Thank you. I read this, and had more questions: “Indeed, among scholars targeted for sanction who also reported receiving threats (about 67 scholars) 60% of them said those threats came from their right rather than their left.”
I couldn’t help wonder, however, what is the metric by which professors know the threats against them are from the right?
Given how far to the left many professors have become, any bleeding heart liberal to the right of Stalin (or even one who believes in markets) would be regarded, under the new “operating system” as “right-wing”. I don’t see how the Hidden Tribes 6% of conservatives are definitively the ones doing the harassing when the circular firing squad could very easily be made up of people who are otherwise sympathetic to a left-leaning professoriate, but who aren’t willing to go along with every new piety. I’m not doubting the experience of FIRE, just a claim like that deserves nuance in an atmosphere devoid of any.
"With those three words—‘very fine people’—the president showed that he was sympathetic to the men who staged the most highly publicized march for racism and antisemitism in the United States in many decades.”
No, he did what Democrat politicians had been doing in spades and continue to do... demonstrate empathy for the condition of their chosen constituents that drives such tribal anger... separate from the criminal acts. And let's clear up this claim of antisemitism being a primary thing of the extreme right when so many black and white Democrat leaders continue to blatantly deliver anti-Jewish rhetoric and views.
"But once users had two super-fast ways to say what they liked, and could do so many times a minute, the social media companies had vastly more information on each user’s behavior, and they began to optimize people’s news-feeds using algorithms that continuously improved the platform’s ability to engage users and keep them clicking."
"In the aftermath, white liberals shifted sharply to the left on survey questions about race (as well as immigration and gender), while black people and conservatives barely moved."
"Why the sudden shift among white liberals?"
"Devoted conservatives see themselves as the last defenders of traditional values that are under threat from the far left. This group was clearly over-represented in the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021."
You see the problem here? I know Jon and Greg and friends are trying to walk a middle line to coddle the feelings and attention span of the highly emotive left, but unfortunately this is leading them to miss quite a bit in the analysis. If the actual reason for the hyper polarization is the "like" button, then why do we not see the center-right all adopting the extremism of the "devoted conservatives"?
Social media isn't the cause, it is the delivery mechanism for a sickness that originated on the college campus. And that sickness on the college campuses was delivered by the cabal of social and economic malcontents in academia and Great Reset globalists connected through the WEF who's hive came alive after the Great Recession.
All of the great ideological and rhetorical narratives of wokeism are in fact strategies of the WEF globalist Great Reset project. Include the great theory of man-made climate change. This cabal has been working to indoctrinate millions of students over the decades, starting before 2008 but significantly ramped up after the global financial collapse, and Critical Theory fake scholarship has been their cult scripture.
You can take away the Like and Retweet function and the sickness will still exist. The elimination of the sickness requires Critical Theory and all its derivatives be labeled as fake scholarship and removed from all curriculum except for the classes labeled as Critical Theory.
And one more point about this claim that the right is prone to wild conspiracy theories about abuses of political power in collusion with the mainstream media to, for example, steal elections.
Don't make me list all of the previous similar claims that have since been proven true. Republican claims of political establishment / media dirty tricks and cheating are well founded.
I agree the right and left feed off each other but that it all started in the late '70s. After the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, both Democrats and Republicans had to rebuild their respective parties. Over the next decade, Republicans co-opted the evangelical right and the Democrats focused recruitment on single-issue organizing and ethnic caucuses. The Republicans gradually adopted a less tolerant, 'purer' tone to their politics and the Democrats eventually spawned thousands of interest groups competing with each other for political influence and concocting narrower and more extreme platforms to gain notice, laying the groundwork for 21st century 'woeness'.
It's a commonplace observation, but the Great Awokening is quite literally insane. The 'woke' go out of their way to condemn J.K. Rowling. who is far to the left on every issue I can think of. For a good example of this insanity, consider Keith Olbermann He has called Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, fascists. Musk was a strong supporter of Obama. Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders.
Pardon my recursion but could it be that essays like this feed and accelerate the polarization spiral? There is now a growing body of literature (dare I say ‘genre’) chronicling and analyzing polarization, the erosion of academic freedom, threats from the Left and Right, and assessing the likelihood of civil war. We do live in interesting times: there is hyperpolarization, there has been an uptick in violence with political pretexts, and a few untenured academics have lost their jobs for no good reason but with a great deal of publicity. But it ain’t that bad. And interesting times do happen.
Déjà vu. I was an undergraduate during what we called The Revolution. There was certainly violence, from wannabe revolutionaries on the Left and thugs on the Right, but they were few. Then there was the vast body of those of us who were demonstrating in the streets, who got great publicity: privileged kids engaging in a more morally elevated form of Spring Break.
So I’m skeptical. History rhymes. The publicity, then on TV, showing anti-war demonstrations, the hard hat riot, Yippies taunting Chicago cops and Chicago cops beating up demonstrators, only accelerated the spiral or polarization.
Thank you. I read this, and had more questions: “Indeed, among scholars targeted for sanction who also reported receiving threats (about 67 scholars) 60% of them said those threats came from their right rather than their left.”
I couldn’t help wonder, however, what is the metric by which professors know the threats against them are from the right?
Given how far to the left many professors have become, any bleeding heart liberal to the right of Stalin (or even one who believes in markets) would be regarded, under the new “operating system” as “right-wing”. I don’t see how the Hidden Tribes 6% of conservatives are definitively the ones doing the harassing when the circular firing squad could very easily be made up of people who are otherwise sympathetic to a left-leaning professoriate, but who aren’t willing to go along with every new piety. I’m not doubting the experience of FIRE, just a claim like that deserves nuance in an atmosphere devoid of any.
"With those three words—‘very fine people’—the president showed that he was sympathetic to the men who staged the most highly publicized march for racism and antisemitism in the United States in many decades.”
No, he did what Democrat politicians had been doing in spades and continue to do... demonstrate empathy for the condition of their chosen constituents that drives such tribal anger... separate from the criminal acts. And let's clear up this claim of antisemitism being a primary thing of the extreme right when so many black and white Democrat leaders continue to blatantly deliver anti-Jewish rhetoric and views.
"But once users had two super-fast ways to say what they liked, and could do so many times a minute, the social media companies had vastly more information on each user’s behavior, and they began to optimize people’s news-feeds using algorithms that continuously improved the platform’s ability to engage users and keep them clicking."
"In the aftermath, white liberals shifted sharply to the left on survey questions about race (as well as immigration and gender), while black people and conservatives barely moved."
"Why the sudden shift among white liberals?"
"Devoted conservatives see themselves as the last defenders of traditional values that are under threat from the far left. This group was clearly over-represented in the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021."
You see the problem here? I know Jon and Greg and friends are trying to walk a middle line to coddle the feelings and attention span of the highly emotive left, but unfortunately this is leading them to miss quite a bit in the analysis. If the actual reason for the hyper polarization is the "like" button, then why do we not see the center-right all adopting the extremism of the "devoted conservatives"?
Social media isn't the cause, it is the delivery mechanism for a sickness that originated on the college campus. And that sickness on the college campuses was delivered by the cabal of social and economic malcontents in academia and Great Reset globalists connected through the WEF who's hive came alive after the Great Recession.
All of the great ideological and rhetorical narratives of wokeism are in fact strategies of the WEF globalist Great Reset project. Include the great theory of man-made climate change. This cabal has been working to indoctrinate millions of students over the decades, starting before 2008 but significantly ramped up after the global financial collapse, and Critical Theory fake scholarship has been their cult scripture.
You can take away the Like and Retweet function and the sickness will still exist. The elimination of the sickness requires Critical Theory and all its derivatives be labeled as fake scholarship and removed from all curriculum except for the classes labeled as Critical Theory.
And one more point about this claim that the right is prone to wild conspiracy theories about abuses of political power in collusion with the mainstream media to, for example, steal elections.
Don't make me list all of the previous similar claims that have since been proven true. Republican claims of political establishment / media dirty tricks and cheating are well founded.
I agree the right and left feed off each other but that it all started in the late '70s. After the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, both Democrats and Republicans had to rebuild their respective parties. Over the next decade, Republicans co-opted the evangelical right and the Democrats focused recruitment on single-issue organizing and ethnic caucuses. The Republicans gradually adopted a less tolerant, 'purer' tone to their politics and the Democrats eventually spawned thousands of interest groups competing with each other for political influence and concocting narrower and more extreme platforms to gain notice, laying the groundwork for 21st century 'woeness'.
It's a commonplace observation, but the Great Awokening is quite literally insane. The 'woke' go out of their way to condemn J.K. Rowling. who is far to the left on every issue I can think of. For a good example of this insanity, consider Keith Olbermann He has called Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, fascists. Musk was a strong supporter of Obama. Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders.
Pardon my recursion but could it be that essays like this feed and accelerate the polarization spiral? There is now a growing body of literature (dare I say ‘genre’) chronicling and analyzing polarization, the erosion of academic freedom, threats from the Left and Right, and assessing the likelihood of civil war. We do live in interesting times: there is hyperpolarization, there has been an uptick in violence with political pretexts, and a few untenured academics have lost their jobs for no good reason but with a great deal of publicity. But it ain’t that bad. And interesting times do happen.
Déjà vu. I was an undergraduate during what we called The Revolution. There was certainly violence, from wannabe revolutionaries on the Left and thugs on the Right, but they were few. Then there was the vast body of those of us who were demonstrating in the streets, who got great publicity: privileged kids engaging in a more morally elevated form of Spring Break.
So I’m skeptical. History rhymes. The publicity, then on TV, showing anti-war demonstrations, the hard hat riot, Yippies taunting Chicago cops and Chicago cops beating up demonstrators, only accelerated the spiral or polarization.