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By David Futrelle
Candace Owens — self-proclaimed “Red Pill Black” conservative — is having a bit of a moment, hanging out with new Trump fan Kanye West, posing for selfies with Don Jr., getting an effusive Twitter shout-out from Don Sr,, threatening to sue people who talk about her in what she considers the wrong way.
A lot of people have been left wondering just where exactly Owens came from. Well, there’s a bit of a story there.
Long-time readers of this blog first met Owens back in the days of Gamergate, after Zoe Quinn criticized her ill-conceived plan for an “anti-bullying” site that would have basically doxed a bunch of teenagers. After Quinn spoke out, Gamergaters spouting conspiracy theories quickly abandoned their own critiques of Owens and rallied around her. Owens began spouting conspiracy theories of her own, and, well, let’s just say things got very weird very fast, as they generally seem to do when Owens gets involved in anything.
In several posts, I tried my best to make sense of the whole surreal mess. I’m linking them here because I think they may illuminate a few things about Trump World’s newest heroine.
This post describes what happened immediately after Owens first heard from Quinn. Trust me, the headline (and the snippet from the post below) don’t fully capture the weirdness of the story.
Instead of listening to Quinn, Owens declared war on her, spewing forth dozens of angry and accusatory tweets, charging that Quinn and fellow anti-harassment activist Randi Harper … were somehow the puppetmasters behind a barrage of abusive, threatening, and often blatantly racist anonymous messages that Owens (who is black) started getting not long after news of Owens’ plans hit Reddit and 4chan.
Owens quickly began to sound like every other internet crackpot who sees conspiracies in every Twitter mention.
SocialAutopsy-Turvy: Candace Owens’ Twitter Trainwreck, Part One
(APRIL 24, 2016)
And quite a trainwreck it was. The story continued to get weirder, and at such a pace that I never had a chance to write part two.
In this episode, Owens writes an angry diatribe against an article she imagined that Washington Post writer Caitlin Dewey had written about her. No, really. She accused Dewey and her editor of attempting to libel her in an article that the Post never published and that as far as I know Dewey never even wrote.
Naturally, Gamergaters were thrilled to have such an, er, original thinker on their side.
NOTE TO READERS: Sorry for being MIA the last couple of days; I’ve been dealing with the double whammy of migraines and some really nasty lower back pain. Doing a little better today.
https://imgur.com/a/z7aUwfy
“I didn’t do it… it wasn’t me….”
“A big dog did it and ran away”
@brony
All of that is extremely useful! I’ve definitely used number 5 to turn the tables on sea lions (“If I go and get you links that demonstrate what I’m saying, will you consider them in good faith and modify your views accordingly? If no, I’m not going to waste my time.”) The issue that I have is where and when these can be deployed with maximum efficiency.
If I were to imagine my perfect world, somebody with enough standing to get Jordan Peterson’s attention would use his “free speech” malarkey against him by demanding an audience to discuss the underpinning of his whole schtick: the law in Canada as it pertains to free speech. It’s unlikely he’d agree to one under less than favourable conditions, but if prepared, that shouldn’t matter. Then once in front of the camera, just rip right into how wrong he was with all the snark you can muster. Use his “slap you silly” tweet against him. Bring up the Constitution and use it in concern with the social contract to demonstrate the need for responsibility in speech alongside freedom. He’ll try to martyr himself as some kind of free speech warrior, but if you keep it to what bill C-16 actually did, you should be able to keep him flustered and sputtering because legally he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
Peterson is used to the deference of professorial entitlement. The people he talks to either let him drone on, or haven’t caught on to his game. If I could handle my anxiety, I could probably do it (as anybody with a Grade 11 Law credit can), but I don’t have the standing to get his attention. And that’s the part I don’t know what to do about.
Trying to catch up with this thread and yeah, had a conservative Facebook acquaintance post a while ago a Peterson video going “you have to watch the entire video to get it, but he’s so incredibly deep and smart” and I’m like uh no thanks.
In an actual academic paper there’s an ABSTRACT at the beginning which takes a couple of minutes to read and will give you an idea of the main arguments and the conclusion, and whether you’ll find the whole thing interesting or not. And if you do find it interesting and decide to read the whole thing, it won’t take hours. Making super long youtube videos and demand that people watch the whole thing or else they can’t criticize you isn’t an academia thing, it’s just… a shitty thing. Yeah not gonna sit there listening through his videos.
Btw I think there are valid critiques to be had about certain aspects of “identity politics” or “social justice” or whatever you wanna call it. I think it can go awry sometimes. But going “it’s all bullshit” is really throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Oh hey, Wonkette absorbed our discussion here via osmosis! the same way everyone has heard about that asshole Peterson! https://wonkette.com/633856/wonksplainer-who-is-jordan-peterson-and-why-is-he-the-worst
Oh man, that is just gold.
Oh wow. After reading that blog post I feel like I know more about Peterson than I ever wanted to know.
Thanx, Katamount
🙂
… so, if I have my JordanPeterson-ness straight, I, as a cis-het, xian (by upbringing, anyway), white, male, am a unique individual, possessed of many, unique, enduring (if not endearing) characteristics….
… all-a-the-rest-a-you are members of monolithic groups, all possessed of the same characteristics… which are mostly bad.
I get that right?
Weird Eddie: What does “xian” mean in this context? I tried to google it, but I just got a Chinese city.
Christian, replacing the ‘Christ’ with an ‘x’.
Aha! Thanks for the explanation.
Well mammothers, you’ve just sent me down a Jordan Peterson rabbithole; I’ve only resurfaced after reading an interview with him where he condemns Frozen as “the subjugation of art to propaganda” and states he could barely sit through it. That’s a pretty highflautin way to be offended by a cartoon about two sisters.
@Katamount
Efficiency is definitely an issue and I think it’s often related to percieved in-group identity. Sadly a person with “enough standing” is a person percieved to be in-group. This requires someone like me (cis, male, white…) to be actively involved in situations as long as the benefits of being in the in-group are relevant (hopefully that benefit is short lived). So I’m more likely to get Jordan Peterson’s attention simply because I’ve been raised in a similar cultural situation. I’m more likely to be able to appeal to his ego or whatever is required to get him to respond to me because I have access to information associated with a similar upbringing.
I wish this wasn’t the case because as an outsider I believe you are able to better objectify problems associated with our psychology. The problem is that as an outsider you face more resistance which requires my help (a cultural flaw). In the long term we will fix this, but for now we need the Hbomberguy’s and the like until that bond is broken.
Peterson can appeal to professional entitlement all he wants because the quality of such depends on how well he can make it relevant to ALL OF US.
Today in misandry. I’m watching CBS evening news and they said that the latest US birthrate figures have the birthrates down in every demographic except women in their 40’s.
@Dvärghundspossen, Rhuu:
Strictly speaking, it’s not supposed to actually be the Latin ‘x’ but the Greek chi or ‘χ’, as that’s the first letter of the Greek Christos, or ‘Χριστός’, meaning “the anointed one”. (Yes, it’s a title, not a name.)
Mentioned because there are often loud Christians with no sense of history complaining that ‘Xmas’ is trying to take the Christ out of Christmas, despite the fact that the source for that abbreviation was that it was using the initial of the original word in its original language.
Everyone must share my pain and also laugh with me at this JP comic that someone made. It’s actually well-drawn (imho) but it takes cringy fandom to even cringier levels (it’s absolutely not satire or irony, in case you were wondering):
Cain to Able ahahahahahaha
The artist has also done one where a brave Kanye is attacked by lefties and saved by the God Emperor…
@Mish
ahahahhahahahahhahahahahhahaahahhahahahhahahah
Oh, Mish, this is sublime!
https://twitter.com/Rasmp42/status/997226280830545923?s=19
Wouldn’t the original language for Christianity be something like Hebrew, not Greek? /doesn’t actually know
@Catalpa
It is quite likely that the original language of the new testament was Aramaic, a successor language of Hebrew, but the oldest extant texts are in Greek.
Oh, neat! Thanks, Dalillama, I learned something new today!
Owens is being really misogynistic on Twitter right now (shocking, I know).
https://twitter.com/RealCandaceO/status/997165058122813440?s=19
Owens probably isn’t married with kids herself and considering the statistics, has a high probability of never being. Lauren Southern was another one caught shaming non-traditional, non-married women without kids, all while being non-trad, single and childless herself. It’s a common (wo)manosphere trope. Although statistically speaking Southern has a better chance than Owens right now (if she moves fast), in another decade stats will probably show both of their demographics on par in singledom, childlessness in the 30’s-40’s age range. For Owens, Karazin recommends swirling to increase her chances of that trad family life she seems to be espousing (while not living it).
I vaguely recall an old documentary of that Alex Jones guy storming some secret place in California where (male only) heads of state gather to run around naked and engage in weird rituals like burning an effigy of CARE.
Did anyone notice in the lower left corner there was an ad for free podcasts using a picture of Teal Swan?!
Except I there’s no “hindu” word there, in either my quotes, or the person I’m quoting. But I already went through this like 2 weeks ago. No more.
They seem to be gearing up for 2040 when it will be identity politics.
Hold on now. As trite and attention seeking Deepak can be at times with his bubblegum pop version of Vedanta for dummies, I still find his books infinitely deeper (and better articulated) than anything I’ve heard Peterson say.
Has anyone watched the Wild Wild Country documentary on Netflix?