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We Live in a Golden Age of Crybullyism
- PaulHoule 3y agoThe language of victimization is dangerous. There was a time when it might have seemed liberatory when applied to "marginalized" populations but the categorical imperative always gets you in the end...
- aredox 3y agoBut the blindness of many internet commentators towards power relations is frankly weird. We have to make different rules depending on the power one yields: for example, transparency is a necessity against the powerful, while the rest have a right to privacy. It is as fundamental as the separation of powers in modern democracies.
- PaulHoule 3y agoMaybe it hanging out with more leftists but I am really bothered with people who seem to think that when a black man or a white man have a conflict the black man should always win or when a man and a woman have a conflict the woman should always win. I worked enough at a mediation center to know that anyone can be in the right or in the wrong. I think the first time I heard a leftist reject the categorical imperative was a friend of mine who I met when we were activists for the 2000 Ralph Nader campaign and what was one of the most active local Green parties in the US for a few years. He was teaching a course in ethics at a local college and when I asked him about "how do I make better ethical decisions?" he gave me a spiel about how the left is on the side of the angels and the right is on the side of the devils. On Mastodon I run into people like that all the time. If you confronted a rightist about, say, Pinochet's crimes, they would probably say it was justified, just look at what Lenin and Stalin did. They did it (and might even do it again) so we have to do it too. Many online leftists (like my ethicist friend) would probably say something to the extent that "it's OK that we do it but not OK when they do it" which is right up there with people who take Carol Gilligan too seriously.
- jquery 3y agoI've found this type of thinking across the spectrum. All I can do is ignore it and realize a lot of people are simply "morally lucky" and didn't come to their conclusions via any principled reasoning... It's easiest to spot when a new issue comes up that adds a cost to their self-professed values (eg, generative AI).
- nickpp 3y agoAnother day another episode of the “Legacy Media vs Billionaires”. Today: Media strikes back. Quite the hit job, too: light on facts but quite strong in name calling, insinuations and quick judgements. Journalism has adapted quite well to our modern times.
- subjectsigma 3y agoThe political class the author belongs to (left-leaning intellectuals) may not have created this trend, but they did popularize it. It’s obvious that the author and his ilk believe that only people who are suffering have value or deserve to have opinions. Of course sociopaths are going to try and appear like they are suffering in response. Sleep in the bed you helped make, Adam.
- aredox 3y agoPretty rich to say that when this whole drama is caused by Ackman launching a great war on academia under the pretense of weeding out plagiarism, and then throwing a hissy fit when shown his academic of a wife has done worse than Claudine Gay. Sleep in the king-sized bed you helped make, Bill.
- subjectsigma 3y agoI don’t give a single flying fuck about Bill Ackerman or his wife, they can burn in the fires of public opinion as well for all I care. The article is complaining that people are acting like victims when the political left made victimization a core tenet of identity politics. So maybe Bill Ackerman wouldn’t be acting in such an embarrassing manner if they hadn’t done that.
- orwin 3y agoIt's third wave feminism, when the word emancipation was replaced by the very liberal and individualistic 'empowerment', and the liberal captation of postmarxism that created identity politics. Saying 'the left created identity politics' is quite antinomic. Identity and individuality are clearly not core left wing values.
- enterprise_cog 3y agoZionists have been using victimization as a core tenet to advance their agenda for decades. To say this started with the “political left” is simply not true.
- 3y ago
- AlbertCory 3y agoI don't know anything about Neri Oxman, but she didn't suddenly become a public figure by virtue of what Ackman did. "Holding her accountable" (to use their dishonest words) is itself mean and bullying.
- jquery 3y agoHer Wikipedia page is pretty long, she was a public figure long before this controversy, even ignoring the fact that simply being a billionaire invites public scrutiny.
- AlbertCory 3y agoNonetheless, no one was calling out her plagiarism before they got their knickers in a twist over Claudine Gay. Pure meanness and revenge. Are they going to shadow his kids at school, too?
- enterprise_cog 3y agoIt’s simple cause and effect. Not sure why it’s so hard for you to grasp.
- AlbertCory 3y agoI grasp it perfectly. It's you who can't grasp bullying: "Oppose us, and we'll ruin you. And your family."
- dekhn 3y agoI just want to check: you are reading Ackman's tweets, right?
- AlbertCory 3y agoI just want to check: what point are you attempting to make?
- Timber-6539 3y agoI love it when the wokest of the woke mob get outed with revelations about their past history. Maybe the "church of modern day woke" could borrow something about repentance & forgiveness from other much older religions but that was never part of the doctrine from the very beginning.
- zeroCalories 3y agoI find myself sympathetic to people like Oxman that are catching strays. Attacking someone's family as a proxy isn't holding them accountable, it is bullying.
- jquery 3y agoShe's a public figure, a billionaire, and a plagiarist; feeling sorry that her misdeeds came to light is a great illustration of OP's article.
- zeroCalories 3y ago[flagged]
- Chris2048 3y ago> the jewsish wife of the big bad jewish man When does that come into it? Or is this the "don't support Israel" == "antisemitism" narrative?
- zeroCalories 3y ago[flagged]
- dekhn 3y agoShe actually did plagiarize, so this is mainly just uncovering latent (existing) problems that were not being paid enough attention to. My hope is that this work is extended to the entire academic corpus, so we can see just how much, uh, "unattributed borrowing" happens. Ackman is on a jihad so he should have fully expected collateral damage, and should have anticipated this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- orwin 3y agoPeople here focus on a plagiarist who was caught in her husband's crusade, but it really miss the point. Whining because a lot of people were mean to you one one side, and crushing people on the other side is becoming a trend, and I'm not surprised.