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Yes, an open thread. In which to share links and bicker.
I’ll set the ball rolling with some augmented reality and an offer of possible interest.
Oh, and your weekly reminder that members of Antifa are just like normal people and in no way unhinged or likely to be afflicted with quite serious personality disorders.
[ Added, via the comments: ]As I’ve said before, Antifa is not so much a political movement as a metastasising personality disorder, a Cluster B contagion. Which is to say, I think the root motive is psychological – a desire to do harm to other people, to cow, obstruct, frighten and assault, while feeling important and, via mob coercion, powerful. The politics, such as it is, is largely a pretext, a focus, a convenient excuse. Which would explain why its glaring idiocies, routine inaccuracies and inversions of reality do nothing to impede participants, and why the victims of Antifa aggression include disabled old ladies trying to use a pedestrian crossing. And who find themselves being gleefully harassed, physically intimidated and screamed at as “Nazi scum.”
A less deranged person might register the optics of such behaviour, the nakedly opportunist sociopathy. Menacing little old ladies, because you can – and hey, why not? - is a strange expression of “social justice” or “anti-fascism” or “resistance” or whatever. But the creatures typically drawn to Antifa, which include an extraordinary concentration of resentful misfits and the mentally unwell, are enjoying themselves far too much to care. The screeching, thuggery and harassment isn’t principled or political so much as compulsive and recreational. They do it because they enjoy it, because they want to, and because it makes them feel powerful.
It’s worth bearing in mind that while dogmatic morony is commonplace, not least among Antifa and leftist student agitators in general, many of the participants are choosing to believe, or pretend to believe, whatever it is that offers opportunities to behave in threatening, controlling or antisocial ways. Facts are not a priority and are often actively avoided.
And so, for instance, Charles Murray is attacked by a mob and denounced as “sexist,” “racist,” “anti-gay” and a “white nationalist.” By people who boast of having never read his books. As even the briefest use of Google would reveal, Murray married a Thai woman while in the Peace Corps, has mixed-race children, has tutored inner-city black children for free, and was an early advocate of gay marriage – hardly the most obvious markers of a supposedly anti-gay white nationalist.
There are several video clips of Antifa ‘activists’ and other leftist delinquents harassing people and accusing them of various, lurid, quite particular sins, only for their targets to explain how impossible that would be – say, by not being anywhere near the site of the alleged sin at the time it supposedly occurred – and for the accuser to promptly reply, with a grin, that it doesn’t matter whether the accusation is true or not – and then immediately resuming their harassment. As one Antifa member put it, “Oh, yeah, I just fucking made it up, ‘cause I can make shit up if I want.” For devotees and opportunist LARPers alike, any pretext will do, any baseless accusation, even outright lies.
That’s who they are.
It’s a ball of malice with delusions of grandeur.
I suspect everyone’s seen this by now, but if not, today’s word is oikophobia.
I Teach At Oxford, But I Don’t Want It To Win The Coronavirus Vaccine Race
Bear with me here as I may very well be drifting into crazy talk (yet again) but if she teaches at Oxford yet apparently doesn’t want it to be successful, perhaps…and hear me out on this…perhaps, especially as the teaching she does is in the Anger Studies domain, perhaps she’s only at Oxford with the intention of dragging that institution down? As a Yank, I’m not culturally attuned to university rivalries as they are manifested in the UK as ours tend to stick to football and other sports that are rumored to exist. But as I understand it, in the UK there is some significant rivalry twixt Oxford and Cambridge at the least. Maybe she’s a Cambridge plant? Surely after an article like this, in a sane world anyway, she should get the boot.
members of Antifa are just like normal people
And again, antifa people demonstrating the exact sort of behavior that is perfectly in line with fascism. My shocked face.
oikophobia
I’m still not convinced it isn’t a parody. But who can tell at this stage. I feel like I’m living in a dystopian novel. As far as I can tell, the coronaplague is not significantly worse than a bad cold, but the entire Western hemisphere has been shut down at the hysterical hectoring of a media and progressive elite who have repeatedly demonstrated their utter hatred of said hemisphere. Coincidence?
perhaps she’s only at Oxford with the intention of dragging that institution down?
No, we can be confident that she wants to drag down the West in the name of “global equity” and “gender equality”. That’s how these people think.
@WTP from what I gather she’s at Oxford something something uni, i.e. not at THE Oxford Uni as she desperately and signally wants to fool everyone into thinking. I believe she is also one of those who calls herself a Doctor because she has a PhD in some Arsewit Study.
As far as I can tell, the coronaplague is not significantly worse than a bad cold. . .
. . . only if your version of a bad cold also involves sufficient levels of blood clotting to cause strokes and other varieties of embolism, after first not being particuarly noticable for a good two weeks to so, so that you and all around you are left with no idea who was the local party pooper . . .
…antifa people demonstrating the exact sort of behavior that is perfectly in line with fascism.
FTFY:
…antifa people demonstrating the exact sort of behavior that is perfectly in line with
fascismcommunism.the coronaplague is not significantly worse than a bad cold
Wuhan Bat Soup cooties are, yes, worse than a cold. And worse than the “regular” influenzas that run though the world each fall … but not as much as the hysterics imposing house-arrest would have people believe.
As antibody tests are increasing it appears that past infection in the population at large is far, far greater than first believed. In Los Angeles County a random antibody test indicates 200K-400K people have already had the infection — 55x what has been previously believed. That drops the deathrate for the county from 4.5% to 0.1% – 0.3%.
Still higher than flu, but not as high as MERS or SARS.
only if your version of a bad cold also involves sufficient levels of blood clotting to cause strokes and other varieties of embolism
More scaremongering, based on anecdotal reports of a sample size I can count on one hand.
FTFY
Fascism/communism is simply a matter of scope. Fascism is nationalism taken to extreme. Communism is internationalism. Same folly, though.
As antibody tests are increasing it appears that past infection in the population at large is far, far greater than first believed.
I keep getting this feeling that I’m the only one who read the Diamond Princess study. And that was about 2 months ago now.
I keep getting this feeling that I’m the only one who read the Diamond Princess study.
You are not, and if you want another ship, all the Sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt were tested, 833 positive, 4105 negative, 2 in hospital, 0 in ICU, 0 deaths. Of course that reinforces the observation that in the young and generally healthy the disease is less severe, and if anyone is curious, just plain flu is a risk factor for strokes as well.
Maybe because, LARPing aside, they are still women.
I’m the only one who read the Diamond Princess study.
Nope. Just adding more data. I wasn’t particularly surprised by the USC study, but it is amazing how it is reported as if suspicions haven’t been raised before.
Same folly, though.
Well in so far as influenza and meningitis are both bad and can potentially kill you, yes; but you have to correctly identify the disease before you can treat it.
Same folly, though.
It goes beyond Nationalism and Internationalism. Mao and Stalin also used Nationalism as a tool when they needed to. Antifa are the tactical embodiment of an authoritarian need to control the broader population by fear and violence. They are both Brown Shirts and Red Guards, but their primary motivation comes from control and adherence to a single belief system (whatever that may be) managed by an overarching power.
“We’re all in this together”.
More scaremongering, based on anecdotal reports of a sample size I can count on one hand.
My buddy working at a lab that is studying the virus still cautions that it is “nothing to fuck with”. The percentage of people it kills or causes lasting damage to may be low, but it remains one of the most unpredictable nasties he has seen in decade of working with very nasty things indeed.
@Farnsworth: I wish this were true. The number of positives from the USS Theodore Roosevelt is still climbing, currently at 840. A total of 8 of those needed treatment in the hospital, and one died. (Only two remain in hospital, as of 24 April, so hopefully there will be no more deaths.) This is a very aggressive attack rate, given that all of the infections happened in one month and all of the people involved were young (the average age was under 30) and had no preexisting conditions. (Similar stories are coming out of the Charles De Gaulle, from the French navy, FWIW.)
By comparison, the “average” flu infection rates would be 3-20% (spread over 4-5 months). Hospitalization rates for people 18-45, including people with serious preexisting conditions, is around 0.1%, and a death rate of 0.02%. So, a group of 840 people (18-45) randomly selected from the population, you’d expect maybe one hospitalization, and very unlikely that that person would actually die. So, this is roughly 8-10 times worse than flu, which was itself one of our most significant infectious diseases (in the first world).
This isn’t the end of the world, but it’s also very definitely NOT the flu. For example, the population-wide death rates in New York are running about four times higher than last year, right now. That’s not the Black Death, but it’s also something quite significant, quite a lot of lives lost that didn’t need to be.
Same folly in regard to centralized planning. As to both will kill you, depends on who you are. With nationalist fascism, a rather intrinsic extension of tribalism, so long as you are on the right team, and stay that way, you will for the most part be ok. And fascism for all its many, many faults may, depending on the stripe, at some point leave you alone. Communism however is far more interested in creating a New Man out of not just you, but the more and more it fails, the whole bleeding world. Like the C.S. Lewis quote about preference for living under robber barons rather than moral busybodies.
And yes Mao and Stalin used nationalism because, basically, internationalism even fails at being much of an -ism. But that (supposedly) wasn’t what they were aiming for.
Back to my ignorant Yank understanding of colleges in the UK, wife and I were discussing this and this came up. Let’s say for example you attended Exeter at Oxford, would you feel a significant kinship to some other random college at Oxford over anyone at Cambridge? Or perhaps more kinship to Exeter’s sister college at Cambridge (and I of course had to look this up) Emmanuel? Or being such high brow intellectuals is one above all that (and thus deep, deep down hating those Emmanuel SOB’s like the dirty vermin they are and knowing you’re really, really torturing their dirty little souls by pretending otherwise)?
@Farnsworth: I wish this were true.
The Navy seems to think it is.
This is a very aggressive attack rate…
Considering living conditions on an aircraft carrier, not really.
…all of the people involved were young (the average age was under 30) and had no preexisting conditions.
The one reported to have died was 41, and unless you have direct access to medical records, you have no idea whether any had preexisting conditions (e.g., per the MANMED one could have hypertension on more than three meds with waiver). Comparing hospitalization rates (or nigh any rates) of the crew of a ship (or prison, or any other confined population) to the real world is like comparing apples to jackhammers.
No one said it is the just plain flu, but using an obvious outlier as NYC as a basis of evaluation (even for the civilized parts of the state) is simply wrong, if you look at overall mortality rates in the civilized states, any increase from COVID is essentially indistinguishable from background noise (e.g., South Dakota with 10 deaths, Texas with 10 million people more than NY state, 623).
The aggregate case fatality rate in the US stands at 5.6, throw out NYC metro, 3.3. As the serological testing is showing, even in NY metro, the final case fatality rate (all ages) is looking as if it is going to be between 0.1 and 0.3, with the average year just plain flu at 0.15 for comparison. According to the CDC (I know) the US is only at 96% of expected annual deaths (all causes), so yeah, far from the the Black Plague and Siege of Leningrad rolled into one people seem to want it to be.
Back to my ignorant Yank understanding of colleges in the UK, wife and I were discussing this and this came up. Let’s say for example you attended Exeter at Oxford, would you feel a significant kinship to some other random college at Oxford over anyone at Cambridge?
Definitely. The thing is, Cambridge people are all totally inferior, or they’d have gone to Oxford. (They’ve never got over the fact that we were founded first.) And while colleges are important, and there’s some rivalry between them, university loyalty is paramount.
Or perhaps more kinship to Exeter’s sister college at Cambridge (and I of course had to look this up) Emmanuel?
To be honest, there are plenty of people who haven’t a clue what their ‘sister college’ is. (I’m one of them…) In my day, there was very little communication between them, and I’m not sure how much there is even now. There’s a fair amount of visiting, but I think it’s more societies and sports than ‘sister’ exchanges. (My oldest son, for instance, who was secretary of the Oxford Maths Society for a couple of years, visited their Cambridge counterpart several times. I know he also played pool against a Cambridge team, but I’m not certain whether it was or wasn’t a ‘sister’ college to Queen’s, where he was at that point.)
Or being such high brow intellectuals is one above all that (and thus deep, deep down hating those Emmanuel SOB’s like the dirty vermin they are and knowing you’re really, really torturing their dirty little souls by pretending otherwise)?
Definitely no hatred, but a certain amount of (affected) contempt! It’s a bit of a sham, really. What is real is a belief, conscious or unconscious, that Oxbridge people are cleverer than everyone else, and an assumption (entirely unjustified) that they’re worthier to run the universe than the rest of humanity. Oxford graduates and Cambridge graduates feel closer to each other than they do to all those lower-class types with degrees from Manchester, Leeds or the University of East Anglia. (Though arts graduates still have a sneaking respect for Imperial College science types – like MIT in your country.)
That’s not the Black Death, but it’s also something quite significant, quite a lot of lives lost that didn’t need to be.
Once the Chinese let it out in decent amounts, there was nothing but mitigation left. We have no vaccine and no cure, so in most of the world there’s no stopping it.
Current efforts are shifting the deaths in terms of when and who, but that’s all.
We are all dust in the end.
@WTP from what I gather she’s at Oxford something something uni, i.e. not at THE Oxford Uni as she desperately and signally wants to fool everyone into thinking. I believe she is also one of those who calls herself a Doctor because she has a PhD in some Arsewit Study.
Correct on the first count: she’s at Oxford Brookes, the erstwhile Oxford School of Art, that became a “university” in 1992. So saying she’s at Oxford is rather like saying my dog is a Harvard graduate because he attended Harvard Obedience School.
Semi-correct on the second count, too. From the Oxford Brookes website: “Emily lectures in Politics at Oxford Brookes and is the Founder of the Free School of Critical Feminisms, an intimate feminist summer school that charges no fees. Prior to joining Oxford Brookes, Emily completed both her BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and MA in Women’s Studies at the University of Oxford.”
Drawing a discreet veil over the precise import of the phrase an intimate feminist summer school, the summer school would be a good bet to be an example that you get what you pay for.
From the HuffPo follow-up: “To all those in the comments and on Twitter angrily pointing out that Oxford Brookes is not part of the University of Oxford, she teaches at the actual University of Oxford, where she obtained a degree and is now also studying for a PhD at Oxford Brookes.”
So … no Ph.D. (or D. Phil., as the degree is called at Oxford). She’s teaching at the University of Oxford … as a graduate student.
In short, she has precisely zero qualifications to weigh in on this vaccine issue, unless you count obnoxiousness and a big mouth as qualifications.
In my day, there was very little communication between them, and I’m not sure how much there is even now.
My understanding was that Cambridge was founded by disaffected dons at Oxford who intentionally decamped to a place that was difficult to get to from Oxford. It at least used to be easier to travel between them by way of London (i.e., well off a direct route) than to travel directly between them over a patchwork of B roads.
The number of positives from the USS Theodore Roosevelt is still climbing, currently at 840.
Alas. If only the US military had training to mitigate against Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear warfare. (Sweet Jesus, it was NBC in my day; I guess someone finally fucking read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_Unsatisfactory to see that you don’t have to pop a bomb to kill people.)
Well well well … look what the archives coughed up.
Speaking of Antifa.
Also, “stalking, for social justice” and “deeply ill people with nothing else going on in their lives.”
Sounds about right.
As I’ve said before, Antifa is not so much a political movement as a metastasising personality disorder, a Cluster B contagion.
Which is to say, I think the root motive is psychological – a desire to do harm to other people, to cow, obstruct, frighten and assault, while feeling important and, via mob coercion, powerful. The politics, such as it is, is largely a pretext, a focus, a convenient excuse. Which would explain why its glaring idiocies, routine inaccuracies and inversions of reality do nothing to impede participants, and why the victims of Antifa aggression include disabled old ladies trying to use a pedestrian crossing. And who find themselves being gleefully harassed, physically intimidated and screamed at as “Nazi scum.”
A less deranged person might register the optics of such behaviour, the nakedly opportunist sociopathy. Menacing little old ladies, because you can – and hey, why not? – is a strange expression of “social justice” or “anti-fascism” or “resistance” or whatever. But the creatures typically drawn to Antifa, which include an extraordinary concentration of resentful misfits and the mentally unwell, are enjoying themselves far too much to care. The screeching, thuggery and harassment isn’t principled or political so much as compulsive and recreational. They do it because they enjoy it, because they want to, and because it makes them feel powerful.
members of Antifa are just like normal people and in no way unhinged or likely to be afflicted with quite serious personality disorders.
I am only asking this since I’ve been caught out once before by a Diane Abbott parody account, but – and while not in anyway disagreeing that real members of Antifa are clearly deranged – are we sure this account was real?
Like why does it say “closely matches the description of” when photo and video of Andy Ngo are widely available at the click of a button?
Even with his head turned to one side, surely no one could possibly mistake that man for Andy Ngo? (Unless it was a Titania McGrath style parody where the point was to show that people obsessed with racism are, unsurprisingly, often profoundly and unironically racist).
And “I will detain him for questioning” almost sounds a bit too ironic to be true – even for, as I wholeheartedly agree, a groupuscule that is less “a political movement” and more “a metastasising personality disorder, a Cluster B contagion.”
are we sure this account was real?
Given the lunacies we’ve seen, and their knack for the casually sinister, it’s hard to tell.
Emily completed both her BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics
Now there’s a shock.
I suggest that Oxford has done more damage to Britain by instituting this godawful “degree” then ever the Cambridge Five did by handing secrets to the Russians.
Antifa is not so much a political movement as a metastasising personality disorder, a Cluster B contagion.
I would resist the temptation to medicalise these phenomena. These aren’t decent people in need of pills and therapy.
As a wise man once said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13CSWRyaAgA
These aren’t decent people in need of pills and therapy.
Indeed. My point being that there is no practical or political concession, no indulgence, that would minimise their delinquency and malevolent behaviour. Even if one were to instantly defer on an indefinite basis, new hoops to jump through would soon be discovered, or conjured into being. The power game, the psychodrama, must never end. And any concession, any attempt to appease, will merely encourage more of the same.
Somewhat related.
These aren’t decent people in need of pills and therapy.
It’s worth bearing in mind that while dogmatic morony is commonplace, not least among Antifa and leftist student agitators in general, many of the participants are choosing to believe, or pretend to believe, whatever it is that offers opportunities to behave in threatening, controlling or antisocial ways. Facts are not a priority and are often actively avoided.
And so, for instance, Charles Murray is attacked by a mob and denounced as “sexist,” “racist,” “anti-gay” and a “white nationalist.” By people who boast of having never read his books. As even the briefest use of Google would reveal, Murray married a Thai woman while in the Peace Corps, has mixed-race children, has tutored inner-city black children for free, and was an early advocate of gay marriage – hardly the most obvious markers of a supposedly anti-gay white nationalist. Ditto Heather Mac Donald, Jordan Peterson, Christina Hoff Sommers, Janice Fiamengo, etc.
There are several video clips of Antifa and other leftist delinquents harassing people and accusing them of various, lurid, quite particular sins, only for their targets to explain how impossible that would be – say, by not being anywhere near the site of the alleged sin at the time it allegedly occurred – and for the accuser to promptly reply, with a grin, that it doesn’t matter whether the accusation is true or not – and then immediately resuming their harassment. As one Antifa member put it, “Oh, yeah, I just fucking made it up, ‘cause I can make shit up if I want.”
For devotees and opportunist LARPers alike, any pretext will do, any baseless accusation, even outright lies. That’s who they are.
scaremongering, based on anecdotal reports
My buddy working on a fruit farm picking strawberries still cautions that they are “nothing to fuck with”. The percentage of people they kill or cause lasting damage to may be low, but they remain one of the most unpredictable nasties he has seen in decades of working with very nasty fruits indeed.
We should all run and hide in our houses until these lethal fruits have been eradicated from our shores.
You gotta admit, though, Antifa mugshots are in a class by themselves. What a hoot. How many bad choices do you have to make to end up looking like that?
As I’ve said before, Antifa is not so much a political movement as a metastasising personality disorder, a Cluster B contagion. Which is to say, I think the root motive is psychological – a desire to do harm to other people, to cow, obstruct, frighten and assault, while feeling important and, via mob coercion, powerful. The politics, such as it is, is largely a pretext
You make a good case, David.* However, what about all the people on the left who protect these monsters? They are, presumably, not insane, but they are happy to use Antifa as their very own Brownshirts. What does this tell us about “moderate” and “reasonable” liberals? (That’s a rhetorical question, mostly.)
* Although I sometimes wonder how often it works the other way, with radical politics causing the development of psychological disorders.
but they are happy to use Antifa as their very own Brownshirts. What does this tell us about “moderate” and “reasonable” liberals?
Pretty much answered your own question there, I think.
I sometimes wonder how often it works the other way, with radical politics causing the development of psychological disorders.
I don’t doubt that can happen. To some extent, people can be made spiteful and neurotic by all kinds of things, given the right circumstance and enough exposure. But it’s not uncommon for neurotic people, or spiteful people, or those with personality disorders, to seek out situations that exacerbate their existing dysfunction. I’d imagine, broadly, there’s some hideous feedback loop. Damaged people are attracted to the cause and rapidly become more so.
Pretty much answered your own question there, I think.
I like to do that sometimes. 🙂 But I like to bring it up because it is something that does not get nearly enough attention: if “moderate” and “reasonable” and “peaceful” liberals are willing to ignore this thuggery, or even protect it, then they are not really moderate or peaceful at all and are in fact the fabled wolves in sheep’s clothing and should be treated as such.
We are all dust in the end.
Honestly.
We are all dust in the wind. (FTFY)
if “moderate” and “reasonable” and “peaceful” liberals are willing to ignore this thuggery, or even protect it, then they are not really moderate or peaceful at all
I was reminded, for example, of Guardian contributor Jason Wilson – who, I assume, doesn’t personally go around beating random people or stealing their possessions, or smashing their windows for shits and giggles – but who seemed more than happy to lie about Andy Ngo, repeatedly, inventing all kinds of improbable excuses for his assault and the open threats against his life. And who then chose not to acknowledge the numerous requests for evidence. All with an air of something close to prideful satisfaction.
Thing is, these are not just random errors; there’s a pattern of behaviour, of contrivance, of impervious vanity. It seems very much a part of leftist psychology.
See also Laurie Penny.
People on the left are waging a war against us. They don’t want socialism because they think it’s better, they want it because we don’t. Similarly they want open borders, motor car bans, green nonsense, no nukes, trannies, feminazis, every single thing. The criteria are not is this good? But do the squares hate it?
if “moderate” and “reasonable” and “peaceful” liberals are willing to ignore this thuggery, or even protect it,
The principle of plausible deniability obtains here, I think. Many on the left, as you say, wouldn’t be prepared to get violent themselves but are perfectly happy to see those they disapprove of physically and verbally abused. I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that Antifa, UAF, Red Action and other violent far-left groups operate with at least the tacit permission of the establishment – witness the lack of consequences for all but their most egregious acts, and that although their foot-soldiers are a collection of rag-tag misfits, the mentally ill and assorted weirdos they are directed by some quite intelligent people.
Needless to say, this titillation, this narcissistic fatuousness, is quite common among leftist academics, who presumably imagine that the property being stolen or destroyed, whether by being smashed or set on fire, will never be their own.
And again, there’s a pattern. I think it’s how they signal their supposedly radical status to other preening idiots.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/why-do-female-leaders-seem-to-be-more-successful-at-managing-the-coronavirus-crisis?
Don’t ever change, Guardian. Just keep being you.
Leftism is also more open to envy and jealousy. It’s hard to be an envious conservative, because the response is usually “if you want it so bad, why not (save / work / put a modicum of effort into it).”
Whether he realized it or not, Terry Pratchett nailed the leftist mindset in “Guards, Guards.” The supporters of the cult who wanted to magically summon a dragon to rule Ankh-Morpork were all envious of their neighbor’s (assumed) wealth, and wanted the power to rule them.