By Professor Doom
It used to be
controversial speakers were controversial, and that was it. Now controversial
has been defined down to the most meager of offenses.
As faculty, even
to say something as “controversial” as “Trump doesn’t get a fair shake in the
media” is enough to get you fired. Heck, even in chatting in forums, I can call
Trump a war criminal (based on his attack of Syria), I can call him a windbag
(based on his speeches), and I can call him a Neanderthal with thick orange
skin (based on his ability to withstand endless baseless attacks).
I can do all
these things, but if I dare to also say “Trump doesn’t suck in every way,” I’m
labelled a “Trumpite.” It’s a strange world we live in, where nuanced views of
political figures are simply beyond the capacity of much of the general public.
Anyway, I’ve
certainly covered how conservative (which nowadays is defined as anyone to the
right of Stalin) speakers cannot get a platform on campus, but it goes much
further than that. There’s a general assault on anyone and anything which
challenges the mainstream media narrative that I find very disturbing.
Fox News is
banned in the UK, for example. The claim is “low viewership” but
considering CNN rates
below 30 year old reruns of children’s cartoons, it’s a
pretty obvious lie. The sub-story points out the real issue:
Unlike
newspapers, broadcasters are expected to maintain strict impartiality and can
be fined if they knowingly disseminate misleading information.
In the
10 years Fox has fallen foul of the regulator 22 times for breaches of its
licence and the Ofcom code, seven of those were for breaches by Fox News.
CNN is pretty
one-sided as well, and yet doesn’t fall afoul of rules violations. I don’t
dispute Fox News is pretty biased, but shutting a news organization out of a
country is pretty hefty de-platforming.
On an individual
level, former presidential candidate Ron Paul was de-platformed. To clarify, he was
de-monetized on YouTube. Oh, YouTube still makes money off his videos but he
gets nothing…it’s an insult meant to drive him away. I grant Ron Paul doesn’t
exactly need the money, but quite a few other people with “alternative” views
have found themselves suddenly without income, and also without viewers because
their videos have suddenly become hard to find.
These de-funded
people are trying to survive, but it’s clear there’s a concerted effort to
“protect” citizens from ideas not approved of by the mainstream (whatever that
is). It’s not just YouTube that’s cleaning house, Google is forever changing
their changing their search engine to keep people away from “offensive” sites.
Something
happened in the search algorithms a few months ago, to steer people towards
mainstream sites, or at least sites “approved” by Google. Even my own blog has
lost around half its readers in the last few months, a surprising drop
considering I’ve hardly changed the tone of my blog, higher education certainly
hasn’t changed, and it really seems like events on campus have been more
newsworthy than in years past. I’m hard pressed to believe I’m relevant enough
to be targeted by Google directly but…it’s clear something is up.
A Google spokesperson said in an
email to the WSJ: "From the beginning, our approach to
search has been to provide the most relevant answers and results to our users,
and it would undermine people's trust in our results, and our company, if we
were to change course." According to Google, their results are "determined
by algorithms using hundreds of factors" and "reflect the content and
information that is available on the internet."
It could just
be Google searchers have a liberal bias, but it seems there’s something
more to it than that. I know they say they mean well, but Google fired their
engineer for daring to say such “controversial” things as human males might
have physical differences from females. I’m more inclined to judge Google by
their actions then their promises of well-meaning.
Stumbling back to
education, it’s long been known that “academic freedom” only applies to faculty
with tenure. Around 70%
of faculty have no hope of tenure now, and will likely end their
academic careers as sub-minimum wage adjuncts.
Now, it’s scary
that “one side” can no longer question what’s going on. It’s downright
terrifying that the other side is also under fire:
Similarly, just weeks after appearing on Tucker Carlson Tonight to
defend the exclusion of whites at a Black Lives Matter event, communications
professor Lisa Durden was fired from Essex County College.
Now, I don’t agree
with what Professor Durden had to say…but the rapid firing for her saying it
was over-the-top. If she wasn’t an adjunct, she’d have a little protection, at
least.
Here’s another
example:
Professor fired over Harvey ‘instant
karma’ tweet for Texas
Honest, the guy is
something of a monster for saying something like this. It…really is bad form to
wish the Wrath of God against a whole state because a majority of it didn’t
vote for your candidate. I’m sure Miss Manners has a whole chapter in one of
her books devoted to this very topic. Still, the instant removal from campus
has a chilling effect.
We’re now at the
point in higher ed where “keep your head down, say nothing of what you see” is
simple career advice. The de-platforming of half the country is a bad thing
happening today, but I promise it all started years ago, when “academic
freedom” was stripped from faculty while they were turned into adjuncts.
I strongly
suspect that the de-platforming of free speakers today is a consequence of the
enslavement and stripping of the academic freedom of our academic class.
I may be wrong,
but the fact remains: soon, only the independently wealthy will have the means
to speak out against what’s happening today…and only the independently wealthy
are benefiting from our current political/economic system. I suspect they won’t
say much in the way of criticism.
We don’t want a
system where only the people at the top can talk about policies, because then
the only discussion will be about how to set policies to benefit the people at
the top.
To what extent do
we have that now?
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