Open letter denouncing the "restriction of debate".

[vuk]

Sorry but that is an incredibly crass statement. Racism in the USA has festered for decades but it's never gone away and the white supremacists have never been more emboldened in recent times. This matters because it's the context within which seemingly minor ideological differences can blow up. Perhaps they are not as minor as they might appear to people who don't know the history of racism and its manifestations in the present.

I recently witnessed, first-hand, a related development on a forum I use professionally. A couple of ethnic minority members of staff pointed out that the organsation's ethnic mix significantly diverges from the wider population's, and asked how this might be addressed in light of recent interest in BLM. There was no aggression or implied criticism of anyone on the forum, but it was met with a wall of defensiveness, missing the point, nit-picking, obfuscation, changing the subject and expressions of hurt feeling from the overwhelmingly white, middle class members of the forum. Weeks later several related threads rumble on, but the original posters are nowhere to be seen - I can only assume they have given up in despair. I won't name the organisation but if I did, you would expect it to be full of liberal-left types. And it is, but my point is that, even in this relatively rarefied atmosphere of liberal tolerance, a huge number of people have a big blind spot when it comes to acknowledging the concerns of ethnic minorities.

Another anecdote, which brought home to me the reality of black life here in the UK. A young man of mixed-race, who I've met several times (he's the nephew of my partner's best friend) has been stopped and searched by police five times in the last couple of years. I know this guy: he lives in a perfectly respectable part of London, he's painfully shy and wouldn't say boo to a goose, and he is slightly built. What must it do to someone to know they are constantly being viewed with suspicion by people who can make life difficult for them (and worse) with the full backing of the state?

I found the Evergreen State College videos. It looks like an interesting, well made documentary, and I think Tony was wrong to censor you (Irony's kinda ironic that way). I intend to watch it in full (unless I get bored) but, whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, within the opening minutes of the documentary, it is stated that Evergreen State is the most progressive of all the progressive colleges. As such, I doubt we can draw general lessons from the exeperience and make the leap to a full-blown "free speech crisis".

Like I said before, the relentless focus on a few extreme examples (if that applies to Evergreen State) is the currency of the far-right and it's designed to undermine legitimate demands for change. And it completely inverts the reality in which the majority of people who are silenced or experience abuse are from minority groups - ask the black people who no longer seem to be posting on the forum I mentioned.

PS: I see whether people should lose their jobs over some of this stuff as mostly a separate issue - it's why we need good employment law, decent employment practices and strong representation in the form of unions.

drood.

first off, i explicitly started off the very post you quoted and replied to with a declaration that this was not about free speech.

second, i have no issue with your anecdotes. i am glad to discuss the specifics, but, on the surface, they certainly don't warrant extrapolation to a full-blown racism crisis, to paraphrase what you said about evergreen.

on one level, evergreen is also an anecdote, but an anecdote that on its own is so troubling to warrant being elevated to a red-alert case study worthy of detailed examination. this anecdote could not have come into being without a cultural backdrop of postmodernist rhetoric and western hyper-individualism "intersecting" with the existential rage of young people living in a world that places wealth above all and keeps pushing the boundaries of wealth inequality. they do have a right to be angry, but when they miss the causal mark so badly, target the most sympathetic, egalitarian, leftist hippy in the world, and get away with it, something is clearly very wrong.

maybe it's an extreme example (i can give you other examples), but can you show me anything remotely comparable on the white supremacist front in america? what i mean is a white supremacist mob intimidating a state college president, or equivalent, into reciting its dogma and all that followed. i ask that because you say: "the white supremacists have never been more emboldened in recent times". i actually agree, but it's all way more complicated than bigorty of the working classes. i keep pointing out that juan guaido is the figurehead of a white nationalist political apparatus that's very common in latin america. he was in audience and applauded by nancy pelosi at the state of the union address. yet, not one person here has expressed any concern about that. non-anglo lives don't matter. white-supremacist imperialism is OK because nancy performs the all-absolving public ritual of tearing up some symbolic paper.

 

[DimitryZ]

Shorter Vuk:

White professor unfairly maligned by college students as a racist: terrible crisis of conscience that requires immediate action.

Blacks gunned down because of police' racism; militarization and white supremacy propaganda: concerning, requires study.

 

[DimitryZ]

Actually, Vuk, I have an even more dire situation with cancel culture run amok.

Allen Derschowitz, Trump fan, ex Harvard professor and a president's defender during the impeachment trial in the US Senate is NOT being invited to dinner parties at the tawny Martha's Vineyard island resort where he summers. He is being SHUNNED by his liberal neighbors who consider him to be an asshole simply because of his defense of the President.

Can you possibly think of a greater injustice? I honestly can't! His excercise of his right of free speech is being used to deny him cocktails and lobster - I am screaming on the inside.

 

[vuk]

Shorter Vuk:

White professor unfairly maligned by college students as a racist: terrible crisis of conscience that requires immediate action.

Blacks gunned down because of police' racism; militarization and white supremacy propaganda: concerning.

that's precisely the sort of cheap rhetoric people are raising concerns about. you haven't really made any precise argument, but simply appealed to emotion via word play.

yes, racism is why blacks get gunned down, but it's 95% (or more) about hereditary wealth inequality forcing them into a high poverty/crime bracket. police culture is indeed awful and sometimes adds the extra ~5%. ironically, that culture has ties to the USA rah-rah vibe you often project here.

i am totally against militarization of the police.

i am totally in favour of re-directing a lot of police activity to other, better qualified institutions.

i am totally against white supremacy. i gave you the most immediate, egregious example in the post you replied to and you don't seem to care.

wtf are you doing but "cancel"? if you're really concerned about racism and policing problems, i should be your ally. you don't like my views on economics, so anything goes.

 

[martin clark]

yes, racism is why blacks get gunned down, but it's 95% (or more) about hereditary wealth inequality forcing them into a high poverty/crime bracket.

Really?
WTF do you actually mean by that?

 

[vuk]

Actually, Vuk, I have an even more dire situation with cancel culture run amok.

Allen Derschowitz, Trump fan, ex Harvard professor and a president's defender during the impeachment trial in the US Senate is NOT being invited to dinner parties at the tawny Martha's Vineyard island resort where he summers. He is being SHUNNED by his liberal neighbors who consider him to be an asshole simply because of his defense of the President.

Can you possibly think of a greater injustice? I honestly can't! His excercise of his right of free speech is being used to deny him cocktails and lobster - I am screaming on the inside.

i am honest enough to admit that derschowitz is both very intelligent and skillful as a lawyer. not everything he says can be easily dismissed. if you want my opinion on something specific, i can offer that.

on the whole, i find his politics, morality and tactics repulsive. i wish he didn't exists. nonetheless, he does have the right to free speech. actually, he is precisely the type of person whose free speech rights someone like me has to defend if the concept is to have any legitimacy.

 

[vuk]

Really?
WTF do you actually mean by that?

the legacy of slavery in the USA has placed black people in a terrible economic position. they have (on average) 1/10th the wealth of whites in a strange capitalist system that, for several decades, has just about eliminated upward mobility. the wealth you are born into is 95% predictor of your fate. what that means is blacks are condemned to being disproportionately poor. step 2 is higher criminality, as inevitable consequence of poverty. step 3 is way more (relative to population ratio) violent encounters with police.

please note, this isn't my brilliant analysis derived from scratch, but the sort of thing black intellectual activists like cornel west talk about routinely and supported by social science research/statistics.

what i'm curious about is why you felt so confident challenging me with a hostile "WTF"?


p.s. @droodzilla -- are you paying attention to the "cultural" responses?

 

[DimitryZ]

i am honest enough to admit that derschowitz is both very intelligent and skillful as a lawyer. not everything he says can be easily dismissed. if you want my opinion on something specific, i can offer that.

on the whole, i find his politics, morality and tactics repulsive. i wish he didn't exists. nonetheless, he does have the right to free speech. actually, he is precisely the type of person whose free speech rights someone like me has to defend if the concept is to have any legitimacy.

You do realize that Derschowitz is on national TV on a regular basis?

His speech on the floor of the Senate was internationally televised.

He has written and published books; has lectured at Harvard for decades, has spoken to presidents and world leaders and is quite wealthy.

His free speech is doing exceptionally well and is no way in danger of being cancelled. We should all do as well.

I decided that he was a bad person after he argued for torture warants after 9/11 - like in middle ages. I thought for a while he was doing a "modest proposal" act...but he was serious. Is that one of his opinions you find "hard to dismiss"?

And yet your heart aches for his dinner party injustice. And I get it - I was at a wedding at a VERY wealthy family's house on the vineyard once - imagine my surprise at realizing that the impressionist art on the walls was, in fact; original. If I was used to drinking old fashioneds in that environment, I would be angry too.

 

[DimitryZ]

the legacy of slavery in the USA has placed black people in a terrible economic position. they have (on average) 1/10th the wealth of whites in a strange capitalist system that, for several decades, has just about eliminated upward mobility. the wealth you are born into is 95% predictor of your fate. what that means is blacks are condemned to being disproportionately poor. step 2 is higher criminality, as inevitable consequence of poverty. step 3 is way more (relative to population ratio) violent encounters with police.

please note, this isn't my brilliant analysis derived from scratch, but the sort of thing black intellectual activists like cornel west talk about routinely and supported by social science research/statistics.

what i'm curious about is why you felt so confident challenging me with a hostile "WTF"?


p.s. @droodzilla -- are you paying attention to the "cultural" responses?

Marxist to the core. Economics - poverty - criminality - violent police encounters. Economic determinism is the explanation for pretty much everything.

And after all that, there is racism. I grew up in the ghetto, so I saw it up close and personal - my high school had a race riot pretty much every year.

 

[matthewr]

I think Evergreen can be summed up as "Students, gonna student" and the more disturbing aspect for it was not young people fumbling about trying to be angry and change the world, but the way the alt-right uses it as a stick to beat progressives and to divert discussion away from the problems faced by minorities and protected groups.

In my experience, the only people who still think it's relevant are the likes of Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and people who go on about "SJWs" all the time.

 

[martin clark]

vuk - simply because - while accepting your follow-up post, I've read similar and agree - the way you used the juxtapositon in the post I questioned is an utter non-sequiter that read as pretty offensive.

And you need challenging, because - as ever - you attempt continually to bound the conversation to suit yourself & worldview.

 

[vuk]

I think Evergreen can be summed up as "Students, gonna student" and the more disturbing aspect for it was not young people fumbling about trying to be angry and change the world, but the way the alt-right uses it as a stick to beat progressives and to divert discussion away from the problems faced by minorities and protected groups.

In my experience, the only people who still think it's relevant are the likes of Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and people who go on about "SJWs" all the time.

to evoke the old totalitarian communist days: " why have you been watching tucker carlson and joe rogan?!"

to bring it to the present, i genuinely have no direct experience of rogan or carlson or anyone on the right exploiting this issue. nonetheless, i believe you when you say they have, because the right consistently grabs intellectual leftists ideas to bash fake leftist centrist with. what you are calling "progressives" is a matter of debate here.

bring it even closer and *i* think evergreen is very relevant. bret weinstein certainly does, as do ALL the people i know in american academia and just about all the people they know and routinely tell me about. it's also pretty easy to pick up on it in the public realm. the harper's letter is merely one very salient expression. you can't just skip over all that because the right is watching and taking advantage. "students gonna student", is clever and witty, but glosses over mob violence and seriously flawed ideas. to compare it to past student protests that have actually held up to the test of time is absurd. to be fair, we can revisit in 20 years.

 

[Tony L]

I found the Evergreen State College videos. It looks like an interesting, well made documentary, and I think Tony was wrong to censor you (Irony's kinda ironic that way).

It was the way they’d been lazily shit-shovelled onto the thread without any explanation that was the issue. Anyway, enjoy:

Folk can easily find the other two parts if they consider them worth watching.

The videos are fairly interesting, though (without finishing them yet) are exactly what I’d expect from Vuk, i.e. a load of middle-aged white academics sitting around a table attempting to post-rationalise a reaction from black students without actually listening to them or entering into dialogue. Sure, there are some clips from the controversial events themselves, but all of the editing and post-event framing is entirely from the side of the university’s overwhelmingly white middle-aged power-structure. It is basically the university lecturer’s defence. I write this mid-way through part II. If it suddenly flips narrative and allows the black student population a similar platform to define, reflect upon and explain their viewpoints in the same way I’ll retract this comment, but at this point I’m calling bullshit, as I have to with Vuk constantly when it comes to issues of race and LGBT rights. This is not as truly repugnant as say Jordan Peterson etc, but it is still very much a one-sided dialogue (so far).

PS The Huffington Post article I link to upthread gives far more actual context/background and demands far less of your time.

 

[vuk]

vuk - simply because - while accepting your follow-up post, I've read similar and agree - the way you used the juxtapositon in the post I questioned is an utter non-sequiter that read as pretty offensive.

i truly have no idea what you mean. if you actually agree, what is the point of continuing to be confrontational? just tell me how i should have phrased things to avoid the misunderstanding.

And you need challenging, because - as ever - you attempt continually to bound the conversation to suit yourself & worldview.

isn't that what everyone does here (and just about on all social media) in every single post? at the very least, i rarely attempt to read minds, infer motives or ignore empirical facts.

 

[matthewr]

to evoke the old totalitarian communist days: " why have you been watching tucker carlson and joe rogan?!"

to bring it to the present, i genuinely have no direct experience of rogan or carlson or anyone on the right exploiting this issue. nonetheless, i believe you when you say they have, because the right consistently grabs intellectual leftists ideas to bash fake leftist centrist with. what you are calling "progressives" is a matter of debate here.

bring it even closer and *i* think evergreen is very relevant. bret weinstein certainly does, as do ALL the people i know in american academia and just about all the people they know and routinely tell me about. it's also pretty easy to pick up on it in the public realm. the harper's letter is just one expression. you can't just skip over all that because the right is watching and taking advantage. "students gonna student", is clever and witty, but glosses over mob violence and seriously flawed ideas. to compare it to past student protests that have actually held up to the test of time is absurd. to be fair, we can revisit in 20 years.

But if you look at Evergreen, surely that sort of thing resonates with many people's direct experience of being a student? It certainly does with mine where we spent a lot of our time shouting half formed ideas at people we felt, even if only instinctively, as very much not on our side. Maybe it's different in the US but in the UK the only people who think this is still the centre of the universe are current students and those who never left. Or those who have a poltical axe to grind.

I also note that Bret Weinstein is part of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web (he is Eric Weinstein's brother) where he hangs out with people like Ben Shapiro, Sam Harris and Dave Rubin. So at this point I lean towards the idea that the students were probably right about him and he is far from the much loved and respected professor who said something wrong and got cancelled.

 

[vuk]

I also note that Bret Weinstein is part of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web (he is Eric Weinstein's brother) where he hangs out with people like Ben Shapiro, Sam Harris and Dave Rubin. So at this point I lean towards the idea that the students were probably right about him and he is far from the much loved and respected professor who said something wrong and got cancelled.

fundamental error of attribution alert

weisntein just before ground zero: highly-regarded, lefty professor for almost 2 decades.

he is then is terrorized for taking a moral anti-racism position that idiot students call racist, forced to uproot with wife (who was prof at same college).

in the aftermath, he has a few conversations with libertarian grifters -- i actually saw some of that and he ALWAYS maintained his leftist integrity. hangs out with ben shapiro? ffs! you've just "proven" the most absurd cancel culture hypothesis.

yet the cause must be that he was a secret racist deep down and nothing to do with upheaval of his life????

fundamental error of attribution

matthew, i know you are way smarter than that.

bret weinstein is a more decent person than anyone on this forum.

 

[DimitryZ]

In the mid 80s, USSR regularly sent agents with perfect American-English accent to US college campuses to propagandize American students.

We did everything we could to stop them, including civil disobedience and private property destruction.

Free speech doesn't mean free propaganda. We shut them down - no regrets.

 

[Dave H.]

But if you look at Evergreen, surely that sort of thing resonates with many people's direct experience of being a student? It certainly does with mine where we spent a lot of our time shouting half formed ideas at people we felt, even if only instinctively, as very much not on our side. Maybe it's different in the US but in the UK the only people who think this is still the centre of the universe are current students and those who never left. Or those who have a poltical axe to grind.

I also note that Bret Weinstein is part of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web (he is Eric Weinstein's brother) where he hangs out with people like Ben Shapiro, Sam Harris and Dave Rubin. So at this point I lean towards the idea that the students were probably right about him and he is far from the much loved and respected professor who said something wrong and got cancelled.

I know Sam Harris as a debater in favour of atheism, but am surprised to see him mentioned in this kind of light.

Is there a handy example/explanation of why he merits this kind of implicit disapproval?

 

[Joe Hutch]

So income is no determiner of wealth at all, ever? Really. Tell that to the guy on a zero hours contract or a family on universal credit and see how much they agree with a home owning, no debt, business owner with assets.

It is a determiner of wealth, but by no means the only one. Someone who owns several properties mortgage-free, but who has a relatively low income, is wealthier in absolute terms than someone on the same income who own just one, heavily mortgaged property. Someone with no children to support is probably wealthier compared to someone on the same income with several young children, and so forth.

 

[Joe Hutch]

bret weinstein is a more decent person than anyone on this forum.

Apart from me. I'm lovely.