In Which The Word ‘If’ Does A Lot Of Work
If what I’ve been saying is true, then you could say, within the white cultural racist imaginary, black bodies are different, black bodies can suffer, black bodies should suffer.
I wonder if Dr Derek Hook, the agitated educator quoted above, the one mentioned here recently, needs to lower his dosage. Or up his dosage. Or to smoke some entirely different kind of bathroom cleaning product. Either way, “whiteness,” or “the white big other of the racist domain,” appears to be pressing on his nerves. When not suggesting, in a bizarrely circuitous and somewhat manic way, that white people, as some collective entity, secretly fantasise about harm befalling random black people, via “damage” and “mutilation,” Dr Hook apparently endorses the idea that “white people should commit suicide as an ethical act,” in order to “castrate whiteness.”
So, no concerning patterns of thought there, obviously.
And in other educational news.
She’s “challenging a broken system,” you see.
Needless to say, if you poke through the archives, you’ll find countless examples of educators whose racial neuroticism and mental contortions, often with racially sadistic overtones, are quite remarkable. And again, it’s not just that the ideas on display – and very much in fashion – are obnoxious, or contorted, or morally deranged, or a blueprint for ruin; it’s that the kinds of people who find such things titillating or life-consuming, as Dr Hook and his peers evidently do, tend to be… psychologically marginal. Which is to say, the kinds of people you wouldn’t generally want anywhere near your children.
Dr Hook apparently endorses the idea that “white people should commit suicide as an ethical act,” in order to “castrate whiteness.”
While I’m reluctant to give any support to the likes of Dr Hook, I really do agree that he and white people like him ought to kill themselves.
“Education Studies at our university accepts only the best and the brightest, as confirmed by their SSRI scores.”
She’s “challenging a broken system,” you see.
I remember when people with tattoos on their hands didn’t get hired as teachers.
…Dr Derek Hook, the agitated educator quoted above, the one mentioned here recently, …
That clip shows Hook reading a lengthy quote from “Delport, 2016, p. 1)”.
Curious to know what the original source was, I tried a search with Delport and 2016 in Google Scholar the single result for which is this:
Spaces of alienation : dispossession and justice in South Africa, HTS : Theological Studies 72(1)
Only it turns out that the paper has two authors, not one, and was written not only by Petrus T. Delport, but also by Tshepo Lephakga.
Given the thrust of Hook’s arguments, leaving out Lephakga’s name on the slide would indeed be highly ironic to say the least if it turns out that this is in fact the source he’s quoting from.
It would certainly reveal far, far more about him than it would anyone else.
lower his dosage. Or up his dosage. Or to smoke some entirely different kind of bathroom cleaning product.
Well, quite.
I remember when people with tattoos on their hands didn’t get hired as teachers.
Not, I think, a trivial point.
She’s “challenging a broken system,” you see.
She is the broken system.
Hmm. I thought Fucknose Derek Hook sounded like someone who left South Africa to sell some BS to the US (hey, that rhymes!) about how to treat oppressed natives.
Fucknose Hook can take his white ass back to South Africa and sell his stories there. For crying out loud, I have a copy of this game which came out in 1977 (which I got as a subscriber at the time). That would have been 12 years after I went to school in a fully integrated classroom in Giles County, Tennessee.
That’s where the KKK started, for those that don’t know. (Not my classroom, but the county seat.)
Well, quite.
The frequency with which enthusiasts of such things seem neurotic or unhinged, or weirdly juvenile, and the frequency with which their young devotees exhibit behaviour typically found among those with serious personality disorders, does suggest that what we’re seeing isn’t so much a political phenomenon as a psychological one. By which I mean, the politics may largely be a fig leaf, a vehicle, a pretext. An excuse for being abusive and behaving shittily, and then being applauded for it. By one’s equally shitty peers.
“Teaching is political
… because equity and anti-racism need to be in the forefront of our minds…
But this is wildly different than indoctrination or propaganda because I’m not trying to sway my students opinions, I want them to form their own educated opinions…”
Oh yes. “Wildly different”.
I do wonder what exactly can be going in this multi-coloured circus freak’s head when she actually publishes this pablum? What does she think propagandists do, exactly, that is in some way different from what she is doing? Does she think “Yes, but when propagandists deliberately manipulate their teaching materials to pre-determine the educational outcome they are lying but I’m telling the truth?”
Or “It’s not indoctrination when I do it because I’m right”?
Or “it’s only propaganda if you don’t really believe it yourself”?
I mean, how can you engage in the exact same process but claim that it’s somehow called something different because your ideological standpoint is different?
I’m finding it difficult to address the studied stupidity here without sputtering into incoherence. As far as I can tell this endless parade of candy-flossed ninny muggins really do believe themselves. But HOW??
this endless parade of candy-flossed ninny muggins
As someone quips in the Twitter thread, “Why do they all look like human-sized fishing lures?”
On a more positive note, I suppose it’s possible that the circulation of teachers’ tweets and Tik-Tok videos may result in a few parents belatedly registering the kinds of people now entrusted to educate their children. And their oddly similar shortcomings.
He’s unhinged because he’s not in love with a beautiful woman.
“I remember when people with tattoos on their hands didn’t get hired as teachers.”
P.E. teachers, maybe. But the kids gave them a wide berth.
“12 years after I went to school in a fully integrated classroom in Giles County, Tennessee.”
Ah, but integration is racist now. Didn’t you get the memo?
“He’s unhinged because he’s not in love with a beautiful woman.”
He’s certainly changed since the last time I saw him. I blame the drugs. Just say no, kids.
Official Department of State tweet “Journalism is not a crime.”
Unless, you know, you report our war crimes or something.
As far as I can tell this endless parade of candy-flossed ninny muggins really do believe themselves. But HOW??
If you read through the Twitter feed on the Rolling Stone Oklahoma invermectin story, no matter how much evidence is presented they discredit the source or muddy the “facts” originally presented or outright lie about the “facts” originally presented. They can do this because all their lives their lies have been given the benefit of doubt or “it’s not important to bother with” or similar excuses for not confronting them. Because confrontation makes people more uncomfortable than the lie. Even when the lie does far, far more damage than the confrontation. Thus here we are.
If you read through the Twitter feed on the Rolling Stone Oklahoma invermectin story, no matter how much evidence is presented they discredit the source or muddy the “facts” originally presented or outright lie about the “facts” originally presented.
Or just ignore the evidence and continue to tell the same lies. It’s important to present the evidence, for the sake of those who are not leftists, but the leftists themselves can only be defeated by removing them from positions of power and influence.
In high school 50 yrs ago we had an american history teacher who was very good and the kids loved her. Kids pressed her for how she voted and she absolutely would not say, since her politics might influence them. An honorable lady, who would not be employable as a teacher today.
give any support to the likes of Dr Hook
By putting him on the Cover of The Rolling Stone?
*apologies to Ted S*
this endless parade of candy-flossed ninny muggins
my vocabulary grows by reading this blog. hahahah
We had a french teacher who dressed like a hooker but there was no proof and none of us said anything. But it was so mainstream compared to today that no one would even notice it now.
…parade of candy-flossed ninny muggins really do believe themselves…
Specking of whom, I fear this is not a piss-take.
they discredit the source or muddy the “facts”
I can at least understand those who genuinely disbelieve, or refuse to accept evidence they don’t like. Hell, I’m (probably) guilty of doing the same.
What I can’t comprehend is someone pretending that they aren’t doing the thing they just declared themselves to be doing.
This kaleidoscopic lunatic is engaged in the deliberate manipulation of her students’ educational resources for political purposes.
She just said “teaching is political because as we develop curiculum [sic] and have conversations with our students, equity and anti-racism need to be in the forefront of our minds” like 2 seconds before denying that she’s propagandising.
She’s not even claiming (with some justification) that all teaching is indoctrination. No. Only that her’s isn’t.
Again – HOW??
He’s unhinged because he’s not in love with a beautiful woman.
I thought it was because Sylvia’s Mother said that Sylvia’s busy, too busy to come to the phone.
Why is it that they all show the identical “Oh So Reasonable & Friendly” smile?
Do they have the same trainer, and if so, do they (given the obviously accurate fishing lure comparison) also clap for fish?
this endless parade of candy-flossed ninny muggins
my vocabulary grows by reading this blog. hahahah
I thought the expression was cotton headed ninny muggins. Although, candy floss is also known as cotton candy.
I fear this is not a piss-take.
CA Gov Newscum is trotting out Fauxahontas Warren and Mad-Commie Sanders as sterling examples to convince people to keep him as governor. Not to mention the hysterical claims of the recall as a “republican power grab” and media leaping to his side by slamming front-runner Larry Elder as the “black face of white supremacy”.
The cognitive dissonance is chest deep. Mr. Elf represents far too many Californians who claim to support “democracy” but want to reopen places like Manzanar for anyone to the right of China’s Xi Jinping.
slamming front-runner Larry Elder as the “black face of white supremacy”.
“We seem to be living in an age of extinction-level stupidity”, as our host would say.
Kids pressed her for how she voted and she absolutely would not say, since her politics might influence them.
Good on her. I had an economics professor who said to us at the beginning of the term: “At the end of the term part of my personal evaluation of the course will be you predicting how I voted in the election (that was coming up during the term). If the answers are not pretty evenly divided, I will know I have failed.”
At the end of the term, he asked for a show of hands – how many thought he voted Liberal, Conservative, NDP… In general, the students predicted he had voted the way they had (or would have done). He said “Okay – I’ve done well enough: most of you thought I was smart enough, and fair-minded enough to agree with you!”
In Which The Word ‘If’ Does A Lot Of Work
I’m reminded of a radio interview (or possibly a podcast) with Penn Gillette a few years back. The subject was the latest accusation about Trump, and the interviewer was saying that this one was going to sink him, for sure. He started off with “if this is true, then” before Penn shut him down.
To say Penn Gillette is not a fan of Donald Trump is an understatement. But even he had had it up to here with all the false accusations. “When you’re saying ‘if‘ something is true, you’re not reporting news, you’re passing on gossip“.
Unfortunately, the distinction between the two isn’t really that far apart any more. When people are “reporting” feelings as “their truth”, and saying that makes them as valid as any concrete, observable, testable fact, then the term is meaningless.
What I can’t comprehend is someone pretending that they aren’t doing the thing they just declared themselves to be doing.
Putting aside politics, I have had people at work, one my direct boss, actually, blatantly, in an objective context lie to my face. They were known to be …mmm…”difficult” people. The one who was my boss was not as pathological as the others but he was very much a nerdy weakling who was lying because HIS boss told him to…or near as I could tell. I am quite certain that he lacked the balls to lie like that on his own. I didn’t know his boss all that well but people who did know him had very low opinions of him. These people lie because they can. Especially if they can do it down the ladder. Because they know that, for the most part, in the right context no one will challenge them. Especially if they think the masses of idiots or the power structure doesn’t care. The reason they don’t seem to notice it in themselves is because, Jerry…it’s not a lie if you truly believe it. Think of these people like method actors and it’s easier to understand. They’re not real people. They’re playing a role that they have immersed their entire lives into.
“They’re not real people. They’re playing a role that they have immersed their entire lives into.”
As has been said, you become the role you that you play, so do not play false roles.
They’re not real people.
It is bizarre that they should upload their blatantly self-flattering mendacity for all to see, but I fear you are right about the general lack of consequences. We seem to be plagued by people in public life behaving like small children and telling the most outrageous and transparent lies while suffering absolutely no repercussions.
From “President” Joe-mentia and his bygone tales of academic credentials, through Hillary and her sniper-dodging, to Princess Sparkle and the ludicrous (and pointless) story of her secret marriage. They are shamelessly dishonest, and yet they are none the worse for it.
Our society is broken.
“Woke-washing the 9-11 attacks”
Dear Dr. Hook,
This one is perfect for you. Enjoy.
Some dummy built this pencil wrong– –
The eraser’s down here where the point belongs.
And the point’s at the top– – so it’s no good to me.
It’s amazing how stupid some people can be.
Yours,
Dr. Hook
We seem to be plagued by people in public life behaving like small children and telling the most outrageous and transparent lies while suffering absolutely no repercussions
I was discussing the fable of The Emperor’s New Clothes with a friend, and I pointed out that just about everyone gets the message wrong. As usually told, no one shouts that the emperor is naked because they don’t want to be thought of as foolish. But the fable would work just as well with a fabulously rich merchant – probably better, as merchants are supposed to be good at making canny deals. And why is it a child who finally shouts the truth? Why not the town fool, or a passing stranger, or the ubiquitous Jack the trickster?
It has to be an emperor, and it has to be a child, because an emperor has the power to execute people who make him look foolish in public. It has to be a child because not even an emperor will execute a child for such an act.
The true moral of that fable is that it is dangerous to speak uncomfortable truths aloud unless you are immune from retribution.
To address your point: many people have realized they have the power of an emperor to destroy those who would point out they are lying.
By which I mean, the politics may largely be a fig leaf, a vehicle, a pretext. An excuse for being abusive and behaving shittily, and then being applauded for it. By one’s equally shitty peers.
That.
That.
Well, I think one has to consider why it is that such obviously awful ideas – say, an urge to “disintegrate” the personalities of small children, to render them sleepless, estranged and distressed, based solely on their skin colour – are so much in fashion and so consuming – why they appeal and entrance. I think one has to ask what kind of person would find these things so attractive, and so useful.
That.
We seem to be in the strange situation of seeing a significant number of people who wish to psychologically abuse the children and teenagers they’re entrusted to educate, often in ways that are quite shocking, and yet being faintly embarrassed by the thought of questioning the motives of such people. As if being suspicious of dogmatic child abusers would somehow be impolite.
As if being suspicious of dogmatic child abusers would somehow be impolite.
“Better dead than rude.”
“Better dead than rude.”
Yeah – look what happened to the last guy who was rude.
Got him banned from twitter and hated by all the right people.
Dr Hook and his peers evidently do, tend to be… psychologically marginal.
I’d say they are way past the margin.
I remember when people with tattoos on their hands didn’t get hired as teachers.
Still don’t at my school. We’ve had to concede on small ones on the feet of the women because otherwise we would have no young staff. All others have to be covered.
It pays to remember that overt propaganda, and certainly via schools, never works. If a teacher beclowns themselves by saying something clearly not true, they pretty much invalidate all their previous efforts. We have this with our RE teachers — the fervent ones (who believe in literal demons and saints actually flying, for example) turn the kids off, whereas the moderate ones actually persuade some of them.
Small kids like teachers who care for them, not scolds.
Professor Hook and Duquesne University have disputed the charge; their statement, though slightly muffled by Academese, is forthright enough, and supported by evidence.
http://booksinq.blogspot.com/2021/09/clearing-record.html
The above post links to a Reuters article, and from there you should be able to link directly to the University’s release.
Reuters: “He did not make a statement advocating anything like what was suggested. In fact, he said that the statement in question was ‘crazy,’” the university wrote.”
If I had spread the story at all, I’d be getting back to everyone I had told, and owning up to the mistake, with considerable regret, and a resolution to be more careful hereafter.
Professor Hook and Duquesne University have disputed the charge
Some of the coverage was lurid and gratuitous, but if you read the College Fix piece linked in the post, it seems that Dr Hook and his employers are not being entirely honest. (For instance, his reliance on the word “crazy” as a minimising fig-leaf.) Clearly, he finds the “provocation,” the annihilationist rhetoric, both relevant and titillating, even if the proposed “end of whiteness” is downscaled to one that is merely “symbolic,” a metaphorical “castration,” albeit achieved in ways left unclear.
Imagine speaking in such terms, excitedly, about any other racial demographic. And doing it in the name of “anti-racism.”
Imagine speaking in such terms, excitedly, about any other racial demographic. And doing it in the name of “anti-racism.”
That.
That.
Well, you’d think that reciprocation would be pretty fundamental to any serious attempt at reducing bigotry; and yet, among avowed “anti-racists,” reciprocation is typically ignored or explicitly disdained, as if it were somehow irrelevant, an inconvenience, or an obstacle on The Path Of Intersectional Righteousness. Instead, we get question-begging, Kafkatraps, and attempts to inculcate pretentious collective guilt.
David, after I offered the above correction to this muddled controversy, I felt obliged to read more widely in its sources than I had done. And having done so I can no longer call Duquesne’s statement “forthright enough, and supported by evidence.” On the contrary: their statement is obscurantist, and I believe deliberately so.
Yes, Professor Hook labeled the call for suicide “crazy,” but that was not a condemnatory label, as the university deceitfully implies; he meant crazy in the sense of “far-out”: he wanted his audience to admire the call for suicide as a rhetorical move; and he endorsed it with the hope that it would be acted upon, or at least such action would be contemplated.
Catholic moral teaching opposes suicide, and Duquesne is nominally a Catholic university. The commentators who have rounded on the professor and his university are variously dismayed, outraged, disgusted by the spectacle of such vile teaching issuing from the very place it should be opposed.
Duquesne’s response wastes a lot of time (and attempts to create a diversion, which is probably the point) on denying that Professor Hook said, rather than merely quoted, the call for suicide. But that was never in question. The original reporting by Emma Colton for Fox News, and the digest presented by Matt Lamb of College Fix, both stated clearly that the call for suicide came originally from a philosophy professor named Terblanche Delport, a South African evidently employed in some capacity by the national university there. Even here Duquesne obfuscates by saying Terblanche made the call for suicide “in the context of post-Apartheid South Africa,” perhaps implying an impassioned moment in history. But SA has been post-Apartheid since the 1990s, and Terblanche gave his call for suicide in 2016. Enough time to have thought better of it, if he was going to.
[I have to break off now, and hope to continue later.]
I can no longer call Duquesne’s statement “forthright enough, and supported by evidence.” On the contrary: their statement is obscurantist, and I believe deliberately so.
Well, there’s no harm in double-checking, and some of the coverage was breathless and somewhat misleading. But in nearly fifteen years of writing about these people – dear God, fifteen years – I can’t say that good faith has been a defining attribute of their output or general behaviour.
Professor Hook and Duquesne University have disputed the charge
Reuter quotes Duquesne University: “The words being circulated were simply lifted out of context to distort the actual comments.”
And yet they do not give us the “context” that they claim exonerates Hook–they only give us their assurance to us that such a context exists. Furthermore, the disputed quote is a full one-and-one-half minutes long and is in itself damning enough: Professor Hook equates “whiteness” with racism and defends Terblanche Delport’s remarks, saying “there is some kind of ethical dimension to his provocations”.
In the spirit of Hook’s “ethical” comments, then, I would like to take professor Hook “to the threshold of a type of symbolic extinction or at least the contemplation of what that might be” and confront him with a proposed “end of Hookness” or in more psychoanalytic terms “offer him the opportunity to contemplate what we could call a castration of himself.”
David, after I offered the above correction to this muddled controversy, I felt obliged to read more widely in its sources than I had done…
Thank you–very much appreciated.
Catholic moral teaching opposes suicide, and Duquesne is nominally a Catholic university.
“Nominally” is all too often the case: Most of these institutions have allowed themselves to be taken over by people who are enemies of Catholicism, Christianity, and any morality which is not based on leftism.
We could extend professor Hook’s “thoughts” by pointing out to him that in America blacks commit violent crime far out of proportion to their numbers, and that some notable elements of black culture even proudly link criminality to black racial identity. We could then ask him if it would be good to “confront” black people with a call for the “extinction” of blackness. The good professor might, however, soil himself.
I can no longer call Duquesne’s statement “forthright enough, and supported by evidence.” On the contrary: their statement is obscurantist, and I believe deliberately so.
It’s easy to be wrong-footed when dealing with people who are accustomed to lying, and who are often quite good at it. The brazenness can be unexpected. (See, for instance, Judith Butler, mentioned in the next thread.)
And Dr Hook seems to belong to a caste of Clown Quarter inhabitants, in which being challenged on one’s mouthings by people outside of said caste – by one’s inferiors, as it were – rarely happens and isn’t generally taken seriously, unless it poses a threat of real-world consequences. At which point, the dishonesty kicks in. As anyone who’s followed this blog will most likely know, things are said by these people that would at the very least raise eyebrows among the wider population, and quite often be thought perverse or obnoxiously unhinged. And yet, among the speakers, these things are said in order to accumulate in-group kudos. A kind of mutual titillation.
The gulf between Clown Quarter cred, its competitive posturing, and actual morality is quite vast. And apparently getting wider.
It’s easy to be wrong-footed when dealing with people who are accustomed to lying…
I am certain that Delport and Hook and Duquesne University would, given sufficient power, fully support actual genocide.
I have little more to add about the Hook business; pst314 mentioned the most important aspect that I didn’t cover above: that Duquesne shows no proof–none–for their bald assertion that Professor Hook said in his presentation that the call for suicide was wrong. In the brief video we’ve seen, he grudgingly allows “parenthetically” that one “could argue” that Terblanche Delport “goes too far” — but then he immediately dismisses even this mild and parenthetical objection, and continues to endorse the call for suicide as “ethical.”
I cannot believe that he ever, at another point in the presentation, reversed ground and unequivocally condemned the call for suicide: because if he had done so the university could rout its critics once and for all just by quoting the exact words. The videoconference was recorded: playback would settle the question. But Duquesne just huffily denies the fault while keeping the evidence under wraps. It looks bad because it is bad.
All right, I’ll leave it at that, but reserve an option for another sequel.
To help chase away those suicidal vapors . . . this turned up a couple months ago alongside some youtube music I was listening to. Usually I ignore their suggestions, but I don’t know why I had a hunch this was different:
Sunny side of the street
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsEFFaboTAM
Bar Colombia, Barcelona, two years ago just about to the day