Publicity for the “statement”
Some nasty posturing self-righteous goon on Twitter is claiming to be one of the people who sabotaged Kate Smurthwaite’s Goldsmiths show yesterday, starting with a “statement” (actually just some screen grabs of a bunch of assertions) about how right they are and how much good they did by sabotaging Kate’s show.
Have you ever seen the like?
The goon is complaining that Kate didn’t RT that ridiculous “statement” and that no one is publicizing it so I told the goon I would publicize the fuck out of it. Here I am doing that now. There it is, in all its brainless glory.
First there’s the brazen claim that they didn’t intend to silence Kate by making sure she had no audience, because she could have gone ahead and performed to an empty room. Then there’s the snotty insinuation that she’s used to performing to empty rooms. (Absolute bullshit. As I’ve said before, I’ve seen her perform: the place was packed, and the audience laughed itself sick.)
Then there’s the insulting claim that “this was a form of peaceful protest against someone who’s [sic] views we find abhorrent.” It is not peaceful protest to grab up all the free tickets to a gig so that no one else can go! And it is not anyone’s job or duty or even right to prevent people from attending a show on the strength of a claim that the performer’s views are “abhorrent.”
And then it’s just a pack of lies. Kate’s not any of the things this scumbag calls her. Kate’s comedy doesn’t harm vulnerable people. Kate’s on the side of vulnerable people.
If this is the left, we’re all fucking doomed.
Ugh how revolting. And how incoherent. Of COURSE ensuring no one can hear what someone is saying is silencing them! Philosopher Rae Langton’s discussion about how pornography silences women is precisely concerned with hearer’s responses. And these goons removed hearers from the equation totally. If you can’t be heard when you want to be, for whatever reason, you are silenced. And secondly, if Smurthwaite was as unpopular as they claim, why would they bother silencing her? What a disgustingly transparent lie.
“We didn’t think anyone was interested, so we booked the show solid so that no one could go.”
Yeah.
Right.
Because that’s so believable.
You went to all that effort in order to stop all the zero people you thought would show up if you didn’t do that.
Uh-huh.
Does this poltroon realize that his (why am I sure this is a “he”?) argument means banning under apartheid did not limit its targets in any way? They couldn’t talk to more than two people (or was it four?) at a time, but that didn’t affect their freedom of speech. They could always just talk to the wall! I’m sure the Nelson Mandelas and Bishop Tutus of that struggle would have been very relieved had they but known that.
{How in hell’s name did this bullshit take hold so much and so fast? What happened?}
I’m not a lawyer but it looks to me that, whoever “we” are, a case could be made that they be prosecuted under English Common Law for Conspiracy to Defraud.
Quixote, the fact this “bullshit has happened so fast” does give me some comfort that it will die off equally fast.
I called him/them “vandals” on Twitter. That was very briefly satisfying. In the comments these asshats made on Twitter they referred to this fraudulent ticket booking as “direct action” ::rolls eyes::. And admitted they were no platforming/silencing Smurthwaite because she had been on panels with people who the asshats in question have decided to blacklist. A black list that magically spreads to any others who are in the same room with them for too long it would appear. They listed the names of the women. Oh my goodness how shocking: Sara Ditum. Germaine Greer. The trans cult’s own version of Beelzebub: Julie Bindel
These trans cultists claim their targets are bigots. Funny thing, when real activists fight against real bigots, been this way since the 50s, they don’t anonymously do weird petty things to screw up the bigoted person’s life. Nor do they attempt to deal with individual bigot’s one at a time. They appeal to the broader population social conscience and attempt to isolate the bigots. Rather than this authoritarian crap.
I’m having flashbacks to when FTB was advertising the Festival Of Dangerous Ideas, when an Islamofascist from Hizb ut-Tahrir was going to give a talk “justifying” honour killings. I left several comments in the Thunderdome and elsewhere trying to get the Horde to get behind the push to have this bloke thrown out of FODI, but to no avail. PZ wasn’t interested either. I realized then that these people were full of shit, and were engaging in virtue-signalling and nothing else.
So the only difference between ‘the left’ and ‘the right’ now is marginally better spelling?
Maybe a slight differential in quality of logical thunking? ;-)
i just listened to her on youtube. She is funny. I must be missing something.
And all this hysterical energy (please note Deliberate Irony for the mentally paralyzed) is being drained away from any substantial progressive goals.
Deranged, self-righteous bullying. And active alliance with the worst reactionaries on earth. THAT’S ‘leftist activism’ today!
“It is not peaceful protest to grab up all the free tickets to a gig so that no one else can go!”
Because it isn’t peaceful or because it isn’t a form of protest? I could understand if you meant the latter, but I don’t understand if you mean the former.
OT but a refreshing palate cleanser: I just read the Vulture RuPaul interview, where he talks about mocking gender, laughing at identity, and how discovering that it’s all a hoax made him decide to be a shape-shifter.
Eli @ 12 – both. Sure, it’s literally “peaceful” in the sense that it’s not literally violent, but “peaceful protest” isn’t quite that literal. Peaceful protest implies protest that doesn’t materially harm anyone in any way. That’s not the case with what these bullies did.
Okay, so say that I stand outside of my local grocery store with a sign that says (correctly) that a large part of the fishing industry uses slave labor. That’s it – just standing there with a sign. And say that one person decides that they aren’t going to buy fish anymore as a result. Was that not a peaceful protest? Because in this hypothetical I’ve taken money away from the fishing industry, which is a form of material harm.
More like, if you stole all the q numbers so noboby could buy any fish?
(I frequent my local fish shop where you take a number.)
Rrr, that’s not what Ophelia just said. “Peaceful protest,” she said, “implies protest that doesn’t materially harm anyone in any way”: “doesn’t,” not “can’t” or “doesn’t necessarily” or anything like that. We’re not dealing with modal logic here, in other words. If it DOES harm someone, then it’s NOT peaceful – that’s the premise we’re working with.
So, yes or no? Is my hypothetical anti-fish protest peaceful or is it not peaceful?
And, incidentally, I’m not asking so that I can jump in and defend anybody in this particular case. For all I care, you can continue to pile on the anti-Kate people to your heart’s content. I’m asking strictly because I’m curious about the way that people construe the word “peaceful” these days.
Well this is a silly way to try to learn more about the way that people construe the word “peaceful” these days. I was responding to the fatuous claim about a “peaceful protest,” so I’m not the one who chose the word “peaceful.” It was already chosen, and I was responding to the choice.
And yes – I consider standing outside a store with a sign with information on it peaceful protest. It’s as Rrr says: that’s not physically preventing anyone from buying fish.
On the other hand, as a matter of rhetoric – if the “information” on the sign is a pack of lies, then I wouldn’t grant that protest the honorific of “peaceful” even though it would fit the literal meaning.
Rhetoric is the issue here, not literal meanings. The goon on Twitter was trying to wrap that bullying act in the flag of altruistic social justice protest, and I’m saying it’s no such thing.
C’mon, waving signs is a pointless form of protest… inconveniencing people gets attention. Malheur wasn’t a peaceful protest (maybe not even a protest) but lunch counter sit-ins were, and those did actually harm (asshole business owners) and inconvenience lunch patrons.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m always anti-bully, but “peaceful protest” cannot be defined in such a way that it ends up meaning a protest that will have no particular effect.
“Rhetoric is the issue here, not literal meanings.”
Yes, precisely: on both sides, rhetoric is the issue here. In my opinion, it’s important to know why people either would or would not use the word “peaceful” to describe this particular protest. If your position is strictly that “the goon on Twitter was trying to wrap that bullying act in the flag of altruistic social justice protest, and I’m saying it’s no such thing,” then that tells me something about the way that you use the rhetoric of peace – namely, it tells me that you’re paying attention to the connotations of the word and not just its denotations, perhaps even to the point of allowing the latter to take priority over the former.
Which makes sense! I mean, words do have both connotations and denotations, and one of the connotations of “peaceful” is “legitimate” or “not problematic” or “unobjectionable.” And so, yes, if someone thought that this protest was problematic, I can totally see why that person would want to dispute the use of the word “peaceful” purely on connotative grounds.
And, again, I’m not pro-goon. This is not a sneaky way for me to eventually end up saying, “But aha! This proves that the goon was right!” It’s just a way for me to try to understand the expanded meanings of the word “peaceful.” For example, I’ve seen people say that lying is not a peaceful action – libertarians in particular are fond of that idea, in my experience. And, given libertarian principles, I can kinda see where they’re coming from. But I still don’t quite understand the thing you said about material harm. Which harm are you referring to? The fact that the show was empty, or the fact that the donations weren’t made, or both, or something else? Because I had thought that I’d understood when I made up the fish thing, but evidently I didn’t understand.
Listen up, you jackass goon, you can have your damn opinion, but you don’t have the right to decide for ME what I direct my attention towards. Or did I miss something where adults get to tell other adults how they spend their free time? Is that a thing that we’re doing now? If so, I have some ideas about what you can go do with yourself.
Also, being in the USA, I might never have heard of Kate Smurthwaite without goons like you trying to silence her. So in a way, thanks. I’ll be following her a lot more closely in the future, now.
see Eli Streisand effect?
Now for the next kiddy book please.
The fact that people who wanted to attend didn’t attend because all the tickets were gone, and the fact that Kate did her act for seven people. The donations probably came to more rather than less, so it’s not that.
But also just the fact that it’s yet another example of people on the left shutting down other people on the left over what ought to be principled disagreements. Then again that’s not what I meant by material harm, so it doesn’t go in that column.
Oh, yeah, that’s probably why I was confused. I thought that you’d meant material as opposed to, like, emotional or psychological or something. Think I’ve got it now, though, it was more the “relevant” or “important” sense of the word or something like that. Okay – thanks!
No, that is what I meant – tangible or measurable harm as opposed to feelings. Actual people were actually prevented from going to the actual show, and Kate had a much smaller audience than she should have. That’s material in a way that ruffling people’s feelings (for good or ill) isn’t. That’s what I meant, at least, whether it’s true or not.
I hope Kate S. does another show and sells tickets at the door. so they can’t pull this stunt again.
Fraud would just be a better way of putting it.
Students arranged for this comedian to come and entertain them and make them think. It cost someone money; travel expenses, etc., and the plan was to ask for donations at the door as a charity fundraiser rather than a set ticket price to offset costs, so that they would be doing good and so that none of the financially-challenged students would have problems attending.
And the ticket-grabber cheated everyone.
It’s as if the grocery store was selling fish to benefit the local food bank, and instead of standing outside with a sign, the protester snuck in the back door and threw the fish into the trash bin in the middle of the night.
I’m not sure what the harm really was, other than harming their sense of superiority and rightness. This is more like the waving signs bit – if people (lunch patrons) are inconvenienced because they are unwilling to sit next to people of color? That is not the fault of the protestors. In this case, the people simply did a normal daily activity – sit at a lunch counter – and no one was actually harmed by that action. Any harm that occurred was the direct result of their own actions to create a stink about someone sitting in a chair that was designated “whites only”.
In other words, not harm from the protestors at all. It’s more like if a protestor was at a Trump rally, and that caused one of the supporters to punch himself in the face, giving himself a bloody nose. Would that mean that the protestor harmed the supporter? No one (here) would suggest that, though I am sure Trump would be happy to trumpet that idea.
Eli, I think a closer analogy would be if your fish shop protester reserved all the stock the shop had, and then never showed up to pick it up. The fish spoil, the owner makes no sales and the people that wanted to buy it go without. In a literal sense, that could be considered peaceful in that there was no physical harm, however I consider it wilful blindness to overlook the fact that the protest method boils down to ‘lying to cause financial harm’.