Culture

White Privilege Conference: Social Justice Warriors Can Never Be Placated

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

WPC2016 twitter anger

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Social Justice Warriors do not want to end oppression. They merely want to become the oppressors themselves

If any further proof were needed that Social Justice Warriors can never be appeased or placated – and that they will keep on moving the goalposts indefinitely so that people with “privilege” can only ever fail the moral tests set for them – then one needs to look no further than the seventeenth annual White Privilege Conference which just concluded in Philadelphia.

One might have thought that an annual confab of contrite white people and their Allies in Privilege to self-flagellate and ruminate on the many ways in which they structurally oppress minorities would have been met with some approval by the SJW brigade. If anything could possibly please the Social Justice Warriors, it should be this event.

And so naturally, the SJWs crawl all over the conference and pick through every speech and interpersonal interaction to find fault with it, to wail and clutch their pearls in shock at the terrible oppression and insensitivity taking place, and to generally flaunt their More Moral Than Thou credentials in public.

The Daily Caller reports:

Disaffected participants in the 2016 White Privilege Conference (WPC) have taken to Twitter to complain that the conference was, ironically, too white and was actually filled to the brim with white supremacy.

Adopting the hashtag #WPCSoWhite, inspired by the recent #OscarsSoWhite campaign, Twitter users claimed the conference that was supposed to battle white privilege instead served to entrench it.

The tag appears to have been started and pushed with particular vigor by Aeriel Ashlee, an education consultant who attended WPC and objected to several parts of a keynote address delivered by (white) historian James Loewen.

She said Loewen’s rhetoric, which was solidly progressive throughout, actually entrenched white supremacy, partly because his speech allegedly lasted too long. When Loewen attempted to defend himself, Ashlee said that any defense was invalid and only further showed his white supremacy.

Every act by non-SJWs, even those desperately designed to appease them and lessen their anger (like university administrators resigning for upsetting their crybaby student populations or whole conferences being set up to discuss the problem with white people) is only more evidence of their guilt. Non-SJWs literally can do no right in the eyes of these totalitarian complainers.

This Twitter exchange between one of the keynote speakers and an antagonist shows the futility of debate, or even of complete capitulation to their demands:

James Loewen - Aeriel Ashlee - Twitter exchange

What exactly was Loewen supposed to do after being accused of overrunning his speaking time when in reality he did no such thing? According to SJW logic, the only appropriate response would have been for Loewen to fall on his knees and beg for forgiveness, even though he had done nothing wrong. And when Loewen failed to do so, the mere act of correcting Ashlee’s false accusation was interpreted as “a white man’s defensiveness intead of accepting responsibility”.

This is madness. In this universe, factual errors and misunderstandings can no longer be corrected if it involves a white male attempting to defend himself or contradicting a POC (person of colour) or other identity group, whose judgement is always final when it comes to determining whether any word or act constitutes “oppression”.

As Rod Dreher commented when social justice warriors criticised a classical music scholar for having the temerity to spend his free time teaching a class about “opera and ideas” to prison inmates:

SJWs ruin everything. They kill everything they touch. Why would anyone want to work in a field where these nuts run rampant?

There is literally no good deed or benign intention which modern Identity Politics cultists will not pick through, determined to find fault. But more tragically for these SJWs, this mindset dooms them to be prisoners of their own (real or perceived) circumstances, passing up endless opportunities for personal growth and even material advancement because they are so self-obsessed and captivated by the injustices meted out on past generations decades and even centuries ago.

More to the point, in the shorter term they will quickly become friendless. Except within their hermetically sealed circle of fellow Identity Politics cultists, nobody will want to socialise or work with these people. Because who wants to be in the company of highly-strung perpetual victims who consider themselves so morally superior that they police the words and behaviour of everyone around them?

But maybe that is where this will end up – with Identity Politics cultists sequestering themselves away in a closed, parallel society, unwilling to engage with the real world lest it corrupt or “harm” them. Perhaps SJWs will be the monks of the twenty-first century, worshipping their narcissistic god of self-identity and living unbearably tense lives as they seek to purge any oppressive behaviour from their systems and excommunicate those who make the smallest transgressions.

Far better than the rest of us having to submit to their tyranny.

 

The White Privilege Conference

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What Conservative Government? – Part 5, Conservatives Who Fail To Conserve

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Tisbury Roman Villa

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This supposedly conservative government is no longer in the business of conserving things – even ancient Roman ruins of great historical and national significance

What kind of a country is modern Britain? And what kind of a people are we?

Sadly, if the behaviour of our own government is any guide we are now such a has-been, good for nothing failure of a once proud country that when we stumble upon one of the largest and most significant domestic archaeological discoveries in a century, we simply shrug our shoulders and cover it back up with dirt because the cost and inconvenience of fully excavating and restoring it would be too great.

And “too great” doesn’t mean Olympic Gamess or Crossrail type money. It means a few hundred thousand pounds, less than pocket change in terms of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport annual budget.

Apparently, discovering the immaculately preserved remains of a great Roman villa – with all of the potential it offers to better understand our past – simply isn’t possible when every last penny of government money has to be diverted to ensure that we continue blindly throwing 0.7% of our GDP into the furnace so that we can be “world leaders” in international aid.

The Telegraph reports:

While laying an electricity cable beneath the grounds of his home, near the village of Tisbury, in Wiltshire, Luke Irwin found the remains of what appeared to be an ornate Roman Mosaic.

But what emerged when archaeologists from Historic England and Salisbury Museum began excavating the site was even more of a surprise.

They found the mosaic was part of the floor of a much larger Roman property, similar in size and structure to the great Roman villa at Chedworth.

But in a move that will surprise many, the remains – some of the most important to be found in decades – have now been re-buried, as Historic England cannot afford to fully excavate and preserve such an extensive site.

Dr David Roberts, archaeologist for Historic England, said:  “This site has not been touched since its collapse 1400 years ago and, as such, is of enormous importance. Without question, this is a hugely valuable site in terms of research, with incredible potential.

“The discovery of such an elaborate and extraordinarily well-preserved villa, undamaged by agriculture for over 1500 years, is unparalleled in recent years. Overall, the excellent preservation, large scale and complexity of this site present a unique opportunity to understand Roman and post-Roman Britain.”

He added: “Unfortunately, it would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to fully excavate and the preserve the site, which cannot be done with the current pressures.

“We would very much like to go back and carry out more digs to further our understanding of the site. But it’s a question of raising the money and taking our time, because as with all archaeological work there is the risk of destroying the very thing you seek to uncover.”

I genuinely don’t know what is worse here – the fact that the government (for Historic England is a subsidiary of DCMS) has become so distracted by trying to trick and scaremonger its way to victory the EU referendum and so untuned from the daily life of this country that nobody within DCMS thought to intervene when they found out that we just weren’t going to bother with this particular ruin, or the fact that one of the archaeologists (Dr. Roberts) himself seems serenely resigned to the fact that he will probably be an ancient relic himself by the time the UK government scrounges the spare change to properly excavate, understand and display this piece our history for the education of all.

This is the country which coughed up over £3 million (mostly voluntary donations) in order to exhume the long-lost body of King Richard III from beneath a car park in the city of Leicester only to rebury him with pomp, swagger and a televised pseudo-state funeral months later. Do we really think that a similar effort could not have been made for the excavation of the Tisbury Villa? Are we not even going to try? And is the government willing to let the ages reclaim this historic site without so much as lifting a finger to help out?

This blog constantly drones on about the virtues of small government and a leaner, more agile state. There are many ways in which the state spends time and resources doing badly things which could and should be done in the non-profit, charitable and private sectors, and this blog will continue to advocate for these libertarian and conservatarian ideals. But surely if we are to have a national government at all, one of the things it absolutely should do is to take some measure of stewardship over our natural and historical built environment.

This blog would be the first to admit that in many areas, excessive government involvement in the arts (as well as a lack of personal tax incentives) crowds out the private sponsorship and philanthropy which so distinguishes the fine arts and cultural in America. But while a plausible case can be made that the state should not be operating its own massive media organisation in the form of the BBC, the historical nature of archaeological discoveries (as well as thorny issues of property rights springing from  such discoveries) mean that this is an area where the state can and should get involved.

It seems self-evident to me that the UK government, through Historic England, should step up and help to preserve this site for the benefit of the nation. But what do we hear from John Whittingdale and David Cameron’s coke zero conservative government? Nothing. Tumbleweeds. This is a government more interested in burying embarrassing stories about the Culture Secretary’s personal life than digging up an archaeological discovery of real importance.

So here we are, a country so lacking in motivation and curiosity that we are willing to re-bury one of the most exciting domestic archaeological discoveries in recent history because it would simply cost too much money and take too much effort to properly excavate the site, study and catalogue it, and maybe throw up a visitors centre at some point so that the thing can begin to pay for itself.

A country where we have much to say about our public services and everything we believe we are owed by the state, but far less to say about what we might do for our country, our society, our community and those who will live here after we are gone.

A country where the ruling Conservative Party has forgotten even how to conserve.

Welcome to David Cameron’s dreary, unaspirational Britain.

 

Tisbury Roman Villa - artist reconstruction

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Top and Bottom Image: Telegraph

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Who Is To Blame For Nightmares Of Donald Trump?

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Donald Trump - school

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Won’t somebody please think of the children?

Apparently American schoolchildren are being terrorised by the thought of Donald Trump winning the presidency.

Buzzfeed reports:

The presidential campaign is stoking fear and anxiety among children of color, according to a survey released Thursday of about 2,000 teachers.

The report, “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the Presidential Campaign on Our Nation’s Schools” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), puts much of the blame on Donald Trump’s comments about undocumented immigrants, banning Muslims from entering the U.S., and building a wall between the United States and Mexico.

Even though the survey questions didn’t identify any candidates, out of 5,000 total comments more than 1,000 mentioned Donald Trump. Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton were named less than 200 times.

“My students are terrified of Donald Trump,” said a middle school teacher with a large student body of African-American Muslims. “They think that if he’s elected, all black people will get sent back to Africa.”

More than two-thirds of the teachers reported that children of immigrants and Muslims expressed concerns about what might happen to them or their families after the election. More than one-third reported seeing an increase in anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment.

“Students are hearing more hate language than I have ever heard at our school before,” said a high school teacher in Helena, Montana.

Another teacher who responded to the survey said a fifth-grader told a Muslim student “that he was supporting Donald Trump because he was going to kill all of the Muslims if he became president!”

But who is actually at fault here?

Is Donald Trump really to be blamed for the fact that American liberals, in their impotent anguish, have concocted all manner of exaggerated lies about Trump, and made any number of disjointed extrapolations between what Trump has actually said and what they think he would do in office?

Let’s be clear – Donald Trump has said some incredibly stupid and offensive things. But the closest he has come to announcing a plan to kill all American Muslims was his declared intention to halt all further Muslim immigration into the United States. Now, one can argue that this is a fear-based, prejudicial, unworkable and unconstitutional proposal (it is), but this still comes nowhere near suggesting that Trump plans to “kill all of the Muslims”.

So where are these terrified schoolchildren getting their ideas, I wonder?

The answer is obvious. They are not being scared by Donald Trump himself, or by any of the things which the presidential candidate has said. They are being scared by the things which other people – typically Trump’s most vehement left-wing critics – are saying about him. These are people who hold their own political views in such high esteem (and the truth in such low regard) that they are comfortable telling children lies about the intentions of a presidential candidate as a means of whipping up public opposition.

A responsible adult would reassure these children that the president lacks any constitutional power to deport African Americans anywhere.

A responsible adult would point out to these children that Donald Trump has never once suggested that he wants to deport black people or kill all Muslims.

And a responsible organisation would be more concerned that young schoolchildren are being grossly misled and misinformed by their parents and other authority figures, and make that the focus of their report rather than Donald Trump.

Unforunately, we are now witnessing a (hopefully) small number of parents and teachers effectively terrorising their own children and students with an entirely false vision of Donald Trump, a caricature even more cartoon-like than the real thing. This is not a tremendously responsible way to raise children, and all the more surprising coming from the side of American politics which perpetually claims to be so concerned for the “mental safety” of students.

So before we even get to trigger warnings and safe spaces, perhaps the first rule for protecting the mental safety of children should be that grown adults – including parents, teachers and those in the media – refrain from telling scurrilous lies in pursuit of their anti-Trump political agenda.

There are enough genuine reasons for America to reject Donald Trump without the Left waging their own psychological war of terror against their own schoolchildren.

 

Donald Trump Hat - Make America Great Again

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Top Image: slate.com

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Identity Politics: Where Does It End?

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

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When asked, a majority of these students accept that a short, white male is in fact a tall, Chinese woman simply by virtue of declaring himself so

Where does it lead when young people percolate in an environment where personal feelings always trump objective reality and where there is no greater crime than failing to praise and play along with the assumed identity of another person?

This video gives us a clue. Take 4 minutes of your time to watch it.

When the interviewer (Joseph Blackholm, director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington and a white male of average height) posits to students on campus that he is, in fact, a very tall Chinese woman, almost none of the students are able to bring themselves to contradict him, or to admit that they disagree with his statement.

What this video shows, above all, is a level of terror of committing thought crime more commonly seen in totalitarian societies and dystopian novels. Identity Politics makes every person (with a partial exception for cis white men) simultaneously an oppressed victim, a champion of the oppressed and a potential oppressor, with adherents gaining in status the more they can emphase their “victim” and “champion” sides while negating their “oppressor” qualities. And because this is a revolution which readily eats its own children – even those with long records of fighting for the movement can be undone with nothing more than a careless choice of words – everyone is perpetually on edge and terrified of giving offence, for fear of looking like an oppressor and consequently losing status within the community.

None of these students want to appear on camera failing to readily accept the declared racial and gender identity of another person, even when that other person is a smirking young man who is clearly trying to entrap them. They cannot tell him simply to take a hike, that he is obviously not a six-foot Chinese woman, because video footage would then exist of them being oppressive and failing to validate the existence of this man’s non-existent identity. And in identity politics circles, this would be committing social and reputational suicide.

Dreher sighs:

This is a freaky thing to watch. These are actual college students. Adults who have the right to vote. And their reason is so compromised that they are unsure what the man in front of them is, so terrified are they of saying the wrong thing.

Ah yes, students at the University of Washington, where they are scared out of their minds by the possibility of seeing a Halloween costume that makes them turn tail and run for their Safe Space™. These people are ripe for dictatorship. They will not let themselves see reality if it offends against the party line.

The only difference between this cowed behaviour and that seen in a totalitarian society is the fact that the students and other identity politics cultists do this to themselves. There is no higher authority, no dictatorship, which transmits these values and insists that they are observed. It is an entirely self-enforcing cult, though concerted efforts are underway to bully university administrators into enforcing the doctrine and punishing the new heretics without first having to be cajoled into doing so through protests and shaming.

Blackholm and the Family Policy Institute of Washington may have been joking, but we are now seeing real-world cases to test our judgement – like that if Stefonknee Wolscht, a 52 year old father of seven who decided that despite having had a family and raised numerous children, he is, in fact, a six-year-old girl.

Where does it end? Nowhere good. This madness will not stay confined to the academy – indeed, it is already leaching out into wider society. But as this blog remarked earlier this year:

Since we seem intent on burying our heads in the sand and denying that there is anything wrong with our new Politics of Identity, by that time our Prime Minister will probably identify as a Beagle, the Home Secretary will be a barn owl except on Tuesdays, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be a goldfish who looks suspiciously like George Osborne’s grown-up kid wearing a wetsuit, Number 11 Downing Street having been converted into a walk-in aquarium in deference to their “mental safety”.

Something to look forward to.

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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Fighting Social Justice Warriors At Ohio University By Adopting Their Tactics

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Ohio University College Republicans - Graffiti Wall - SJWs - Identity Politics

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University Social Justice Warriors, with their victimhood culture and authoritarian tactics, are in danger of creating an equally illiberal conservative backlash

In a recent piece, Rod Dreher speculated as to what might happen if and when the usual targets of social justice warrior bullying come out of their defensive crouch and begin to fight back, playing the SJWs at their own game.

(The upshot: while an entirely understandable reaction, nothing good can from it; free speech will then be under assault from both ends of the political spectrum).

This comes in the context of Donald Trump-supporting students having their free speech right to advocate for Trump’s candidacy treated by snarling left-wing activists and cowed university administrations like some kind of grave assault on the safety of the campus community.

Dreher writes:

One likes to think that most students have enough residual dignity to restrain themselves from behaving like bully-babies.

What if that changes? What if students — whites, males, and other out-groups — decide that they’re going to fight fire with fire, and adopt Trumpian methods on campus, challenging the sacred victim status of the SJWs, and claim the mantle of victimhood for themselves, and intimidating university authorities until they get what they want? Trump has shown what you can do to acquire power if you just don’t give a rat’s rear end what people think of you. That is, if your own belief in yourself and your righteousness is so absolute that you are not susceptible to believing that it is undignified or dishonorable to present yourself in the public square as a victim. Trump’s genius is to present himself as both victim and victor, and that kind of thing is not going to work on campus. But sooner or later, the tactics of the SJWs are going to be taken up by their opponents, because that’s the only way they will save themselves from being entirely disempowered on campus, and in time, in the workplace. Trump has shown that establishments are weaker than people think, and can be pushed over. So have the SJWs. All that campuses need now are counterprotesters to the SJWs, making similar uncompromising demands from administrators, driven by nothing but their feelings of grievance. Then we can have a proper war of all against all.

Thanks, SJWs.

Unfortunately, this counterprotest is already coming to pass, with some American conservative students now adopting the same language of fragility and victimhood used by their leftist tormentors.

The College Fix reports:

The College Republicans at Ohio University say they are under siege by peers for painting a message on the campus free speech wall defending the First Amendment.

In a barrage of cyber harassment over the last day, they have been called racists, described as Klansmen, and accused of literally threatening the campus — all over a painted message that read “Trigger warning: there are no safe spaces in real life! You can’t wall off the 1st Amendment.”

“It got so much hate, I just don’t know if I have ever received so much hate in my life,” David Parkhill, 19, president of the Ohio University College Republicans, said Thursday in an interview with The College Fix.

“Granted, I knew what I was getting into, but I didn’t think it would be that much hate,” he said. “We are basically a minority on this campus. Our opinion is so put down and so crushed, it’s almost like we don’t have a say.”

While the Ohio University College Republicans doubtless have a point – one can imagine campus life not being much fun for anyone with openly conservative convictions in the current climate – what is depressing here is the way in which David Parkhill, president of the OU Republicans, uses the same whining language of victimhood and oppression to elicit sympathy for his own embattled minority.

Nobody likes a pity party, but that is exactly what will get if conservative and liberal students face off against each other not as they should, through lively debate, but rather through constant, tear-stained appeals for the university authorities to intercede on behalf of their respective sides.

And in a sense, one cannot blame the Ohio University College Republicans for behaving in this way. They have watched for months and years while identity politics-wielding left-wing students get every little thing that they demand from spineless university administrations, and shame into submission anybody who stands in their way.

It is not therefore an illogical leap when other students conclude that this is the best and most effective way of advancing one’s own agenda. If the Social Justice Warriors can mobilise support and win concessions by emphasising (and frankly, grossly exaggerating) their supposed victimhood and oppression, why should conservatives not do the same?

But this can lead nowhere good. For a start, the SJWs have much more practice at wielding identity politics as a weapon. It is their bread and butter, they do it every day. Every linguistic trick and campaigning tactic to elicit the last drop of sympathy and support from sympathetic university authorities is already known to them, while as the Ohio University example demonstrates, conservative students are still taking their first baby steps at playing the victim.

Therefore, in the short term, conservatives will not only continue to be outgunned by the SJWs, they will squander whatever sympathy and respect they otherwise deserve by lowering themselves to the same tactic of  appealing to their weakness and minority status as a valid reason to clamp down on the freedom of others (SJWs) to organise and protest.

And in the longer term, if through repeated practice young students become adept at flaunting their fragility and exalting in their helplessness, both sides will fight to a bloody draw, with nobody able to say or do anything on campus without immediately triggering a protest and counter-protest. University will truly no longer be a place for the discussion of ideas, but a sheltered place of “comfort and home” for weak-minded adult babies, an intellectual demilitarised zone protected by a field of verbal landmines laid by every competing minority group over the academic and political discourse.

In other words, this is not the anti-SJW backlash that we have been waiting for. While it is unsurprising to see Ohio University College Republicans seeking to fight back in the way they believe will make the most difference in the short term, while they still have to live on campus, their adoption of the SJW’s own weapons and tactics will do nothing to halt the longer-term slide into authoritarianism, infantilisation and ever-more restrictive behavioural codes.

All of which makes it even more vital that the adults in the room – professors and university administrators – stop being so darn terrified of their own student populations, and actually start push back against any student or advocacy group which attempts to use their supposed fragility as a reason to shut down free speech for others.

As this blog has argued, students alone cannot halt the growth of safe spaces and censorship on their college campuses. Though liberty-minded students will have to be the foot soldiers in any such fightback, they can only succeed if they are given sufficient air cover by those in positions of authority and moral leadership – and on too many campuses, this has been pointedly lacking.

Some universities – like Mizzou – are starting to pay a high price for attempting to appease the mob rule of the SJWs.

How long will it be until more universities realise that they need to fight back and stand up to the identity politics takeover, or else face a similar fate?

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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