As for being betrayed by people we support, that’s a risk we have to keep taking. The alternative is to eat your soul.

Thing is, ‘class conflict’ sounds like fisticuffs or revolution, whereas ‘classism’ is more suited to describing personal prejudice, like racism (because it’s *not* a system, it’s a thing individuals do).

# I’ve read a little about the honey badgers, and I don’t know any reason not
# to support them if you’re tempted to. I’m really no expert, but they seem
# like an honorable group.

Yeah, but then ‘progressive lefties’ seemed like an honorable group five years ago, and they’re been revealed to pretty much be spawn of satan, so how can I ever trust anyone again? And, of course, if I support the honey badgers, I’ll become a ‘gamergate supporter’, and thus be labelled as a rapist or something. I notice that very few people have had to carry-the-can for being ‘RequiresHate’ supporters. Perhaps I should just stop supporting Refuge and allout.org instead. After all, the person who put me onto allout.org was a close friend of RH, and might even have been part of RH.

I used “classism” for a while, but I went back to talking about class conflict instead, because it was easier to be clear. Unlike racism, classism’s a fairly new word, so its meaning isn’t precisely defined anywhere.

I’ve read a little about the honey badgers, and I don’t know any reason not to support them if you’re tempted to. I’m really no expert, but they seem like an honorable group.

Yeah, but that’s one of the reasons I no longer run with that crowd. Orwellian redefinitions of racism and sexism in order to allow them to attack whomever they want to attack are evil hypocrisy. This is what drove RequiresHate. Sooner or later this ideology is going to be used by some extremely bad people (if it isn’t already) as it can basically be used to justify anything.

# and it’d be nice if both words had the same implications.

Then don’t accept their change of the meaning. Next they’ll be redefining murder.

# They mention class now and then, but it’s not really a concern of theirs—
# if it was, they would never use an insult like “white trash” and they would be
# advocating for things like Basic Income.

Well, you’ve no doubt heard what I think about that. I consider “Social Justice” to be a weapon of class war. It destroys solidarity among the working class, and robs them of their only weapon: collective action. It’s splitting the working class vote, at least in the uk, by driving white men into the arms of UKIP. It denies the existence of privilege in terms of wealth and class background, claiming everything is gender and that ‘white men rule’, hiding the fact that actually a tiny minority of white men hold power, and their wives and daughters likely hold more power than a hundred white men from the working class. And look at who the SJW’s are, college-educated ‘activists’ who will one day hold jobs as bankers and journalists.

# As for tactics, I was thinking of the things that fell under the Geneva Convention.
# I keep thinking free speech is effectively part of the Geneva Convention of debate.

But time and again we’ve seen SJW’s argue that ‘free speech’ only means protection from the government, not from the likes of them. Free speech is also not a concern of theirs. Have you seen what happened recently with the ‘honeybadger brigade’ of gamergate women at calgary comics expo? I don’t entirely trust the group, but it does seem they’ve been banned for speaking at a panel, and looking at the transcript of that panel, they didn’t do anything wrong that I can see. But as usual unnamed people said that the speech was ‘harrassing’, and so they’ve been banned from a wide range of comics expos in perpetuity.

I’m thinking of donating to their legal fund. Are you aware of any reasons why I shouldn’t? Is there anything I don’t know about the situation?

# But enough quibbling. I hear your concern, and I agree there are no easy answers.

Unfortunately if your opponent uses underhand tactics, you often have to do the same. Although for me, I draw the line at death threats. I see Ms Mustafa claims to have been getting those, and I’m inclined to believe her. I’d like to see more prosecutions. But my problem is that I would expect this to just become another weapon, with people getting jailed if they issued a threat while being white, male, or right-wing, and people getting applause for the same. It’s difficult to be supportive of Ms Mustafa when it’s very obvious she wouldn’t be supportive of me.

As for tactics, I was thinking of the things that fell under the Geneva Convention. I keep thinking free speech is effectively part of the Geneva Convention of debate.

But enough quibbling. I hear your concern, and I agree there are no easy answers.

I’ve read it on a number of sites (the huffpost being one, I think) but I’ve just come across a site trying to make something out of the fact that she used images of women firing guns for her election campaign. I don’t think that’s really serious on it’s own. Maybe if those pictures were used in combination with the #KillAllWhiteMen hashtag, but I don’t think they were. I think this is a case of people trying to find more evidence, when they already have enough, and digging up stuff that’s not relevant. This makes me a bit sus of the ‘white trash’ comment, though I think the police are looking into it.

# The term is simultaneously racist and, to use a word I dont like, classist.

I actually increasingly like that word. Five, six years ago, I didn’t think class was a ‘thing’, now I pretty much think it’s everything. But I’m wary of getting too… starting to become one of *those* people.

# I do think people are right to ask the institution whether her opinions are
# likely to clash with her duties as a teacher, but it should be a question
# that doesnt come with a threat.

Thing is, she’s not a teacher, she’s a welfare officer. This means she’s supposed to be the person the students go to if they have certain types of problem. Someone is that role has to be above jokes about ‘male tears’.

# As for tactics, while the Allies were hardly saints during WWII (Dresden, Hiroshima,
# etc.), they were right to refuse to employ all the tactics of the Axis.

This is true, but they only refused to employ those tactics that they didn’t need to win the war. The Nazis were doing a lot of bonkers things that weren’t really helping their cause, for instance switching from eliminating the RAF to attacking cities. Both sides ‘refused’ to use gas in WWII, mostly because gas was a troublesome weapon that could blow back onto your own lines if the wind was wrong. At the end of the day both sides did whatever it took to win, but the Axis powers did a few things that didn’t help them win.

I think that events tend to develop their own dynamic once we’ve got down to the point where both sides are demonizing each other. In such a situation you have to do as the situation dictates. I think the only thing that will allow people to safely speak their mind without losing their job, will be knowing that the other side will do the same in return. Although perhaps that could result in everyone losing their jobs. It’s tough to know what to do, times is bad.

As for tactics, while the Allies were hardly saints during WWII (Dresden, Hiroshima, etc.), they were right to refuse to employ all the tactics of the Axis.

Grinning at your comment about academic politics!

I agree with this.

# The Tim Hunt affair is getting murkier by the minute. The way his wife has
# described the circumstances in which she said he was forced to resign is so far
# removed from the UCL provosts version of events that one of the two must be lying.

Maybe not. It could be ‘Rashomon effect’. Human beings are just not very good at remembering what happened, or even perceiving it accurately. Different people will notice different aspects of an event, and this can lead to them recalling very different things.

# Theres a lot that just doesnt add up, and it all smells very fishy. My gut feeling
# is that theres a lot of backstabby academic politics in play here;

You say that like there’s another kind of achedemic politics

I largely agree with what you’re saying Will, but I feel Ms Mustafa is a special case. She is the student’s union diversity and welfare officer, yet she has apparently called people who angered her ‘white trash’, posted under a ‘KillAllWhiteMen’ hashtag, and banned whites and white men from certain events, making jokes about doing so with regard to ‘male tears’. She then tries to defend herself using the moral-exclusion “it’s not racism when I do it to whites argument”.

More info here: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/27/goldsmiths-student-diversity-officer-bahar-mustafa-keep-job_n_7452322.html

It would appear that some of her behavior has not been on her personal site, but has been in her official capacity.

The difference here is that I think all this demonstrates that Ms Mustafa is not competent to do her job. I wouldn’t trust her to look after my welfare if I were a student, would you? This is different from Ms Gallo, who apologised for her statement, which was probably made in the heat of the moment (Ms Mustafa is a serial offender) and who even Mr John C Wright agrees, continues to be very competent at her job as art editor regardless of her statements.

There’s a further issue though, which is that ‘our opponents’ (I’m not sure what ‘side’ I’m signing up to in writing that though) are using these tactics to great effect, and this is having a profound chilling effect on people who disagree with them even speaking their mind. Opposing viewpoints are simply not being heard anymore, and part of this is because the online left has used repeatedly used the ‘nuke’ of getting people fired (or bullied into tears, or whatever). If your opponent uses a nuke, you have to use a nuke, in order to demonstrate to them the principle of mutually assured destruction. As long as they can use the tactic at no cost, they will, and eventually anyone who disagrees will be silenced for fear of losing their job.

I don’t really like it, but it seems to me that if one side uses such tactics, and the other doesn’t, (assuming there are only two sides, I think there are many) then the side that doesn’t will be eradicated.