"These woke volkisch rules, where people are only allowed to consume cultural products from their own culture, can be hard to parse, which is unsurprising considering that cultural appropriation is a bullshit made-up problem that has no earthly connection to actual social justice."
Anyway, the entire silly "cultural appropriation" thing seems like a ripoff of intellectual property concepts, which in turn are sort of artificial, if you think about it.
The whole point is to obtain victim status, which humans these days loving cultivate and curate.
I've made a similar argument before, re IP. We have entire generations who've grown up knowing nothing but corporate ownership of their culture; we see it in fan communities around Star Wars or Pokemon or whatever where personal identity is tied to a relationship with consumer goods and the corpo that controls them. Inevitably it shapes the culture where fans get this parasocial relationship with the corporation itself, and even (sometimes) act to police the boundaries of corporate ownership against criticism.
I have, legit no joke, gotten into arguments with people who don't understand the need for public domain and (in one memorable case) claimed it was totally fine for all ideas to be owned for all time, and thought that arrangement was better.
It's no surprise people who grew up like this will apply that framing to every dispute over culture. I think some just can't conceive of ideas without owners, so they frame, say, dreadlocks as the "IP" of black people or whoever, and any whites with a "black" hairstyle as "stealing" it.
This is well crafted (although I initially misinterpreted the title). Would also add that I don't fully grasp the perspective of today's college activists who seem to see themselves as something more than just customers at these colleges.
On the one hand, I think any movement whose core is elite college students is probably bound to fail in the wider political arena.
On the other hand, I would certainly prefer that elite college students care deeply about issues than just practice silence in exchange for merit. It would help if those issues are actually relevant.
I think to be a student is to be much more than a customer, but of course many colleges operate like for-profit businesses these days - even if they’re legally non-profits. All of which is to say that I think campus activism really needs to focus on the insane and unjust higher education system in our country, which continues to give the scions of the rich and powerful free or heavily-discounted educations while saddling poor and middle-class students with life-changing amounts of debt in the name of giving them “equal access” and “opportunity”.
Much of the activism is happening on "elite" college campuses where the students sacrificed much of their latter childhood to gain admission. The student activists simultaneously want to be taken seriously but also face no consequences for any of their actions on their way to a comfortable life in the professional-managerial class. They might spend four years criticizing UPenn for its commitment to Zionism or whatever and then will cash in on that degree right after graduation. In other words, they aren't going to go too hard on the system that they benefit from. The students that are getting royally screwed are those that fell for the narrative that they need to go to college no matter what, took out loans, and then dropped out without a degree (or ended up with a useless degree). Ivy students don't give a shit about those people.
Yes, I agree. Nothing would bolster the credibility of campus activists more than if they took on the system that underpins college admissions and financial aid. But that would be something near treason for many of them, I’m sure.
That word, and all the business-y things associated with it, are part of a different problem though: i.e. framing education as a market service and not as a public good. Granted Oberlin is a private college, so it sort of gets a pass on that. Sort of. But imho treating schools like businesses and students as customers is just so way off the mark of where education should really be. And does a huge disservice to anyone under the upper middle class.
Almost no other country does this; this weird idea where education (even higher education) is primarily a product or service that customers "purchase" like they would a cheeseburger or streaming service. I certainly agree with FdB's writings here, that kind of activism is just plain dumb. But if we're going to treat education in this country like some neo-liberals' free-market wet-dream, then we've already lost the plot because we're basically making higher-ed untenable for the bottom half (or worse, bottom 2/3) of the entire country.
And these activism hissy-fits at colleges aren't really going to matter to most Americans, because they are just going to be seen as rich-kids doing stupid rich-kid stuff. Why should they care?
I see any decision to attend a private or out of state public as distinct from attending a state college near to where you live (and I think student loans should only be available to those students). But my larger point in utilizing "customer" is to get at college students who believe that administrations absolutely have to address their demands. No obligation to listen.
I would agree to that...mostly. They don't have an obligation per se to listen, but they might have an economic incentive. As the state funding portion of college budgets continue to slowly go down over time (and conversely the tuition portion goes up), enrollment numbers become the single most important fiscal responsibility for college administrators. And that means cultivating a positive image to those students and parents footing the bill. Which is one of the reasons (certainly not the only!) admins have generally been so spineless in recent years...they don't want to lose that cash. It's one of the unfortunate side-effects of bloated college budgets and lower state funding: universities can't afford to be to "mean" (for lack of a better word) to students, and thus their instructional and authoritative credibility takes a hit.
I agree with you that admins shouldn't have an obligation to absolutely adhere to all student demands, that's friggin' ridiculous. I'm just saying that the financial reality right now is such that it makes it harder for admins to have that otherwise sensible stance.
Empowering the unreasonable demands of college students does not serve them well. I recently watched The Devil Wears Prada (the original) with two millennials. Both have Gen Z employees. Both felt their employees should watch the film just to understand that, yes, there are unreasonable workplaces (medical residencies, pharmacies, just to name two) and if you want to work in those spaces, you have to suck it up, try harder, and respect your boss.
Young people are not served by validating their worst ideas. Once they are off campus, they'll need to be able to compromise, do shit they don't enjoy, listen--really--to the opinions of others, and be willing to push themselves out of the easy or comfortable.
I feel bad that activism has been so degraded by these abuses. When someone refers to themselves as an "activist", I automatically think, "someone looking for attention but not actually accomplishing anything." I blame the universities for inculcating the belief that the most important thing you can do is have the right beliefs, and that loudly talking about those beliefs is the same as actually doing something virtuous.
I think very few people have the temperament to do activism in a way that is sustainable and helpful to the causes they support. Certainly, this idea that everyone should be an activist and should turn their employment / education / social circles into a site of political activism is disastrous. It's easy to forgive college students who are still figuring this out, but as Freddie points out, that entails taking them seriously and not pulling punches when they get it wrong.
As for myself I have mostly given up on political activism. The pull towards getting angry in ways that are emotionally satisfying but do no good for anyone is too strong. I try to focus my "making the world better" efforts on non-political volunteer and mutual aid stuff, with politics being just another interest / hobby.
Details are fuzzy, but I do recall Civil Rights Era activists going through pretty tough training. They'd get yelled at, shoved, and generally mistreated and manhandled by actors in workshops to ensure they could maintain discipline and keep their cool in the face of provocation.
I'd bet there's still workshops out there doing that, but also that they don't get half as many trainees as there are people loudly calling themselves "activists".
EDIT: Also, full disclosure, I'm not sure I could get through said workshop easily, and I don't call myself an activist. These are connected.
I think it's just narcissism, plain and simple. These are children demanding attention, and their petulant outbursts make them useful allies to university administrators in their war against faculty for control of the universities.
Also, portraying "activism" by children as a high calling is merely a prescription for perpetual disorder. All those kids running about sharing their various "visions of justice" when they have yet to understand the world they live in or learn what justice is and what it is not would be absurd if it didn't have so many real consequences in the social media era. Youth generations are only a few years long, and each new "generation" decides that it is imperative that it be an "agent of change." To do that it must somehow go beyond whatever the generation a few years ago did. It must replace the change "envisioned" (too grand a word for the petulant ravings of kids) by the youth of 5 years ago with its own, new and improved version of change. So the "visions" get more and more ridiculous. FdB has a soft spot in his heart for this nonsense because it recalls him to his own youthful "activism." But as he gets older, and deeper into the real world that his son must live in, I suspect that his appraisal of all these childish "visions of justice" will change.
"Earlier this month, students with the school’s black student union protested outside of the dining hall at the Afrikan Heritage House, after demands for more traditional meals, including more fried chicken, went unmet, according to the campus paper, The Oberlin Review."
I guess if I was given the opportunity to demand I be served more fried chicken (for equity reasons) I would also take it? But what a bizarre moment in time
Silly me, I would have thought serving black students fried chicken would be prima facie evidence of racism. But maybe that is what "a bizarre moment in time" is referring to.
A black human pointed it out thusly: if you go looking for any and all evidence of racism behind every rock, tree and bush, then surely you will find it.
I don't really understand the question Scott Lemieux is asking. I know the name of the Perry County Sheriff (which don't think I've seen discussed elsewhere than the FIRE newsletter but whatever) but I don't know the Oberlin student beyond '"Oberlin student." Does anyone else? "Why is a person in the news with their name attached to their behavior in 2026 less famous than the abstract idea of a person from 2016?" is not a serious question.
Also, you can be upset by more than one thing. College students being censorious asshats is bad; a county sheriff arresting someone for his social media posts is worse. We can just be opposed to both of those things.
I barely remember the Oberlin incident at all. I'm not certain I ever knew the name of the student. Even thinking hard, I can't even make a guess as to their name.
The way it was discussed as a "of course you all know what I'm talking about" made me think I had missed some big recent news about a sandwich incident at Oberlin. I only found out today it's a 2016 incident. When directly prompted about it I had no memory.
My "zero-prestige state commuter school" helped stage the 1978 Grant Park protests but the Chicago 7 got the press. I never thought of my undergrad as a "zero-prestige state commuter school"--I was so happy to go there. Our cafeteria had hot dogs. No one complained.
O right. It was 1968 ( school was then Illinois Chicago Circle). I keep forgetting it outs my age (:--I was focusing on the zero-prestige part. I later went to Library School at UofChicago and a lot of the others were from Oberlin...I didn't understand (at the time) what that meant.
Sorry again, I just couldn’t pass up a good cosmic joke of being 10 years late to a protest :-)
I certainly thought of Gibson’s. There’s now an entire alternate history of the last 15 years in my head that I’m sure isn’t what Howard Zinn had in mind.
Neat. I think a new term should be coined for this behaviour...
In-group strawmanning: A strawman built not to attack the enemy, but to acquit the tribe.
or Self-strawmanning: Sanitizing your own side’s real position or conduct into a weaker, more innocent version so criticism of the original looks hysterical.
Are you saying that Bushart's arrest and the Oberlin cafeteria menu snafu are false equivalencies? Or is your objection to Scott Lemieux's dis of Oberlin's cafeteria policies that he invented a strawman ("Oberlin undergraduate") and used the word "politely"?
'Cause it seems to me that you and Lemieux are on the same side. Though Lemieux does tend to take a more Puckish view ("Lord, what fools these mortals be!") while you prefer a more militant, take-no-prisoners approach.
Lawyers, Guns, and Money is not on my regular reading list, but I have enjoyed it the few times I've read it, and one of the things I enjoyed about it was its droll style, which relies heavily upon satirical understatement. It does not pretend to do reporting! Without knowing anything about the context from which this quote was lifted, I am assuming—true, possibly incorrectly!—that the whole piece was a lampoon, meant to showcase the ridiculousness of both sides, the conservative vigilantes and the progressive student hysterics.
I'm saying that lemieux is misrepresenting the history. He's coming up with a more effective and more enlightened vision of what student activist had Oprah learning were up to in order to exonerate them. More effective and more enlightened vision of what student activists at Oberlin were up to in order to exonerate them. And speaking from my perspective as someone with a lot of experiences an activist, I'm saying that such condescension is not helpful or respectful.
I mean, I think his point is that the entire controversy was very cynically amplified by right wing voices who claimed, like yourself, to deeply value free speech, but are comparatively rather silent on actual contemporary violent repression by actual agents of the state. That the students don't even need to be exonerated, because too-strident students complaining about the contents of the commissary is always going to be small potatoes next to ICE and a weaponized DOJ and MAGA sheriffs going rogue and so forth.
It's useful to watch and see which people and institutions actually care about free speech vs which ones use free speech concerns cynically to attack the other side.
Can you imagine a world in which Freddie had been arguing for years that cultural appropriation is real and bad, activists should focus on symbolic victories over material change, and capitulating to the loudest, most annoying leftists is a great idea? This essay would make him such a hypocrite!
Freddie, this is addressing a point that you've made before and I think you know that, so not saying it is sort of weird; he's dismissing the impact of the Oberlin kids. That never happened, if it happened it was good, etc. College kids don't matter, don't grow up to be consultant parasites who look back proudly on their accomplishments. Only adults matter and how they were shaped doesn't matter. There's a sheriff now. Don't ask how he got to be sheriff. He doesn't care for the first amendment and does love tribalism. Don't ask if things he did or learned in childhood shaped that. Adults matter, kids don't. When kids do things, we are proud of them. You don't want to get caught criticizing the youth. Only old people who aren't hip do that. You should know better by now
Perhaps the reason Lemieux is doing this is because it never entirely ended. It moved to lesser places, like cafe bathroom stalls and Twitch/Discord chats, but none of those people really showed *any* contrition unless they got a fancy job. And they're still at it. Like that one time I got banned from a Twitch channel because I told a moderator that their role makes them a cop. (Couldn't square being a cop and queer at the same time. They prolly think "cop" is an identity...)
I hadn't heard of this latest teacup tempest, but I wonder whether the Oberlin thing is just a matter of timing. Because it seems like maybe 5 years ago, the university administration would have obsequiously capitulated.
Also, I wonder if FdB might dilate on that ubiquitous phrase, "held accountable." Does it just mean "punished" or "shamed"? If so, how, and by whom? How much punishment or shame is required for "accountability"? Also, if so, why not just say "punished"?
Had an impulse to restack "Israel’s slaughter in Gaza has in general been quite salutary" without context for lulz. Obvs fdb doesn't think that and neither do I.
I really enjoyed this article. I think Freddie said it best with this statement: "The censorious campus politics of the 2010s, the pile-ons, the demands for termination, the institutional capitulations… these were not a minor embarrassment to be waved away with a punchline. They were, instead, a genuine strategic and moral failure that alienated potential allies, corroded norms of free inquiry that the left needs as much as anyone, and handed the right a durable and genuine grievance." I still align with the Left, but the identity politics crowd is its own worst enemy. They sound stupid, anger those who are politically moderate, and gave the 2024 election to Trump.
The identity politics crowd has not learned the difference between speaking truth to power and blindly "punching up" against targets who do not really matter. Their rhetorical tactics are the same as the MAGA crowd. They need to get a lot more politically savvy quickly or the Dems are not going to win the midterms. We can stand against racism and sexism without trying to silence or denigrate those with honest questions, misunderstandings of facts, or disagreements that stem from deeply engrained views, whether from parental teachings, religion, or sense of self. The Left also has to learn which hills are worth dying on. Transgender women and girls competing against biological women and girls? Give me a break.
"The identity politics crowd has not learned the difference between speaking truth to power and blindly "punching up" against targets who do not really matter."
The word "crybully" comes to mind.
"Their rhetorical tactics are the same as the MAGA crowd." Yea, verily. Both practice identity politics, just on behalf of different grievance groups.
"We can stand against racism and sexism without trying to silence or denigrate those with honest questions, misunderstandings of facts, or disagreements that stem from deeply engrained views, whether from parental teachings, religion, or sense of self. The Left also has to learn which hills are worth dying on. "
"These woke volkisch rules, where people are only allowed to consume cultural products from their own culture, can be hard to parse, which is unsurprising considering that cultural appropriation is a bullshit made-up problem that has no earthly connection to actual social justice."
Oh, very well, then:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg "When Wokes And Racists Agree On Just About Everything"
Anyway, the entire silly "cultural appropriation" thing seems like a ripoff of intellectual property concepts, which in turn are sort of artificial, if you think about it.
The whole point is to obtain victim status, which humans these days loving cultivate and curate.
I've made a similar argument before, re IP. We have entire generations who've grown up knowing nothing but corporate ownership of their culture; we see it in fan communities around Star Wars or Pokemon or whatever where personal identity is tied to a relationship with consumer goods and the corpo that controls them. Inevitably it shapes the culture where fans get this parasocial relationship with the corporation itself, and even (sometimes) act to police the boundaries of corporate ownership against criticism.
I have, legit no joke, gotten into arguments with people who don't understand the need for public domain and (in one memorable case) claimed it was totally fine for all ideas to be owned for all time, and thought that arrangement was better.
It's no surprise people who grew up like this will apply that framing to every dispute over culture. I think some just can't conceive of ideas without owners, so they frame, say, dreadlocks as the "IP" of black people or whoever, and any whites with a "black" hairstyle as "stealing" it.
This is well crafted (although I initially misinterpreted the title). Would also add that I don't fully grasp the perspective of today's college activists who seem to see themselves as something more than just customers at these colleges.
On the one hand, I think any movement whose core is elite college students is probably bound to fail in the wider political arena.
On the other hand, I would certainly prefer that elite college students care deeply about issues than just practice silence in exchange for merit. It would help if those issues are actually relevant.
I think to be a student is to be much more than a customer, but of course many colleges operate like for-profit businesses these days - even if they’re legally non-profits. All of which is to say that I think campus activism really needs to focus on the insane and unjust higher education system in our country, which continues to give the scions of the rich and powerful free or heavily-discounted educations while saddling poor and middle-class students with life-changing amounts of debt in the name of giving them “equal access” and “opportunity”.
Much of the activism is happening on "elite" college campuses where the students sacrificed much of their latter childhood to gain admission. The student activists simultaneously want to be taken seriously but also face no consequences for any of their actions on their way to a comfortable life in the professional-managerial class. They might spend four years criticizing UPenn for its commitment to Zionism or whatever and then will cash in on that degree right after graduation. In other words, they aren't going to go too hard on the system that they benefit from. The students that are getting royally screwed are those that fell for the narrative that they need to go to college no matter what, took out loans, and then dropped out without a degree (or ended up with a useless degree). Ivy students don't give a shit about those people.
Yes, I agree. Nothing would bolster the credibility of campus activists more than if they took on the system that underpins college admissions and financial aid. But that would be something near treason for many of them, I’m sure.
"Customers"
That word, and all the business-y things associated with it, are part of a different problem though: i.e. framing education as a market service and not as a public good. Granted Oberlin is a private college, so it sort of gets a pass on that. Sort of. But imho treating schools like businesses and students as customers is just so way off the mark of where education should really be. And does a huge disservice to anyone under the upper middle class.
Almost no other country does this; this weird idea where education (even higher education) is primarily a product or service that customers "purchase" like they would a cheeseburger or streaming service. I certainly agree with FdB's writings here, that kind of activism is just plain dumb. But if we're going to treat education in this country like some neo-liberals' free-market wet-dream, then we've already lost the plot because we're basically making higher-ed untenable for the bottom half (or worse, bottom 2/3) of the entire country.
And these activism hissy-fits at colleges aren't really going to matter to most Americans, because they are just going to be seen as rich-kids doing stupid rich-kid stuff. Why should they care?
I see any decision to attend a private or out of state public as distinct from attending a state college near to where you live (and I think student loans should only be available to those students). But my larger point in utilizing "customer" is to get at college students who believe that administrations absolutely have to address their demands. No obligation to listen.
I would agree to that...mostly. They don't have an obligation per se to listen, but they might have an economic incentive. As the state funding portion of college budgets continue to slowly go down over time (and conversely the tuition portion goes up), enrollment numbers become the single most important fiscal responsibility for college administrators. And that means cultivating a positive image to those students and parents footing the bill. Which is one of the reasons (certainly not the only!) admins have generally been so spineless in recent years...they don't want to lose that cash. It's one of the unfortunate side-effects of bloated college budgets and lower state funding: universities can't afford to be to "mean" (for lack of a better word) to students, and thus their instructional and authoritative credibility takes a hit.
I agree with you that admins shouldn't have an obligation to absolutely adhere to all student demands, that's friggin' ridiculous. I'm just saying that the financial reality right now is such that it makes it harder for admins to have that otherwise sensible stance.
Empowering the unreasonable demands of college students does not serve them well. I recently watched The Devil Wears Prada (the original) with two millennials. Both have Gen Z employees. Both felt their employees should watch the film just to understand that, yes, there are unreasonable workplaces (medical residencies, pharmacies, just to name two) and if you want to work in those spaces, you have to suck it up, try harder, and respect your boss.
Young people are not served by validating their worst ideas. Once they are off campus, they'll need to be able to compromise, do shit they don't enjoy, listen--really--to the opinions of others, and be willing to push themselves out of the easy or comfortable.
I feel bad that activism has been so degraded by these abuses. When someone refers to themselves as an "activist", I automatically think, "someone looking for attention but not actually accomplishing anything." I blame the universities for inculcating the belief that the most important thing you can do is have the right beliefs, and that loudly talking about those beliefs is the same as actually doing something virtuous.
I think very few people have the temperament to do activism in a way that is sustainable and helpful to the causes they support. Certainly, this idea that everyone should be an activist and should turn their employment / education / social circles into a site of political activism is disastrous. It's easy to forgive college students who are still figuring this out, but as Freddie points out, that entails taking them seriously and not pulling punches when they get it wrong.
As for myself I have mostly given up on political activism. The pull towards getting angry in ways that are emotionally satisfying but do no good for anyone is too strong. I try to focus my "making the world better" efforts on non-political volunteer and mutual aid stuff, with politics being just another interest / hobby.
Details are fuzzy, but I do recall Civil Rights Era activists going through pretty tough training. They'd get yelled at, shoved, and generally mistreated and manhandled by actors in workshops to ensure they could maintain discipline and keep their cool in the face of provocation.
I'd bet there's still workshops out there doing that, but also that they don't get half as many trainees as there are people loudly calling themselves "activists".
EDIT: Also, full disclosure, I'm not sure I could get through said workshop easily, and I don't call myself an activist. These are connected.
They want the mantle of being a great civil rights leader without any of the downsides.
Each time I watch video footage of the civil rights era I'm amazed by the courage of what they went through. I don't think I could do it.
I think it's just narcissism, plain and simple. These are children demanding attention, and their petulant outbursts make them useful allies to university administrators in their war against faculty for control of the universities.
Also, portraying "activism" by children as a high calling is merely a prescription for perpetual disorder. All those kids running about sharing their various "visions of justice" when they have yet to understand the world they live in or learn what justice is and what it is not would be absurd if it didn't have so many real consequences in the social media era. Youth generations are only a few years long, and each new "generation" decides that it is imperative that it be an "agent of change." To do that it must somehow go beyond whatever the generation a few years ago did. It must replace the change "envisioned" (too grand a word for the petulant ravings of kids) by the youth of 5 years ago with its own, new and improved version of change. So the "visions" get more and more ridiculous. FdB has a soft spot in his heart for this nonsense because it recalls him to his own youthful "activism." But as he gets older, and deeper into the real world that his son must live in, I suspect that his appraisal of all these childish "visions of justice" will change.
The word "performative" should the the OED Word Of The Year.
Reading that old NYT story led me to this line:
"Earlier this month, students with the school’s black student union protested outside of the dining hall at the Afrikan Heritage House, after demands for more traditional meals, including more fried chicken, went unmet, according to the campus paper, The Oberlin Review."
I guess if I was given the opportunity to demand I be served more fried chicken (for equity reasons) I would also take it? But what a bizarre moment in time
Silly me, I would have thought serving black students fried chicken would be prima facie evidence of racism. But maybe that is what "a bizarre moment in time" is referring to.
A black human pointed it out thusly: if you go looking for any and all evidence of racism behind every rock, tree and bush, then surely you will find it.
I don't really understand the question Scott Lemieux is asking. I know the name of the Perry County Sheriff (which don't think I've seen discussed elsewhere than the FIRE newsletter but whatever) but I don't know the Oberlin student beyond '"Oberlin student." Does anyone else? "Why is a person in the news with their name attached to their behavior in 2026 less famous than the abstract idea of a person from 2016?" is not a serious question.
Also, you can be upset by more than one thing. College students being censorious asshats is bad; a county sheriff arresting someone for his social media posts is worse. We can just be opposed to both of those things.
I barely remember the Oberlin incident at all. I'm not certain I ever knew the name of the student. Even thinking hard, I can't even make a guess as to their name.
The way it was discussed as a "of course you all know what I'm talking about" made me think I had missed some big recent news about a sandwich incident at Oberlin. I only found out today it's a 2016 incident. When directly prompted about it I had no memory.
My "zero-prestige state commuter school" helped stage the 1978 Grant Park protests but the Chicago 7 got the press. I never thought of my undergrad as a "zero-prestige state commuter school"--I was so happy to go there. Our cafeteria had hot dogs. No one complained.
I mean, when you show up ten years after the fact…[ducks]
O right. It was 1968 ( school was then Illinois Chicago Circle). I keep forgetting it outs my age (:--I was focusing on the zero-prestige part. I later went to Library School at UofChicago and a lot of the others were from Oberlin...I didn't understand (at the time) what that meant.
And I wonder why the Gibson's Bakery hasn't come up --at Oberlin. Gibson's Bakery v. Oberlin College. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson%27s_Bakery_v._Oberlin_College
Sorry again, I just couldn’t pass up a good cosmic joke of being 10 years late to a protest :-)
I certainly thought of Gibson’s. There’s now an entire alternate history of the last 15 years in my head that I’m sure isn’t what Howard Zinn had in mind.
Neat. I think a new term should be coined for this behaviour...
In-group strawmanning: A strawman built not to attack the enemy, but to acquit the tribe.
or Self-strawmanning: Sanitizing your own side’s real position or conduct into a weaker, more innocent version so criticism of the original looks hysterical.
we made signs.
Self-strawmanning is also known as "motte and bailey arguments".
I'm confused here.
Are you saying that Bushart's arrest and the Oberlin cafeteria menu snafu are false equivalencies? Or is your objection to Scott Lemieux's dis of Oberlin's cafeteria policies that he invented a strawman ("Oberlin undergraduate") and used the word "politely"?
'Cause it seems to me that you and Lemieux are on the same side. Though Lemieux does tend to take a more Puckish view ("Lord, what fools these mortals be!") while you prefer a more militant, take-no-prisoners approach.
Lawyers, Guns, and Money is not on my regular reading list, but I have enjoyed it the few times I've read it, and one of the things I enjoyed about it was its droll style, which relies heavily upon satirical understatement. It does not pretend to do reporting! Without knowing anything about the context from which this quote was lifted, I am assuming—true, possibly incorrectly!—that the whole piece was a lampoon, meant to showcase the ridiculousness of both sides, the conservative vigilantes and the progressive student hysterics.
What am I missing?
I'm saying that lemieux is misrepresenting the history. He's coming up with a more effective and more enlightened vision of what student activist had Oprah learning were up to in order to exonerate them. More effective and more enlightened vision of what student activists at Oberlin were up to in order to exonerate them. And speaking from my perspective as someone with a lot of experiences an activist, I'm saying that such condescension is not helpful or respectful.
I appreciate the reply. Thanks! 😀
I mean, I think his point is that the entire controversy was very cynically amplified by right wing voices who claimed, like yourself, to deeply value free speech, but are comparatively rather silent on actual contemporary violent repression by actual agents of the state. That the students don't even need to be exonerated, because too-strident students complaining about the contents of the commissary is always going to be small potatoes next to ICE and a weaponized DOJ and MAGA sheriffs going rogue and so forth.
It's useful to watch and see which people and institutions actually care about free speech vs which ones use free speech concerns cynically to attack the other side.
Can you imagine a world in which Freddie had been arguing for years that cultural appropriation is real and bad, activists should focus on symbolic victories over material change, and capitulating to the loudest, most annoying leftists is a great idea? This essay would make him such a hypocrite!
.
.
.
(In that world.)
Freddie, this is addressing a point that you've made before and I think you know that, so not saying it is sort of weird; he's dismissing the impact of the Oberlin kids. That never happened, if it happened it was good, etc. College kids don't matter, don't grow up to be consultant parasites who look back proudly on their accomplishments. Only adults matter and how they were shaped doesn't matter. There's a sheriff now. Don't ask how he got to be sheriff. He doesn't care for the first amendment and does love tribalism. Don't ask if things he did or learned in childhood shaped that. Adults matter, kids don't. When kids do things, we are proud of them. You don't want to get caught criticizing the youth. Only old people who aren't hip do that. You should know better by now
Perhaps the reason Lemieux is doing this is because it never entirely ended. It moved to lesser places, like cafe bathroom stalls and Twitch/Discord chats, but none of those people really showed *any* contrition unless they got a fancy job. And they're still at it. Like that one time I got banned from a Twitch channel because I told a moderator that their role makes them a cop. (Couldn't square being a cop and queer at the same time. They prolly think "cop" is an identity...)
I hadn't heard of this latest teacup tempest, but I wonder whether the Oberlin thing is just a matter of timing. Because it seems like maybe 5 years ago, the university administration would have obsequiously capitulated.
Also, I wonder if FdB might dilate on that ubiquitous phrase, "held accountable." Does it just mean "punished" or "shamed"? If so, how, and by whom? How much punishment or shame is required for "accountability"? Also, if so, why not just say "punished"?
Had an impulse to restack "Israel’s slaughter in Gaza has in general been quite salutary" without context for lulz. Obvs fdb doesn't think that and neither do I.
I really enjoyed this article. I think Freddie said it best with this statement: "The censorious campus politics of the 2010s, the pile-ons, the demands for termination, the institutional capitulations… these were not a minor embarrassment to be waved away with a punchline. They were, instead, a genuine strategic and moral failure that alienated potential allies, corroded norms of free inquiry that the left needs as much as anyone, and handed the right a durable and genuine grievance." I still align with the Left, but the identity politics crowd is its own worst enemy. They sound stupid, anger those who are politically moderate, and gave the 2024 election to Trump.
The identity politics crowd has not learned the difference between speaking truth to power and blindly "punching up" against targets who do not really matter. Their rhetorical tactics are the same as the MAGA crowd. They need to get a lot more politically savvy quickly or the Dems are not going to win the midterms. We can stand against racism and sexism without trying to silence or denigrate those with honest questions, misunderstandings of facts, or disagreements that stem from deeply engrained views, whether from parental teachings, religion, or sense of self. The Left also has to learn which hills are worth dying on. Transgender women and girls competing against biological women and girls? Give me a break.
"The identity politics crowd has not learned the difference between speaking truth to power and blindly "punching up" against targets who do not really matter."
The word "crybully" comes to mind.
"Their rhetorical tactics are the same as the MAGA crowd." Yea, verily. Both practice identity politics, just on behalf of different grievance groups.
"We can stand against racism and sexism without trying to silence or denigrate those with honest questions, misunderstandings of facts, or disagreements that stem from deeply engrained views, whether from parental teachings, religion, or sense of self. The Left also has to learn which hills are worth dying on. "
What are you, a commie?
Great piece! This is why I am here.