Spouting
It’s Mary Beard’s turn to get some random policing and name-calling, it seems.
What “nonsense” has Beard “spouted”? As far as I can tell, none. As far as I can tell (people have been locking accounts or deleting them altogether, so some evidence is missing) someone whined at her for followcrime, and others rushed to join the fun.
There aren’t enough scare quotes in the world to convey how not progressive all this is.
One might say it runs far, far deeper. After all, Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot killed millions and millions more than Hitler. And no, I am not defending the fascist right in any way. Just noting an unpleasant reality for us on the “left”. Yet, it is considered utterly legitimate for a group of “progressive” students to call themselves the Portland Maoist Group.
But then, comparative destructiveness is not a good game. We should be fearful of any purist, dogmatic groups.
I have no idea what ‘nonsense’ she may have ‘spouted’ recently, but I still remember her defense of the (male) aid workers who raped children in Haiti. ‘Well you know, it’s rough being a civilised white man in an environment like that, it’s little wonder they lose it sometimes, but think of all the good they’re doing and cut them a little slack.’
I also remember an enlightening point a Black woman who criticised this position made, when Beard responded to criticism by posting a photo of herself crying with a caption something like ‘you made me cry, are you happy now?’ The woman whose criticism this was a response to pointed out the racism inherent in the response. Black women weren’t disagreeing with her statements, criticising her ideas, or taking a principled stand; they were ‘attacking her’ to make her sad.
The first leftists butchered countless innocent people and inspired the right wing backlash that gave us the Corsican Ogre (Emperor Napoleon)… so really hasn’t it always been that way?
Guest,
You may find people more supportive of your statements if you don’t present inaccurate paraphrases in quotation marks, or invent “tweets” to support your points
I’ve read a number of Mary Beards books and I thought they were great!
So have I and so did I!
guest @ 3 – that’s not what she said though.
https://twitter.com/wmarybeard/status/964613592833253376
“Of course one can’t condone the (alleged) behaviour of Oxfam staff in Haiti and elsewhere. But I do wonder how hard it must be to sustain “civilised” values in a disaster zone. And overall I still respect those who go in to help out, where most of us wd not tread.”
The left has always been better at enforcing political uniformity of thought. The right has a tradition of sub-contracting it to religious authorities, so just aren’t as intrinsically good at it otherwise.
‘Of course one can’t condone the (alleged) behaviour of Oxfam staff in Haiti and elsewhere. But’
To me, this is not a sentence that should be followed by ‘but’.
I think this affected me because I’ve done aid work, and developed some, shall we say, suboptimal coping behaviours as a result. But at least they didn’t involve ’employing underage sex workers’, so I guess that’s a win?
I speculated at the time, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one, that because Beard wasn’t in a position to do aid work herself she believed it important to support Our Brave Boys Overseas no matter what.
Guest, I take your point about the “but”.
But. Beard was saying that we should be careful not to rush to judgement of people in desperate situations. I agree that it looks an awful lot like excuse-making and it was spectacularly poorly phrased, but I think her meaning was more along the lines of “there but for the grace of god go I”. She was speculating about what would happen to her own moral judgement in those situations, not excusing the failings of others.
For what it’s worth, I’m closer to your side on this than to hers. There was rather too much academic detachment in her statement, and not enough outrage for my liking.
I’m still a fan, though.
On the other hand the capacity for realizing that in certain circumstances one might do the wrong thing oneself is a good capacity to have. “I do wonder how hard it must be to sustain “civilised” values in a disaster zone.” That’s something it’s useful to think about.
Not that I’m saying her tweet was perfectly worded or anything, but I don’t think it justifies ignorant twerps throwing stones at her now.
Ophelia,
Yes, that’s my impression of what Beard was saying, based on her subsequent – if not very clear – clarifications.
It’s easy to criticise from our armchairs, but would we do any better if we were there? I’m very sure I wouldn’t fail in the way those Oxfam workers did but I could definitely be tempted to do morally dubious things if I believed it would help people. Knowing (roughly) where the levers are doesn’t mean they can’t be applied. And that’s before even considering what my emotional reaction to the horror might be and what that might lead me to do.
It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t condemn – we definitely should – but it’s a useful question to ask, like you say.
It’s also useful to ask ourselves questions like “how would I react if that tweet came from X instead?”
For fun, let’s start with X = Dawkins.
I can definitely imagine circumstances in which behaviour I’d normally consider reprehensible is understandable, if not necessarily praiseworthy. (As I said, I’ve been there. I did things I don’t necessarily consider unethical, but certainly things I wish I hadn’t done. I suspect we’ve all ‘been there’, at some time in our lives.) And it’s definitely a sign of maturity to be able to say to oneself ‘I can’t judge this person’s behaviour solely by my own ethical criteria; if I’d been in their situation I may have done the same.’ But my empathy (and, I’d have hoped, Mary Beard’s) does not extend to raping children. I can’t imagine any situation that makes this behaviour understandable.
I take it as more of a “Lord of the Flies” or “The Crucible” comment, about how thin the veneer of civilization is when tested. But the risk of everything breaking down doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t answer the call to help.