Weaponised Victimhood

Or, Feel My Pain, Now Do As I Say. 

This is not a grand battle against institutionalised injustice. This is an addiction to indignation.

Below the fold, a short film by Rob Montz on the vanities, hysteria and clown-shoe politics of campus protest culture:

Some background here. 

Comments

[svh]

Brown student protesters complain homework is interfering with their activism.

http://campusreform.org/?ID=7308

[rjmadden]

The solution is to gather up all the 'protestors' belongings and dump them on the curb.

[David]

The solution is to gather up all the ‘protestors’ belongings and dump them on the curb.

Well, you’d think that sabotaging lectures and barracking the university’s provost might have… consequences. But apparently not.

[Lisa]

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2016/07/more_co_working_spaces_should_provide_pads_and_tampons.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top via @slate for god's sake.

[Rafi]

the filmmaker himself told Campus Reform he is not hopeful for the future of the university. "I'm pretty pessimistic," he said. "I think real, vigorous debate is migrating to outside the academy."

It left the building years ago.

[David]

via @slate for god’s sake.

Some 33-year-olds just don’t seem interested in being adults.

[R. Sherman]

Well, you’d think that sabotaging lectures and barracking the university’s provost might have… consequences.

Such behaviors would have consequences if the sabotage and unrest were in advocacy of something other than the established Leftist orthodoxy. The university leadership is quite happy to allow students to parrot the Leftist talking points of the leadership. This being done be design to squelch any dissent and make sure when students graduate--if they graduate-- they have the "proper" view of the world.

[David]

It left the building years ago.

On more than one occasion it has literally been chased out.

[Stan]

Why are they asking them to be quiet?
Boot them out.

[David]

Why are they asking them to be quiet? Boot them out.

Quite. If you repeatedly indulge bad behaviour, you will, quite quickly, get lots more of it. As any parent should know.

[Killer Marmot]

Authoritarianism tells you what to think, not how to think. It has never sought debate or conversation, and it fears diversity of opinion. The only goal is obedience.

[Criticas]

As long as protesting students can get loans to pay tuition and fees, universities will bend over backwards to take their money. Disciplining students risks cutting the revenue stream, both now and from future alumni. Oddly, universities don't seem to have done the math and realized many of their graduates will be so burdened by debt they won't be donors. Those that did choose remunerative majors will look back at their younger selves and cringe.

Until current alumni donors put their foot down, the inmates are running the asylum.

[R. Sherman]

Speaking of "weaponized victimhood. . .

[David]

The attacker, named as Mohamed

You can imagine my surprise.

[Gene]

Criticas, I call your attention to the University of Missouri, which is now suffering quite substantially (dramatic enrollment declines and a substantial drop in alumni support) for its administration's spinelessness last year.

[R. Sherman]

...dramatic enrollment declines and a substantial drop in alumni support...

Quite. And I say that as one who along with his spouse has a number of degrees from that institution and has occasionally sent money to it over the years. In the last twelve months the very earnest students calling me asking for contributions have received and earful from us, my wife tending to be the more strident one.

[David]

my wife tending to be the more strident one.

I’m mailing her a Guild of Evil™ membership pack and amulet.

[Fred the Fourth]

That French lady got what she deserved for having the cultural insensitivity to have helped the ill Mohamed yesterday. I'm sure the daughter's injuries were just collateral damage of his attempt to educate her about proper behavior in a French resort.
(FFS. I was just there last year. And later in Italy I neglected to punch a pudgy guy in shorts and sunglasses for allowing his woman to be following him in public while wearing a full head to toe bag. I will report for reprogramming asap.)

[Hedgehog]

for allowing his woman to be following him in public while wearing a full head to toe bag

Yes, that irks me as well. I just spent a week in Munich and you see that all the time. Shorts and t-shirts for the men, full body bag for the women who follow three paces behind. At least when you see Orthodox Jews there is an equality of inconvenience in the respective accoutrements of the men and the women, but with these guys it's anything goes for the men and do as you're told for the women. There's something profoundly wrong with that sort of outlook.

[Fred the Fourth]

Plus, the guy is inevitably swaggering, and openly ogling the scandalously clad locals / tourists. It's perverse, and very disturbing to watch. I always get the vibe of "ownership" from the guys.

[Spiny Norman]

What do you mean "vibe", Fred? It IS ownership.

[Jimmy]

Oh, you nasty bigots and your hate for bag-lady-man! Did it not occur to you that they are simply expressing their individual preference for bag-wear in a modern liberal way?

#NotAllBagLadies

[David]

Off-topic but sort-of tangentially related - Cathy Young watches the Ghostbusters remake so you don’t have to:

The movie currently has a 73% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Except that if you look at the “fresh” reviews, many of them really aren’t so fresh. For instance, here’s a “fresh” review that gives it two out of four stars and opens with, “It’s somewhat ironic that the funniest thing about Ghostbusters - the ‘controversial,’ all-female remake of the 1984 original - is a man.” (That’s Chris Hemsworth as Kevin, the dumb-as-rocks receptionist.) Here’s another one that starts with rebuking the misogynists who think women can’t be funny and then sheepishly admits that, actually, the movie isn’t all that good. In fact, that’s been a standard formula for a lot of “positive” reviews: “Suck it, woman-hating fanboys! Hell yes, women can be funny and there’s nothing wrong with lady ghostbusters! And this movie ... well ... it’s not great, but it’s not terrible.”

That’s hardly a ringing endorsement. In fact, it’s awfully patronising. Essentially, this movie is being patted on the head for offering us female leads in an action/comedy movie and a gender-flipped remake of a beloved movie classic. Yay?

The spoilers section of her review is quite damning.

[Hopp Singg]

Rudeness is a weakling's imitation of strength: victimhood, of courage.

[sH2]

Milo banned from Twitter.

http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/07/19/breaking-milo-suspended-twitter-20-minutes-party/

[David]

Milo banned from Twitter.

So I see. I suppose it was inevitable. But although Leslie Jones received some nasty, overtly racist tweets, including Photoshopped gorillas, so far as I can make out, none of them were sent by Milo. If Twitter bans people for sending racist tweets, why didn’t it ban the people actually sending them? As noted by many others, Twitter’s suspension and banning policy seems both wildly incoherent and politically inclined.

[ Edited. ]

The saga is made muddier by the fact that some of the studio publicity for the Ghostbusters remake, including the first trailer, made Leslie Jones look like a gurning racial caricature. It was one of the things that stood out as “oh dear,” along with the general feebleness of the jokes.

[David]

I see #FreeMilo is trending.

[Rob]

I am imagining women striding up and down the aisles of cinemas, flicking whips at cringing watchers and growling "you WILL laugh at this bit!"

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

But although Leslie Jones received some nasty, overtly racist tweets, including Photoshopped gorillas...

Perhaps they have been sent down the memory hole, but the only one I saw referencing the new Ghostbusters and a gorilla merely showed this from The Ghost Busters, an acutely bad TV show (and cartoon) from 1975.

[David]

growling “you WILL laugh at this bit!”

I wasn’t particularly interested in the gender hoo-hah surrounding the film. What struck me was just how flat and unfunny the trailer was. (Rather like the trailer for Absolutely Fabulous, which was equally forced and dismal. Trailers for comedies are particularly do-or-die and if the trailer doesn’t make you laugh, even once, then the rest of the film almost certainly won’t either.) And as I said, given the right-on feminist pretensions of the stars and filmmakers, it seemed a little odd to rely for comic effect (or would-be comic effect) on a lazy, rather unflattering racial caricature.

Perhaps they have been sent down the memory hole,

Either way, there was some nasty racial crap that I don’t intend to search out again. The point, though, is that, so far as I could tell, Milo didn’t write or send any of it and didn’t “incite” any “targeted abuse” of Ms Jones, which is Twitter’s stated reason for deleting his account. Unless noting lousy spelling and grammar now counts as heinous racism and incitement to harass. Of course Twitter isn’t a public utility and its owners can ban whomever they wish on whatever pretext. But any claims of political impartiality seem even less credible than before.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

But any claims of political impartiality seem even less credible than before.

Yes, I rather doubt anyone will be booted for this sort of thing, because Trump.

[Microbillionaire]

"Of course Twitter isn’t a public utility and its owners can ban whomever they wish on whatever pretext."

I'm hearing this line a lot after the Milo fuss, but... cake, bakery. That set a pretty harsh precedent that a private company in fact can't ban whoever they wish on whatever pretext. If anything Twitter is the one far more like a utility given its size and the relative number of twitter-clones to bakeries.

[David]

According to the Daily Beast, Milo’s now the “racist, alt-right leader.” And “the appealing young face of the racist alt-right.” Though the specifics of his alleged racism are, again, curiously absent. Ditto screengrabs of any racist tweets or harassment, or “incitement” to harassment. And the author of the article doesn’t seem to know or care whether Milo is in fact racist or not. But hey, headline.

[David]

The spam filter’s being twitchy again. If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me and I’ll shake the damn thing.

[Fred the Fourth]

I've read all kinds of commentary about the Twitter / Milo kerfuffle. I've concluded that the unstated reason Twitter banned Milo is that he can write (and argues coherently, and is smart, and is clever), and his opponents can't (and don't, and aren't, and aren't). He's just BETTER than they are, and so they can't allow him in their clubhouse.
(Gee, sounds like I have a man-crush on Milo. Sadly, no, I just find his writing refreshing.)

[sk60]

Timeline is interesting.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2016/07/20/leslie-jones-twitter-trolls-milo-yiannopoulos/

[SumDumGuy]

“Today, Iago is a suicide-bomber willing to destroy hundreds of Muslim lives for the sake of a radical nationalistic ideology,” Bezio writes. “A police officer so conditioned to believe that he has the power, the authority, and the right to make life-or-death decisions that he doesn’t care if (and in fact enjoys it when) he kills an innocent black man.

So cops = suicide bombers... But at least she's teaching Shakespeare.

[David]

I’ve concluded that the unstated reason Twitter banned Milo is…

Well, the stated reason doesn’t look at all convincing, given that I’ve yet to see any evidence that Milo “incited” anyone to do anything, let alone urged his readers to tweet racial insults. As there are plenty of people who would be keen to publicise screengrabs of any such incitement, this makes the lack of evidence rather conspicuous.

[Fred the Fourth]

David: Yes. The "stated" reason is obviously bogus. But even crybullies have to have SOME kind of verbalizable excuse.
"Mom! Milo's being mean to me again!"
"Sigh..What is it this time?"
"He's touching MY SIDE of the car seat!"
"No, he isn't. He's belted in way over by the door."
"Well, he WAS. When you WEREN'T LOOKING!"

[Ding Badabing]

Unsurprisingly, the best Ghostbusters 2016 review comes from Red Letter Media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEKreyTkvA

[David]

Yes. The “stated” reason is obviously bogus.

Taken at face value, and bearing in mind the lack of any evidence of incitement, the ‘logic’ seems to be that a Twitter user is to be held personally responsible for the actions of strangers who may happen to read his tweets, and over whom he has, and can have, no control. Extending the same logic, it’s possible that someone might read a post of mine and then search out the person I’ve written about and say crass things on their blog or via Twitter or whatever. And I would be pointed to as “inciting” personal abuse, or “hate” or some such, regardless of what I’d actually done, or not done.

And by “Twitter user,” I mean, obviously, only certain Twitter users.

[R. Sherman]

. . .[I]t’s possible that someone might read a post of mine and then search out the person I’ve written about and say crass things on their blog or via Twitter or whatever.

Don't look at me. I don't "do" Twitter. Besides, Laurie Penny can spawn outrage, ridicule and mockery on her own without any help from you.

[David]

Besides, Laurie Penny can spawn outrage, ridicule and mockery on her own without any help from you.

Nevertheless, I feel obliged to contribute. I’m a giver.

[Fred the Fourth]

R.Sherman: Laurie Penny can spawn...on her own
I'm so relieved. Otherwise how would the world supply of outrage etc. be maintained? Can you imagine how impoverished we'd all be if Ms. L.P. had to get practical help from a fertile male for her spawnings?
(I have this pic in my head of L.P. in the form of a salmon, in a sunlit 6-inch deep stream, curled protectively around a clutch of embryonic artworks. Do I need to up my meds?)

[Ten]

Excellent video. Groundbreaking in its delivery, I might add. Especially note the desperation in Prof. Glenn Loury's voice. Shit just got real.

And the solution to the liberal academy? One neither side of the political divide will even consider: Not a dime more of public money.

The goddamn thing has become the pending end of the West. Starve the beast, an option as impossible as reforming the liberal enterprise itself.

Sigh.

[JuliaM]

"Well, you’d think that sabotaging lectures and barracking the university’s provost might have… consequences. But apparently not."

No consequences = no chance of this being reined in. Expect more. Much more.

[David]

Re the Milo saga, this long comment thread over at MetaFilter may offer insight into a certain, left of centre, supposedly educated demographic.

There’s lots of nodding and name-calling, and rumbling about incitement and “dog whistles,” but, again, as yet, there’s still no evidence of Milo inciting anything. One commenter says, “About goddamn time someone was held accountable for spewing racist misogynist hateful words in a targeted fashion in order to harass someone.” [Italics mine.] But there’s a remarkable lack of curiosity – of dare I say, critical thinking - about who actually did what, and when, or whether it might be better to ban the individuals who were directly, personally responsible.

So far, I’ve seen one comment, out of 197, that questions, briefly, whether Milo actually did what he’s accused of. One pious soul suggests banning all of Milo’s followers en masse, all 388,000 of them, regardless of whether they tweeted anything racially abusive, or anything at all to Ms Jones. The rather obvious point I made upthread, about being held responsible for the actions of strangers over whom one has no control, and being treated as if you’d said and done what someone else has said and done, has yet to be aired.

[Flubber]

Re: Milo

I think the bigger issue is that of Twitter's ownership - Twitter has a significant ownership share from Middle Eastern investors. e.g.

"Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, who in 2011 invested $300 million in the social network, now owns 34.9 million shares of Twitter’s common stock, according to a new regulatory filing (pdf).
At nearly 5.2%, his stake in the company is now larger than that of Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and newly re-minted CEO, whose 21.86 million shares give him 3.2% of the company, according to FactSet. (The prince previously had a stake of roughly 3%.)"

Milo as well as being anti-SJW is also furiously anti-Islam, and was making waves in the US's gay community after the Orlando atrocity.

I think the Ghostbusters nonsense, gave them the excuse they'd been looking for to ban him...

[David]

I think the bigger issue is that of Twitter’s ownership

Yes, I hadn’t considered that.

[Nikw211]

Re the Milo saga, this long comment thread over at MetaFilter may offer insight …

One of the top comments on that thread is a quote from a Yiannopoulis article from 2012:

So perhaps what’s needed now is a bolder form of censure after all, because the internet is not a universal human right. If people cannot be trusted to treat one another with respect, dignity and consideration, perhaps they deserve to have their online freedoms curtailed. For sure, the best we could ever hope for is a smattering of unpopular show trials. But if the internet, ubiquitous as it now is, proves too dangerous in the hands of the psychologically fragile, perhaps access to it ought to be restricted. We ban drunks from driving because they’re a danger to others. Isn’t it time we did the same to trolls?

What’s amusing about this to me is that all the comments that follow (e.g. "That's the same guy? Did he have a stroke or something?”) seem unable to grasp the possibility that perhaps Yiannopoulis might not actually be the kind of racist Imperator of Trolldom they unquestioningly presume him to be.

I mean, yes, that quote from that article would indeed be hypocritical if Yiannopoulis was in fact guilty as charged of inciting a hate mob of puerile racists to flock after Leslie Jones … except that he didn’t do that so it doesn’t make him a hypocrite.

I’ve seen the Tweets he sent and while they are not exactly sophisticated bon mots there is nothing in there that I think could be considered racist.

But of course … that’s not actually very important to the people in that list. They had long ago condemned him as a racist - or worse still, condemned as a racist on the say-so of someone else - so what Tweets he sent or didn’t send recently become incidental and insignificant details.

Incidentally, that very same Yiannopoulis article begins:

Glibness and superficial charm. Manipulation of others. A grandiose sense of self. Pathological lying. A lack of remorse, shame or guilt. Shallow emotions. An incapacity to feel genuine love. A need for stimulation. Frequent verbal outbursts. Poor behavioural controls. These are just some of the things that social media are encouraging in all of us. They’re also a pretty comprehensive diagnostic checklist for sociopathy – in fact, that’s where I got the list.

Hmm.

[Nikw211]

Also on a not entirely unrelated note:

Seattle Artist Natasha Marin Launches "Reparations" Website

The way it works is pretty straightforward. A person of color makes a request, and a white person can elect to fulfill that request […] Alternatively, a white person can offer a service or good, and a person of color can choose to accept it […] So far, white people have successfully given people of color car rides, money, a trip for four poets to relieve some stress at the Hot House Spa, and advice on revamping a CV.

And these are people who think they should be running the country?

[David]

They had long ago condemned him as a racist - or worse still, condemned as a racist on the say-so of someone else

That’s what struck me, repeatedly, across a large chunk of the supposedly hip and nerdy media, not just the usual suspects. Buzzfeed claimed that Milo had “incited his followers to bombard Jones with racist and demeaning tweets.” Well, maybe that’s what you’d expect from Buzzfeed, or from Gawker or whatever. But the New York Times, a supposed paper of record, claimed that the “racist and sexist remarks” had been “rallied and directed by Mr Yiannopoulos,” which, so far as I can see, is simply a lie.

There’s been a glib repetition of these “incitement” claims, as if they were self-evident, as if no-one need check, by people who fancy themselves as clever and sophisticated, and who have fathomed who it is they ought to be seen disliking, but who don’t seem interested in establishing whether the things they assert are true. And so, again, whether or not one agrees with Milo on any given subject, and whether or not one finds that a little Milo goes an awfully long way, he seems to have provided a public service, by disclosing what fashionable opinion, and “social justice” in particular, very often entails.

[ Edited. ]

[brilton]

I find all this stuff about Milo disturbing, more so than usual. But I suppose nothing should surprise me anymore.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Seattle Artist Natasha Marin Launches "Reparations" Website

IOW, free s#it army takes advantage of gullible hipsters white guilt:

...a person named Ana who wants rent money and/or a Chakra cleanse...Karyn Schwartz of Sugar Pill, an apothecary on Capitol Hill, can provide "herbal & natural well-being consultations, classes/workshops for groups on natural strategies for stress management, and free flower essence formulas for additional support."

OK, rent or a Chakra cleanse, hard to pick whether no place to live of having a filthy Chakra is more oppressive. Let's see, get the Chakra tidy, then get the flower essence for the support of being homeless because you used rent money to get a Chakra steam clean, buff, wax, and detail.

And now for something completely different:

Bronycon ! The grown men who love ‘My Little Pony’ aren’t who you think they are

Actually, yes, yes, they are.

[Ten]

Reading your last handful of comments we find these snippets of evident leftism:

...spewing racist misogynist hateful words in a targeted fashion in order to harass someone.

banning all of Milo’s followers en masse, all 388,000 of them,

Buzzfeed claimed that Milo had “incited his followers to bombard Jones with racist and demeaning tweets.”

...the New York Times, a supposed paper of record, claimed that the “racist and sexist remarks” had been “rallied and directed by Mr Yiannopoulos,”

All of this an infinitely more, I'm sure, qualifies for the lede: It's all indignation addiction, a moral posturing common to the dysfunctionals noted already here.

And as bolded, it's all without meaning, irrelavent noise, and lies.

The line between outing this crap as such and becoming codependent on its overwhelming and overwhelmingly psychotic narrative is fine enough to be a primary concern. I vote for never engaging it on its level, but it is nonetheless a thoroughly vile misfit among the normal human principles the rest of the world presumably needs to operate. Try not to feed it, is my advice. It's hog-wrestling looking to book space and sell tickets.

[Hedgehog]

David: But the New York Times, a supposed paper of record, claimed that the “racist and sexist remarks” had been “rallied and directed by Mr Yiannopoulos,” which, so far as I can see, is simply a lie.

I must say I am slightly touched by the vestigial trust you put in the journalistic integrity of the supposed (and self-proclaimed) paper of record. Those of us who live in this increasingly tenuous republic that is the USofA have long since ceased viewing the New York Times as anything other than the party organ of the left. This is, after all, the newspaper that already in the 1930s made itself the apologist for the Soviet Union when it published Walter Duranty's Stalinist propaganda justifying the collectivization of agriculture that resulted in the mass starvation of the Ukrainian peasantry.

The point of the New York Times is not to provide factual news, it is to provide its leftist readers with the affirmation and the confirmation of their biases. Since none of them will ever bother to check the facts behind the narrative peddled by their newspaper, there is no earthly reason why the newspaper itself would be so conscientious as to do so. Milo Yiannopoulos is the enemy of everything that the New York Times holds dear, and this has provided a perfect opportunity for the paper to reinforce this view of Milo in the minds of its readers.

[David]

I must say I am slightly touched by the vestigial trust you put in the journalistic integrity of the supposed (and self-proclaimed) paper of record.

Oh, it’s very vestigial.

[Hedgehog]

Oh, it’s very vestigial.

Yeah, thought so.

[Horace Dunn]

Oh boy. I remember my university days (which weren’t all that long ago). I was inclined to be contrarian, childishly so, I’ll admit. I remember one occasion when I presented an anti-vegetarian argument (at the time, there was a move to increase costs in Hall for everybody because the costs of catering would go up if “vegetarian options” became standard). My argument was poor and it was politely dismantled. Afterwards there were no hard feelings. I continued to adopt contrarian positions about all sorts of things. Sometimes my arguments won out, but all too often I found myself bested by very smart people. But there were never any hard feelings. I learned a good deal in those days. Being contrarian was pretty much encouraged, but only on the understanding that if you’re going to adopt a pugnacious standpoint, you need to take the punches. Or put another way: the University’s gift to you is to teach you to grow up intellectually. I rather fear that those were the dying days of a great institution. I’d be surprised if the freedom and tolerance that existed then remain these days, but I hope that I’m wrong. The University in question, by the way, is Oxford.

[David]

Cathy Young has a thoughtful, measured take on the Milo / Twitter saga. Worth reading in full.

[Adiabat]

Apparently Laurie Penny and Milo had a little date a few days ago:

"I’m a radical queer feminist leftist writer burdened with actual principles. He thinks that’s funny and invites me to his parties."

She was with him when he found out he was banned on twitter:

"How does he feel about his suspension?

"It's fantastic," he says"

If you can tolerate the flowery rhetoric then it's a funny read: https://medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream-room/im-with-the-banned-8d1b6e0b2932#.kijvl1ym8

[David]

If you can tolerate the flowery rhetoric then it’s a funny read

See the comments in today’s ephemera thread.

[K Riches]

What would little Penny Whistle do without her endless Easter Parade of patriarchal villainy? The more there is, the more she loves every minute of denouncing it. She's like a little puppy that rolls over on it's back, wiggles in excited glee and pees all over the carpet. She's having a breathlessly wonderful magic-carpet ride, and she seizes every moment of it. Perhaps though, deep down somewhere inside, she might come to realise that it's all been a matter of pure expediency, and that one day she will be dispensible, or replaceable. What will she do then, when the limelight has faded?

[ACTOldFart]

What will she do then, when the limelight has faded?

She will get ever more desperate about the loss of attention focused on her, and make ever more noisy, outrageous and absurd claims and assertions to try to get it back. She will do anything to seek attention, generating an accelerating spiral of screeching, posturing, loony stunts. She will be like Kim Kardashian without the tits.