Pointedly incurious or delusional about the people they’re defending
Tom Owolade has some thoughts on the Goldsmiths feminists and LGBTQ+ activists.
Before examining the underpinnings of the Atheist and Humanist society ideology, one should first examine Goldsmiths’ Islamic society.
In 2011, they invited to speak at their annual dinner Abdurraheem Green and Hamza Tzortzis. Green believes that a husband is permitted to beat his wife if she misbehaves, and that homosexuality should not be permitted in society; Tzortzis has supported child-marriage.
In 2014, Goldsmiths Islamic society invited Cage Prisoners – a group whose dalliance with terrorism and extremism is well-documented. CAGE has supported a wide range of Islamist terrorists – from Abu Hamza to Anwar al-Awlaki. The deputy director of CAGE, Asim Qureshi, has twice refused when interviewed on TV to answer whether he thinks adulterers should be stoned to death.
So the feminist and LGBTQ society think it appropriate to ban a vocal opponent of wife-beating, lethal homophobia, apostasy laws and terrorism, whilst supporting a society that promotes and invites misogynistic and homophobic Islamists. No-platforming for left-wing critics of Islamist oppression; safe-spaces for thugs that endorse theocratic fascists: this is the dysfunctional moral compass now crippling the mainstream student left.
Why is that? Why are they so blind to the reality of the Islamist groups they rush to support? What kind of mushroom do you have to nibble to get that way?
[W]hat we have here is a culture of progressives, disaffected by liberal principles, pointedly incurious or delusional about the people they’re defending, marginalising the voice of someone who speaks up for vulnerable people. For people who don’t have the benefit of languidly complaining about safe spaces; for people who don’t have the benefit of coming out as gay to their parents or telling them they’re atheist or having a boyfriend; people who dare to behave in a way that doesn’t suit the stereotype of brown people, and instead think for themselves. People who don’t cry or wallow in shallow victimhood because they’re offended by the misuse of a pronoun or the wearing of problematic clothes. These people are alone because the student left has abandoned them in pursuit of the solipsistic politics of grievance.
I’ve noticed that. The solipsism. I’ve noticed the huge overlap between the people who declared me a Banned Person and the people whose conversation (i.e. blog posting and social media) is mostly about…themselves. There’s a thing there. I don’t quite know what to call it or how to organize it, but it’s there. Bloggers who write 5000 words about Dear Self on Monday, then 5000 words about That Evil Terf on Wednesday, then 5000 words about Dear Self on Friday. What’s the connection between the two? I don’t know, but I think there is one.
Whatever it is, it doesn’t make for good politics.
I’m pretty sure the logic behind this uncritical support of fascist theocracy is really simple:
George W. Bush attacked Islamic nations.
George W. Bush is evil incarnate.
Therefore Islamic nations are good, and by extension so are their Islamist proponents.
With regards to the penultimate par, one could speculate that both things are motivated by a craving for approval or validation. As in:
First let me call out some bigots to show what a good person I am, even if they’re not bigots I’ll call them out anyway just to be sure, so there’s absolutely no doubt what a good person I am. Now here’s an essay on My Experiences With Depression just so you understand I deserve sympathy because it’s so hard being me.
Or one could not speculate.
Anyway, I was taken aback during what you’ve called the Great Shunning by how many related posts had a distinct vibe of, What about me? Can’t anyone see how hard this is for me?
Yes, so was I.
It’s sad for them, really, because the truth is, it’s boring being that obsessed with the precious self. The self is such a limited subject, while if you look in the other direction…well it’s hardly limited, is it.
“Image conscious” is the connection, I think. Do they care about the substance of an accusation, or just that it exists? Supporting the accused would be bad for their image. I don’t even think they care about *understanding* themselves, because it isn’t about critique and questioning themselves– it’s about crafting an image to put out there.
Yes to all of the above. Another strain I noticed in the awfulness, along w/ the “ME ME ME ME” and the “I WILL MIMIC WHAT SOMEONE ELSE IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE SAID ABOUT X” is the I REFUSE TO VERIFY AND I TOTALLY REFUSE TO THINK.
I read a lot, when I was still being a professor, about the current generation, who were said to be lacking empathy. I certainly noticed that. But I also noticed students who had the right amount of empathy. So who knows.
Also, these very ignorant and shouty deluded groups have so far all been in England? And/or Scotland and Wales? I do see, in British politics about “diversity” a really terrible view about equality and “respecting” religions all religions simply because they are religions. And so merit respect. I think that is stupid and dangerous but it is sure out there. And the Deluded Ones probably think that they are respecting a religion and banning women who clearly and eloquently do not respect religion.
Anyhow it’s all disturbing and horrible. And so fucking ignorant. I say it’s spinach, to hell with it.
Claire, I think many commonwealth countries have a strong respect for authority and religion, in part because the head of state was also the head of the official religion. The USA.is hardly free from unquestioning acceptance of the value of religion or respect for authority however. It’s just that the language and debate have a different tone. I’m not convinced the substance is much different though.
Why should the LGBTQ society at Goldsmiths care about what Islamists want to do to them? They’re the type of activist who think homosexuality is an oppressive, Western social construct to begin with. The type who deride same-sex marriage as “inherently anti-black” and form “Queers for Palestine” groups to condemn Israel for having a better record on gay rights than its Islamic neighbors. They might embrace being thrown off a high roof as a middle finger to the decadent West.
Why would Goldsmiths’ feminists care about Islamist misogyny? They’re the type of feminist who think wearing niqab is liberating (for other women, anyway. Maybe not so much for themselves). A few years back, I remember Ophelia posting something about an academic from Sierra Leone who said that female genital mutilation empowers women, while opposing FGM is patriarchal and misogynist. I believe that woman was educated in England, although it’s probably too much to hope she studied at Goldsmiths in particular.
Because Truth is less important than feeling good.
When you challenge them? It makes them maybe not feel so good. You must be a bad person to want someone to not feel good. Luckily they can feel good again if they can point out how bad you are, like having a fatter freind who makes you feel thin.
@TGGP #7,
(Nodding my head, with lips pursed)
Yes, We have them in my university. A couple of (entitirely western) “Queers for Palestine” were surprised to discover that I thought their movement was misguided, that in fact I knew a young gay Palestinian who had fled for his life to Tel Aviv when he was threatened by Hamas and was forever grateful to an Israeli group for helping him obtain a student visa to Canada. The same “Queers for Palestine” participated in an event with the Muslims Students’ Association (roughly equivalent to Goldsmiths’ Islamic Society) which had previously hosted several virulently homophobic speakers. When I pointed that out they were puzzled that I couldn’t see the importance of “solidarity”!
Speaking of which, the (supposedly) last post on the matter from one of the Pure claimed OB could hardly complain about bullying because she profited, while his own blogging income had been halved. The fact that half his readership no longer want to even follow as a silent lurker any more did not cause him to consider that maybe said readership exercised their judgement and disagreed, rather, it was phrased as if the loss of income was somehow OB’s doing.
In my (limited) experience, “student life”, “student politics”, student societies and groups of all flavours, but particularly “activist” ones are far more of a thing in UK than US. That may be a factor.
Holms @ 10
Hahahaha that’s hilarious. Right, I forced them to write all those venomous posts about me; it was just part of my cunning plot to cut their blogging incomes in half. Is there no end to my perfidy?
Banichi @ 11
America has no shortage of pseudo-progressive apologists for jihad.
And while the gnawing rage at Bush/Cheney certainly fuels a lot of the fervor, the problem goes well back into the Cold War. My take is that, the moment Egypt and Syria became Soviet clients, the True Believers (fresh from making excuses for the invasion of Hungary) started depicting every Pan-Arabic and Jihadist group as Proletarian Revolutionaries.
60 years of relentless, unopposed propaganda for anyone who wanted to kill Jews or Americans has left a stain that can’t really be SEEN, let alone scrubbed.
I think StlSin got it in the first comment: it’s simplistic, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” thinking. Right-wing xenophobic reactionaries are their enemies, so anyone the Right criticizes must be a friend, therefore Muslims, even radical Muslim extremists, are Friends. And anyone who criticizes those Friends is therefore an Enemy.
But are they particularly well organised at the student level? Not in the same was as in Britain (I suggest).
Rob – I wasn’t trying to claim that the US is not full of ignorant respecters of religion-any-religion and kiss asses. Like other posters I was trying, but not very clearly I suppose, to figure out the roles/workings/powers of British university student organizations. It is worth noting, I think, that such British groups have been making noise lately, and I am curious about it.
We have nothing to crow about in the US, believe me. I did not mean to imply an international contest of stupidity and delusion. We have assholes like Ted Cruz and Geo Bush before him telling us that the big one upstairs has decreed that they be President. Plenty of people who would simply love to have a state religion, and many more who believe that we actually do have a state religion.
@ 12 Ophelia Benson
It’s such harebrained logic anyway. Since when do we measure ethics by who’s better off?
My home gets burgled and the burglar goes to prison while I make an insurance claim and get brand new stuff — and that make the burglar the victim? :-/
No worries Claire. I agree there is more than enough stupid to go around. I’ve seen some sad examples here at home recently around both race and sexism. I don’t have an answer as to why there seems to have been a spate of UK university linked organisations doing this sort of thing. I did ask a colleague who graduated recently. His reply was that he stayed as far away from anything to do with student politics and organisations as possible. He’s a nice compassionate caring man who I haven’t seen say or do a disrespectful thing to anyone in two years.
Silentbob – well I think it’s not so much about ethics as about my having any grounds to criticize the way they carried on. I think the idea is that even though I lost the income I earned by blogging at FTB (because they made it impossible for me to stay there), I don’t get to object to their forcing me out because I started a Patreon.
I think that’s the ostensible idea, at least. The real idea, that they probably don’t want to come right out and say, is that they’re pissed off that they didn’t succeed in stripping me of all income from writing.
@19: comparing your situation (having an actual job writing) versus that of a lot of your FtB critics (regular tip-jar campaigns to make rent), I think the jealousy was an even bigger factor than that.
Oh I wouldn’t describe myself as having an actual job writing. I do write two paid columns, but I wouldn’t call that a job, exactly.
I’m really not sure it’s jealousy as opposed to sorrow and anger that they failed to destroy me as a writer who has readers. I think it’s probably more the latter. I think they wanted my departure from FTB to mean my abrupt and complete disappearance, along with complete loss of income from writing. Why? Well, I don’t know, really, but they worked up such a frenzy of hatred of me, I suppose in a spiral of self-justification (having started the process they needed to keep justifying it by adding more and more epithets to the pile), that maybe that’s all the explanation there is.
For the record, I’m supporting both FTB with an annual subscription AND Ophelia Benson via Patreon. Because, you know, while I’m not entirely in agreement with all the bloggers involved, I get value from it and think I should pay for it.
But what does that make ME? A double-agent? A bidirectional-quisling? SOMEONE TELL ME!
(No comments about how this post is all about me. I’m just carrying on the tradition, tyvm.)
Ophelia @21,
Perhaps they sought vindication of their stance.
(bolds mine)
I don’t suppose it had anything to do with you being a vocal woman that refused to back down…? NAH!
Well…in theory at least they don’t object to vocal women who refuse to back down. Some of them pride themselves on being vocal women who refuse to back down. But theory is one thing and particulars are another. I’m the wrong kind of vocal woman who refuses to back down. (And of course I can think of vocal women who refuse to back down whose work I intensely dislike too – C H Sommers for instance.)
Still, with some of them, the veneer of theory is exceedingly thin, and the hatred of vocal women who refuse to back down is all too easy to see.