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It would be nice to think that the campus authoritarians are being embarrassed to their senses, but the human capacity for hypocrisy is unlimited, alas.

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Look forward to reading your Atlantic piece. And of course this McCarthyism 2.0 is coming not from right to left like in the 50s but left to right (although since October 7 everyone has got in on the censorship action.) We're very much in the Upside Down. I wrote a fairy tale / poem about this when I first launched my substack two months ago. Here's a relevant excerpt:

"[...]is not odd that the dissenters

of the Cold War

hysteria, the critics of this

McCarthyism Red Scare 2.0 are now

identified

named, shamed and defamed

as being right.

right not as in righteous

nor as in might makes right

(for in the Upside Down

might makes left)

but right as in

Putinite.”

The full story for anyone interested is at: https://www.mostlymyth.com/p/rip-van-winkle

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1) Cancel Culture dates from? Well it was certainly well established by 2017: "Evergreen State College, a biology professor had his class invaded by a frenzied mob hurling ‘Fuck you, you piece of shit’ type abuse. The professor, ironically a lifelong progressive, “had refused to obey an edict from Evergreen’s Director of First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services that all white faculty cancel their courses for a day and…white students were also ordered to absent themselves from the school to show ‘solidarity’.” Evergreen’s president expressed his “gratitude” for the mob’s “passion and courage”. In 2015 an orgy of foul-mouthed student self-engrossment took place at Yale: “Who the fuck hired you?!...You should not sleep at night!’ screams a black student at her college master Nicholas Christakis. “You are disgusting!” screams another." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind

2) Full-of-shit Western intelligentsia dates from? Well established by the Bloomsbury Set in the 1920s - plus Stalin-groupie academics in the 1930s; plus Mao-groupies in the 1960s.

Western Liberalism's self-destruct has been long in the making

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Yes, we talk a lot about the Evergreen case in our previous book coddling of the American mind, and I was actually the person who videotaped the angry crowd that surround at Nicholas Christakis. One of the most depressing things I've seen in my life.

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Genevieve Lakier, who is quoted in the politico piece as being concerned that private consequences for unpopular opinions is McCarthyism, has been actively looking for ways to shut people up she disagrees with. The hypocrisy of these people approaches infinity.

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Campus intolerance and cancelling is normal and permanent, both among students and among faculty competing for grants and tenure.

I remember reading Max Shulman's 'Barefoot Boy with Cheek', describing the squabbles among campus leftists in 1948. Nothing has changed.

The only difference now is that the ADMINISTRATORS are amplifying the normal student intolerance instead of trying to damp it down.

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I am a Gay American who was prevented from serving my country in both the Military and the Foreign Service because of legislated bigotry that declared that I, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people like me, were unfit to serve our country because of the beliefs and discriminatory intent of social conservatives - yet these are the same people who are screaming to high heaven about "Cancel Culture".

I hope they all get cancelled - would serve those hypocrites right.

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I talk all the time about the Lavender scare, and the persecution of gay Americans particular in the 1950s as a shameful.. Secret City, about the Gay community of Washington DC in the 20th century, by Jamie Kirchick is actually one of the books I recommend the most to everybody, and I recommend on this blog as well. Frank Kaminey is a hero of mine and of my friend Jon Rauch. If you wrote this assuming you're addressing a social conservative, who doesn't care about cancellation when it comes from the right you definitely have the wrong person and did not do your homework.

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I really don't understand your comment and I'm kind of bristling here about sharing a deeply personal story about my lifes journey in the face of discrimination and hypocrisy - and you feel the need to first state your bona fides(ooooh - I'm impressed! Are you happy?) in order to make assumptions about and personally attack me.

Obvs this community isn't what I thought it was - and I don't need this kind of abuse by any self-appointed whatever you are.

I'm out of here. Happy?

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To me, employers vowing to not hire someone who voices story the unprovoked slaughter of innocent Israeli citizens is different from trying to actively expel them from their universities.

Ilya Shapiro has a great piece in The Free Press discussing if the different situations of this type are "First Amendment" protected or not (spoiler: voicing support for the Hamas may be, but harassing, menacing or chasing Jewish students is not).

So... I hardly feel sorry for the"doxxed" students. It is their right to voice horrible opinions. And it the right of their potential employers to ensure they won't hire such people.

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*voices support for...

*Grumbles against the autocorrect in french* 🥖 🧀

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