When a college feminist decided, one cold night in 2014, to burn her personal copy of pseudofeminist Christina Hoff Sommers’ book The War Against Boys, the internet’s antifeminists responded as if Hitler himself had risen from the grave.
“Universities bring book-burning back, one page at a time,” declared a blogger at TheRebelMedia. After an extended comparison with the infamous book burning campaigns of the literal Nazis, he declared that “[t]he burning of Hoff Sommers’ book is a striking visual synecdoche for the malaise afflicting free expression across not only North American college campuses.” In a featured article, A Voice for Men described the burning as a “disturbing” example of “misandry in academia.”
On the Men’s Rights subreddit, meanwhile, one angry dude declared that
If you’re burning a book, you’re basically admitting to being not just a bigot, but one who doesn’t even have enough confidence in the strength of their own views to believe that they can stand up for themselves without needing to silence and censor those that oppose them.
If we set aside the fact that, unlike the Nazis, who confiscated the books they burned, a person burning their own copy of a book that is readily available to others is not actually censoring anything, he’s got a point.
So it’s interesting to see how many of the Internet’s antifeminsts and Anti-Social-Justice-Warrior-Warriors are embracing a proposal from one of their own to literally censor all academics who teach stuff they don’t like.
On Change.org, professional feminism-hater Carl Benjamin, known on YouTube as Sargon of Akkad, has started a petition demanding that “UNIVERSITIES” — presumably, every single one of them — immediately “Suspend Social Justice Courses” because he thinks that “social justice” professors are up to no good.
In vague but melodramatic language Benjamin proclaims that
Social justice has become scientifically illiterate, logically unsound, deeply bigoted and openly supremacist.
He doesn’t specify exactly what kind of supremacism he’s complaining about here; presumably not white.
Nor does he ever define exactly what courses count as “social justice courses.” There aren’t any departments of Social Justice that I’m aware of. [EDIT: Oops! Turns out there are.] Does Benjamin mean a tiny handful of, say, women’s studies courses taught by radical feminists? Or does he hope (at least in his wildest dreams) to take down the humanities and social sciences as a whole?
Social justice professors are indoctrinating young people into a pseudoscientific cult behind closed doors that is doing damage to their health, education and future.
Well, technically, I guess, virtually all college courses are taught “behind closed doors,” since the doors of lecture halls generally do get closed before class begins. Technically, I’m writing this post behind closed doors, because I don’t leave the doors of my apartment wide open. (People might wander in; the cats might wander out.) I suspect that Benjamin himself wrote up his petition behind closed doors!
Benjamin goes on to declare that
[s]ocial justice … has become another ideology fit only to pave the road to Hell, so it is time to turn around and choose another path that is concerned with reason, science and improving the lives of every human.
If only some evil Social Justice English professor has indoctrinated Benjamin in the devilish art of writing without resorting to hackneyed cliches.
But that’s pretty much all there is to Benjamin’s petition. Somehow, thought, the vagueness of Benjamin’s plan hasn’t stopped 9,878 people — so far — from signing the petition.
It is, however, possible that some of the signers are a little bit confused as to what exactly they’re signing.
Indeed, the top two most-liked comments on the petition, for example, were written by people who seem to think that Benjamin’s proposal to peremptorily censor all college courses that he thinks are excessively social-justicey is, somehow, a defense of free speech?
Benjamin has posted a video in which he explains his crusade in a little more detail. It’s possible that somewhere in it he answers the question of how exactly his plan to drive all professors he doesn’t like from all the college campuses in the world is actually a crusade for free speech.
Here’s the video in question:
Oops! Wrong video. Let me try again:
Huh. I don’t think that was it either.
No, that’s clearly not it.
Ok, ok. I found the real one here.
But it’s 40 minutes long. I sampled the first 2 seconds, and that was about all I could bring myself to watch. So I guess I’ll just have to resign myself to a life of servitude under the jackboots of the Social Justice warlords. Still, that’s a far better option than actually watching a Sargon of Akkad video all the way through.
They always think that if democracy is revoked, it’s those icky *others* that will be kept down, and they’ll be sitting in the catbird seat.
And now, if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee and her veep is a woman or a minority, can you feature all the dirty-word screeching we’re going to hear from the dextrosphere?…
Ah yes, the international monolith that is UNIVERSITIES. I’ve never taken a gender studies course, and probably won’t get the chance to fit on in my schedule, which is actually a little disappointing. I noticed, though, that one that I had wanted to take was being taught by a woman with a PHD in theoretical physics. The one social-justice-y ethics course I did have to take was quite good, and taught by the same prof who teaches a logic course. In actuality, people with PHD’s in philosophy are usually pretty good at the reason stuff. I mean I’m sure their skills in logic and reason pale in comparison to youtube celeb Sargon of Akkad and the many Free Speech Warriors hell-bent on limiting free speech that makes them uncomfortable.
I suspect Mr Benjamin has never set foot in an actual university. Perhaps he’d be happier at one of those Fundamentalist Christian Pseudo-Acreddited Universities that they have in the US. He’ll find no scary liberal ideas to challenge his world view, there.
@ikanreed or anyone, really – I’ve seen a few mentions of MRAs using thinking/reasoning that is similar to that of a cargo cult, but I have to admit I have no idea what it really means.
Can anyone point me to a good analysis of how the two are similar?
They celebrated?
A dumbass proposal by a paid anti feminist shill. If Carl wants to start a crusade against scientifically illiterate and bigoted ideologues he should take aim against himself.
Having watched a sampler of his work, Sargon never does his homework or looks up anything before turning on the microphone – He just spouts off whatever bigoted, misinformed thing he believes is true and presents this as an objective fact. I worry for all the idiots getting their news from his channel – they think they’re getting the hot uncensored truth, but he’s just a right-wing spin jockey.
dreemr: There’s been lots of literal cargo cults. The best known are the ones that started in the Melanesian Islands during WWII. First the Japanese forces, then the Americans, occupied the islands, and brought with them the first manufactured goods the indigenous population had ever seen. Furthermore, these were often air-dropped, so appeared to the locals as if the gods were literally sending the occupiers supplies.
Since they had no reference for modern technology, the islanders would set up mock airstrips (with local building materials) and perform the same actions they saw the occupiers using to ‘summon’ the cargo. They even would build replica airplanes out of straw.
It’s classic magical thinking–perform this rite, and you get the benefits.
So the comparison to MRAs and the like, who co-opt social justice terminology, is pretty straightforward. They think that by waving around terms they barely comprehend (racist, sexist, oppression and so forth) completely devoid of the proper context or support, that they can somehow make their opponents look as bad as they are. It’s an astounding sociological phenomenon.
More reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
Imagine the conniptions these freezepeachers would have if they realized that their beloved white males of pre-feminism days had established rituals for burning and otherwise destroying their own copies of books they didn’t like!
That’s right, back in the days when Euclid’s geometry was mandatory for most college students (who were, of course, young, white and male), students who had finally finished their Euclid studies held elaborate ceremonies for the destruction of the book. As one 1850 source put it,
Does not the petition violate TOS? Is it reportable?
Gotta love this “You burned one copy of a book therefore lets make an entire giant ill-define collection of fields of study totes illegal w/a Change.com petition!” man logick. top fuckin kek.
@Freemage – okay, I get it now. I did have a passing familiarity with cargo cults (not at all in-depth and not very broad) but I couldn’t figure out the connection. I kept thinking, “I should get what this means, but…I don’t”.
Thank you for the explanation.
@dreemr:
Well, there’s the Wikipedia page on Cargo cult science, a term coined by Feynmann.
And a lot of Sovereign Citizen/Freeman on the Land stuff has been referred to as ‘Cargo cult law’ for the same reason.
The basic idea is that one copies the outer appearance of what they’re trying to do (in the case of the original cults, building landing strips and mock airports) with the expectation that success will follow (airplanes landing with food and equipment) without actually understanding any of the underlying context that made this happen (actual radios making arrangements for supply drops).
Re: Prince
I remember, back when people were laughing over the ‘artist formerly known as Prince’ aspect, being told that it was at least in part related to his rather public disagreement with his recording contract. After all, the contract gave Warner Brothers exclusive rights to sell albums created by ‘Prince’ and to not market any albums they didn’t want to… but if he changed his stage name, he could put out albums under the new name through a different label.
I did my undergraduate in a STEM field at a “top” university that had a reputation for being more to the left. Many of the humanities professors did seem to be a bit more liberal, but not leftist or socialist. They definitely weren’t radical feminists.
The complaints about “political correctness” and claims that it’s totalitarian were definitely attempts to create an abusive and hostile environment towards people with more radical political views on campus. Conservative groups felt like they were being censored unless every humanities course included exposure to highly polemical attacks on left-wing ideology.
Before the early 1990’s, certain people on the left with a more theoretical bent, including Catharine MacKinnon, used the term ironically to refer to themselves. It ended up being associated with MacKinnon’s views that the First Amendment shouldn’t protect pornography or abusive speech. A few college students in the 1980’s were disciplined for violating speech codes, but much of the material on that is anecdotal and not actual studies of how the speech codes were enforced or the effects they had.
In the early 1990’s, “political correctness” got picked up by conservative pundits as a strategy to project conservative support for censorship onto liberals. Now, holding anyone (non-criminally) accountable for hateful views is apparently censorship, even though almost nobody thought that way before the early 1990’s.
@Jenora – thank you for adding to this explanation. It does help me see it much more clearly. So they confuse correlation with causation, in a way!
Is there an online personality anyone can think of with a name that screams ‘delusions of grandeur’ more than Sargon of Akkad? It’s like calling yourself Alexander the Great and expecting to be taken seriously.
Don’t forget that the entire Gamergate manifesto was about eight paragraphs of total bollocks that looked like someone had run it through a thesaurus and replaced every word with the longest synonym he could find. A veil of cleverness is all it takes to fool these people.
Film Runner: I’d say Vox Day is second place (his is more pretentious, IMNSHO, but still very self-aggrandizing).
@Dark Statistic
Sargon is arguably way more postmodern and deconstructionist than radical feminists and critical race theorists. He bases his arguments on anecdotes and speculation rather than empirical evidence and he’s more concerned with the particularities of language people use than their actual substance.
GamerGate itself is pretty postmodernist (e.g., Anita Sarkeesian is wrong because I’ve found a way to interpret her language that makes her sound silly). It tries to be critical race theory for white gamers with cargo cult deference to 19th century liberalism and Enlightenment rationalism. The LessWrong people are the actual ridiculous uber-rationalists.
I really wanted to like Sargon of Akkad since he bills himself of someone who listens to reason, who might even change their mind if presented the right evidence. Ironically I’ve seen plenty of evidence before reading this here that he’s the same as many anti-feminists and espouses the exact same ideas as the others. I suppose that because there is the patriarchal view that “Men are logical” some anti-feminists have irrationally concluded that “Pro-male arguments are logical.”
I suppose their are some social justice types who are tempted by the idea of simply silencing their enemies, but 90% of the time I see what they say nobody is calling for outright censorship, but instead simply pointing out why certain statements are bad.
I was never a fan, and what little I knew suggested that he never lead a healthy life, still…
Prince: A legend has died.
I don’t think he actually did, though he did go to a private school. I know this at least through one of Laughing Witch’s older videos. It was especially ridiculous how Sargon would keep shitting on Laurie Penny for going to a posh private school though Sargon himself did the same. At least Penny went to college. Sargon had every opportunity but didn’t take it either because he was too lazy or too dumb.
I guess I am one of those ebil SJWs that Sargon is trying to get fired. Oh noes. I teach Human Cultures and most ebil of all SJW courses, Human Diversity. (I also teach Introduction to Archaeology on occasion, but that’s not so SJWy.) I have a Ph.D. in Ancient Studies, so I know who the real Sargon was – a much nicer person, I have to say. So, I guess I should update my vita, since this fearsome petition will make this my last semester teaching such blasphemies against white suprmacy… (T_T)
Sargon:
Huh. Professors at my college usually leave the classroom door open unless the noise level in the hall is particularly loud, so I didn’t know this was a thing.
@sjildfreja
As someone who is not British but my parents live in the uk let’s not confuse having an English accent with having a soothing voice. Its cos of the bbc that people think that. I understand thunder foot is also British. But I find carl Benjamin worse actually. He is patronising and self satisfied to at least the same level as thunderfoot. I know the main reason these people have a following in the us and places outside of Britain is because an English accent is aussmed smart and trustworthy. Mainly cos of old BBC speak.
WHAT?!? B-but STEM LOGICS, movement atheism! He could never believe in god, he is a human with a clearly superior IQ! He should be in MIT!!!
You think so? I think they all have the most annoying tones. I honestly cant watch the vídeos and if I want to adress a point they’re making I need to read an inscription of it instead of listening, cause I get SO intensely annoyed I cant think or talk properly. Its like when babies cry, except I don’t usually feel like throwing stuff at baby faces.
I used to melt when I heard british accents. Now when someone talks in a mocking tone and a british accent I literally grind my teeth. I hate those guys more than they hate Sarkeezian.
… unless it’s free speech that we disagree with.
Remember when internet petitions weren’t a joke? Neither do I.
Based on watching a few of his videos, Sargon doesn’t appear to have beyond a (US) community college or sophomore level university education. Maybe he’s a little beyond US high school if he went to a private school in the UK and took A-levels, but he’s not familiar with the type of research writing you do in upper division courses. He can use other sources to illustrate his points, but he doesn’t know how to use sources critically. He’d get an F if he turned in one of his video scripts as a term paper.