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Failed to take a knee or prostate yourself in front of whatever? Fired, cancelled etc Having grown up during perestroika. I remember saluting the red banner an

by tlear 6y ago

Failed to take a knee or prostate yourself in front of whatever? Fired, cancelled etc Having grown up during perestroika. I remember saluting the red banner and blood soaked monster Lenin portet while reading Archipelago Gulag at home. Never though US will get here

Daishiman 6y ago
Seriously? Kids in the US would get in all kinds of trouble for not respecting the Pledge of Allegiance back in the... 90s, not the 70s. It's only been in the past decade that anything that's not complete and vehement agreement with the "support the troops" mantra has been tolerated by the mainstream. It's things like these that make me very skeptical of the intentions of the article. The idea of the American public being tolerant of ideas outside the norm is a new conservative narrative that has no correspondence with reality. People were __pissed off__ when the Simpsons began to air. Openly admitting to doing drugs was (and still is, to a much lesser degree) a way to be fired an ostracised in many middle class circles. I am really not seeing anything new.
- tlear 6y ago
  Did they purge Tankies, Maoists, Trotskyist etc from universities? Because when O went to Uni half of social science department was some sort of -ist in the 90s See how fast you get fired if you don’t take a knee when department head tells you to for BLM.
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    McCarthy certainly did, I don't know if you're being facetious but that's exactly what happened. These sectors of the left didn't come to dominate some sectors of academia; they were driven out of everywhere else and that's the only area where their radical ideas were tolerated. Meanwhile the rest of society has been tolerating everything else in mainstream public institutions: the racist and regressive corporate bosses, the Evangelicals who considered anything that's not in agreement with their doctrine to be an affront to God, the gun nuts who consider walking around in public with an assault weapon to be a perfectly valid expression, and on it goes. American society is dramatically more tolerant of these extremist right wing positions, and that Overton window shift has always existed in the US. It is only because of the inflammatory discourse of Trump and his allies that people have decided that the fringe left is dramatically less dangerous and tolerant than these literal fascists.

by tlear 6y ago

Daishiman 6y ago

Seriously? Kids in the US would get in all kinds of trouble for not respecting the Pledge of Allegiance back in the... 90s, not the 70s. It's only been in the past decade that anything that's not complete and vehement agreement with the "support the troops" mantra has been tolerated by the mainstream. It's things like these that make me very skeptical of the intentions of the article. The idea of the American public being tolerant of ideas outside the norm is a new conservative narrative that has no correspondence with reality. People were __pissed off__ when the Simpsons began to air. Openly admitting to doing drugs was (and still is, to a much lesser degree) a way to be fired an ostracised in many middle class circles. I am really not seeing anything new.

tlear 6y ago
Did they purge Tankies, Maoists, Trotskyist etc from universities? Because when O went to Uni half of social science department was some sort of -ist in the 90s See how fast you get fired if you don’t take a knee when department head tells you to for BLM.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  McCarthy certainly did, I don't know if you're being facetious but that's exactly what happened. These sectors of the left didn't come to dominate some sectors of academia; they were driven out of everywhere else and that's the only area where their radical ideas were tolerated. Meanwhile the rest of society has been tolerating everything else in mainstream public institutions: the racist and regressive corporate bosses, the Evangelicals who considered anything that's not in agreement with their doctrine to be an affront to God, the gun nuts who consider walking around in public with an assault weapon to be a perfectly valid expression, and on it goes. American society is dramatically more tolerant of these extremist right wing positions, and that Overton window shift has always existed in the US. It is only because of the inflammatory discourse of Trump and his allies that people have decided that the fringe left is dramatically less dangerous and tolerant than these literal fascists.