Guest post: Insane, cult-like, and authoritarian
Derrick Jensen posted this on Facebook and told us to share widely. I’m making it a guest post for ease of reading.
i just got deplatformed here in Crescent City. the left is insane, cult-like, and authoritarian.
i was asked to do a talk as part of the climate strike. i said yes.
i was volunteering my time.
today i got a note from the “Del Norte Climate Justice Alliance” disinviting me.
here is their note.
Dear Derrick and Heather,
We are cancelling your talk this week for the Week For Future Generations. We would like to be transparent about the reason, the room that you would be using is a room used by students of color, trans, and queer students. This is a community gathering and meeting space that is all inclusive. There was new information brought to our attention that might jeopardize the space, values and standard we have created in this inclusive space.
Sincerely,
i responded
this is appalling.
we can’t talk about the murder of the planet?
Congratulations for continuing to destroy free speech in this country.
you should be ashamed of yourselves.
leftists like Mario Savio who once stood for free speech would certainly be ashamed of you.
and don’t rope ‘people of color’ into your excuse. i’ve written extensively about racism.
yes, i disagree with queer theory and transgender ideology because i stand in support of women.
i can provide cogent critiques of both. i would be delighted to debate you or the person of your choice on those issues.
but of course you won’t agree to that, because deep in your gut you know your positions are indefensible. This is a primary reason queer theorists and transactivists _must_ deplatform anyone who disagrees with them, anyone who participates in any form of wrongthink, which big brother says is double-plus-ungood.
have you even read any of my work?
of course not.
Can you point to any place in any of my books where I even mention those issues?
of course not.
you are deplatforming someone whose books you haven’t read, whose books don’t even mention the issues over which you are deplatforming me, who was not going to speak about the issues over which you are deplatforming me.
yes, your position really is that absurd.
you should be utterly ashamed of yourselves.
it might not be a bad idea to remove the name ‘justice’ out of your ‘justice alliance,’ and ‘inclusive’ from your description below, because your use of those words are Orwellian.
Welcome to 1984.
derrick
i then received this note back from the person who first invited me.
I’m replying to you personally.
Yes, we can talk about the murder of the planet. And that’s exactly why we reached out to you. But we cannot risk you diving into your ideologies, the ones steeped in hate of an “other” while you are presenting. I hope you can respect this. We have a transgender teen doing coverage of the event, and I couldn’t imagine him feeling attacked by your views.
You’re right. There are probably many things we don’t agree on. And most of the time I am okay with that…but not when you are given a public platform from which to speak on whatever you want.
This is not about deplatforming you. This is about protecting trans people and making sure any risk of folks feeling threatened is not part of our work.
Climate Justice work is about much more than environmental justice…you know that.
####
The left is completely fucking insane. please broadcast widely. This sort of outrageous behavior needs be recognized for what it is.
We would like to be transparent… but for some reason we won’t be. Instead, we’ll dance around the issue like a pantomime horse.
As long as “we” doesn’t include you.
We’re so far down this helter-skelter that we can’t even “risk” “trans folk” “feeling threatened” because of other, unrelated things someone might or might not have written?
I’m all for protest, but use it where it counts. Protest against nazis doing a talk about why nazis are great? Knock yourself out. Protest against a talk on climate change because a participant might or might not have said something – ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TOPIC – that might or might not be offensive to one person who is reporting the event? Nah. It’s obscene.
He pegged it. They can’t allow him to speak, or debate him, because their views are indefensible. We offer science, we offer the reality of women’s lives, and they offer some very poorly defined terms, a lot of inner perception, and some made-up (or coopted) statistics.
It’s like the Jesus and Mo cartoon this morning. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should. It makes me think of exactly what is happening here.
Wow, he must have said some really awful things about trans people for his mere presence to be threatening to one!
@marinerachel Derrick has always been completely frank. His worst offense is saying that trans “women” are men, and that they should not be in spaces where women are vulnerable (like changing rooms). That’s the absolute worst of it: him speaking plain common sense. For that, the trans activists develop hives and vapors at the idea of someone hosting him to talk about ongoing ecological damage–it’s somehow dangerous to be in the same room with him as he outlines things like heavy metal runoff into lakes and streams. Nevermind that if he is so dangerous in this way that they could, you know, just stay at home and not attend these terrifying discussions about how to reverse the damage to the environment.
I think this sentence sort of steps on itself. It accuses the invited speaker of being so, so very obsessed with a particular ideology that they can’t be trusted to not bring it up during completely unrelated topics — a talk on climate, a discussion of Victorian poetry, the toast at his sister’s wedding — but then quickly follows that charge with a nasty ideological boot to the gut (“steeped in HATE of the OTHER”.) Couldn’t just keep to the cordial script, could you, o regretful Justice Alliance person, could you? Gotta dive right into it.
Projection much?
I mean, do you suppose McKinnon goes through a single day without talking trans? Possibly even to students, who have to get along with the teacher if the teacher has a bee in his bonnet that says anyone who doesn’t go along is a hateful bigot?
Wait, what…
Am I missing something here, or is this statement completely nonsensical?
Actually, coddling trans people’s feelings is not your job. It’s bad enough that so many trans people are obsessed with telling the world how precious and vulnerable they are; it’s worse that so many on the left go to ridiculous lengths to humour them. It’s psychologically toxic, and it’s unsustainable. The left is caught up in a cult and it’s tearing itself apart.
So where’s the problem? Or is ‘couldn’t’ a typo? Whether a typo or not, it appears that whoever sent those e-mails hasn’t actually bothered to ask the transgender teen if he would feel ‘attacked’, they’ve just imagined how he’d feel and de-platformed Derrick based on their own imagination. Not at all patronising, is it?
But it’s definitely mostly about environmental justice.
latsot,
So what you’re saying is that they’re being cisparent?