Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

hey everyone we can all get together and laugh at this right

http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/03/10/critique-drift/

Well: we have been talking about privilege for 30 years. We’ve been talking about intersectionality for 25. We’re still here in this unjust world.

30 years? that long? no shit.

2000 words on the heroism of eyerolling.

(I have gotten her permission to tell this story, with the caveat that I admit that I am a rogue and a ne’er-do-well. So admitted.)

ne'er-do-well

noun
a person who never does anything worthwhile; one who cannot make a living, get things done, etc.
adjective
lazy, inadequate, etc.

s clover i think its a little dishonest to extract that from the surrounding paragraph, which i would call otm

I attract a lot of communications from people who feel strongly about the need to pursue social justice but who feel that the social justice movement has lost its way. (A lot of people.) These people are not enemies of the fight for equality and justice; in fact, they reach out precisely because they think current tactics are impediment to the achievement of actual equality and justice. Many of them are afraid to be public with those feelings, because they fear reprisals from those who enforce a very narrow, cliquey vision of progressive politics. Well: we have been talking about privilege for 30 years. We’ve been talking about intersectionality for 25. We’re still here in this unjust world. It’s time to recognize that the injunction against criticizing those who self-identify as activists for social justice is a dead-end for our movement. While the work of counseling others to be more specific, fair, and self-critical in their engagement is uncomfortable, fraught work, it is also profoundly necessary, and I see no possible alternative if the left is to wage a campaign against injustice that can actually win.

that article is really good. i agree with most of it and appreciate learning the term "critique drift" which concisely describes something i see all the time

narrow clique first against wall under benevolent dictatorship

http://www.spin.com/2012/08/lupe-fiasco-mansplains-some-more-in-the-video-for-bitch-bad/

Forgot how much I hated Soderberg's relentlessly smug, finger-wagging Spin posts. [fervently hopes he's not on this board]

lol @ "mansplains" in 2015

that was from 2012

try and keep up will u

think u mean "creep up"

Its hook goes, “Bitch bad, woman good, lady better,” which sounds sweet and all

but does any female want to be called “a lady”?

soderberg seems to mansplain a lot when he talks about mansplaining

that's why the lady is a bitch

In the same vein as the Freddie piece, written by a dude I know who's sharp as fuck

http://thesouthlawn.org/2014/07/13/on-rhetoric-and-strategy-in-social-justice-and-leftist-spaces/

It goes without saying that I, a Black man who grew up in the South, experience this world differently from my wife, a white woman from the Northeast, even if we both grew up working class. To not give these experiential differences some thought within leftist activism is to unnecessarily take tools out of our toolbox when it comes to strategy, regardless of whether we are discussing policies or movement-building. As D’Arcy points out, the way that New Left-era activists tended to flatten identity wholesale manifested itself in problematic ways both internally and externally.

But spend 15 minutes on any social networking site and you will find that leftism is now faced with the opposite problem: an increasingly Balkanized landscape where identity and representation becomes an end in and of itself, rather than a means to ensure that the spoils of an ultimate working class victory are not distributed along the same (insert -ist and -ism here) lines as before. I mean, how else can you explain an entire blog post in Ebony dedicated to a random white woman appearing on a natural hair website on the same day that thousands of women care workers of color potentially lose access to union representation in America’s fifth-most populous state, which, of course, goes without any mention? Perspective is important, but that becomes clouded when the focus is always on claiming space rather than building communities. Erecting the perfect clubhouse rather than building broad-based movements rooted in solidarity and respect. The former might be easy and satisfying, but the latter will actually ensure that my children grow up in a different world than I have.

...

As Dr. Adolph Reed, Jr. put it, “The left careens from this oppressed group or crisis moment to that one, from one magical or morally pristine constituency or source of political agency….to another. It lacks focus and stability; its métier is bearing witness, demonstrating solidarity, and the event or the gesture. Its reflex is to ‘send messages’ to those in power, to make statements, and to stand with or for the oppressed.”

At what point do we decide that we have sent enough messages and start building power? Actual power, not the power that comes from perfecting a clubhouse or meeting structure, but rather from the articulation of a vision and a plan to execute said vision? When do we start looking at the moving parts, looking out 5-10-20 years, and start piecing together a strategy to fight the forces of reaction, revanchism, and repression? It is no longer enough to simply act as a town crier, monotonously signposting every problem and grievance facing our world; we must actually engage in praxis.

Perspective is important, but that becomes clouded when the focus is always on claiming space rather than building communities. Erecting the perfect clubhouse rather than building broad-based movements rooted in solidarity and respect. The former might be easy and satisfying, but the latter will actually ensure that my children grow up in a different world than I have.

so otm

At what point do we decide that we have sent enough messages and start building power?

this is the exact dilemma, i think, and it's also the exact point at which a doctrinally pure "leftism' is inevitably going to then become the very "power" that will make unjust exclusions due to the prerogatives of power. to act from any authentically left position is to also understand that there's a very strong risk that you will be wrong. this is also to recognize that even authentically leftist commitments are always entangled with power, produced from power, and cannot extricate themselves without also extricating their ability to act.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51VcjD%2ByiFL.jpg

ryan otm

tho the lesson i draw from this is mostly "not everybody can be or should be convinced of the rightness of yr cause"

isn't part of the problem that maybe there isn't a lot of agreement on the left about what kind of praxis is valuable, so remaining in this state of messaging means that you can constantly replay the same debates over and over again w/out ever having to deal w/ the compromises necessary to organize politically? i feel like unionization is a good example here (bc there's a long tradition of effective action to be drawn upon) where there are practical things that could be done to strengthen unions but in 2015 are all leftists on the same page that unions are important? + didn't occupy have this very problem? by contrast 'call out' culture just requires a twitter account and a nasty attitude.

like let's say i finally get on board w/ 'privilege,' 'intersectionality,' 'call out culture,' 'social justice,' whatever other trendy word. besides moving forward myself to abuse ppl into agreeing w/ the jargon, what are the practical actions i can now take? by contrast i could disagree w/ all those things but still participate in passing legislation X (idk, equal pay law, or union laws, or expanding safety net).

well, some of those trendy words are connected w/ practices you could try to engage in or establish, say if you were part of an institution that needed better procedures for decisionmaking, for dealing with conflict, etc.

i don't think these are exactly the same struggles over and over, even if "progress" is fractional and stuttery. absolutely coalition-building requires finding commonalities but coalitions that seek to do this at the expense of recognising and accommodating difference are gonna be inherently unstable imo

maybe that's true, h00s can speak better to that than i can. i'm obv not a professional activist - just a politically active employee of a small business. in my experience every organization needs help w/ decision making, conflict resolution, etc, and it hasn't been my experience that those trendy words have a lot of practical use, but obv different spaces have different needs. xp

if anything in my experience those terms are counterproductive for decision making + conflict resolution

(yes, ryan otm. piece on "critique drift" & article posted by hoos insightful as well)

well i mean i'd be cautious to separate the decision-making, training & conflict res practices born out of the anti-nuke & global justice movements from the people who've adopted their jargon in the present, as the former have pretty broad utility while the latter are sorta defined by their narrowness. but yeah, there are a lot of real practical things you can change about how you conduct yourself, or your group, or your organization if you decide to get on board with this stuff. since the 90s a whole cottage industry of "activist training" has sprung up based on the values of social justice. training for change is a great example.

oh yes i didn't mean to say they were the same, just that the historical connection (and some present-day connection, to i dunno graeber-style direct-action practices? at least laterally??) suggests that there be practices there (yaar) for those interested in them

100%! a lot of my initial exposure to this stuff was through graeber's book "direct action" where he's primarily writing about the latter days of the global justice movement of the 90s.

lol fair cop on article

btw i heard a radio ad for online reputation management in the barber shop the other day lol

― lag∞n, Tuesday, April 14, 2015 11:05 AM (7 hours ago)

interesting NYer article recently mentioned these reputation companies

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/29/solace-oblivion

whoops wrong thread

http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2015/04/16/judy-putnam-prof-live-tweets-elhs-sex-ed/25879891/

: D

BREAKING wtf

http://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/former-reed-college-student-arrested-sex-abuse-charges#.tdjDKj7ELA

that is m/l the logical conclusion to that story unfortunately

Okay thank you. Probably first time "arrested for disrupting a high school girls' rugby practice" has ever been called "the logical conclusion" to anything, but then the internet is full of people claiming they are never surprised by anything, ever.

well i just mean more "creepy guy who got a lot of attention for saying a bunch of creepy men's rights stuff & weird stuff about rape stats has been arrested for sexual abuse charges" is not a shocking thing.

unhinged for sure but odd is in the details

he was trying to interrogate our assumptions about rugby the cops were preventing a conversation do u see

http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/04/24/mama-dont-let-your-baby-grow-up-to-be-a-winner/

fdb sonned by maura in epic twitter beef

rip free speech.

u were pretty sweet

not really

guy spends 2/3rds of an essay writing that poptimists claim to like Beyonce and Kendrick so that they can't be charged with racism, only to then turn around and write, What I am tired of is being told “you don’t really like this; you only claim to like it to seem cool/arty/different/intellectual.” That is something else. That is something different. That is not disagreement. That’s refusing me the right to be myself.

that dude lives in a different reality

One of my many critics defined poptimism as merely the belief that chart pop should be taken seriously by critics. Well then I have good news! You have already won. It has already been accomplished. Where, I’d like to know, is chart pop not taken seriously by reviewers? What sad website didn’t run a rapturous review of the latest Kendrick Lamar?

Chart popper Kendrick Lamar

should have included the next line - Jesus, Rolling Stone can’t fall over itself fast enough to seem down with the hippity hop.

if Kendrick Lamar is chart pop then Metallica was chart pop in the 90s

should have included the next line - Jesus, Rolling Stone can’t fall over itself fast enough to seem down with the hippity hop.

― da croupier, Friday, April 24, 2015 2:59 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if i hadn't just picked a new dn...