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The author of the memo framed his argument in exactly this way. To quote the memo: "As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’

The author of the memo framed his argument in exactly this way. To quote the memo: "As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”" The author literally thinks 'Left' policies are part of a Communist power struggle. If the above comment is toxic, then so is the original memo.

Jabanga 9y ago
No, postmodernism and feminism are rooted in Marxist ideology. Marxist intellectuals shifted to postmodernism in the 1970s after it became impossible to deny that Marxist doctrine had led to authoritarian police states and democides all over the world. Postmodern ideology changes Marxism's fixation on capital with a fixation on power, and replaces income-class with race/gender/income-class identity groups. It's extremely similar to Marxism in its perspective, goals and methods. The evolution of postmodern ideology is well-documented and so his claim can be validated. Even the reaction to the memo validates the memo author's claims, as it shows the dogmatic, sexist/racist and hateful nature of postmodern/feminist ideology. With respect to the ideological foundation of postmodern/feminist ideology: the fact that one fifth of social scientists in today's universities identify as adherents of Marxism - an ideology as murderous as Nazism - is a testament to its prevalence in academia, and the malevolent nihilism animating postmodern/feminist ideology.
- clavalle 9y ago
  And here I thought I was just a capitalist who believes that people should all be given an equal shot to choose their own path in life and that how things have been does not necessarily dictate how things should be. Turns out I'm a hateful, dogmatic, sexist racist as well as a malevolent nihilist, postmodern feminist, and a Marxist to boot. Thanks for clearing that up. Those -isms really snuck up on me (they really are an insidious bunch, aren't they?). Good thing there are people out there that know way more about people's position and why they have them than they do themselves. Otherwise, we may have to picture the world we want to live in and work toward it without thought to all of the pseudo-cruft attached to specific iterations of ideas throughout history in various places and times by specific individuals that some people might highlight and promote as The One Truth of an Idea to further their own political agenda. It's all very obvious, now that you bring it up.
  - Jabanga 9y ago
    I did not say that you're a "hateful, dogmatic, sexist racist". I said that postmodernism and feminism are. Very few people subscribe to all of the beliefs of a particular ideological and philosophical framework. But the tenets of an ideology are there, even if a particular adherent is unaware of them. An ideology manifests itself in its effects on the world. In postmodernism and feminism, we see that in the completely dogmatic and anti-science reaction to the memo. Here was a memo that was produced in good faith, stayed fully within the realm of established science in its assertions, and within the realm of the reasonable in its opinion, and yet we have absolute lies being trotted out by its critics about its content, and an ideologically motivated firing of its author. This is not an accident. It's a result of an anti-science dogma that frames the world as a power struggle between identity group, and where facts are only acceptable when they aid in the fulfilment of the postmodernist/feminist agenda: which is to flatten the social dominance hierarchy that, according to the postmodernist/feminist framework, is formed by various identity groups. This is inspired by Marxism (as the historical record shows), whether or not you personally identify as a Marxist yourself.
    - clavalle 9y ago
      That's your point of view (and likely the author would agree with you). Let me explain mine. I see the memo and the citations it trots forth, not as an authoritative treatise with well sourced, scientifically sound backing, but as a cherry picked hodge-podge of descriptive science (where the citations were, in fact, scientific publications - many were blog posts and opinion pieces) abused to support a prescriptive framework. This is not an anti-science position. It is a position that understands the limitations of science. A scientific fact that may successfully describe the past or current condition doesn't consider other states that could have happened under similar conditions and certainly doesn't lock us into a way forward. Descriptive science can tell us the process that gave giraffes their long neck but doesn't have much to say about why other creatures didn't select for long necks as well under similar conditions but instead found a different niche nor does it have anything to say about niches left unfilled. It also doesn't have much to say about what giraffes will look like in 10,000 years under different conditions. It's the difference between analysis and synthesis. Turning successful analysis into successful synthesis is only possible under very simple conditions relative to the messiness of the world[1] and the complex and chaotic interactions that are possible. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of human behavior. This is one reason the memo only had the veneer of reasonableness. Either the author was unaware of what he was doing (deeply misguided but in good faith) or thought others would not catch on to the bait and switch (in which he was promoting his own agenda in bad faith). I lean toward the former since he seems genuinely surprised that other people had a problem with his analysis and cherry picking facts and abusing statistics to make a political point is very common (on the other side of the political specturm too, of course). [1]Which is why we've had better luck as a species crafting synthesis in different fields from mathematics -- building from the ground up rather than trying to tease the relevant parts from the morass where we are in danger of missing important ingredients or making effort killing assumptions.

Jabanga 9y ago

No, postmodernism and feminism are rooted in Marxist ideology. Marxist intellectuals shifted to postmodernism in the 1970s after it became impossible to deny that Marxist doctrine had led to authoritarian police states and democides all over the world. Postmodern ideology changes Marxism's fixation on capital with a fixation on power, and replaces income-class with race/gender/income-class identity groups. It's extremely similar to Marxism in its perspective, goals and methods. The evolution of postmodern ideology is well-documented and so his claim can be validated. Even the reaction to the memo validates the memo author's claims, as it shows the dogmatic, sexist/racist and hateful nature of postmodern/feminist ideology. With respect to the ideological foundation of postmodern/feminist ideology: the fact that one fifth of social scientists in today's universities identify as adherents of Marxism - an ideology as murderous as Nazism - is a testament to its prevalence in academia, and the malevolent nihilism animating postmodern/feminist ideology.

clavalle 9y ago
And here I thought I was just a capitalist who believes that people should all be given an equal shot to choose their own path in life and that how things have been does not necessarily dictate how things should be. Turns out I'm a hateful, dogmatic, sexist racist as well as a malevolent nihilist, postmodern feminist, and a Marxist to boot. Thanks for clearing that up. Those -isms really snuck up on me (they really are an insidious bunch, aren't they?). Good thing there are people out there that know way more about people's position and why they have them than they do themselves. Otherwise, we may have to picture the world we want to live in and work toward it without thought to all of the pseudo-cruft attached to specific iterations of ideas throughout history in various places and times by specific individuals that some people might highlight and promote as The One Truth of an Idea to further their own political agenda. It's all very obvious, now that you bring it up.
- Jabanga 9y ago
  I did not say that you're a "hateful, dogmatic, sexist racist". I said that postmodernism and feminism are. Very few people subscribe to all of the beliefs of a particular ideological and philosophical framework. But the tenets of an ideology are there, even if a particular adherent is unaware of them. An ideology manifests itself in its effects on the world. In postmodernism and feminism, we see that in the completely dogmatic and anti-science reaction to the memo. Here was a memo that was produced in good faith, stayed fully within the realm of established science in its assertions, and within the realm of the reasonable in its opinion, and yet we have absolute lies being trotted out by its critics about its content, and an ideologically motivated firing of its author. This is not an accident. It's a result of an anti-science dogma that frames the world as a power struggle between identity group, and where facts are only acceptable when they aid in the fulfilment of the postmodernist/feminist agenda: which is to flatten the social dominance hierarchy that, according to the postmodernist/feminist framework, is formed by various identity groups. This is inspired by Marxism (as the historical record shows), whether or not you personally identify as a Marxist yourself.
  - clavalle 9y ago
    That's your point of view (and likely the author would agree with you). Let me explain mine. I see the memo and the citations it trots forth, not as an authoritative treatise with well sourced, scientifically sound backing, but as a cherry picked hodge-podge of descriptive science (where the citations were, in fact, scientific publications - many were blog posts and opinion pieces) abused to support a prescriptive framework. This is not an anti-science position. It is a position that understands the limitations of science. A scientific fact that may successfully describe the past or current condition doesn't consider other states that could have happened under similar conditions and certainly doesn't lock us into a way forward. Descriptive science can tell us the process that gave giraffes their long neck but doesn't have much to say about why other creatures didn't select for long necks as well under similar conditions but instead found a different niche nor does it have anything to say about niches left unfilled. It also doesn't have much to say about what giraffes will look like in 10,000 years under different conditions. It's the difference between analysis and synthesis. Turning successful analysis into successful synthesis is only possible under very simple conditions relative to the messiness of the world[1] and the complex and chaotic interactions that are possible. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of human behavior. This is one reason the memo only had the veneer of reasonableness. Either the author was unaware of what he was doing (deeply misguided but in good faith) or thought others would not catch on to the bait and switch (in which he was promoting his own agenda in bad faith). I lean toward the former since he seems genuinely surprised that other people had a problem with his analysis and cherry picking facts and abusing statistics to make a political point is very common (on the other side of the political specturm too, of course). [1]Which is why we've had better luck as a species crafting synthesis in different fields from mathematics -- building from the ground up rather than trying to tease the relevant parts from the morass where we are in danger of missing important ingredients or making effort killing assumptions.