umbrage into lucrative careers. The vast majority of these people just do the whole “look how mad I am” schtick for fun. It’s like the relationship between MLB and my over-50, beer-enhanced softball league.
Speaking of logic traps, people like Mrs Ashlee and all the other bigots in the name of social justice present the rest of us with a seemingly unsolvable problem.
For people obsessed with cultures, they have hit on ruthlessly exploit the one weakness in any culture – that, more or less, any culture operates on the principle of a kind of ‘gentleman’s agreement’.
In the normal run of things, we just agree to respect the authority of teachers, be polite to strangers, not assume that people we’ve never met and know nothing about will behave in certain ways and hold certain political beliefs on the sole basis of their gender or ethnicity.
But, like any ragamuffin teenage thug in high schools the length and breadth of the country, knowing that cultures depend more on informal agreement than any actual force of authority it is literally child’s play to disrupt a classroom, an office, a political party, even the way a whole society is organised just by behaving like a total fucking arsehole.
Unlike teenage thugs in run down high schools, however, people like Mrs Ashlee cynically exploit the principle of respect and tolerance afforded to people who might be considered a minority of one sort or another.
Just like teenage thugs, however, there will be no end to it until they have brought everything crashing down about their ears.
“VITAL will give readers the tools and confidence they need to effectively integrate social justice into their everyday lives.”
So ‘social justice’ is a bit like Scientology?
When a white man is not on time, it can only be a sign of his assumed superiority (demanding others afford him unearned respect). . .
It’s funny, my punctuality was learned from my father who said, “Being late is telling someone else your time is more valuable than theirs. It’s disrespectful of others and just plain rude.” Of course, he was a Caucasian, cis-male, heterosexual (with a side of onion rings and diet Coke) patriarch of the old school.
Of course, he was a Caucasian, cis-male, heterosexual (with a side of onion rings and diet Coke) patriarch of the old school.
Barring the part about onion rings and coke, my own parents sound very similar.
The cultural lacuna that exists between the values I was raised and those of people like Mrs Ashlee and her ilk sometimes make me feel like a visitor from a far distant planet.
Subordinating facts and reality to political ideology is not just perverse, it can be downright suicidal.
Are we supposed to follow such people over the cliff?
Night of the Long Knives.
They have chased people like you and I off, it’s time to clean house.
Meanwhile, the NUS have just voted in as President an anti-Semite who reportedly vetoed a motion condemning Isis as ‘islamophobic’…
One of the most striking aspects of left-wing activists is their propensity for turning on their own. When your only political weapon is criticism, is it any wonder that this is your response to every situation? As a result, even those one might think would be sympathetic to these activists — e.g., moderate progressives — eventually flee in repugnance at the hair-trigger intolerance.
. . . to trust and storysharing as tools toward . . .
. . . Storysharing?!?!?!?!?!
There’s nothing more devious and sinister than the white male. I mean, look at Kyle Ashlee, look at the BS he’ll spout in order to nail a hot Korean chick! And he’s even got her to take his name… Player!
. . . Storysharing?!?!?!?!?!
This is no s#it, there I was…
And he’s even got her to take his name… Player!
No, I was wrong, just as their name is wrong, horribly, horribly, wrong for any normal, sane people.
Mr. and Mrs. Ashlee have named themselves, Ashlee is from her Korean name initials, ASH, and his middle name, Lee. Ashley was also Mrs. Ashlee’s given middle (legal, non-Korean) name so Mr. Ashlee has transcended being beta and gone straight to omega.
Why I watched this, other than morbid curiosity, I am not sure, but here is the whole sordid explanation.
Recruiting the mentally ill to attack your enemies is a great tactic!
Why I watched this …
He has lovely smooth skin. As eunuchs do.
Storysharing?!?!?!?!?!
It’s presumably an extension of so-called “critical race theory.” Which, stripped of its pretensions, boils down to: “My stories and feelings – however ill-informed, wrong-headed or simply made-up – trump your arguments and evidence, which are merely another kind of story, because I’m not white, and therefore not evil.” And the essence of which is to steer the gullible away from critical thought and instead wallow in self-flattering emotion.
In a classroom setting or “safe space,” the idea is for listeners to be utterly deferential and supportive, regardless of what’s being said and regardless of how credulous one is expected to be. Attempts to see if a given story holds up logically or matches the available evidence are generally frowned upon, especially if the person doing this happens to be white, and may result in accusations of “privilege,” of “silencing,” and of “misappropriating” the storyteller’s “truth” and “pain.”
As a way of reinforcing existing conceits and ignoring inconvenient facts, and exploiting tribal thinking, you can see the appeal.
Loon gathering echo chambers, like the one described here, are great places for their excessive compulsive behaviours to reach their ultimate end goal of creating a vacuum where reason and reality cannot exist.
This unbridled moonbattery is best dramatized in the satirical song and dance number from Team America – every body has AIDs yeah yeah yeah – “Everybody is racist yeah yeah yeah ….everything is racist yeah yeah yeah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6szE_qmzavQ
. . . Storysharing?!?!?!?!?!
This is no s#it, there I was…
I never believed those stories in Penthouse Letters, but then…
No earthly force could untangle that kind of mental wreckage.
An entire pantheon of gods couldn’t do it.
Given that every human society eventually devolves into its own insanity, I wonder whether the Wrathful Old Testament God was a mercy killer rather than arbitrarily punitive.
SMOD 2016 — Because an extinction-level meteor event is exponentially better than where we’re headed under our own power.
… in order to nail a hot Korean chick …
She ain’t all that hot. Luna Lee is a lot hotter.
How much money was wasted by that conference? Who paid for it? I don’t want to go to any associated site to see the guilty in case I catch something.
Mr Sherman,
“he was a Caucasian, cis-male, heterosexual”.
Well there you go, damned from the get-go.
“Being late is telling someone else your time is more valuable than theirs. It’s disrespectful of others and just plain rude.”
Punctuality is the courtesy of kings.
Given that I’m a) white and b) massively intellectually superior to these window-lickers then yep, I guess I’m a white supremacist, faute de mieux.
If you’re going to attach labels to people, in bad faith, then don’t be too surprised if they decide to own them. I’m being ironic in the preceding paragraph (in case it wasn’t obvious), but at some point I might cease to be.
My grandparents spent some time in Communist Europe post WW2 and this sort of behaviout is exactly what they saw then
Posted by: Dan | April 20, 2016 at 08:37
It also occurred in the Communist Party of the USA around 1950. Dalton Trumbo got it. Dee Ron and Allis Radosh’s “Red Star Over Hollywood”. You can use Amazon’s “search inside”.
Also see Dorothy Healey, in “California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party”. Search Google Books for her last name and the phrase “white chauvinism”.
Liberal petard hoisting. Always a pleasure.
But I thought Communism was a beat-up and it was Senator McCarthy who was totally deluded and also evil? That’s what they taught me at school!
Everyone’s a little bit racist?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RovF1zsDoeM
Oh the whole Twitter thread relating to this conference fallout is a hilarious read.
But I thought Communism was a beat-up and it was Senator McCarthy who was totally deluded and also evil?
Ehn.
When right wing liberal, one claims that McCarthy is the saint and Stalin the evil monster.
When left wing liberal, one claims that Stalin is the saint and McCarthy the evil monster.
When conservative, one notes that both are the evil monsters, while also noting that Stalin’s situation and environment allowed him to rack up his pile of murders, where McCarthy’s situation and environment allowed him to destroy himself instead.
No earthly force could untangle that kind of mental wreckage.
An entire pantheon of gods couldn’t do it.
Well, if disagreement is instantly construed as proof of wrongdoing, and if further attempts to explain one’s position or to correct some faulty assumption are regarded as scandalous provocations, it’s hard to see how a realistic discussion could take place. Reading these tweets, and others by the attendees, I tried to imagine how I’d go about engaging with such people, how it might play out. But it’s almost as if the goal were to make realistic discussion as difficult and unrewarding as possible. A coincidence, I’m sure.
McCarthy was largely correct about the marxistic penetration of Hollywood. He handled matters badly. Considering the “storytellers” he was up against it is not surprising he ended up cast as the monster.
DiCentra is correct–this stuff is not a joke. The SJW dross are a massive danger to the future of us all. They must be purged from the Unis and the Red Guard scum likewise.
That’s not conservative, that’s retarded.
And that’s absurd. You’re dismissing millions of deaths and countless other crimes as “situation and environment” to pretend that a mega-murdering, government-toppling, country-annexing, genocidal despot is somehow the moral equivalent of a peaceful civil activist. I can object to McCarthy on choice of tactics, but it’s nonsense to call him an evil monster.
McCarthy stated that there was ongoing Communist subversion and worked to oppose it at a time when there was ongoing Communist subversion. For this he was destroyed, in no small part by Communist sympathizers. This doesn’t make him a saint, but it does qualify him for speaking truth to power. For an example of how high and far the subversion reached, consider for example Silvermaster.
And so there was a Communist agent overseeing US production, telling the Soviet Union what the US was producing and how much, thanks to the backing of other Communist agents in high places. Silvermaster, Currie, White, Golos, Perlo, Hiss – we have the records now, for the most part. We know about e.g. Communists at the Treasury smuggling printing plates to the Soviets so they could print American currency. We have the defectors like Bentley and Bezmenov describing the Communists’ attempted subversion and infiltration of everything they could put an agent in, from Hollywood to high school, with definite malicious intent.
What microbillionaire said. And bobby Kennedy was right by Joe all the way, to some extent rightly, yet avoided any of the scorn.
Regarding Evil, White, Racists, here’s one of the sadder testimonials I’ve seen (about 19 minutes long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAPKqjFeXxA
Meanwhile, further to this, the arrest of serial vandal and race-baiter Denzel McDonald has apparently caused uproar and searing mental trauma across campus, or at least among other pernicious little clowns in the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Afro-American Studies:
Because when the police calmly and politely arrest a black thug who’s wanted for threatening behaviour and 11 counts of vandalism, causing thousands of dollars of damage – specifically, spraying deranged anti-white racist graffiti on campus walls – the real victims here are, apparently, professors of Afro-American Studies.
“there are consequences for perpetuating white supremacy”
Not enthusiastically agreeing with these people all the time is apparently “perpetuating white supremacy”. Pretty cool, huh?
Meanwhile, further to this, the arrest of serial vandal and race-baiter Denzel McDonald has apparently caused uproar and searing mental trauma across campus, or at least among other pernicious little clowns in the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Afro-American Studies.
Perhaps ‘diversity’ isn’t a strength after all?
Storysharing?!?!?!?!?!
It’s presumably an extension of so-called “critical race theory.”
McCarthy . . . . was destroyed, in no small part by Communist sympathizers.
Heh!
Sooo, if we’re correctly understanding your claims, The Senate of The United States Of America was documented and well known for taking the direct orders of Stalin’s Kremlin . . . .
Ehn, No.
McCarthy will remain as he is and has been, an American analogue to the Soviet Stalin.
Ehn, No. McCarthy never killed anybody, outside of war that is. Stalin killed what? 20 million?
If you want an analogue to Joe McCarthy, witch hunts, and such, look no further than the special snowflakes falling all around. Which brings us right back in a nice circle to the beginnings. Ain’t life some kind of poetry?
McCarthy never killed anybody, outside of war that is.
??? The idea that he actually succeeded in getting anyone killed does look odd–And yes, apparently his own associates state he didn’t kill anyone at all . . .
Stalin killed what? 20 million?
Or something . . . so yes, being where he was, he could get that done. In America, McCarthy was limited to bullying, blustering, and being full of himself, thus being quite the useful idiot for his Eastern European analogues.—Beria just popped into mind, and since Beria was indeed in the USSR instead of safely in the US like McCarthy, he got shot . . .
If you want an analogue to Joe McCarthy, witch hunts, and such, look no further than the special snowflakes falling all around.
Bingo. Now imagine them continuing to be just like McCarthy, running for office so that they can carry on in some legislature just like McCarthy did . . . .
“Legislators would divert funds currently allocated to the Office of Diversity, “to minority scholarships for engineering students. ”
BWAHAHAhahaha…
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2016/04/19/senate-panel-votes-strip-university-tennessee-diversity-funds/83233434/
McCarthy stated that there was ongoing Communist subversion and worked to oppose it at a time when there was ongoing Communist subversion.
And how many of them did McCarthy uncover? If he had turned over dozens of actual spies, instead of ruining the lives of people who weren’t, he would be remembered fondly.
There were Communist agents at the time (probably still are) but it’s not like the FBI wasn’t looking for them. McCarthy’s public denouncements didn’t work, and didn’t help. (When you uncover a spy, it’s really quite important that you don’t blab about it initially, so that you can work him or her for a while.)
McCarthy was brought down because he was about to destroy the army as his next target. Starting a witch-hunt in the military is really not good, a public witch-hunt even worse. (Stalin’s “purge” of the army was a good reason Hitler was so successful in Operation Barbarossa.)
True, McCarthy didn’t kill anyone. But then he never got the chance. Other people saw him for the lunatic he was and chopped him off. I have no doubt that public executions would have been his thing, given half a chance.
@ Microbillionaire
McCarthy began his anti-Communist crusade purely to bolster his own electoral chances. His targets included men like George Marshall and Dean Acheson who did more to fight the Cold War against Communism and to protect the American people than Tail-Gunner Joe ever did. He smeared public servants for crimes they did not commit, and the end result was that he discredited a cause that was honourable through his opportunism and deceit.
Remember that story about the boy who cried wolf? That was Joe McCarthy, that was.
Yeah…so my OCD can’t leave this as is…
Yes, Joe McCarthy was a problem. Yes he was overzealous to a dangerous degree. But much similar can be said of the over reaction to the over reaction to the discovery of communists and communist sympathizers in some high positions in the US government. To turn the term “useful idiot” inside out to apply it to JMcC, while novel and amusing, distracts from the far wider, far more damaging useful idiots who blew the problem out of proportion. Most people who were both alive and of mature age from that time are now gone. But I recall studying this in school, in AP history. And I recall bringing the subject up with numerous older adults, besides my parents. It fascinated me how this subject was being emphasized in school to such a degree yet I had only started hearing of it then. While these older adults gave me some background on it and several thought JMcC had gone too far, not one of my parent’s friends, my scoutmaster, or others had the “crisis point in US history” view, the degree, that was being promulgated in my classroom or the news media at the time. Now granted this is my empirical perspective but at the time I wrote these older adults off, even the ones I suspected were Democrats, as the dumb ole conservative know-nothings that was the cultural perspective at the time. But as I got older, and with the ease of digging into numerous perspectives via the internet, I developed an appreciation for the times in which these events took place. Secrets on the bomb had been leaked to the Soviets. The Rosenbergs had been busted and executed. The Profumo scandal was not long after. There may not have been reds under the bed, but there were reds and they were serious.
Again, remember he wasn’t a totally loose cannon. He was, despite being a Republican, good friends with the staunchly anti-communist Kennedys. He was godfather to RFK’s first child. RFK quit working with him when he went too far, but there was a reason this process started out as bipartisan. And RFK refused to attack McCarthy when challenged to. This perspective is never brought up in the MSM and grandly glossed over in mainstream academia. But it’s there.
You are not. You are so far from understanding them that I am reminded of Clarke’s Corollary to Heinlein’s Razor: Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
I noted Communists in high places outside the Senate, and I said that there existed Communist sympathizers who worked against McCarthy.
From this you committed an Olympic-grade leap of logic to somehow mangle this into
To paraphrase Welch, have you no sense of intellectual honesty?
My claims concern the opposition to McCarthy – which overlaps with, but is not identical with, the Senate. One example of such might be the infamous See It Now program concerning Annie Lee Moss, speaking of which:
Moss, that supposed icon of injured innocence, turned out to be a Communist party member, and to have lied about this under oath. Got any other candidates for ruined lives you want to propose?
Moreover, I’m claiming fellow travelers, not just Party members.
Try Elizabeth Bentley’s story for another example of what’s going on. Bentley is not a devoted Communist. Bentley is a devoted Christian, and for a while she believes that Communism is doing Christian things, and supports Communism to oppose Fascism. Then she ceases to believe that Communism is doing Christian things, and ceases to believe that supporting Communism is a good way of opposing Fascism, and so defects. En route, she intertwines with a heck of a lot of Communists and Communist sympathizers.
Or consider the “alternative explanation” Wikipedia mentions in its account of how the Soviets ended up with American treasury plates:
Rewording that last part slightly: ‘The Soviet Union demanded American Treasury plates, and American government officials thought that keeping the Soviet Union happy was important enough to go along with this.’
Summing up, there’s a spectrum of explanation here. At one end, you believe that the American government was riddled with treacherous spies, and at the other end, you believe that the American government was riddled with non-spies who just happened to think that giving the murderous Communist regime everything it wanted was somehow good for America. But the fact remains that when the Soviets said “Jump”, the American governing structure went weak at the knees.
To what degree the pinkos were powered by the pay of the Kremlin or by unpaid idealism is beside the point.
The single most shocking thing I’ve heard on the BBC (I know, stiff competition, especially if you take an interest in its climate coverage) was a Radio 4 programme where a group of BBC types looked back on some historical event – in this case the unmasking of Anthony Blunt as a Soviet agent. Granted, Brian Sewell was present (and I can forgive him for being loyal to his friend), but the rest were unable to utter a single syllable in condemnation of his treachery. Not one word.
Treason which extended back into the time of the Nazi-Soviet pact, when the Soviet Union was actively supporting the German war effort and communist union leaders were actively working against our own.
Those who were communists (in the US just as much as anywhere else) when Stalin was on the throne were Stalin’s agents: each and every one of them. Some were used by the Soviets, some were not: but they were all available.
Stalin: you might be a bad person when the number of people you’ve murdered is most often rounded off by the tens of millions.
Stalin: you might be a bad person when the number of people you’ve murdered is most often rounded off by the tens of millions.
Ooooohhhhh. That comment isn’t good, that comment is excellent.
Have a couple of pieces of David’s cake.
“Fellow travelling” has never been illegal.
Nor should it ever be. Freedom of thought is a tenet of liberalism (small L) worth fighting for.
Belonging to illegal organisations is illegal. Selling out your country is illegal regardless of political affiliation. Traitors should be hunted out and punished mercilessly.
But there is no decency in witch-hunts for “wrong thought”. It’s disgraceful when the SJWs do it, and it was disgraceful when McCarthy did it.
I don’t care that Communism is a plague on humanity. Everyone has the right to go about their business regardless of what I think, provided they stay inside the law.
“Fellow travelling” has never been illegal.
Nor should it ever be. Freedom of thought is a tenet of liberalism (small L) worth fighting for.
Nor is anyone here saying it should be, unless I missed it. Nor was such the focus of JMcC efforts. He was trying to root out communists in the State Department, Army, and elsewhere in the US government. AGAIN, he certainly went overboard which has been stated in the comments here several times. One could work for the government without swearing that they were not be a member of the communist party, nor any organization that advocates the violent overthrow of the United States and its constitutional form of government. I signed an oath stating such several times well into the 1980’s to apply for jobs even outside of government in critical industries such as electric power and such. If you were a communist and you were working in the US government you were a subversive. Outside of government, I don’t think there was ever a law forbidding people from being communists. There was, and still is I think, a Communist Party USA.
That shoul read “One could not work for the government…”
WTP: Microbillionaire appears to be saying that Joe McCarthy was on the right track, because even if some people had not actually committed any offences that they were fair game for a hunt because their political opinions were wrong. (He said “Moreover, I’m claiming fellow travelers, not just Party members.”)
Outside of government, I don’t think there was ever a law forbidding people from being communists.
No law maybe, but the Hollywood “blacklist” wasn’t deemed illegal. And the US government “investigated” Hollywood for communist subversion as if it was.
I read Micro-b’s comments a little more nuanced than that, but I’ll leave him to clarify if necessary. As for the Hollywood blacklist, the House Un-American Activities Committee was responsible for that. Again, a bipartisan group that did its own damage but also uncovered a number of communists in government. But JMcC was a senator. He never served in the HoR.
And again, for all the faults of the anti-Reds, and they are numerous, they pale in comparison to the damage that communism has done. The very fact that we, on a conservative leaning, rather staunchly anti-communist and anti-socialist site are tying ourselves in knots over this is really quite telling on how deeply such socialist propaganda has poisoned rational political discussion.
“Bedlamites” is an apropos tag for these neo-jocobin creatures but not strong enough nor indicative of the perfidy that drives their motivation.
Anyone sick enough to disavow (read; betray) their race, culture and heritage of democracy,freedom and prosperity, is demented enough to take others with them on their political/cultural suicide attempt. This is why they align with west-hating radicals of Islam – a fanatic tag team effort to deconstruct western liberal pluralistic democracy.
This latest hatch of western communists haven’t the ethical or moral passion that drove their progenitors to treason – theirs is a sickness of soul and misanthropic malevolence only military intervention will cure.
Make no mistake, these are revolutionary weapons grade commies, not the buffoons you would like to think, and if you ignore them you will certainly end up fighting them to keep your country free.
I didn’t mean being a fellow traveler was illegal, I meant that people who did illegal Communist-supporting things – like treason – did them for reasons of both being fellow travelers and being Party members.