Milwaukee, WI — Tensions arose on the UW Milwaukee campus over a controversial guest that came to speak on the campus to students yesterday.

Famed YouTuber and self-proclaimed “Meat-Variety” activist Tim Munchin was invited to speak at Culinary Hall at 7:30 pm by the college’s Students for Dietary Freedom chapter.

“Munchin’s appearance today gives voice to those who have been marginalized due to our society’s pervasive culture of political correctness,” said SDF leader Bobby Vittles to us yesterday.

“The idea of ‘every human life being sacred’ is nothing more than a PETA-leftist conspiracy theory to limit dietary freedom. Some humans are not meant to live. Some are meant to be tasty culinary dishes instead. College students tend to get hungry often, and sometimes ramen noodles do not suffice. Not everyone is a vegetarian, hippies!”

While some welcomed Munchin’s presence on campus, others were angered and shocked by the University’s decision to give a platform to someone they believed to be an advocate for the normalization of cannibalism.

Outside the Culinary Hall, students organized a March Against Cannibalism rally against the speaker. They say they organized the protest in solidarity with students that have been targeted as potential culinary victims on campus and now live in fear for their own lives.

“HOW THE FUCK ARE PEOPLE TREATING THIS SHIT LIKE IT’S NORMAL?” Proclaimed Michael Sane, Co-Founder of Students Against Flesh Eaters (SAFE), the group that organized the demonstration against the speaker last night. “DO PEOPLE NOT REALIZE THAT IF YOU ARE SUGGESTING EATING OTHER HUMANS AS A VIABLE DIETARY ALTERNATIVE THAT YOU ARE ADVOCATING FOR CANNIBALISM?!”

Munchin spoke to the press an hour before taking the stage. He negated a lot of the criticisms against his controversial philosophy of meat variety advocacy.

“Meat Variety activism is often misunderstood and misinterpreted as cannibalism. I do not advocate for cannibalism. I only advocate for human flesh being a viable protein source for those who get bored with our nation’s politically correct dietary options. Social justice warriors and PETA-leftists are always going to be triggered by views different than their own.”

Attendees of the event varied in political ideology. One such individual attendee was Becki Smith, a sophomore Media Communications student who spoke to us after the event. She said she wasn’t immediately convinced that human meat should be a viable dietary option, but she is still thinking about it.

“I had seen a few YouTube videos of Munchin’s, and the first time I heard of his advocacy for a variety of protein options to include human meat, I was like, ‘Eww! Gross! Who would want to eat human beings?’ However, after thinking about it more deeply, I realized I might have internalized societal pressure to care more about human beings than for free thought or personal autonomy ya know?”

When it came to the protesters, she did not have many kind words to say.
“I can’t understand what the big deal is,” she snorted.

“College is not suppose to be a ‘safe-space’. It’s meant to challenge you on your ideas — and in this case, your diet. These Social Justice Warriors are acting as if the college allowed a Neo-Nazi to come on campus or something. Just because your feelings got hurt due to someone calling you ‘potentially delicious’ doesn’t mean you get to throw a fucking temper tantrum and try to shut down free speech.”

“People do not understand the particular danger that they are putting other people in by allowing this to happen,” Sandra Blanket told the University’s student paper, Puddle Weekly.

“This is not about being a meat lover or a vegetarian/vegan. This is not about PETA. Heck I fucking HATE PETA. NOBODY likes PETA, not even most vegans. Stop using that as a political smear tactic against us. We have valid concerns that we are trying to raise. Munchin’s rhetoric is more than just words. Can American Citizens have different diets? Of course! It’s a free country, this is not about that. This is about the not-so-fine line between being a meat lover and being a straight up sick fuck that kills people for food.”

During the event Munchin argued that the act of consuming human meat is nothing new nor abnormal. “Humans eating human meat has existed in our country and around the world for more than 400 years!” Munchin bellowed to the crowd. “The Settlers of Jamestown, The Donner Party, even Jeffrey Dahmer were judged out of context!”

The crowd cheered.

“It’s OK to have variety! Munchin cheered back. “Protein variety is good! MEAT VARIETY IS GOOD!”

The protest and march against the speaker is also in response to a reported rise in incidences involving students’ body parts that have gone missing without consent, mainly fingers and toes. They believe speakers like Munchin and those who share his views is what’s contributed to this rash of violence.

“Like I said, to call these incidences ‘cannibalism’ is absurd. To advocate for cannibalism is to advocate for murder. I do not advocate for murder. I only advocate for human body parts being available to consume. I offer the suggestion that if students get hungry and meatless options do not suffice, they can seek out alternative sources of protein; this may be from progressive body volunteers, body farms, etc. I have on good authority that this ‘rash of violence’ on campus is just more fear-mongering. Every part that’s gone missing was volunteered—offered up consensually. Don’t let the crazy PETA-leftists interested in restricting dietary freedom and forcing a vegetarian agenda down our throats tell you otherwise.”

But Sam Wheeler, a senior theater major at UW, says otherwise. He claims a hooded figure came into his room late on Wednesday night, ripped back the covers, and lopped off three toes on each foot before he could “even scream.”

Wheeler maintains that his aggressor thanked him on behalf of Munchin and “alt-meats” everywhere before leaving him to crawl his way to his desk where he called the health center.

“I am not one of those vegetarian/Vegan leftists,” Wheeler insisted. “But this was far from consensual. How could I have even been asked—it was 4 in the morning, I was asleep! Me speaking out against Munchin is not based on a ‘Vegetarian agenda’ — you don’t have to be a vegetarian or vegan to oppose this violent nonsense, period.”

His testimony is as follows:

I thought Munchin, Vittles and others like them were just good men who loved meat just as much as I do. I was wrong. They are nutcases. I should have known. I should have opposed him way before he and others started munching on the toes of me and others, but I am opposing him now. He does not represent me as a meat-lover nor does Vittles or any of the SDF or as a meat lover. Taking people’s body parts against their will is wrong. This is happening in Munchin’s name and he needs to put a stop to it. I would like to make that clear.

The controversy around the incidences have left many meat-lovers split on the issue of meat-variety activism in general. While some remain repulsed and angry like Wheeler, many attendees of the speaking event felt differently. Dumi Boyman, a freshmen Exercise Science major, was one such individual.

“You know I am really sorry that dude had to go through that. It seriously must suck for a grown man to have to crawl on his hands like a baby again. However, he needs to not freak out and chill. Just because there are a lot of incidences of missing body parts on students doesn’t mean that there is an epidemic of cannibalism or anything. I think these protestors are a little too obsessed with cannibalism, and I think that makes them the real cannibals if you ask me.”

Only time will tell what will transpire; the debate on college campuses between expanding dietary freedom and preventing what protesters would call “sick, fucked up shit” is an ongoing and vital dialogue with no end in sight.

Until then, both sides can only agree on one thing: Nobody likes PETA.

Every person who’s misused arguments for free speech to defend white supremacists has some of Heather Heyer’s blood on their hands.

flickr / Henry Burrows

The way we were going, this was always going to end in blood. Every person who’s ever misused arguments for free speech to defend Nazis or white supremacists — just so they could puff out their chests and apocryphally quote Voltaire with smug certitude — has some measure of Heather Heyer’s blood on their hands.

The road that James Alex Fields Jr. sped down was paved with countless editorials in major newspapers and magazines that positioned student movements or black women on Twitter as existential threats to “free speech.” It was paved by those who said they were less afraid of Richard Spencer than the man who punched him. It was paved by countless people saying, “they’re just words” or “it’s just the internet, it’s not real life” in defence of extremists’ vitriol, never realizing that such statements are not mere words on the wind: they are promises.

After all, how many times have we seen white people online call for mowing down protesters? What happened in Charlottesville wasn’t even the first time someone went out and actually did it. As a recent Slate article notes: “On July 10, 2016 — the same day a South Carolina fire captain threatened to run over BLM protesters who had shut down Interstate 126 — an SUV driver in southern Illinois plowed through a group of BLM protesters after yelling ‘All lives matter, not blacks, all lives.’”

That was over a year ago, and we should have seen then how hateful social media slogans quickly become action.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of Heyer’s murder, a Springfield, MA policeman wrote on Facebook — in response to a news article about the terror attack — “Hahahaha love this, maybe people shouldn’t block roads.” He added, to someone trying to argue with him, “How do you know [the driver] was a Nazi scumbag? Stop being part of the problem.” An incredible two step: celebrating a woman’s murder, and then tut tutting someone who insulted her murderer while retreating behind formless relativism.

The many instances of whites letting loose their hatred online and calling for the mowing down of protesters are wishes being loosed into the ether. Eventually, they’ll coalesce into a deed. As I said, they are not just words, they are promises, given force and urgency by the overheated rhetoric that prevails on social media, where even the most extreme racists are given free reign to agitate without limit.

Years ago, a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center made abundantly clear that hate sites like Stormfront were a common denominator for the spate of white nationalist terrorism we’ve seen on both sides of the Atlantic. The SPLC describes what should now be an all too familiar profile of an angry young white man with internet access:

“Assured of the supremacy of his race and frustrated by the inferiority of his achievements, he binges online for hours every day, self-medicating, slowly sipping a cocktail of rage. He gradually gains acceptance in this online birthing den of self-described ‘lone wolves,’ but he gets no relief, no practical remedies, no suggestions to improve his circumstances. He just gets angrier.
And then he gets a gun.”

This was written in the days before GamerGate and the alt-right co-optation of 4chan, but the analysis readily applies to these larger, more easily accessible echo chambers, which have now claimed whole fiefdoms on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit; their combined reach vastly outstrips that of the two decade-old Stormfront.

It was an important first step that GoDaddy and then Google booted the white supremacist Daily Stormer from their hosting services after the site’s role in radicalizing Fields — and celebrating his rampage — was made abundantly clear. That decisiveness was vital, and an even stiffer moral spine will be needed in the days and weeks to come. The time for pretending this group of white-right terrorists are playing the same game of democratic discourse was over decades ago, but some continue to refuse to wake up and acknowledge this reality.

Sacrificing Lives for Liberal Principle

In truth, we need to add the ACLU to this list of naysayers; they actually defended the Nazi and white supremacist mob, fighting the city of Charlottesville when they tried to move or cancel the march. Now, the rally they fought for — because of vague, abstract “free speech” principles grounded in a liberalism allergic to meaning — has claimed a life and seriously injured many others.

Liberals like Jonathan Chait, Jon Ronson, and Michelle Goldberg deserve their share of criticism for their spinelessness. Free speech absolutism originates, after all, from both Constitutional minimalism and a particular school of liberalism that sees principle as an end in itself — but there are leftists who are quite keen on the usual cliched arguments as well.

Why Punching Nazis Is Not Only Ethical, But Imperative

Glenn Greenwald, for instance, defended the ACLU at length for their choice to defend both the extreme right troll Milo Yiannopoulos and the Charlottesville march. He likens us — those who openly criticize the reductive use of the Constitution to support hate crimes — to people who attack the ACLU for defending the civil liberties of terror suspects, or who attack the Council on American-Islamic Relations as “terrorists.”

Take note of the following, content-free argument I’m sure you’ve never heard before: “One of the defining attributes of fascism is forcible suppression of views.”

(Running over a young socialist woman does indeed suppress her views, but Greenwald is wringing his hands here for her murderers, keep in mind.)

Or this equally vacuous cliche:

“Is it not glaringly apparent that the exact opposite will happen: by turning them into free speech martyrs, you will do nothing but strengthen them and make them more sympathetic? Literally nothing has helped Yiannopoulos become a national cult figure more than the well-intentioned (but failed) efforts to deny him a platform.”

As someone who watched Yiannopoulos’ rise, I’ve borne witness to the fact that no one with any real power stood up to him and his abuses; this absence is what abetted his growing popularity. The passive permission granted to him by social media platforms, universities, and the press carried with it an imprimatur of approval and acceptability. The grating noise you heard was the sound of the Overton Window shifting.

Greenwald’s words are interchangeable with those of any number of liberals he otherwise abhors and disdains as warmongering crypto fascists — a fact I find darkly amusing. But he makes a more novel argument here that’s also worth quoting:

“It’s easy to be dismissive of this serious aspect of the debate if you’re some white American or non-Muslim American whose free speech is very unlikely to be depicted as ‘material support for terrorism’ or otherwise criminalized.”

This is as insulting as it is fantastical. Most of the noble warriors for abstract free speech I’ve encountered, who especially elevate the speech of Nazis and their ilk to prove their virtuous fealty to a principle, are white. In truth, it’s marginalized people, queer/trans people and women of color like myself, who often look askance at the tremendous amount of ink spilled by white men like Greenwald defending the untrammeled rights of people who A) say they want to kill us and take away our rights, and B) do so on a regular basis.

We don’t look at Nazis being too scared to march and think “there but for the grace of God go I,” but instead think, “good, I can breathe that much easier.”

His defense of the ACLU here also makes no note of how their Virginia chapter was apparently trolling the counter-protesters hours before Fields’ terror attack, snarkily pointing out how a black counter-protester was carrying a bow and arrow.

In addition to functionally narc’ing for the very police state Greenwald claims to abhor, it expresses the same tut tutting of our self-defense and political expression liberals love to indulge in. At the risk of stating the obvious, it wasn’t that counter-protester who ended up killing anyone; it was the ACLU’s client and object of Greenwald’s fetish principle.

There is a difference between defending the civil liberties of someone accused of terrorism (I have no doubt Fields, as a white man, will be accorded every democratic legal courtesy) and saying that a group of people who we know will likely be aggressively violent and bigoted should be permitted to congregate—with weapons—in a public square rich with targets.

Further, Greenwald’s direct comparison of the defense of Muslims (a vastly diverse group of 1.6 billion people who, in the West, comprise a religious minority routinely subject to discrimination and abuse) to the defense of Nazis (a discrete affinity group united by racial supremacism with murderous intent towards those self-same minorities), and the racism directed at the former to justifiable outrage at the latter, is completely obnoxious.

Much like his comparison between Nazis and left wing activists.

Since Greenwald is so eager to liken us to Dick Cheney, I might point out that this invidious equation of fascists, socialists, and communists is itself a popular right wing talking point. But one need only say this: there are many kinds of socialism and communism that are not Stalinism; there is no expression of fascism but Hitlerism. We can and should be able to make moral judgements accordingly.

Our deaths — the deaths of trans folks, POC, and members of other marginalized communities — are the true content of Nazi, white supremacist, and neo-Confederate speech. Their rallies are “peaceful” in the way Richard Spencer’s promise of “peaceful ethnic cleansing” is peaceful.

Contrary to Greenwald’s bizarre fantasy about how all non-whites agree with his absolutism, we understand that reality and organize around it. Securing unlimited rights for Nazis does not guarantee my rights; it forfeits them. Bear in mind who Fields targeted with his car: a group of protesters, many of whom were women and people of colour carrying “Black Lives Matter” signs.

There are many kinds of socialism and communism that are not Stalinism; there is no expression of fascism but Hitlerism.

As I was at pains to point out months ago, this vision of untroubled free speech always runs afoul of the fact that there are rights conflicts in any democracy. No one person can have unlimited rights, lest they inevitably interfere with the rights of others. In this case, the privileged indulgence in the rights of Charlottesville’s Nazi marchers conflicted quite directly with the right to life putatively enjoyed by the counter-protesters (who all comprise direct targets of Nazi violence).

What Liberals Don’t Get About Free Speech In The Age Of Trump

How many of us must die before liberal and left wing white men realize that they’re not the ones being asked to make the ultimate sacrifice so they can hold on to a parlor game principle? Why do they not see that the “free speech” argument creates a moral loophole large enough for these murderers to drive through?

Jeremy Christian, who murdered two men on a light rail train in Portland, OR, reportedly said “Get stabbed in your neck if you hate free speech” to police, days after attending a “free speech rally” in the city that hosted extreme right wing groups. These people are adopting this term for a reason. When we use “free speech” as moral spackle to cover up the true content of these people’s’ beliefs and deeds, they will take that as a cue and use it accordingly.

This nonsense will keep getting people killed until we grow up as a society and accept that we can make decisive moral judgements about speech acts. Taking action against Nazis is not a slippery slope; it’s a sticky floor. It is the ethical ground on which we must stand in order to take our bearings.

A Foolish Consistency

The catastrophic failure of mealy mouthed “both sides”-ism, which Greenwald’s editorial is but the liberal version of, was revealed this week when Trump’s initial condemnation only blamed nameless “many sides” for violence that had a single source.

To look at how white supremacists, neo-Confederates, and Nazis cheered on that statement, even though it (in some vague, abstract way) condemned them, is instructive. It tells you how and why they thrive on moral ambiguity and relativism, why condemning “both sides” is illusory in its fairness and how it actually emboldens the true culprits by enabling them to skulk in the shadows of namelessness.

Why do they not see that the “free speech” argument creates a moral loophole large enough for these murderers to drive through?

One of the last social media posts that Heather Heyer made was the popular slogan “if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Her final act was to march with Black Lives Matter protesters and members of the local DSA chapter — which has fundraised a storm for Heyer and her family. Meanwhile ten others remain in hospital, like Natalie Romero, a Latina student at UVA who joined the counterprotest.

It didn’t have to come to this.

But every inch of permission granted by our liberal thought-leaders, and the leftists who’ve abetted their arguments, every bit of digital earth ceded by Twitter, Google, and Facebook, every “it’s the principle of the thing!” argument made by well-meaning whites in defense of our would-be assassins, brought us closer and closer to the point where Charlottesville was inevitable.

As so many of us pointed out, the Klansmen, Nazis, and neo-Confederates were marching en masse in broad daylight without hoods or masks. That boldness has its origins in the permission granted by powerful institutions and prominent commentators who said the “marketplace of ideas” would crush Nazism, in Twitter’s ongoing failure to stamp out the Nazi presence on the platform, in the excuses made by liberal/left commentators eager to score easy points off of student activists rather than do the hard work needed to fight an actual threat to freedom.

All this in the name of that foolish consistency that Emerson excoriated so long ago, as if discernment were not also a moral and intellectual skill.

I could say “the time for illusions is over” or some such thing, but people of color have been dying for decades so that people like Greenwald or Chait could cling to a fantasy of “free speech” that never includes us when we need it most, that privileges the speech rights of our murderers over our right to live. It needs to stop now.

I am not the price to be paid for the hobgoblin of your consistent arguments.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/the-establishment-when-free-speech-kills-9cb1353086e9/ Tue, 15 Aug 2017 18:53:20 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=1767 Read more]]> Every person who’s misused arguments for free speech to defend white supremacists has some of Heather Heyer’s blood on their hands.

The way we were going, this was always going to end in blood. Every person who’s ever misused arguments for free speech to defend Nazis or white supremacists — just so they could puff out their chests and apocryphally quote Voltaire with smug certitude — has some measure of Heather Heyer’s blood on their hands.

The road that James Alex Fields Jr. sped down was paved with countless editorials in major newspapers and magazines that positioned student movements or black women on Twitter as existential threats to “free speech.” It was paved by those who said they were less afraid of Richard Spencer than the man who punched him. It was paved by countless people saying, “they’re just words” or “it’s just the internet, it’s not real life” in defence of extremists’ vitriol, never realizing that such statements are not mere words on the wind: they are promises.

After all, how many times have we seen white people online call for mowing down protesters? What happened in Charlottesville wasn’t even the first time someone went out and actually did it. As a recent Slate article notes: “On July 10, 2016 — the same day a South Carolina fire captain threatened to run over BLM protesters who had shut down Interstate 126 — an SUV driver in southern Illinois plowed through a group of BLM protesters after yelling ‘All lives matter, not blacks, all lives.’”

That was over a year ago, and we should have seen then how hateful social media slogans quickly become action.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of Heyer’s murder, a Springfield, MA policeman wrote on Facebook — in response to a news article about the terror attack — “Hahahaha love this, maybe people shouldn’t block roads.” He added, to someone trying to argue with him, “How do you know [the driver] was a Nazi scumbag? Stop being part of the problem.” An incredible two step: celebrating a woman’s murder, and then tut tutting someone who insulted her murderer while retreating behind formless relativism.

The many instances of whites letting loose their hatred online and calling for the mowing down of protesters are wishes being loosed into the ether. Eventually, they’ll coalesce into a deed. As I said, they are not just words, they are promises, given force and urgency by the overheated rhetoric that prevails on social media, where even the most extreme racists are given free reign to agitate without limit.

Years ago, a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center made abundantly clear that hate sites like Stormfront were a common denominator for the spate of white nationalist terrorism we’ve seen on both sides of the Atlantic. The SPLC describes what should now be an all too familiar profile of an angry young white man with internet access:

“Assured of the supremacy of his race and frustrated by the inferiority of his achievements, he binges online for hours every day, self-medicating, slowly sipping a cocktail of rage. He gradually gains acceptance in this online birthing den of self-described ‘lone wolves,’ but he gets no relief, no practical remedies, no suggestions to improve his circumstances. He just gets angrier.
And then he gets a gun.”

This was written in the days before GamerGate and the alt-right co-optation of 4chan, but the analysis readily applies to these larger, more easily accessible echo chambers, which have now claimed whole fiefdoms on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit; their combined reach vastly outstrips that of the two decade-old Stormfront.

It was an important first step that GoDaddy and then Google booted the white supremacist Daily Stormer from their hosting services after the site’s role in radicalizing Fields — and celebrating his rampage — was made abundantly clear. That decisiveness was vital, and an even stiffer moral spine will be needed in the days and weeks to come. The time for pretending this group of white-right terrorists are playing the same game of democratic discourse was over decades ago, but some continue to refuse to wake up and acknowledge this reality.

Sacrificing Lives for Liberal Principle

In truth, we need to add the ACLU to this list of naysayers; they actually defended the Nazi and white supremacist mob, fighting the city of Charlottesville when they tried to move or cancel the march. Now, the rally they fought for — because of vague, abstract “free speech” principlesgrounded in a liberalism allergic to meaning — has claimed a life and seriously injured many others.

Liberals like Jonathan Chait, Jon Ronson, and Michelle Goldberg deserve their share of criticism for their spinelessness. Free speech absolutism originates, after all, from both Constitutional minimalism and a particular school of liberalism that sees principle as an end in itself — but there are leftists who are quite keen on the usual cliched arguments as well.

Why Punching Nazis Is Not Only Ethical, But Imperative
theestablishment.co

Glenn Greenwald, for instance, defended the ACLU at length for their choice to defend both the extreme right troll Milo Yiannopoulos and the Charlottesville march. He likens us — those who openly criticize the reductive use of the Constitution to support hate crimes — to people who attack the ACLU for defending the civil liberties of terror suspects, or who attack the Council on American-Islamic Relations as “terrorists.”

Take note of the following, content-free argument I’m sure you’ve never heard before: “One of the defining attributes of fascism is forcible suppression of views.”

(Running over a young socialist woman does indeed suppress her views, but Greenwald is wringing his hands here for her murderers, keep in mind.)

Or this equally vacuous cliche:

“Is it not glaringly apparent that the exact opposite will happen: by turning them into free speech martyrs, you will do nothing but strengthen them and make them more sympathetic? Literally nothing has helped Yiannopoulos become a national cult figure more than the well-intentioned (but failed) efforts to deny him a platform.”

As someone who watched Yiannopoulos’ rise, I’ve borne witness to the fact that no one with any real power stood up to him and his abuses; this absence is what abetted his growing popularity. The passive permission granted to him by social media platforms, universities, and the press carried with it an imprimatur of approval and acceptability. The grating noise you heard was the sound of the Overton Window shifting.

Greenwald’s words are interchangeable with those of any number of liberals he otherwise abhors and disdains as warmongering crypto fascists — a fact I find darkly amusing. But he makes a more novel argument here that’s also worth quoting:

“It’s easy to be dismissive of this serious aspect of the debate if you’re some white American or non-Muslim American whose free speech is very unlikely to be depicted as ‘material support for terrorism’ or otherwise criminalized.”

This is as insulting as it is fantastical. Most of the noble warriors for abstract free speech I’ve encountered, who especially elevate the speech of Nazis and their ilk to prove their virtuous fealty to a principle, are white. In truth, it’s marginalized people, queer/trans people and women of color like myself, who often look askance at the tremendous amount of ink spilled by white men like Greenwald defending the untrammeled rights of people who A) say they want to kill us and take away our rights, and B) do so on a regular basis.

We don’t look at Nazis being too scared to march and think “there but for the grace of God go I,” but instead think, “good, I can breathe that much easier.”

His defense of the ACLU here also makes no note of how their Virginia chapter was apparently trolling the counter-protesters hours before Fields’ terror attack, snarkily pointing out how a black counter-protester was carrying a bow and arrow.

In addition to functionally narc’ing for the very police state Greenwald claims to abhor, it expresses the same tut tutting of our self-defense and political expression liberals love to indulge in. At the risk of stating the obvious, it wasn’t that counter-protester who ended up killing anyone; it was the ACLU’s client and object of Greenwald’s fetish principle.

There is a difference between defending the civil liberties of someone accused of terrorism (I have no doubt Fields, as a white man, will be accorded every democratic legal courtesy) and saying that a group of people who we knowwill likely be aggressively violent and bigoted should be permitted to congregate—with weapons—in a public square rich with targets.

Further, Greenwald’s direct comparison of the defense of Muslims (a vastly diverse group of 1.6 billion people who, in the West, comprise a religious minority routinely subject to discrimination and abuse) to the defense of Nazis (a discrete affinity group united by racial supremacism with murderous intent towards those self-same minorities), and the racism directed at the former to justifiable outrage at the latter, is completely obnoxious.

Much like his comparison between Nazis and left wing activists.

Since Greenwald is so eager to liken us to Dick Cheney, I might point out that this invidious equation of fascists, socialists, and communists is itself a popular right wing talking point. But one need only say this: there are many kinds of socialism and communism that are not Stalinism; there is no expression of fascism but Hitlerism. We can and should be able to make moral judgements accordingly.

Our deaths — the deaths of trans folks, POC, and members of other marginalized communities — are the true content of Nazi, white supremacist, and neo-Confederate speech. Their rallies are “peaceful” in the way Richard Spencer’s promise of “peaceful ethnic cleansing” is peaceful.

Contrary to Greenwald’s bizarre fantasy about how all non-whites agree with his absolutism, we understand that reality and organize around it. Securing unlimited rights for Nazis does not guarantee my rights; it forfeits them. Bear in mind who Fields targeted with his car: a group of protesters, many of whom were women and people of colour carrying “Black Lives Matter” signs.

As I was at pains to point out months ago, this vision of untroubled free speech always runs afoul of the fact that there are rights conflicts in any democracy. No one person can have unlimited rights, lest they inevitably interfere with the rights of others. In this case, the privileged indulgence in the rights of Charlottesville’s Nazi marchers conflicted quite directly with the right to life putatively enjoyed by the counter-protesters (who all comprise direct targets of Nazi violence).

What Liberals Don’t Get About Free Speech In The Age Of Trump
theestablishment.co

How many of us must die before liberal and left wing white men realize that they’re not the ones being asked to make the ultimate sacrifice so they can hold on to a parlor game principle? Why do they not see that the “free speech” argument creates a moral loophole large enough for these murderers to drive through?

Jeremy Christian, who murdered two men on a light rail train in Portland, OR, reportedly said “Get stabbed in your neck if you hate free speech” to police, days after attending a “free speech rally” in the city that hosted extreme right wing groups. These people are adopting this term for a reason. When we use “free speech” as moral spackle to cover up the true content of these people’s’ beliefs and deeds, they will take that as a cue and use it accordingly.

This nonsense will keep getting people killed until we grow up as a society and accept that we can make decisive moral judgements about speech acts. Taking action against Nazis is not a slippery slope; it’s a sticky floor. It is the ethical ground on which we must stand in order to take our bearings.

A Foolish Consistency

The catastrophic failure of mealy mouthed “both sides”-ism, which Greenwald’s editorial is but the liberal version of, was revealed this week when Trump’s initial condemnation only blamed nameless “many sides” for violence that had a single source.

To look at how white supremacists, neo-Confederates, and Nazis cheered on that statement, even though it (in some vague, abstract way) condemned them, is instructive. It tells you how and why they thrive on moral ambiguity and relativism, why condemning “both sides” is illusory in its fairness and how it actually emboldens the true culprits by enabling them to skulk in the shadows of namelessness.

Why do they not see that the 'free speech' argument creates a moral loophole large enough for these murderers to drive through?
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One of the last social media posts that Heather Heyer made was the popular slogan “if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Her final act was to march with Black Lives Matter protesters and members of the local DSA chapter — which has fundraised a storm for Heyer and her family. Meanwhile ten others remain in hospital, like Natalie Romero, a Latina student at UVA who joined the counterprotest.

It didn’t have to come to this.

But every inch of permission granted by our liberal thought-leaders, and the leftists who’ve abetted their arguments, every bit of digital earth ceded by Twitter, Google, and Facebook, every “it’s the principle of the thing!” argument made by well-meaning whites in defense of our would-be assassins, brought us closer and closer to the point where Charlottesville was inevitable.

As so many of us pointed out, the Klansmen, Nazis, and neo-Confederates were marching en masse in broad daylight without hoods or masks. That boldness has its origins in the permission granted by powerful institutions and prominent commentators who said the “marketplace of ideas” would crush Nazism, in Twitter’s ongoing failure to stamp out the Nazi presence on the platform, in the excuses made by liberal/left commentators eager to score easy points off of student activists rather than do the hard work needed to fight an actual threat to freedom.

All this in the name of that foolish consistency that Emerson excoriated so long ago, as if discernment were not also a moral and intellectual skill.

I could say “the time for illusions is over” or some such thing, but people of color have been dying for decades so that people like Greenwald or Chait could cling to a fantasy of “free speech” that never includes us when we need it most, that privileges the speech rights of our murderers over our right to live. It needs to stop now.

I am not the price to be paid for the hobgoblin of your consistent arguments.

Trump’s Weaponized Base Is Going After Academics — I Know Because I Was Targeted

In Trump’s America, academic freedom is under siege.

flickr/Bill Kerr

Academic censorship is nothing new — especially for scholars of color — but in Donald Trump’s America, the issue has taken on new and frightening dimensions. Trump’s emboldened base, en masse, has been attacking leftist educators with renewed vigor since his election, and universities across the country have wasted no time caving to alt-right (read: white supremacist) pressure to discipline professors, freedom of speech/academic freedom be damned. In a peculiar twist of logic, members of the alt-right have positioned themselves as victims of discrimination, and as such, have demanded that universities take action to “protect” them.

Sadly, many are.

George Ciccariello-Maher was censured and is the subject of an ongoing investigation by Drexel University over a tweet mocking white nationalists. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor was bombarded with death threats for calling Trump a “racist, sexist megalomaniac” in a commencement speech at Hampshire College (though the school defended her, a rare occurrence). Johnny Eric Williams was placed on leave by Trinity College for using a hashtag drawing attention to systemic racism. Lisa Durden was fired from Essex County College for defending a black-only Memorial Day event while appearing on Fox News. This is just a small sample, all since November’s infamous election.

Inevitably, these stories get some press, then are largely forgotten. But the repercussions reverberate long after the news cycle has moved on.

I know because Trump’s weaponized base came after me, too.

I had been an adjunct professor at Rutgers in the Women’s and Gender Studies department since Fall 2013. On November 15, 2016, two NYPD officers showed up at my Brooklyn apartment around 9 p.m. They entered without permission and after numerous refusals on my part and threats of force on theirs, transported me by ambulance to Bellevue Hospital for what they said was a mandatory psychiatric evaluation required by Rutgers University.

An anonymous complaint from a parent claimed I forced students to destroy an American flag, threatened every white student in class by saying I would shoot them all given the chance, then returned home and tweeted proof of my dangerous behavior. (I guess it should also be noted at some point that I, myself, am white.)

Conservative Group Launches Watchlist For Liberal Professors

Any piece of this complaint could’ve been easily corroborated or disproved by 60+ students or a scroll through my Twitter feed. Instead, Rutgers escalated the after-hours complaint — logged a week after the “alleged events” — from the parent to the Dean of Students to Rutgers Police to the NYPD, all in roughly three hours. No one even attempted to contact me before NYPD showed up at my door. (I later tracked down police reports from the NYPD and Rutgers. They can be seen here and here.)

When the cops arrived, I tried to explain what had actually happened that fateful day. Yes, I had tweeted about the flag from my personal account.

And yes, the day after the election, I had brought an American flag to class. My students were largely women, people of color, immigrants or children of immigrants, and LGBTQ+ folks — all groups with a lot to fear under a Trump administration. We had discussed the campaign throughout the semester; the events closely mirrored themes of the course.

Anticipating my students’ anger and frustration at the election results, I brought the flag as a way to spark conversation. If students wanted to engage in therapeutic protest using the flag, I was also amenable. Nothing happened; I never even removed the flag from its shopping bag. I simply referenced it as present, which was enough to spark a productive conversation. I returned the flag, unharmed and in its original packaging, to the store later. Another fact I publicly tweeted.

Our class conversation jumped from topic to topic that day. Some students shed tears. Some expressed outrage. Some were shocked to silence by the election results. We commiserated in a friendly fashion. At one point, I made a jocular, off-the-cuff comment about the Second Amendment and police brutality, insinuating that conservative white people and the NRA would care a lot more about gun control if they were constantly being shot at. Students laughed. It would be a stretch of any imagination to consider it a threat. I tweeted a similar comment later as well, framed by the events of my day and by my personal frustration with the election results.

The tweet was admittedly provocative. I was angry. But it was posed as a rhetorical question regardless of the semantics of “when” versus “if.” Either way you slice it, it was not a direct threat against a particular person. And it was a personal communication on Twitter. Moreover, this was not the way the comment was phrased in class, but the complaint blurred the two.

This is the whole truth at the core of the fabricated complaint. Whomever made it or passed it on to a parent knew it to be an exaggeration, a grandiose lie.

The doctors at Bellevue performed a full evaluation, but rushed me through the steps once I explained. They were outraged and stunned at the waste of time and resources involved, but were personally empathetic. Suffice it to say, I passed the evaluation easily.

Two days later, Rutgers placed me on immediate and indefinite administrative leave, using the same anonymous fabricated complaint as evidence, still having undergone no investigation to corroborate or disprove. They still hadn’t even attempted personal contact. They charged me with violating the University Policy Prohibiting Violence in the Workplace, as well as the Policy Prohibiting Discrimination and Harassment. The protected class I had allegedly discriminated against and/or harassed was cited as “white people.” Pending the completion of an internal investigation conducted by the Office of Employment Equity, I was placed under a gag order, not allowed to speak to anyone at Rutgers or even step foot on campus.

The investigation lasted 99 days. My administrative leave turned into effective termination as the Fall 2016 semester ended and I couldn’t sign contracts for courses promised to me for Spring 2017 since the investigation was not complete. Using a kind of punitive circular logic, Rutgers initiated an investigation into whether I had done anything wrong while instituting a punishment for the alleged wrongdoing simultaneously. And…spoiler alert: after 99 days, I was exonerated on all counts. Not only was I cleared, the investigation report provided a strong, substantive defense of my actions. My union has tried to help me seek remedy, but Rutgers continues to ignore my grievance, claiming it was filed too late.

Rutgers initiated an investigation into whether I had done anything wrong while instituting a punishment for the alleged wrongdoing simultaneously.

The student at the center of the complaint (still unknown to me) recanted when questioned by the investigator, admitting they never felt unsafe and could offer no proof for “discrimination against white people” or “violence” beyond my telling the class that 53% of white women voted for Donald Trump — a statistical fact. Every other student interviewed recounted a version of events mirroring those shared above sans threats, discomfort, and forced flag desecration.

Vindication is, of course, nice — but it’s also too little, too late. The investigation didn’t include anything stating I could return to the university, and though I could theoretically get a job with another department, it’s hard to imagine that happening. I’m also not sure I’d even want to return, considering the circumstances.

As such, I’ve lost a job I loved. Meanwhile, Rutgers refuses to issue a public statement acknowledging my exoneration, further sullying my name and reputation. Nor will they pay the nearly $2,000 in medical bills accrued through forced transport and a psych evaluation with no health insurance (can’t afford it and Rutgers doesn’t provide it for adjuncts), or the $10,000 I would have made teaching my courses for Spring 2017. I’m still struggling to recover from the unexpected and unjustified loss of income.

I’ve lost a job I loved.

If that wasn’t enough, I’m also the subject of an investigation by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, who visited me weeks after the NYPD. I was referred to them by “local law enforcement.” Having learned my lesson with the NYPD, I refused to open the door and immediately secured a lawyer (one of many I’ve had to scramble to find—pro bono because I’m broke—for various aspects of my ongoing case). I’ve received multiple death threats and doxxing—publication of my personal information online, threatening phone calls, emails, letters, etc., that continue 8 months later. I know so many, especially women of color, face much worse on the internet daily. I’m insulated by various privileges, but this is the reality of Trump’s weaponized base in action.

The democratic ideal of power spread throughout the hands of all the people has never been truly realized in America; “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” in bell hooks’ phrasing, has always constituted a massive roadblock. What does it mean to become a society that threatens, punishes, and arrests professors who encourage students to question that very roadblock?

There is, too, a troubling sense of irony to this. As freedom of speech, especially when exercised by educators, is being curtailed right and left, the ACLU defends Milo Yiannopoulos’ right to spout racist, misogynistic, transphobic propaganda, and individuals bend over backwards to defend noted white nationalist Richard Spencer’s right to speak on college campuses.

What Liberals Don’t Get About Free Speech In The Age Of Trump

Alice Walker famously said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” By caving to Trump’s base and coming after professors, universities are attempting to convince students they have no power, a dangerous and false lesson. They’re hoping that professors also fall for the ruse, or at least fall in line.

What does this mean for educators going forward? I don’t know the answer, but I know, despite all the bullshit, that it makes me want to teach harder, more ferociously, and more unapologetically than ever. I offer the details of my story because I have the privilege and safety to do so, and so it might echo into the future as warning.

So it might resound and rebound and encourage more to teach or learn, damn the consequences.

Now more than ever.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/white-people-its-time-to-prioritize-justice-over-civility-bfd90b80012e/ Tue, 09 May 2017 21:57:28 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=4261 Read more]]> In striving to be ‘civil,’ white moderates provide cover for deadly white supremacy.

The Boston Globe recently ran — and subsequently deleted — a tweet that, with a straight face, asked: “Can white power groups get past old differences and build lasting relationships?”

Welcome to our current reality, in which white supremacists are treated like B-grade celebs on a reality TV show.

The tweet should hardly come as a surprise. White supremacists are, after all, routinely landing profiles in leading media sites — because it’s apparently surprising Nazis can brush their hair and tuck in their shirt — and often getting invited onto popular shows, as if their ideas deserve more attention and platforms.

In fact, in today’s media and political environment, white supremacists have some of the most powerful platforms in the world, as well as the power to act on their toxic resentment. These are people who, in one breath, can claim to be oppressed, and in the next boast about retaining most of the world’s wealth and power and even the executive and legislative spheres of American government. And on the latter point, they’re not wrong.

Still, I’m not primarily concerned with the almost cartoonishly — but for the fact that they hurt people of color every day — evil Trump Administration, or the Neo-Nazis around the world who love said administration. Instead, I’m mostly concerned about those who look on and treat racism as fairly normal, as everyday, as a mere quality of a “passionate” group.

The media discusses white supremacists like they’re B-grade celebs on a reality TV show.
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I’m concerned about those white people who think profiling Nazis amounts to “hearing both sides,” as if racist ideas are taking place in some kind of agora, instead of a battlefield where we must regularly dodge hatred.

It’s the epitome of white privilege to be able to encounter racism and consider calmly listening to what this nicely dressed man thinks about segregation and integration, “black on black crime,” and so forth.

Worse still is that this kind of engagement means not giving time to people of color: whether as a media platform or your individual attention. When you invite a Nazi into your house, you probably won’t find us wanting a seat at your table. When you make efforts to hear a racist, it means you’ve ignored efforts to hear a person of color. Whenever you profile a Nazi, you’ve made it clear to us precisely whose views you would rather use your finite resources and platform on.

When you invite a Nazi into your house, you probably won’t find us wanting a seat at your table.
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This isn’t an issue of balance: You can’t counter this by claiming to also want our opinion. The planet’s entire history is one of hearing, witnessing, and struggling against white people’s ideas of race. We’re not on equal platforms; we’re still fighting an uphill battle against the mountain of white supremacy, in the shadow of colonial history. South Africa, my country, only experienced universal, non-racist adult suffrage in 1994. There’s no level playing field here.

And yet, white moderates would rather fall on their swords to hear what racists think in the name of “free speech” than take the time to understand people of color’s perspectives. They insist on saying people are “too harsh” in punching Nazis (I have my own views), in shouting down Nazis, and in calling Nazis, well, Nazis. The opposition to Nazis lecturing at universities gets shoved into a nonsense debate about “free speech,” instead of getting discussed as an issue of survival for people of color.

Why Punching Nazis Is Not Only Ethical, But Imperative

By adding a dash of synonyms (“alt right”), a sprinkle of personal hygiene (“well-groomed”), and a tone of smirking civility, white moderates welcome white supremacists to share their platforms, as if they’re not spouting views that echo apartheid or Nazi history. When white supremacists get called “clowns” or “crusaders” or trolls of the “alt-right,” we ignore that these people are actually proponents of racist ideology who would love to see people of color die or no longer exist.

When framed in this way, any opposition from people of color is also viewed not as opposing racists, but as opposing a passionate or playfully villainous group just trying to express its free speech.

It’s easy to get trapped into believing yourself good when there are almost no repercussions for being wrong.
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The issue with all this isn’t that suddenly Not Racist white people will start finding comfort with the Klan. It’s that these white people tolerate and entertain views from those who would see us dead.

In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King made a claim that you won’t find most white people sharing on social media on MLK Day:

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

For people of color, many governments’ idea of maintaining “law and order” is not maintaining (actual) justice, but continuing oppression. In South Africa, the apartheid regime was entirely legal, maintained by laws set down by elected lawmakers, often given further veracity by courts. Maintaining “law and order” meant maintaining segregation (literally “apartheid”), limiting how far and when and how often people could go: in life and in daily movement.

Our first black President in South Africa was officially listed as a terrorist and prisoner by the same country that, a few years later, he led.

As Dr. King later points out in the same letter: “I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when [law and order] fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”

This is why the status quo deserves to be upset: because the way things are doesn’t equate to how things should be. It’s only through confronting various personal and political systems, and upsetting them, that progress happens. Remember: Opposing apartheid was literally illegal. If people of color are disruptive, it’s because things need to be changed.

The way things are doesn’t equate to how things should be.
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White supremacy is being treated like a normal way of thinking by those who do not bear any fallout of such views taking root. It’s not white people who make up most of America’s prison system, and it’s not people from white countries who were being denied entry into America’s airports. White moderates must understand that flirting and ogling well-groomed Nazis isn’t an academic exercise for us. Yes, you might be able to do so and face no repercussions, but who benefits? Certainly not people of color. Certainly not people who claim to support us. All that happens is white supremacists obtain an air of legitimacy.

And the opposition to such legitimacy — whether on shows or campuses — is construed as people of color being hypersensitive, disruptive. “How dare they shake things up!” Instead of seeing that the status quo is fucked and toxic — since we’ve not shaken off the effects of white supremacy — white moderates opt for “civility” when what’s required is justice. They would rather spend time finger-wagging at Black Lives Matter or other activists for being too loud, than call out Nazi-loved lawmakers making statutes that kill people.

White moderates opt for ‘civility’ when what’s required is justice.
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And so white supremacy gets another cover — the white moderates’ displeasure at people of color, and their opinion about how we should fight against racism. “Don’t lump all white people together!” “It’s not a race issue, it’s a class/economics issue!” “If you don’t do anything wrong, the government won’t discriminate!” Not understanding that even following the rules doesn’t lead to positive outcomes for people of color, white moderates engage in a form of racism that bolsters more overt white supremacy.

In turn, more cover means white supremacist views can gain footholds and start influencing beyond the dark corners of the internet. The Trump Administration is no accident. The growing international support of such populist, racist movements is not by chance. We saw this coming because white people don’t listen and don’t want to listen. Think about the fact that non-racist, diverse modern societies are new. Our entire history has been one of inequality. These ideas aren’t emerging from nowhere: Indeed, we’re fighting against humanity’s collective history. But that’s all the more reason we need more white people speaking out against it, interrogating their own privilege and seeking out people of color’s perspectives.

Our entire history has been one of inequality.
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There can be no peace without justice. And it’s time white moderates prioritized justice above civility, and put the well-being and safety of people of color above their curiosity over that funny little man who makes feminists angry. It’s time for white folk to stop expressing personal displeasure when, say, some young activist calls them “oppressor,” instead of wondering what would lead someone to say that in the first place. White moderates have little to lose by maintaining the status quo, but much to gain by fighting against it.

Privilege is a blindspot that requires constant interrogation, and we can only hope that white people listen to us when they blunder, instead of flirting with the sympathetic eye of the Nazi.

But who said being a better person would be easy? Racism is primarily white people’s problem, even though people of color must face it every day. White people can help us by putting aside their white fragility — and, importantly, not making it our problem to manage — and start fighting white supremacy alongside us: Start by listening to our opinions on race, instead of your gut reaction and feelings of being attacked.

That is what we need, that is how we progress, that is how we obtain justice.