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> They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©1955, 1966, 2017 by the University of Chicag

• hagbard_c 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • immibis 1y ago
    First they came for those who thought the sky was pulsating green, but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question the blue sky narrative. Then they came for those who thought the earth was flat, but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question the round earth narrative. Then they came for those who thought the internet was carried by little elves, but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question the fiber optic narrative. Not all narratives are equal.
    • FrustratedMonky 1y ago
      Also in 1933, people saying 'not all narratives are equal' to diminish any outcry against what was happening.
      • immibis 1y ago
        In 1933, lots of people were saying Hitler was a fascist and was gonna be really bad, and they were ignored.
    • roenxi 1y ago
      But, key difference, the people pushing green sky or flat earth narrative don't get deplatformed, fired, yelled at or called Nazis. I still haven't seen anyone attempt to do a cost-benefit on whether the COVID lockdowns were a net good. I do note we had a big social and economic disjunction and since then it has been pretty much nothing but war and trouble. The part where they were shutting up people with PhDs on YouTube through COVID was definitely a net loss though; the censors weren't anywhere near as qualified to decide what to talk about as the censored were in my experience.
      • shakna 1y ago
        > But, key difference, the people pushing green sky or flat earth narrative don't get deplatformed, fired, yelled at or called Nazis. ... You know that people show insane behaviour regularly get shadow-banned, right? And don't get called on by every piece of media for their position? That people wearing tinfoil have been regularly shouted at and harassed since it became a thing? If you really want to not be called a Nazi... Don't make friends with people who call themselves that, don't attend the same parties as them, and don't make the same false claims as them.
      • thrance 1y ago
        The president and the secretary of health both believe vaccines give autism and covid was nothing but a big fever. You act like "covid skepticism" isn't mainstream in the highest spheres of power.
      • UncleMeat 1y ago
        Professors have been publishing papers advocating for legal bans of gender affirming care for ages. They've been publishing papers on gender dysphoria and the medical impact of transition for ages. Heck, there are law professors on topics like "against civil rights." For covid, there are not only oodles of papers on the topic you describe here, but entire books written by academics on the topic. These people remain employed at premier institutions. The question of the cost benefit analysis of remote schooling (costs to education outcomes and costs to parents having less available childcare against costs to public health) has been a particular vigorous topic of discussion.
        • analog8374 1y ago
          Entire books you say.
          • UncleMeat 1y ago
            Yes, even ones that are expressly critical of the policies. In Covid's Wake is a rather famous recent example. The authors are both professors at a prestigious university. They were interviewed by all sorts of outlets, including left leaning outlets. The idea that doing a cost-benefit analysis of various covid policies would get academics expelled from the academy is just not based in fact.
    • hagbard_c 1y ago
      True, the ones you mentioned here come straight from the land of Fairy while the ones I mentioned all come from real life, warts and all. If anyone outside of the Dept. of Literature or that of Psychology were to struggle with the ideas you mentioned they'd be better of in either one of the mentioned departments or outside of academia.
  • nativeit 1y ago
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  • thrance 1y ago
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  • fn-mote 1y ago
    > get ideology out of academia This reads like someone who needs to take the time to understand the breadth of “ideology”. What will be left when what you consider ideology is gone? As you note, even science has its ideology. What about science itself? That too can be (is) considered ideology, although I assume you reject that position… that doesn’t make you correct (or wrong). There is a lot of theoretical writing about this; it would be worth your time to understand. In some ways we are already living in a world in which there are no restrictions on speech, certainly no privilege of truthful, factually based speech.
    • hagbard_c 1y ago
      > What will be left when what you consider ideology is gone? The scientific method, that is what you're left with. Even when the results of your study do not track with your feelings, your religion, your political opinions or any other irrelevant factors. I can give examples galore and I'm pretty sure you can come up with close to the same examples of where ideology trumped the scientific method by either not releasing studies, by simply falsifying or otherwise manipulating data so the results fit with the narrative and other interferences with the scientific method so as to use the cachet of the institution to amplify some desired narrative. As far as I'm concerned there is no 'Science', what there is is people who use the scientific method to study some phenomenon in the search for more insight. People who know how to use this method and who apply it diligently, who publish their data and methods and outcomes and to the best of their ability try to interpret the results are 'doing science'. It can be bad science if they don't know what they're doing or if they're using bad methods but as long as they follow the tenets of the scientific method they're doing science. Their experiments can be repeated, their methods can be researched, their data can be inspected and others can apply their methods to their data to verify their results. Their conclusions can be questioned and discussed. If the same people start with a given position and tailor their experiments and data and methods around that position to reach a pre-defined conclusion they are not doing science no matter how lofty an institution they happen to be employed by and how impressive their titles are. If one of these people says something which clearly does not stroke with the truth and starts throwing epithets at those who call him or her out on this that person is not a scientist but something else - a charlatan, an activist, a propagandist, a troll, anything but a scientist. A scientist, when confronted with clear and obvious refutation of his or her claims will retract or revise those claims and - if their character allows for this - thank those who pointed out the error in his or her way. That is how knowledge grows, by learning from our mistakes and by turning back when we happen to have entered a dead end. In short, science does not have an ideology, it is the application of a method - the scientific method - which is orthogonal to ideology. You can take the most left-wing radical and the most convinced orthodox conservative person and have them do a study into ${subject}. If both of them strictly adhere to the scientific method and use valid method and valid research data there's a good chance they'll arrive at more or less the same conclusions. They may differ on their interpretation of what these conclusions mean when applied to society but the actual conclusions should be similar.
  • madaxe_again 1y ago
    Look, I don’t say this to be cruel, I say this to be kind. Someone once said similar to me and it helped me enormously: The reason your life sucks is you. Not anybody else. You. You are in complete control of your destiny. That is all.
    • hagbard_c 1y ago
      Why are you trying to diagnose a person over the 'net? What makes you think some other person's life sucks? What makes you think that if some other person's life 'sucks' that is only caused by that person's own (in)actions or thoughts?
  • estearum 1y ago
    "They came for..." in this comment refers to "the marketplace of ideas built a brief consensus against..." The "they came for..." in the famous poem, and in reference to today's Trump administration, refers to "the government utilized state power to advance or suppress certain ideas." These are not the same at all. A few specific bullets: * Universities (especially private ones) are allowed to have ideological biases. If you disagree with them, go to a different university, criticize them, or create your own university. * At least in the US, the health institutions merely flagged low-quality information to social media companies. It was up to the social media companies as to whether they wanted to respond -- in many cases they did not. This went to SCOTUS who decided there was no evidence that social media companies were coerced by the health institutions, partially because the social media companies created and began enforcing their policies prior to any of the alleged coercion Note: None of this applies to the UK which really does have a free speech issue, but also doesn't really have anything close to as strong a legal guarantee of free speech and maybe should.
    • ethical_source 1y ago
      > Universities (especially private ones) are allowed to have ideological biases Universities as private associations can have whatever biases they want. What they can't do is take public money earmarked for promoting debate and discovery and use it to promulgate a particular ideology, discriminate on the basis of immutable protected characteristics, or do other things contrary to public policy. If they want the money from the public, they need to serve the public --- the whole public, not the part that agrees with administrators who mandate diversity statements for hiring. > At least in the US, the health institutions merely flagged low-quality information to social media companies There are public records of highly placed government officials emailing social media company leadership and demanding that specific posts be taken down. Not only is this state censorship in all but name, it's also unconstitutional under Vullo and other precedents. Yes, the UK is worse. That doesn't make the behavior of the previous administration acceptable or consistent with American values.
      • estearum 1y ago
        What federal money gets sent to universities with the earmark “promote debate and discovery?” The vast majority of federal money is given to universities to execute research contracts. It is simply not true that if you receive any federal money your institution cannot have biases or opinions. What would that even mean in practice? They cannot use federal money specifically for political activities, but merely receiving public funding does not relieve you of your First Amendment rights. If anything, the reality is the opposite of what you suggest: your contracted money cannot be threatened on the basis of your institution’s (protected) biases or opinions. Re public health: The government itself has a First Amendment right to speak with and request action from private organizations, and those organizations have a First Amendment right to accept or decline those requests. Vullo absolutely did not find the government has no ability to request action, it said it has no ability to coerce action. As it relates to COVID, we don’t need to speculate: this is the exact question that was asked in Murthy vs Missouri. SCOTUS found lack of standing because the “censorship” in question pre-dated the “coercion” in question. Private platforms are absolutely allowed to create and enforce content policies! You cannot infer “the platforms were coerced” from the following set of facts: 1. The platforms made and enforced policies prior to government requests 2. The government made requests 3. Some of those requests were satisfied and others were declined 4. There was no punishment or threatened punishment for decline 5. The platforms said they were not coerced That’s what SCOTUS and IMO any reasonable person would find.
  • nkrisc 1y ago
    Is "gender ideology" what we're now calling the idea that a tiny minority of people want to live their lives a little differently that the rest of us without harming anyone and mostly be left alone?
    • scandox 1y ago
      I think the reality of what has gone on has several faces which are all worth thinking about: 1. A group of people that want to be different without harming anyone and be left alone 2. A group of people demanding certain specific and new legal rights with respect to how they are different 3. A group of people advocating for new social and linguistic norms around said difference 3. A group of people socially shaming people who failed to respect said norms 4. A group of people socially shaming those who opposed new specific legal rights 5. A group of people vocally opposing said legal and social changes 6. A group of people advocating legal restrictions to prevent or punish said different life choices 7. A group of people fighting said restrictions
      • JoBrad 1y ago
        Given the overall rancor around topics like this, I feel it’s necessary to say I’m approaching this as a discussion, and am open to evidence that I’m wrong. In my opinion your item 2 is mostly a conflation of “people want to enjoy the same rights that others have enjoyed” and a recognition that “separate but equal” doesn’t actually work. A prime example is gay marriage, where we went from “don’t ask don’t tell” to a brief national discussion of “civil marriages” to simply recognizing that a marriage is a marriage, and anyone who is married should get access to the same rights as others who are married.
        • scandox 1y ago
          I don't see a contradiction. I'm happy for people to seek changes to the law that makes their lives better. But it is still seeking change to the law. I don't know the American system well but didn't gay marriage require legal change? Or at least legal challenge leading to precedent?
  • grosswait 1y ago
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    • epistasis 1y ago
      I've had comments flagged for far less inflammatory framing than that comment! And they probably should have been flagged, they resulted in lots of bad discussion. In this thread it's a completely appropriate flagging because it's basically troll bait. People did engage with it in far higher level of thinking than it used, this time, but I think we would all have been better off without this digression.
• throwawaymaths 1y ago
  Universities will not be safe from government meddling until they comprehensively stop taking money from the government first. Until such a point, they run the real risk of censorship and becoming the agents of the very thing that they are warning about.
  • IshKebab 1y ago
    I don't know why you think financial independence would free them from government meddling. That happens to be an easy tool that Trump has used, but it isn't the only one available. Ultimately the government can simply pass laws to make Universities do whatever they want.
  • 1oooqooq 1y ago
    you're historically wrong. monasteries were financialy independent. when the "government changed" and the new rulers had no use for the church, all of them were raided and plundered. it's very dangerous to have resources and not be politically positioned. you become a target more than a fortress. it's the one thing preppers don't get. universities are facing the same problem as monasteries faced. they are huge bags of money already. excluding the UCs they are already rich and take government money more for the associations than the actual money.
    • throwawaymaths 1y ago
      nobody claimed absolute immunity from everything that the government does anywhere. enjoy beating up your strawman.
  • JeremyNT 1y ago
    What a strange assertion. It's not the case that the government is necessarily run by authoritarians cracking down on speech they disapprove of at colleges by threatening to withhold other funding. This is a novel development. We can surely go back to funding schools without such strings attached.
    • throwawaymaths 1y ago
• Levitz 1y ago
  >Such books will no longer be published if universities are not free. That depends on which are the ways in which they are not free. Government influence is categorically worse because of its very nature, but I'm trying to think of a more consequential influence in the US than the leftist hegemony in universities and coming up with nothing.