Further to the recent, eye-widening exchange between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman, Conor Friedersdorf on scandalous paraphrasing:
In the interview, Newman relies on this technique [of perverse rephrasing] to a remarkable extent, making it a useful illustration of a much broader pernicious trend. Peterson was not evasive or unwilling to be clear about his meaning. And Newman’s exaggerated restatements of his views mostly led viewers astray, not closer to the truth… One of the most important things this interview illustrates — one reason it is worth noting at length — is how Newman repeatedly poses as if she is holding a controversialist accountable, when in fact, for the duration of the interview, it is she that is “stirring things up” and “whipping people into a state of anger.”
Fabian Tassano on “critical thinking”:
It is interesting that the scholars feel able to announce in advance, on behalf of their own students, and the students of other history tutors at Oxford, a decision on whether students will engage with the [Ethics and Empire] project. One might think that the ability to “think critically” would include openness to ideas from heterodox perspectives, as well as the capacity to decide for oneself, independently of one’s tutors, whether a source of information is worthy of consideration. One has to remember, however, that the word “critical” may have a special technical meaning in the context of the humanities.
Via Claire Lehmann, Kerryn Pholi on Aboriginal taboos:
Those who mourn the demise of Aboriginal culture almost always regard things from the viewpoint of the men, who were indeed dispossessed of their land, and subsequently their traditions and status. Land wasn’t the only item of property they lost, however. They also lost or traded their women to the settlers, and this absorption – along with frontier warfare and disease – rapidly eroded tribal structures and doomed Aboriginal traditions to obsolescence. The settlers arrived with a wealth of goods and a shortage of females, and they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture… The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain.
And Joe Katzman on leftism as a never-ending status game:
Do you have any doubt about the left’s hatred for those who will not stay in their assigned status? Have you noticed their quickness to turn on their own allies? Fail to follow the latest fad, and your status is demoted. Perhaps you’ve noticed that endlessly callous virtue signalling is the identifying badge of our modern try-hard Striver Class. Maybe that’s because American public education is now a 20-year Milgram Experiment, where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favour of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status. These aren’t accidents. They’re clues.
Very much related, the second item here.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
JP talks about the interview here:
https://youtu.be/TK2-xYyNpYk
Our host has linked to Penthouse. 🙂
Our host has linked to Penthouse. 🙂
Heh. I swear I only realised after earmarking the article. Blimey, what are the odds?
Tassano’s observations combined with Katzman’s thoughts on Leftism as a “positional good,” where value comes from scarcity explain the lunacy displayed at “Real Peer Review” often discussed on these pages, not to mention the SJW tendency to mine ever deeper into what constitutes the “problematic” in otherwise rather prosaic human interaction.
tendency to mine ever deeper into what constitutes the “problematic” in otherwise rather prosaic human interaction.
The theatrical agonising – over everything from barbecues to cupcakes to spellcheck software – is very competitive and presumably exhausting. Perhaps that explains the chronic sourness of those who indulge in it.
I just want to note for the record and in case my lovely, long-suffering wife of 30 years checks the browser history, I read the Pholi link but did not click on the “Girls” tab.
Carry on.
JP talks about the interview here
The notion of women as faultless, omnicompetent beings who are cruelly oppressed is most vividly undermined by the feminists who advance it.
they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture
But, but…I was told that such violence was a product of conquest and oppression by the evil white capitalists. I’m so confused. 🙂
…and presumably exhausting.
If your views are untethered, and a response to an outward community within which you have to signal your correctness and pieties, it must be a constant strain, looking around to see where the next pitfall is, checking you get the thumbs up and haven’t strayed.
In the JP/CN interview you can see that CN is mouthing the pieties regardless of what JP says – she is playing the role for her community – whereas JP’s views have been thought through and he is vastly more tethered as a result. I think that’s why, when someone is red-pilled, it’s usually on one specific truth, but that then leads to another, and another, and the house of cards collapses. Whereas if, for example, it was somehow proved that yes, actually the majority reason for women not being in the FTSE top 100 was a secret patriarchal cabal who deliberately excluded women, JP could update his facts, accept it, condemn it, adjust his other beliefs to accommodate, and move on.
This constant adjustment of the mental gyroscope in reaction to the need for ever more exclusive positional goods must hurt at some level. Not just the constant strain, also the bafflement you must feel if you’ve always played the game, e.g. as a good feminist, suddenly to find you’re a Nazi because of your views on trans. We’re back to the Communist flip in WW2, and we have always been at war with Eastasia.
…a secret patriarchal cabal who deliberately excluded women…
We meet at 7:30 PM on the third Wednesday of every month in the Fellowship Hall of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, Benkelman, Nebraska. BYOB. Set-ups provided. (The Patriarchy Ladies’ Auxiliary usually provides a pot-luck supper, unless their quilting interferes.)
… where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favour of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status.
We can always learn from other Cultures.
The theatrical agonising – over everything from barbecues to cupcakes to spellcheck software – is very competitive and presumably exhausting. Perhaps that explains the chronic sourness of those who indulge in it.
“You’re not reading that incorrectly: If someone posts a sign advertising a women’s group and colors it pink, then Williams College wants you to report that to the school’s anti-bias squad, which will then take all appropriate action.”
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/41007/
#NeurosisIsTheNewBlack
“Conor Friedersdorf on scandalous paraphrasing”
I was about to draw your attention to that piece myself.
Spot-on. And of course, as we’ve heard, she’s still at it.
I noticed that Friedersdorf’s tweet publicizing it calls this “twisting [of] words to make people look like extremist monsters” “a new trend in public discourse”. Oh no, it’s not new. Not by a long chalk. Remember Enoch Powell? Or Barry Goldwater? (And if you think either actually was an extremist monster, that just shows how powerful the technique used to be.) It’s just that in the internet age, people watching these interviews aren’t sitting at home asking themselves, “Is it just me… ?” They’re asking other people all over the world and realising that it absolutely isn’t.
“they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture”
No, no. That can’t be right. White man bad.
That.
That.
If you like that, there’s more here. A sort of devil’s dictionary for modern times, and well worth reading.
I’ve not heard of this Katzman – is his position similar to Kristian Niemietz’s, which I’ve linked to here before? It’d be interesting to see if this is something economists have cmmented upon independently.
Gotta find that pea under all those mattresses or you’re not a princess after all.
The theatrical agonising is very competitive and presumably exhausting.
At least in Versailles, the pecking order was well established, and fashions changed at a pace where one had at least a prayer of keeping up. Life in the Clown Quarter today is Versailles at high speed, with each of the inmates vying for their turn at playing Louis XIV and forcing the newest fad on all the courtiers.
Now I’m half-tempted to re-cast Dangerous Liaisons and insert our favorite Clown Quarter All-Stars into appropriate roles…
One has to remember, however, that the word “critical” may have a special technical meaning in the context of the humanities.
That. And those in the humanities no longer recognize or understand the word as described by Tassano.
Dear Penthouse,
I never thought this would happen to me. I was typing away at my blog, found an interesting link, and it serendipitously turned out to be to your fine publication!
The only thing that would improve Penthouse would be a culinary column on blowtorch cooking. I happen to live with an incineratory chef and would be delighted to write such a column.
A Far Side cartoon that may be apposite to the aboriginal culture article:

Also, I denounce myself.
Blimey, what are the odds?
Personal growth. 🙂
With white male homosexuals having already been shifted to the problematic column, it is time for white women to start moving across. http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/news-features/we-need-to-talk-about-the-womens-march-20180123-h0mpvw.html
I think intersectional should be rebranded as fractious, factional, splintered, or exclusionary. I wouldn’t care about these people except they get space in the media to spread their nonsense and there is an excess of so called academics who get paid a lot more than I do to produce nothing but harm.
I know someone doing a phd in anthropology who is a fairly conservative white heterosexual male who was a very successful businessman. The very picture of patriarchy. I’d pay to see him defend his thesis against the department. He said he loves the subject, just wishes it was part of a different department.
Personal growth. 🙂
You wish.
From David Taylor’s link:
In what may be assumed to have been a warped show of solidarity, someone put a “pink pussy hat” atop the statue of Harriet Tubman, black abolitionist and anti-slavery resistance heroine.
That would be Harriet Tubman, the gun-toting Republican.
Governor Squid:
“Life in the Clown Quarter today is Versailles at high speed….
More like “Versailles ON speed”.
My impression was that Cathy Newman was following the classic progressive technique of creating prepackaged arguments that “destroy” right wing nuts but she didn’t bother to try the arguments out on anyone who didn’t already agree with her. I regularly see these “if someone says x then destroy them by saying y!” on Facebook. They often involve question begging.
On a completely un-related note, Honorable Chinese(?) Woman cooks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoC47do520os_4DBMEFGg4A/videos?disable_polymer=1
The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain.
Many years ago, when I had more time to browse libraries, I ran across an anthropologist’s account of his sojourn with an Amazonian tribe. Rape of unmarried girls was common and accepted. He described the despair on the face of a young girl as she was dragged off into the bushes.
pst314,
Was that Napoleon Chagnon? Whether he was telling the unvarnished truth or exaggerating (or much worse), his work has been thoroughly denounced as rayciss lying lies by the social justice wing of academic anthropology.
New York Times Magazine, 2013
Here in the Dominion of Canada, we had much mau-mauing over the need for an inquiry into why so many indigenous women go missing or end up dead (statistically, they don’t any more than white women in the same areas; it’s a regional poverty issue).
The inquiry quietly wound down last year when it became impossible to massage the numbers to hide that the reason so many indigenous women go missing or are murdered is indigenous men.
Davos jargon: A crime against the English language?
>Also, I denounce myself.
Too late, Sporkatus. Your name and misdeeds have already been given to the authorities by me. (Had to save myself somehow.)
Have you noticed their quickness to turn on their own allies? Fail to follow the latest fad, and your status is demoted.
By way of a timely illustration, pop artiste Taylor Swift has apparently gone from feminist-approved empowered ladyperson to enemy of the revolution. It seems she failed to attend the so-called Women’s March, which is apparently mandatory, and only tweeted her “respect” for those who did. (Quite why one should respect a dumb, narcissistic clown-show of people waving demented placards and mouthing conspiracy theories, and leaving the usual mountain of garbage for someone else to clean up, is another matter.)
I believe the last time this happened was last year, when Ms Swift publicly encouraged her fans to vote, but didn’t specify a candidate. This terrible sin was compounded by her comment: “I don’t think that I know enough yet in life to be telling people who to vote for.”
And we mustn’t forget this instructive episode. Because the scolding must never end.
pst314, Was that Napoleon Chagnon?
No, although I don’t remember who specifically.
Professor Bret Weinstein of Evergreen College fame, attended a speech by constitutional lawyer Adam Levine at his old school on the subject of free speech – or rather how to legally prevent free speech. He wasn’t impressed:
http://twitter.com/BretWeinstein/status/956090689648984064
via Yeyo
or rather how to legally prevent free speech.
It reminded me of this:
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1980.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a truly great man.
There’s this too:
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure,”
Thomas Jefferson.
I just hope we can effect change in the West without having to spill actual blood.
If you like that, there’s more here. A sort of devil’s dictionary for modern times…
Here also is some help for translating leftist to English.
The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain.
“Trump is right ..”
Adam Levine…on…how to legally prevent free speech
From the link:
“Some ideas, he argued, don’t deserve protection. Those are the ones we get to bar.”
Levine may not realize it, but he is begging to be subjected to the sorts of totalitarian laws that he espouses.
What I did witness every day was that women were worked half to death
A friend witnessed that in the Middle East: Arab men lounging around while women labored all day at home and in the fields…and were often supervised by little boys whose only function was to watch them and make sure they did not slack off.
Africa is… different.
http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/?p=6529
Americans think it is a universal human instinct to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s not. It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture.
This.
“It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture.”
“Revert to the mean” is not just an investor term and “regression toward the mean” is not just a statistical term.
“Mean” can mean many things, I mean.
Yes, but do you really mean that?
…his work has been thoroughly denounced as…
In Before the Dawn Nicholas Wade writes a fair bit about the amount of covering-up that goes on in the fields of anthropology and archeology.
One interesting story of a researcher who did not do this goes thus: The man was studying African Bushmen, who never seem able to gather in significant numbers unless some non-Bushman tribe is present to enforce their own rules on behavior. Out of the blue the researcher got it into his head to ask the about half a dozen Bushman males he was sitting with whether any of them had ever killed a man. Nearly all of them responded that they had. Taken aback by this he asked them why they had killed others.
Their answers were all much the same: Because he made me angry!
It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture.
Actually it’s because we live in countries created by, built by and, up until recently, entirely inhabited by people of Northwest European origin. For which I’m thankful every day.
Africa is… different.
“The renewed efforts of the Niger State police command to rid the state of criminal elements may have started yielding results, following the discovery of a severed head of a few months old baby girl in a polythene [bag]in possession of a young man suspected to be one of the arrow-heads of a syndicate that specialises in using human parts for ritual purposes in parts of the state.”
I had been assured by reliable bien pensants that pagans did not do that sort of thing, and that those who said they did were slanderous slandering slanderers.