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Monday 14 April 2014

Uncracked Monday: Privilege and "Narrative"

Today we present a couple of links, important in how they're interconnected.

First, if you have ever heard some fucking pseudoactivist douchebag talking about "privilege" online (no doubt while DEMANDING that someone else be silenced and not allowed to speak, usually to avoid having said douchebag's idiotic statements refuted by someone with a modicum of rational capability), you might have asked yourself "Wait, would I count as privileged?"
And if you did, you're an idiot, because that's a stupid fucking question. But now, you can get your question answered, as there is actually a convenient online test you can take to see just how privileged you are (or aren't).
That is not a joke, by the way; the implication is that it is a totally serious checklist-style test to determine where you rank in "privilege", no doubts for the purpose of expressing online victimhood, or bashing your chest in online forum threads with mea culpas about acknowledging your privilege so you can be purified in the holy fires of "political awareness" that thus allows you (in spite of your privilege) to make authoritative (politically correct) statements about the evils of western civilization, while condemning and silencing others for their ("unacknowledged") privilege.

I post this here because, as far as I can see, never has a pseudo-activist article done so much to inadvertently discredit its own cause as this.  Everyone is having great fun taking the test to find out how privileged they are!  It shows off just how much of a fucking stupid concept this whole thing really is.

You can't measure either human sensitivity or human accomplishment by a checklist of supposed disadvantages.  Much less human rights.  And I have never, ever seen the concept of "privileged" used for any purpose other than as a rhetorical tool by otherwise poorly-armed fashionable-college-leftists to try to silence any debate on one of their pet subjects before other people can interject with their pesky Truth.  And that's the fucking toxicity of the "privilege" idea: it suggests that before looking at certain arguments, and judging said arguments on their reasoning, on whether or not they are TRUE, we first must look at the person making the argument, and whether or not they fit a list of approved characteristics.  The highest of which is not actually to be in any way truly disadvantaged; in fact, the top-ranking person permitted to speak, whose voice (lip-service aside) clearly matters far more than that of, say, a black woman from a third-world country (who certainly does score high on the Privilege test), is the Liberal College Student/Graduate/Postgrad who, in spite of usually coming out of the most advantaged of backgrounds, has "checked" and "recognized" their privilege, and received the education they believe allows them to now qualified as the Intellectual Elite that have the right to determine for all the rest what is right or wrong, or who should get to speak or not speak, and whether or not we should actually pay attention to what is being said.  Because "truth" means NOTHING to these people (like good little postmodern relativists, they don't believe there is such a thing), what matters is "narrative".

Do you think I'm overstating my case?
Let us consider then, the recent incident with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who's initial presentation of an honorary degree at Brandeis University was rescinded.  It demonstrated that to pseudo-activists, "muslim" trumps "woman".  Not just woman, in that case, but Third-world Black Atheist Woman Victim of Genital Mutilation; she had every qualifier and she still lost the privilege game in the eyes of the First-world Upper Middle Class (mostly White) College Pseudo-activists because she did not fit their "narrative" about how a good third-world black woman ought to behave.  She was "insensitive" by "criticizing" Islam; note that they also don't give a fuck about Islam per se, but again it fits the larger "narrative": people who criticize Islam are usually evil patriarchal religious right-wingers who believe in western civilization and are thus Enemy #1.  To have a black female atheist criticizing Islam is, to them, in many ways worse than if a White Male Baptist were to have done so, because she risks harming the precious narrative, she risks confusing the whole story they've invented in their heads as a way to avoid having to deal with the actual tools that depend upon examining truth.
She's like a traitor.

Its clearly not just about "insensitivity".  Consider that a few years earlier Brandeis had given an honorary degree to a guy (Tony Kushner) who said some very offensive things about the state of Israel (to the point of suggesting it should not exist), and when challenged at the time, the college actually made this statement:

"(Brandeis) bestows honorary degrees as a means of acknowledging the outstanding accomplishments or contributions of individual men and women in any of a number of fields of human endeavor. Just as Brandeis does not inquire into the political opinions and beliefs of faculty or staff before appointing them, or students before offering admission, so too the University does not select honorary degree recipients on the basis of their political beliefs or opinions."

Apparently consistency or lack of hypocrisy is not a trait Brandeis values.

So if you believe in wiping out Israel, then apparently you're OK, even if you're a white guy, as long as you're saying in the right "narrative" (i.e. as a self-loathing liberal douchebag, and not, say, some redneck with a confederate flag; again, its all about the 'story', not what's true or not, the same statement of fact can be embraced or rejected by the Pseudoactivists based on who's making the statement).  But if you are a black woman who was genitally mutilated as a child, had to escape your country in fear of your life, and then had a dear friend murdered by a religious fanatic because he made a film about your story (with a note literally stabbed into his chest saying you were next), you're "privileged".

And that's the thing, "privilege" is always used, contrary to the claims of its Swine proponents, as a contest: as a comparison game to see who we should be most politically correct about.   The dude who wants Israel wiped off the face of the earth is not "privileged" compared to those lucky lucky jews (they haven't had anything bad happen to them in a while, right?), but Ayan Hirsi Ali is "privileged" compared to anyone who's still a Muslim because some Cultural Studies Major somewhere has decided it is so, in order to consistently fit the reality-bubble of Pseudoactivist Douchebaggery.  The whole thing is a grading scale for an intentionally constructed view of the world that rejects fact in favor of a specific 'story', rather than any true or accurate marker of suffering.  And even if it was the latter, it'd still be pretty fucking stupid.
 RPGPundit
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9 comments:

  1. meanwhile, I will note that it has now been revealed that part of the pressure on Brandeis University (ironically, a university historically founded by Jewish academics who were trying to address the anti-semitism that limited their opportunities as scholars in America at the time) came from a collection of over 80 faculty members, actual alleged "academics" demanding that someone else be silenced for their political views.

    And in their signed letter, they even proved my point: These people have been so utterly rotted in their minds that they can't even conceive of the idea of anything being truth or facts. The letter talks about how "we cannot accept Ms. Hirsi Ali's triumphalist narrative of western civilization". To them, this is all about what they imagine is a story they don't like, versus the one they want to believe in (the one they want to believe in being one where western civilization is the corrupt root of all malice, and where other cultures are 'noble savages' who do no wrong that wasn't brought about by evil white men). The "narrative" of Hirsi Ali's life, of a girl facing mutilation and then a woman facing horrific brutality escaping that savagery to the civilization of the west and then praising the values of the culture that saved and protected her against one that still has people seeking her death even to this day, that is the "narrative" that isn't working for these scholars.

    The letter also tried to claim that one of Hirsi Ali's crimes is that by talking about the horrific violence committed against girls and women in third-world Muslim countries it diminishes attention to the "violence" perpetrated by the west, including the "rape culture" of college campuses. Right, because the 'rape culture' of frat boys calling girls 'hot babes' is EXACTLY as bad as (or, I suppose the narrative they want to imagine is that its 'worse' than) slicing the clitoris and labia off an 8 year old child.

    What really bothers them is that Hirsi Ali's real campaign for human rights (freedom from female mutilation, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of expression) for which she is in danger of her life, shows off just what a ridiculous charade, what a pathetic joke, the 'campaigns' of Women's Studies Majors in U.S. colleges against the 'patriarchy' really is, what a shallow narcissistic circus act of pseudo-activism it is for them to be dedicating their time and effort to the vital struggle of 'raising awareness' that western men who like comic book covers of cartoon superwomen in bikinis is "rape" while people like Hirsi Ali campaign against 11-year-olds having to flee from their lives after trying to escape forced marriage in Yemen or while 14 year old girls who commit the sin of wanting to learn how to read are being shot in the face by those poor wonderful victims of "western-Jewish aggression" in Pakistan.

    They hate her because she shows just how fake they are, and how fake their alleged causes are. And because she points out the inconvenient narrative that the civilization they despise so much (their own), fight actively to undermine, and would cheer at the destruction of, is the absolute best hope for fighting for the rights of women throughout a world where everyone else does a much worse job of it.

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  2. I imagine it is the money and power of authority that attract these fakes. If the government stop lending money to would be college students I wonder what would happen when colleges are no longer getting students? No seriously I am wondering what would happen if you take out the grants and borrowing money because college is expensive.

    Sure it would mean that less people are able to go to college, but it might force colleges to start dropping bullshit classes. Am I wrong in thinking of this?

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  3. I don't think most of these people are in it for the money. College professors don't earn that much. They're in it because its an environment where they can feel important (without having to actually do much or show much talent other than for bullshitting) and where they can serve their (sickeningly warped) cause.

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  4. Your maybe right on the professors, but what about the deans? College coffers have to be full if the college hopes to exist. If you make a dean choose to sacrifice a college, or sacrifice a bullshit class along with its bullshit professor which would a dean choose? I imagine a wise dean would sacrifice a few classes so the college can keep going.

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  5. If you're suggesting that the College SYSTEM itself is a fucked-up victim of its own success, then yes, I'd absolutely agree. Its perhaps possible that this fucked-upness on the financial/institutional level has affected the rise of the Frankfurt-school critical-theory anti-civilization types dominating almost all areas and shutting out any opposition (ironically changing Universities from bastions of free speech to bastions of politically-correct speech-control where diversity of ideas is persecuted), but I'm not sure the correlation is all that direct. The Frankfurt school started their infiltration shortly before university education began going to shit. Academia was ALWAYS the place where bad ideas could go to hide, because they required no real-world testing with real-world consequences there. That's nothing new. What's new is that now the Pushers of Bad Ideas rule the roost at every level of the education system.

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  6. So how would you attempt to stop it?

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  7. I don't know if that's really possible, not without a major culture change.

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  8. It's pretty funny how, in the 1980's, the U.S. right-wing was in love with some of the worst (and most murderous) Islamic reactionaries (the Afghan Mujahadeen), dubbed as "freedom fighters", while now the fake-left suddenly supports the same reactionaries under exactly the same slogans.

    Real leftists in the actual third-world are fighting against these religious reactionaries, who are typically good allies of the village gentry, the sweatshop bosses and other scumbags.

    Oh, and the entire "identity politics" are a great asset for the ruling oligarchy as instead of people uniting to fight for their common interests, they get divided. The same goes with post-modernism (i.e. nothing is true so why fight to change the world?) and other crap which serves the modern oligarchy in the same way that the church dogma served the feudal lords in the Middle Ages (i.e. keep people passive - after all "it's all narratives"). Screw narratives. Screw identities. Screw privilege-talk. Go out to the streets and fight for real things.

    Post-Modernism (i.e. "nothing is true"), "critical" theory (which busies itself with criticising, not fighting) and identity politics (divisive and pointless) have actually crippled the left.

    (I am writing this as a radical leftist myself).

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  9. And I would agree with you. The left has absolutely shot itself in the foot by embracing all this stuff.

    Its also been one of the most notable changes to have happened within my lifetime; when I was a child, if you were right-wing you were very likely an anti-semite, while if you were a leftist you were probably a supporter of Israel.
    Today it is almost exactly the reverse, and in some ways I think "where you stand on the Jews" is a pretty good litmus test of how insane your ideologies are. You seriously have a fucking problem with your movement if you've contorted your logic to the point where you think the guys who want to have a stable democracy are the great villains while the guys who want to shoot 14-year old girls in the head for learning to read are the heroic ones.

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