Open letter denouncing the "restriction of debate".

[mansr]

The fact that societal wrongs exist doesn't mean people claiming to be against them cannot simultaneously be abusive. Also, a person can be right in some matters and wrong in others. Hell, once in a while I even agree with the Pope.

 

[Cheese]

PS If you bring dubious illiberal views here I will rip them to bits. Every time. I will not host anything I view as bigoted. This is all covered in the site AUP. Live with it or go. I don’t really care. No other choice on the table.

The way you write this sentence makes it look like you are almost waiting for dubious illiteral views that you can rip to bits.

 

[Tony L]

The fact that societal wrongs exist doesn't mean people claiming to be against them cannot simultaneously be abusive.

Absolutely, and some times it is absolutely necessary. There is no way to engage with fascism without the fight, denying platforms, disrupting, defunding etc. It has always been the same. As I’ve mentioned before I became politically aware thanks to Rock Against Racism etc back in the late-‘70s and ‘80s and that was not an entirely passive movement.

(for clarity: I’m certainly not saying anyone here is a fascist!)

 

[Tony L]

The way you write this sentence makes it look like you are almost waiting for dubious illiteral views that you can rip to bits.

It is the nearest I get to sport! ;-)

 

[mansr]

Absolutely, and some times it is absolutely necessary.

If it's necessary, it isn't abuse. It is not necessary to run a college professor out of town because you didn't like something he said. Neither is it necessary to cancel business contracts over something nasty the owner's daughter said years ago without his knowledge. Those incidents, and others like them, are examples of abuse.

 

[Minio]

If you take all the editorial bias out of vuk’s recommended doc I’m not sure I’d be any the wiser as to how all the anger and indignation depicted is supposed to improve racial equality in the world.
Just more hot air from those of privilege enjoying a bit of self congratulatory intellectualism in a bid to springboard their careers I’m guessing.

 

[Cav]

PFM is a tightly moderated, homogeneous, middle class, genteel corner of the internet. The idea that people feel intimidated into silence here is odd. Are such people scared of their local librarian?

As one often banned for far less controversial views than are allowed in this thread, I would disagree.

 

[Joe Hutch]

There's also (more than) a hint of ageism going on in some of the discussions, here and elsewhere; 'these guys aren't just white, they're old'. But, hey, I'm a Boomer*, so what do I know?

*Or am I?

PS Something kept niggling at the back of my mind when I was reading this thread. Then I remembered; it was the novel/TV series 'The History Man' by Malcolm Bradbury, which is about orthodoxy and the hazards of challenging it. Back in the 70s, when it was written, the orthodoxy, in academia at least, was Marxism (another faint memory just stirred, of one of my lecturers back when I was doing my BA getting excited because the Penguin Complete Works of both Freud and Marx were about to be published). Nobody challenged the Marxist orthodoxy at my university, because we were a bunch of slackers, and soon the orthodoxy changed anyway to structuralism and post-modernism, by which time I was out of there.

 

[Joe Hutch]

The fact that societal wrongs exist doesn't mean people claiming to be against them cannot simultaneously be abusive. Also, a person can be right in some matters and wrong in others. Hell, once in a while I even agree with the Pope.

'But the right to freedom obviously includes the right to be foolish. If what I say must be passed over for its sagacity by censors, however wise and prudent, then I have no free speech. And if what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.'

H L Mencken, 'Christian Science', 1927

 

[Joe Hutch]

As one often banned for far less controversial views than are allowed in this thread, I would disagree.

The answer is to be as non-controversial as me, or at any rate to wrap controversial views in anodyne words. I'm never banned. Well, not from pfm at any rate.

 

[vuk]

There's also (more than) a hint of ageism going on in some of the discussions, here and elsewhere; 'these guys aren't just white, they're old'.

i have noticed it.

one of the claims upthread is that letter signatories were too old to understand stuff like twitter. yeah, i'm sure noam chomsky (the oldest of the lot, i'm guessing) has trouble figuring out social media.

 

[vuk]

As one often banned for far less controversial views than are allowed in this thread, I would disagree.

as you see it, what are the controversial views that have been allowed? not trolling, i am genuinely interested and quite possibly guilty (by your standard).

 

[Tony L]

It is not necessary to run a college professor out of town because you didn't like something he said.

You’ll notice, I hope, that I have made no comment on the professor’s sacking at all as I simply don’t have sufficient information to make that call (the Huff Post article doesn’t cover it and the YouTube video is clearly one-sided revisionism). This at present is the sum of my knowledge. I may have stated that I feel getting to the root of the student’s collective concerns about racism is infinitely more important than any lecturer’s job, but I honestly don’t know what happened here, or what led to it over what sort of timeframe. I certainly won’t rush to the lecturer’s defence dismissing the protestors feelings out of hand as some are clearly so determined to do, as IME this sort of event never arrives out of thin air, but neither have I judged him (other than his truly terrible video!).

PS Not only was this video a waste of my time my YouTube ‘recommendations’ list is now full of other likely alt-right shite relating to it rather than my normal tranquil selections of vintage audio restoration, music documentaries, vintage computer & guitar geekery etc etc. Arrgh!

 

[Dave H.]

I've never heard of any of them, but a quick Google finds this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris

'Glenn Greenwald has claimed that "[Harris] and others like him spout and promote Islamophobia under the guise of rational atheism." Greenwald claimed that Harris' Islamophobia is revealed by his statements such as: "the people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists", and "[t]he only future devout Muslims can envisage — as Muslims — is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, politically subjugated, or killed."[60]

Harris has criticized the way the term Islamophobia is commonly used.[61] "My criticism of Islam is a criticism of beliefs and their consequences, but my fellow liberals reflexively view it as an expression of intolerance toward people",[62] he wrote following a disagreement with Ben Affleck in October 2014 on the show Real Time with Bill Maher. Affleck had described Harris' views on Muslims as "gross" and "racist", and his statement that "Islam is the Mother lode of bad ideas" as an "ugly thing to say."[63][64]'

Thanks. I see how that would work. Not sure the characterisation is fair, but the dots are there to join up.

 

[DimitryZ]

Let me get this straight:

We are now seriously discussing - for days - if an episode of student anger and faculty conflict in a small college (Olympia, WA...storied location) is indicative of racialized totalitarianism engulfing civilization through the trojan horse of BLM movement.

Really?

 

[vuk]

We are now seriously discussing - for days - if an episode of student anger and faculty conflict in a small college (Olympia, WA...storied location) is indicative of racialized totalitarianism engulfing civilization through the trojan horse of BLM movement.

3 things

1) lame-ass attempt at humour
if you think 4 days is bad, over in the trump thread, someone just prolonged russiagate tedium well into the end of YEAR 4.

2) forum etiquette
what you are doing here verges on what is called "thread crap". if you don;t like what people are talking about or it doesn't interest you, don't belittle them for it. just stay away.

3) collective perceptions and cultural symbols
you could present george floyd as a two-bit criminal who is hardly worthy of attention or you can recognize the powerful symbolic meaning of what took place and how it tied together a bunch of important social problems worth talking about for a whole lot of people.

 

[DimitryZ]

3 things

1) lame-ass attempt at humour
if you think 4 days is bad, over in the trump thread, someone just prolonged russiagate tedium well into the end of YEAR 4.

2) forum etiquette
what you are doing here verges on what is called "thread crap". if you don;t like what people are talking about or it doesn't interest you, don't belittle them for it. just stay away.

3) collective perceptions and cultural symbols
you could present george floyd as a two-bit criminal who is hardly worthy of attention or you can recognize the powerful symbolic meaning of what took place and how it tied together a bunch of important social problems worth talking about for a whole lot of people.

1. I don't think Russian GRU throwing an American election is a tedious topic...especially a few month out of the one coming up.
2. Forum etiquette is not one of your strongest positions.
3. I am definitely beginning to see the simularity: in one case a black man was killed by police after begging for his life and in the other case a white professor was shouted at by students and fired after refusing to follow college policy. Didn't the second case spur a world-wide movement called PFM - Professor's Feelings Matter?

 

[vuk]

You’ll notice, I hope, that I have made no comment on the professor’s sacking at all as I simply don’t have sufficient information to make that call (the Huff Post article doesn’t cover it and the YouTube video is clearly one-sided revisionism).

some guy on the internet sets the stage (i'd say he's pretty spot on with the summary):

"Once a year, Evergreen State University (located just outside of Seattle), allows the students of colour to take a day of absence, so that their importance and contribution is felt at the University. Bret Weinstein, as a progressive, was and has been on board for this for a long time.

A year ago, they flipped the logic. Rather than telling people of colour to stay away for the day, they told white people that they are not welcome on campus for a day. Absence wasn’t compulsory, but highly recommended."

from: https://medium.com/@jakubferencik/t...-explained-the-evergreen-scandal-f3dfe07b1d70


then this is weinstein's email message in response to the "event" change:

vuk.

 

[DimitryZ]

I got interested in who this Bret W. is, the man at the center of the tragic event that is destroying the Western Civilization.

He seems to have just finished a scholar year in residence at Princeton, though he seems to be saying that Princeton is worse than Evegreen.

He does many podcasts and interviews, having used his new found fame as a springboard to a political relevance.

He has created something called Unity2020, where Andrew Yang and some admiral will be drafted to run as an independent ticket in November:

https://medium.com/@ArticlesOfUnity/the-articles-of-unity-f544f930d336

It seems rather fantastical undertaking with little chance of success...However, this would definitely help Trump if gains any traction.

He tweets a lot...his website declares him to be a Professor in Exile. His academic work seems to be at intersection of evolutionary biology, race and sociology, I guess?

There is something about this guy that rubs me the wrong way...

 

[DimitryZ]

Here is a link to one of the latest of Bret W.'s "Dark Horse" podcasts.

It's long but scimmable. Bret and a sympathetic academic from Columbia are lamenting the leftist, authoritarian mobs that have flooded American cities. Other that the declarations of their own "leftist" bona fides, the actual arguments are standard Fox News fodder.