the geist of the zeit

A Storm’s a-Brewin’

By in free speech, juxtapositions, the geist of the zeit No Comments

Canada’s justice minister is considering options raised by the independent adviser on unmarked graves, who says Indigenous leaders want Canada to move on criminalizing residential school denialism.

Kimberly Murray called on lawmakers to consider “legal mechanisms” that could address the practice of denying or minimizing the abuses Indigenous children suffered at residential schools in her interim report released back in June.

One way to do that is by amending the Criminal Code to criminalize such actions, Murray said in a recent interview, noting Ottawa did so last year on the issue of Holocaust denialism.

“We could do the same for Indigenous people,” she said. “Make it an offence to incite hate and promote hate against Indigenous people by … denying that residential (schools) happened or downplaying what happened in the institutions.”

“Everybody in leadership when I speak about this, Indigenous leadership, … all want that amendment to happen in the Criminal Code.”

— CTV News

****

Riots broke out in Dublin on Thursday evening, after an Algerian immigrant stabbed a woman and three children outside an Irish-language school earlier in the day. Police arrested more than 30 rioters, some of whom looted shops and lit cars and buses on fire during their rampage through central Dublin. Ireland’s police chief blamed the rioting on a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by far-right ideology,” which, however true of the property destruction, obscures the tensions that have been building for some time over Ireland’s generous immigration and asylum policies. From April 2022 to April 2023, Ireland, with a population just over 5 million, admitted more than 140,000 immigrants, and the foreign-born share of its population has risen from just over 6% in the mid-’90s to about 20% today. In February, Irish police reported an “exponential” increase in protests in 2023, many of them related to immigration.

Now the Irish government, led by Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, is using the riots as an excuse to renew a push to pass a draconian hate-speech law that would criminalize, among other things, the possession of “hateful” content on personal electronic devices, which police would be empowered to seize and search. Irish police are also reportedly investigating Conor McGregor for a series of high-profile social media posts on Thursday in which the professional fighter criticized government immigration policy and the police response to the stabbing attack.

— The Scroll

****

The modern Left espoused a radical version of Jeffersonian individualism. Born at Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement in 1964, it considered the primary threat to democracy to lie in the great hierarchical institutions like the university, the corporation, and government. The struggle pitted the individual against the machine-like inhumanity of the industrial age. Mario Savio, the movement’s leader, told his comrades: “You’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus—and you’ve got to make it stop.”

A remarkable transvaluation has occurred since that idealistic time. In essence, the postmodern establishment Left has reversed the terms of the Jeffersonian ideal. The threat to democracy is now society—a realm of injustice and oppression, in which human wolves perpetually devour the weak. Trump and Musk stand as archetypes of the predator. They represent the authoritarian impulse, and they can manipulate the dull-minded masses, even unto insurgency, by spreading falsehoods and fake news. The pandemic showed them willing to kill with their lies, to undermine the authority of science.

Only a powerful, watchful government, in the hands of the Party of Truth, can impose democracy on a troubled society by controlling the words said, as well as the means of communication that convey them, to the public. A wise guardian class, advised by specialists, must be mobilized to assume control of politics and culture. In this framework, opposition can never be legitimate—it belongs to the Party of Lies. Those who follow Savio’s exhortation and throw themselves on the gears of the great institutions will be ground to pulp—for their own good.

— Martin Gurri

 

Againstism

By in the geist of the zeit, the great awokening No Comments

Charles C.W. Cooke:

Why isn’t this a problem? I find this question genuinely fascinating. What is it about those ideas being expressed by someone foreign — someone who can plausibly (albeit stupidly) be cast as a victim — that causes otherwise exquisitely sensitive people to completely gloss over them? In quotidian American politics, the most inconsequential of sentiments are routinely cast as being a part of the “white, male, cisgendered hegemony.” But Osama bin Laden starts talking about the evils of homosexuality and fornication, about the fusing of church and state, and about “complete submission to His Law,” and it’s just . . . ignored.

This same trend has been on display at many of the anti-Israel protests, where I’ve seen quite a lot of people wearing T-shirts that read, “Queers for Palestine” or “LGBT for Hamas” or what you will. It’s utterly delusional — almost to the point of pride. This is your brain on intersectionality. How to fight back remains anyone’s guess.

I feel like I’ve seen this a lot lately: people peering into the void of wokeness and attempting to discern the core of it, the ruling principle. But I’m here to tell them to stop wasting their time. There’s nothing there beyond what I think of as “againstism.” The emotional fuel of it, as Nietzsche always said, is resentment. But intellectually, there’s nothing of substance there. The point is simply to be against anything perceived to be established, successful, dominant, or powerful — whiteness, heterosexuality, capitalism, America, the West, etc. It’s the perpetual rage of the spoiled adolescent who has never had to consider how much comfort and security he takes for granted even as he blindly flails against it. Why do we find Western libertines supporting Islamic terrorism? Because it’s also against everything they resent. Why do we find trust-fund brats advocating for Communism? Say it with me now: it’s also against everything they resent. What the hell does it mean when we see signs about “reproductive justice” at anti-Israel protests, or when a kid famous for refusing to go to school anymore leads a chant of “no climate justice on occupied land”? It just means that countless resentments can fit inside a pinhead. We’re against it all! The Coalition of the Oppressed is made up of multiple marriages of convenience with nothing in common but an enemy, marriages which can be annulled on a whim. Jews are favored against right-wing populists, but disfavored against Muslims, who in turn become villains when they protest against gender ideology in schools. That same gender ideology trumps the TERFs formerly known as feminists, who were in favor when battling against patriarchy. It’s an intersectional version of rock, paper, scissors, or maybe musical chairs, or perhaps Calvinball. If the Western white male capitalist didn’t exist, he’d have to be invented just to act as a centripetal force.

Reaping Whirlwinds

By in conspicuous crusading, the geist of the zeit No Comments

Christopher Rufo:

Conservatives have recently scored surprise victories against left-wing corporate culture, with successful pressure campaigns against a trio of blue-chip companies—Disney, Target, and Bud Light—that have revealed the potential of a culture-war tactic once considered the Left’s stock-in-trade: the consumer boycott.

The campaigns are notable because they drew blood, figuratively speaking. Disney, which promised to embed radical gender theory in its children’s programming, watched its stock price plummet and signaled a retreat from the culture war. Target, which featured “breast binders” as part of its seasonal “Pride Collection,” saw a decline in sales and promised to “pause, adapt, and learn.” Bud Light featured a transgender “influencer” in an advertising campaign, sending its reputation and sales into freefall.

What lessons can be drawn from these examples? And how can conservatives use boycotts to fight left-wing cultural capture?

Helen Andrews, in her book Boomers, describing the tactics that brought Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to prominence:

Interestingly, if Breadbasket had tried these tactics only a few decades earlier, courts would have considered them illegal. Boycotts, except in limited circumstances, were considered unfair commercial interference, and victimized owners could sue organizers for damages. In a landmark case in 1934, the Harlem agitator Sufi Abdul Hamid, also known as Black Hitler for his vocal support for the Third Reich, launched a boycott against the A. S. Beck shoe store on 125th Street demanding that it hire more blacks on its sales staff. A New York judge ruled the picket unlawful, not because store patrons had been violently assaulted (though they had been), but because Hamid and his picketers had no connection to the store. If it had been a protest by black Beck’s employees demanding better treatment, that would have been a labor dispute and thus protected by the Norris-LaGuardia Act. But this was a​ conspiracy against a lawful business by a third party seeking to impose its political preferences. Even a peaceful boycott would have been illegal.

I was not aware of this. I thought tedious consumer boycotts led by political activists had always been with us, like death, taxes and the poor. I had so many futile arguments in my misspent youth against left-wing enthusiasts for boycotting. Oh, man, what I wouldn’t give to see the old lefty blogosphere prosecuted en masse for “conspiracy against a lawful business by a third party seeking to impose its political preferences.” Is this what the edgy kids mean when they say RETVRN?

But alas, as with free speech, I’m resigned to the idea that it will take people like Rufo leading a counter-revolution before we have any chance of finding our way back to the detente of old-fashioned liberal pluralism. I don’t like it, and I’ll never participate in it myself, but if I see my old liberal pals squealing in protest, I’ll be happy to remind them, in the words of Les Claypool, “I’m the one who told you “Told you so.”

Cry ‘Havoc’! And Let Slip the Dogs of Cancellation

By in free speech, the geist of the zeit No Comments

Ian Leslie:

In recent weeks the air has been thick with accusations of hypocrisy, flying both ways. Left wing American academics, justifiably upset about being censored by employers for pro-Palestinian speech, have accused those who oppose cancel culture of going quiet (even if that’s not actually true). Free speech enthusiasts like me have taken great pleasure in seeing far leftists suddenly discover the importance of unrestricted speech. Much as I enjoy schadenfreude, charging someone with hypocrisy is the easy part. I agree with Matt Yglesias when he says, “Any time you find yourself prosecuting a hypocrisy case, you ought to take some time to consider what you think is actually correct.”

Free speech isn’t just a question of the law, it’s a question of norms, and establishing norms is up to all of us. When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America he noted that although there were more formal protections of speech there than in Europe or anywhere else, there was no place with less “independence of mind and true freedom of discussion”. The social pressure to conform was too great.

When J.S. Mill read Tocqueville’s Democracy In America he absorbed this point and incorporated it into his theory of liberty. Mill argued that having legal protections for the rights of individuals to speak freely is a minimal but insufficient condition of a free society. You also need a culture that tolerates and supports that freedom. Otherwise, even without a tyrant on a throne telling you what you can and can’t say, people will still be subject to “social tyranny”.

I’ve always considered myself a free speech maximalist, but lately, I’ve started to lean more toward something like this:

In other words, our cancel-happy progressive friends are simply going to have to feel some serious pain in order to be reminded why it’s a bad idea to overturn social norms in favor of the pursuit of raw power. If that means a bunch of academics or radical students suddenly find their career prospects curtailed, oh, well. We didn’t make this bed, but we’ll be happy to tuck you in and bid you sweet dreams. Free speech in its ideal libertarian sense is like pacifism — it’s only workable when your opponents already share your basic moral values. In the face of a genuine enemy who only recognizes the morality of that Frank Herbert quotation, it’s suicidal.

I realize that this is a dangerous proposition. Once you’ve decided that certain ideas are beyond the pale, what’s to stop you from rationalizing that all criticism and dissent is essentially giving aid and comfort to the enemy? In the abstract, I don’t know if there’s a satisfactory answer to that question. To me, though, that just means “so much the worse for abstract reasoning.” As an atheist, I run into that sort of objection all the time: if you don’t believe in a transcendent law or lawgiver, what’s to stop you from raping, robbing and pillaging on a whim? Lots of things, including social norms, practical reasoning, and what Adam Smith called “natural sympathy.” I don’t mean to digress into theological debates; my point is just that everyday life is all about discerning the difference between countless shades of grey. That judgment is shaped by experience more than abstract axioms. My judgment in this instance is that healthy social norms around free speech will only be restored through a threat of mutually assured destruction, not purity of principles.

We Effing Love Science

By in extraordinary popular delusions, non compos mentis, science, the geist of the zeit, the great awokening No Comments

Jerry Coyne:

In the end, we have still more evidence that Scientific American is no longer circling the drain, but is now in the drain, headed for, well, the sewers. It used to have scientists writing about their field, with no ideological bias, but now has ideologues (these authors happen to be scientist-ideologues) writing about science in a biased and misleading way.

Apparently this trend will continue, and apparently the publishers won’t do anything about it. So it goes. But those of you who want your science untainted by “progressive” ideology had best look elsewhere.

Those who advocated for Lysenkoism at least had the excuse of fearing that they and their families would be imprisoned, or worse, for dissenting. We should always remember with disgust how little it took for our modern ideologues to submit to this insanity. Peer pressure? Loss of status? Maybe having to look for a new job? Cowardly whores, all of them.

It Never Ends, Only Hibernates

By in the geist of the zeit No Comments

Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places

By in books, the geist of the zeit No Comments

Who am I? An illiterate peasant of the Middle Ages was better equipped to answer that question than many people in advanced societies in this century. He may only have lived until age thirty — but he spent his days among family and in towns, practicing a shared faith, and thus developed a vivid sense of those to whom he was elementally connected, not just in the course of his life but before birth and after death. Every one of the assumptions he could take for granted is now negotiable.

— Mary Eberstadt, Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics

I don’t think Eberstadt intended this little aside to be representative of her argument, which is that many of the social pathologies that plague us are traceable back to the detrimental effect of the sexual revolution on the family. One can certainly see how people with a weak sense of self could be attracted to fringe cults like gender-fluidity and ethnic pride out of a desire to belong to something, anything, although I don’t think that this is necessarily a rational response to circumstances. Sometimes people are just bored, stupid, or malicious, regardless of how well they’ve been raised. As long as we’re wishing upon a star, sure, it would be nice to make single-parent homes, divorce, and abortion rare and generally unnecessary. But as the above paragraph starkly illustrates, there’s always a trade-off. As long as there’s any freedom to choose, some people will choose unwisely and suffer for it.

Whither Are We Moving?

By in books, the geist of the zeit No Comments

It’s strange that a book published in 2021 could already seem outdated, but that’s the case with Andrew Potter’s On Decline: Stagnation, Nostalgia, and Why Every Year Is the Worst One Ever. At fewer than 120 pages, it forgoes argumentation in favor of assertion, which leaves the author’s priors standing on their own. If you don’t happen to agree with those priors, it makes the experience irritating.

We’re told that “the bill for our exploitative approach to the natural world is finally coming due” in the form of climate change, which is happening even faster than we expected (allegedly).”Today the antipathy to reason is found predominantly (though still not exclusively) on the right,” he says (there is no mention in the book of the cultish belief in gender fluidity which has permeated all our major institutions). Cancel culture is acknowledged, but only as a reaction against the trollish provocations of the right. Reactionary populism comes in for a kicking — its characteristics include “the rejection of science and other forms of expertise, hostility toward immigrants [and] hatred of the mainstream media.”

This is what I mean about the book’s outdated feel — who, having witnessed the public health establishment commit reputational suicide in the summer of 2020, would not feel suspicious of experts claiming to speak for science? Who, having read the Twitter files, would not feel a healthy hatred toward the mainstream media? And where have the latest nativist protests against illegal immigration come from? Massachusetts and NYC, those…notorious strongholds of of Trumpist populism? As the old song says, there’s something happening here, and what it is ain’t exactly clear, but it seems evident that the world in which Potter’s version of liberalism made sense is changing fast. Even faster than the climate (allegedly).

Kayfabe

By in fresh hell, the geist of the zeit No Comments

What makes me laugh is knowing that the people who produce and consume “news” like this would no doubt look down their noses at the people who sit ringside at a pro wrestling event and scream at the heels and refs. But really, there’s no difference. A heel named Trump makes his way to the ring. The fans, wearing t-shirts with his mugshot on them, jeer and chant, “You’re a short fatty! You’re a short fatty!” Trump pantomimes covering his ears while grimacing in rage. “Shut up! SHUT UP!” he yells. The fans laugh in delight. The promoter does too, as he looks over the gate receipts for the night and gets ready to take the show to the next town. Will the dastardly heel finally get his comeuppance at ElectionSlam next November? Or will he lose a “Loser Goes to Federal Prison” match before then? Stay tuned!

1 2 3 4›»