And Another Balanced Individual
The university became aware of the post Monday morning, Wilson said in his email. The professor, whose identity was not revealed, works in the university’s English department… “The post stated that rather than ‘shouting down’ those with whom we disagree, one would be justified to commit murder to silence them,” Wilson wrote.
According to the educator in question, Steven Shaviro, “It is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down.” What unfailing criteria might be used to determine such things, and how those gorged on indignation might avoid error, prior to any murder attempt, isn’t made clear.
The professor goes on to blame “right wing” student groups for inviting speakers who “provoke” leftist students – who mustn’t be expected to have any kind of self-possession – making them behave in ways that are threatening and delinquent, even sociopathic. Behaviour illustrated here many, many times – as, for instance, at Middlebury College, where the 74-year-old scholar Charles Murray, a contender for the title of World’s Most Polite Man, was physically chased off campus.
Says our educator,
Or put another way, “How dare you try to discredit leftist Mao-lings by even briefly existing in their proximity and thus making them want to murder you.” I paraphrase, of course, but not enormously.
Update, via the comments:
Given sufficient squinting, readers may have noticed the professor’s tiny rhetorical fig leaf. We’re told that he doesn’t advocate breaking the law – by murdering someone for shits and giggles – he merely admires it, a lot. And so, if, for example, a woman says that she doesn’t think a mentally ill man should be using the women’s changing rooms and toilets – and is then murdered for her “transphobia” – this would be a good thing and “far more admirable” than merely ganging up on her and preventing her from speaking.
He’s an intellectual, you know. A terribly caring intellectual.
Update 2:
In the comments, Pete R adds,
No, not really. This, remember, is a man for whom demurral on a wide range of contentious topics is by definition “reprehensible” and, in his mind, could only exist in order to “provoke” the righteous and good-hearted, i.e., people much like himself, who fantasise about menacing and killing those who disagree with them. Note the implication at the end of his post – that after murdering someone – say, someone who doesn’t think that dysmorphic men and autogynephile perverts are actually women – one should be acquitted, as one’s actions would have been “justified.”
These sentiments don’t suggest a detached thought experiment or some devil’s advocacy. More a sociopathic urge. Maybe inside our professor’s head, there’s a loud, relentless buzzing noise.
This shaper of young minds, a self-styled “Kitsch Marxist,” has been suspended with pay.
Previously in the world of totally balanced educators.
Via Tom Joyce.
Is today’s word ‘inevitable’?
Again, as so often, it looks like a variation of the Wife-Beater’s Lament: “Don’t make me hurt you, baby. You know I don’t like hurting you…”
Judge, jury, executioner.
Yes, it’s terribly convenient. It saves so much time, you know.
He’s here to help humanity.
Seriously? This guy is the cartoon stereotype that a certain group used to make unflattering cartoons about in the 1920s.
As Instapundit often quips, “Maybe letting the enemies of our civilisation teach our children was a mistake.”
Fortunately these feminized men are are slap fighters at best. The Civil War will be be short but bloody.
Yet another unhinged English professor. Huh.
All they should be allowed to do is clean floors and toilets.
An educator who thinks it “admirable” to murder people who disagree with you politically – assuming you’re left-leaning, that is.
Thank goodness those Marxoid educators and educational bureaucrats are so famously even-keeled. Not at all neurotic and perverse, or chronically spiteful, or in need of medication.
See also… well, pretty much anything here tagged academia.
In the Stanford shout-down, the particular ruling by the judge that was so horrific was that a male pedophile prisoner should not be referred to as “she”. Grounds for rioting for sure. Way to go Stanford students: supporting a pedophile!
In Europe before Luther, the official doctrine was pretty easy. You were assumed to be Christian and had to follow a few rules. Now, the doctrine is very very complex and changes every day. It involves race, sex, political party, religion-is-bad, abortion is good, you must get jabbed. But it also involves scientific questions: do the vaccines work? Is there risk? Is the sea level really rising at a dangerous rate? Are we going to perish from climate change? How is the average person supposed to have an informed opinion on all this stuff? And yet the Woke claim it is all so obvious that only an evil person could disagree with them.
I assume the idea is that the rest of us will simply defer to whatever it is they say on any given day, accepting whatever scolding has been loaded up ready, while living in a state of continual apprehension.
You have to admire the immediate and principled stand (following media attention) taken by Wayne State “University” on the issue:
Translation:
In the interests of cowardly self-protection we have referred one of our English professors to the police for his advocating of assassination and murder as appropriate responses to ideological disagreements.
We are retaining him on full salary, while we await their lack of response, before determining it be completely appropriate to continue employing this violent psychopath to teach your children hate.
Given sufficient squinting, readers may have noticed the professor’s tiny rhetorical fig leaf. We’re told that he doesn’t advocate breaking the law – by murdering someone for shits and giggles – he merely admires it, a lot.
And so, if, for example, a woman says that she doesn’t think a mentally ill man should be using the women’s changing rooms and is then murdered for her “transphobia,” this would be a good thing and “far more admirable” than merely ganging up on her and preventing her from speaking.
He’s an intellectual, you know. A terribly caring intellectual.
Translation:
No, I think you’re being a bit uncharitable. I know a fair number of university professors and their unions[1] are very strong, to the extent that suspending him with pay is probably the best the president can do.
Honestly I would be inclined to see this as a fairly based response by the president, since as David pointed out the university could have hidden behind the rhetorical dodge. Instead they referred the complaint to the police themselves and made a public statement and suspended him with pay. The union contract probably dictates that they can’t fire him unless he’s at least actually charged with something. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
[1] Why. In the f*ck. Do professors have a union
This guy is the cartoon stereotype that a certain group used to make unflattering cartoons about in the 1920s.
As much as I detest the Every. Damn. Time meme that’s going around, the pattern is undeniable. I like to show such people the 1985 mockumentary The Canadian Conspiracy to explain the difference between correlation and conspiracy.
Post updated.
Suspended with pay? Please don’t throw me into that briar patch!!
I would guess that, given a high mean IQ, one would expect a lot of Jewish people to find a position in academia, including in its Clown Quarter. Or at least to have been immersed in it for a number of years at a time when they were most susceptible. Inevitably, many will internalise the pathologies of that environment – say, as markers of status. The issue being the ideological environment and its dysfunction – the clownishness, as it were – rather than the racial background of any particular clown.
Help humanity with what? Hair care tips?
After 50-something years on this planet, I’ve come to the unsettling conclusion that well over half the people in the modern world actively want to be miserable – and they insist on making you miserable too.
What I find so strange is not that they go on pretending that they care, it’s that so many people can’t seem to bring themselves to see the truth that’s right before their eyes, which is that these people are not merely “people with bad ideas” they are NOT well-intentioned. No. They are malevolent, maladapted sociopaths.
How much more evidence do people need?
Inevitably, many will internalise the pathologies of that environment
I think there’s another consideration as well. Far too many Jews have been taught that the be-all and end-all of Judaism is the Holocaust and the prevention of another one. And since Communism (International Socialism) claims to be the polar opposite of National Socialism,* then such Jews think that the Communists are their friends and protectors; that they brutally suppressed Judaism in Russia and elsewhere is either unknown to them, or dismissed as just Stalin’s personal predilection.
Better educated Jews, by contrast, don’t fall for such things that easily, and know the dangers of Marxism in its various flavors (and that, conversely, there are plenty of nationalists who are very pro-Jewish interests, a prominent example being Trump). Consider Chaya Raichik of LibsOfTikTok: she’s a Chassidic Jew, whose ancestors fought to keep Judaism alive in the Soviet Union, and so she knows good and well what those types are capable of. You have other religious Jews, such as Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, and lots of others, who likewise see past all the talk of “equity” and “human rights” and other such leftist slogans.
‘* And they do have the figleaf of the Bolsheviks having put down nationalist pogromchiks such as Simon Petlyura, mentioned by this Shaviro fellow, and later on having fought the Nazis. Doesn’t hurt, too, that they’ve always had credulous Western journalists covering for them, all the way back to Lincoln Steffens and Walter Duranty.
I think it goes even further back. I know a small number of practicing Jews, liberal and orthodox and there’s a strong but largely subconscious cultural meme that your property could be taken away from you at any moment – because it has been, repeatedly, in dozens of countries for centuries. So Jewish parents will steer their kids into professions where your wealth is dependent on your skills and intellect rather than property investment: medicine, law, finance…education and journalism.
So we shouldn’t be surprised to find Jews over-represented in those fields, but those are also fields where the lunacy infects <i>everyone</i>.
Suspended with pay?? Tells me they support this sort of behavior without saying they support this behavior. They seem to have no trouble suspending without pay, and/or just firing professors guilty of wrongthink, or who have come up against the MeToo mob. It’s quite easy to get rid of those professors, even ones who have tenure.
When they tell you their intentions, believe them.
Media working to make a murderer the “real victim”.
“But I had to kill the infidels. They tried to erase me by refusing to acknowledge the supremacy of Islam.”
Not much of a fig leaf.
No, not really. This, remember, is a man for whom demurral on a wide range of contentious topics is by definition “reprehensible” and, in his mind, could only exist in order to “provoke” the righteous and good-hearted, i.e., people much like himself, who fantasise about menacing and killing those who disagree with them. Note the implication at the end of his post – that after murdering someone – say, someone who doesn’t think that dysmorphic men and autogynephile perverts are actually women – one should be acquitted, as one’s actions would have been “justified.”
These sentiments don’t suggest a detached thought experiment or some devil’s advocacy. More a sociopathic urge. Maybe inside our professor’s head, there’s a loud, relentless buzzing noise.
Maybe inside our professor’s head, there’s a loud, relentless buzzing noise.
A swarm of those Murder Hornets.
It’s essentially a boast, a kind of ideological chest-puffing. Worded so as to (I’d guess) avoid prosecution, while conveying his pretensions of being hardcore.
Our professor was apparently prompted to express his inner delightfulness by this farcical incident at Stanford Law School, during which activists and administrators invoked all kinds of implausible victimhood. Including trauma, oppression, and risk of death. If memory serves, during the shrieking and wailing, the word genocide was deployed.
It’s also a way to intimidate people into silence, and to encourage others to see violence against the left’s enemies as legitimate.
Narcissism + paranoia.
There’s certainly narcissism in there, and fantasy, and outright dishonesty.
Regarding the imagined genocide, any killing of transgender people is usually at their own hands. And any violence experienced generally occurs during arguments with intimate partners, including other dysmorphic people, and during interactions with drug dealers, and while working as prostitutes. Much of the latter, presumably, a result of deceiving punters as to what, exactly, is on sale.
As noted before, this is not a trivial detail. And the mouthings of many trans activists seem designed to make the risk of violence worse. As when the activist Riley Dennis, an Everyday Feminism contributor, told us that not wishing to have sex with him can only be due to seething bigotry. Mr Dennis believes, or claims to believe, that the particulars of what’s inside his underwear will be a delightful surprise for any unwitting straight man who succumbs.
[ Added: ]
See also the last paragraph here, regarding the reality series Cops.
Narcissism + paranoia weaponized.
“We have referred this to law enforcement agencies for further review and investigation. . . .”
For what? I think we can all agree that this guy is a loathsome sociopath, but should he be prosecuted for expressing an opinion, however horrible, on a non-university platform? Seems to me that this is exactly the sort of thing that’s happening to people on our side of the street: deplatforming, cancelling, etc. etc. — even intimidation and arrest by the police in the UK. If we believe in free speech we should support it even for scumbags like him. The university is perfectly justified in firing him for being a lousy teacher, but referring him to the police because of something he said on Twitter is outrageous.
TN trans community “fearing for their lives”–hyperbole much? I guess they mean people frowned at them.
These people who cover for murderous twits like this really need to watch The Killing Fields. In Cambodia nearly 1 in 5 people was murdered by the communists. For laughing. For having sex. For having a snail in their pocket. For no reason. All to “purify” the country. The extremes humans can go to are…extreme. It is best to stay far far away from the edge of that cliff.
These people who cover for murderous twits like this…
Neither unrelated nor unexpected.
I’m sure you’re right – it’s exactly the kind of mealy, pathetic, cowardly, dishonest excuse Wayne’s “University” will trot out. After all, why would anyone expect a “University” to take responsibility for dismissing a homicidal lunatic patently unsuitable for indoctrinating your children? After all his union is “very strong”.
Heaven’s to Betsy we’ll be expecting them not to indulge in racist hiring practices next. Then where would they be?
And there you have it. The loser mentality. Your concern is duly noted. I’m sure they will treat you well and eat you last. See references to The Killing Fields above.
Added…similar to something I was saying at Insty in regard to another topic, Like logic and reason mean anything. No one cares. It’s about the bloody megaphone and how often whatever they want the people to believe is repeated. Keep building those imaginary worlds in your stupid bloody heads but out in the real world your slavish devotion to logic and reason is meaningless. Until the Gods of the Copybook Headings wake up, that is. But those b@st@rds kill everyone indiscriminately so…you lose twice.
Part of the problem as well, a big part of the problem, is that the otherwise positive values that people used to hold for their personal self esteem have been denigrated (see chart). A void has been created and thus, much like removing God from a society, something is going to fill that void.
It is a mistake to confuse a right to free speech with a ‘right’ to a platform from which to utter said speech.
No. It is a mistake to confuse free speech with threatening to murder people, or an clear incitement to murder people. I’m pretty sure there is sound legal precedent for such though to what degree it applies in this specific case is another matter. The ‘right’ to the platform is a different matter which depends upon who controls the platform. If the platform is essentially a monopoly or oligarchy controlled by the government to the exclusion of other platforms then short of the incitement case, etc. all should have an equal right to that platform.
Leftists and “liberals” have been telling me that for years: Whenever I would express concern about left-dominated institutions banning speech they disapproved of and requiring speech they favored, they would tell me that this is should not be condemned because it is not a violation of the First Amendment.
As the frequency and extremeness of such incidents increased, I concluded that not even “liberals” actually care about free speech, and that it would be foolish for me to waste any time defending those who want to silence me and destroy my life.
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”
–Abraham Lincoln, letter to Henry L. Pierce, 1859
referring him to the police because of something he said on Twitter is outrageous
A great many states have laws against incitement to violence or uttering threats, and university administrations are not qualified to investigate crimes.
Can’t have it both ways. If you don’t want universities deciding whether Bob and Suzie hooking up while drunk means Bob raped Suzie, then you can’t have universities deciding whether a prof broke state law.
After all his union is “very strong”
Stop pearl-clutching. Faculty unions can and have shut down entire universities over less. As JKS notes, this is an extreme reaction. Referring this to the police is a shot across the bow by the president. According to some legal blogs I follow this is a damp squib, there’s zero chance it’ll go anywhere as a criminal investigation and the president knows this. This is the normal, sane person’s equivalent of “Nice academic career you’ve got here. Shame if anything happened to it.”
the otherwise positive values that people used to hold for their personal self esteem have been denigrated
Bezmenov tried to warn us.
I’m laughing my ass off at right-wing pundits hand-wringing today at the “transgender movement openly targeting Christians” because we’ve all forgotten that Jack Phillips and Fr. Frederick Henry exist, apparently.
Of course it won’t go anywhere, that’s why the “University” referred it to the police.
In the U.S. it’s perfectly legal to express your admiration for murderers or murderous behaviour. And rightly so.
One might have hoped though, that it would be grounds for not being retained as an English professor, but unfortunately there are too many well-meaning people like yourself willing to accept their simpering excuses.
It’s worth noting that when a “University” wants to get rid of someone who’s offended against woke shibboleths it magically doesn’t require a police referral. Just ask Joshua Katz or Jodie Shaw.
Zara Jade: Halifax woman jailed after stabbing and tying up victim
😀
And that Halifax “woman” has a serious criminal record. Surprise.
I wonder whether this absurdity is going to continue indefinitely, stretching into the future, beyond my lifetime. Or will it peter out, like any fad, and then be remembered with some embarrassment?
My vote is for living in the end times.
I think we’ll give that one a post of its own. Comments that-a-way.
Exactly this. The law has long since stopped caring about any reasonable consistency. As I said above regarding logic and reason, but especially in the context of encouraging murder, the ultimate repression of someone’s freedom of speech, the other side does not care about playing by consistent rules. This Marquis of Queensbury stuff is a losing policy.
Generals Curtis LeMay and Bomber Harris were right.