37 posts were split to a new topic: Flogging dead horses, from Peak woke
Yes. I’m sure we put the stress on the wrong things. One more reason why some people’s crazy claims and obsessions sound more stupid.
Totally agree. Let’s fix that and stop spending money on bullshit.
But let’s also let people have fun even if it’s posting in this thread crazy shit, and let’s also acknowledge that there’s a political agenda that is conditioning academia, people’s jobs and freedom of speech.
Yes.
Objectively false, but telling.
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Feel free to. I can also be free to criticize. 
I don’t agree there is a cabal forcing us all to speak a certain way. Cultures change and that is a collective movement. Sometimes there is a need to course correct. And sometimes people get left behind.
You care much more than what you say. Just acknowledge it.
There are political movements that legitimate mobs cancelling people or getting them fired, when not pushing them to do so.
Indeed. These things matter because they imply that people are such sensitive creatures that they must be protected from any possible slight, and we need to constantly contort ourselves to make it happen. Taboos are an assault on the liberal principles and concept of objectivity that underlie Western culture and civilization. This may be a small assault, but these things add up over time and are definitely worthy of responses.
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Certainly not the response where our entire political platform is based on it and we are incapable of addressing any other issue.
Free and open debate in the marketplace of ideas matters, and the woke crowd wants to stifle it by accusing everyone and everything under the sun of racism, sexism, misogyny, ableism, cultural appropriation, heteronormativity, etc., etc.
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It’s pretty hard to ignore someone who can arrange to get you fired, and who will do so if it gratifies him. This is not hypothetical - I can think of at least three high-profile examples, and I’m sure there are dozens or hundreds more who simply skulked away from an academic vendetta and got a nice boring job in sales.
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That’s a nice anecdote. Can’t really speak to anything without specifics.
@TT has firsthand experience of the influence of wokeness in an academic setting, which he’s shared extensively on this forum, and all you can do is name-drop Rufo as if that means something?
Indeed.
I’ll let Rufo’s words speak for themselves. One of the great things about advertising, branding, propaganda is they get you to buy into an idea even when you don’t know what they’re selling.
“We will eventually turn [critical race theory] toxic, as we put all of the ‘various cultural insanities’ under that brand category. The goal is to have the public read something ‘crazy’ in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory’.”
The people I’m thinking of here are Julie Ponesse, Bret Weinstein, and Jordan Peterson. Those are just names that immediately spring to mind, but they’re almost certainly not exceptional. The point here is that nobody would object to the extreme left holding particular views if they could simply be ignored. It’s the level of spite and aggression they direct against others that’s beyond the pale.
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So some of the most influential spokesmen for the anti woke crusade profiting off of you lapping up everything they’re saying…and what they’re the victims? 
Sorry I don’t buy it.
Yeah, didn’t think you would. You wanted examples of people hounded out of their jobs by the woke brigade. Your response seems to be “they deserved it”. Which is precisely why people are so afraid of “woke” and its supporters.
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Is that what I said? No the examples you gave are people making a shit ton of money off an anti woke crusade. That doesn’t look like they’ve been cancelled to me. I thought free speech was over.
JP and BW might have done that - and of course that is incredibly offensive to the Left because what they should have done is rolled over, grovelled, and accepted their fate.
Are you claiming that every single person who was hounded from academia by a baying mob subsequently monetized their predicament? These particular people are well-known because they made an effort to become well-known. Most would not have been up for the confrontation. By definition, you don’t hear from people who have actually been cancelled.
Why not address the circumstances under which they were cancelled, instead of getting upset about the fact that they picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and gave a big middle finger to the Left?
Ponesse, incidentally, isn’t much of a public figure.
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I’m noticing a pattern here…
Self martyrdom…sell more books you say?
I recently resigned from my position as full tenured professor at the University of Toronto. I am now professor emeritus, and before I turned sixty.
My students are also partly unacceptable precisely because they are my students. I am academic persona non grata, because of my unacceptable philosophical positions. And this isn’t just some inconvenience. These facts rendered my job morally untenable. How can I accept prospective researchers and train them in good conscience knowing their employment prospects to be minimal?
Peterson might have lost access to a powerful promotional platform, but days after his suspension, it was announced that he was joining The Daily Wire, an influential right-wing publication, which has expanded into its own streaming platform, The Daily Wire+.
Oh, Fiamengo File is still happening, years ago I never missed a video, but lost interest around 2018
Yes, I’m the problem here. Not the bald genderfluid thief who stole some lady’s clothes, probably wore them and then disposed of them while lying, bald faced this time, to the coppers.
Is he still employed with the US Government?