I’d planned for my next post to be a book review, but someone sent me a link to the video below because it perfectly captures everything I’ve been saying in this series of posts. The college professor in this video is a walking, talking (but barely-thinking) example of the postmodernist mindset described by Stephen Hicks in Explaining Postmodernism.
Now, set aside whatever opinions you have on illegal immigration, illegal immigrants, build the wall, don’t build the wall, etc. That’s not the issue here. The issue is how a college professor – an actual COLLEGE PROFESSOR at Cal State University – deals with logic, evidence and language.
As Hicks described in his book, postmodernists view everything in terms of The Oppressed and The Oppressors. When the speaker cites statistics showing that illegals commit federal crimes at a higher rate than the legal population, the professor immediately tries to blame it on “structural racism” – a term I’d wager a week’s pay she can’t define in fewer than 250 words, most of which will be gobbledygook.
But the really fascinating/horrifying part comes later, when the professor says that by citing these statistics, the speaker is engaging in conversation that is “oppressive.” There it is again, exactly as Hicks describes in his book. According to postmodernists, free speech is oppressive if the wrong people are allowed to speak freely.
(I always think of that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “Come see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I’m being repressed!”)
But speech isn’t just oppressive, ya see:
Speaker: So that means that you, a faculty member at an American public university, paid for by taxpayer dollars, are conflating speech with violence.
Professor: Yes. Speech can be violent.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the wackadoodle belief that leads to the cancel culture. If we don’t like what you’re saying, you’re committing violence – so we can shut you up to protect ourselves from the violence. (Or in the case of antifa, we can engage in true, physical violence and then claim we were merely protecting ourselves from your speech “violence.”)
Putting her postmodernist-induced lunacy further on display, the professor wants the speaker to ask the audience if they feeeeel violence has been committed on them. Do we rely on logic, proof, some kind of reasonable evidence actual violence has taken place? No, according to the professor, if people feeeeel violence has occurred, then violence has occurred.
It doesn’t require much imagination to see where this lunatic logic leads: people don’t like what they hear, they decide they feeeeel violence has committed, and they respond with actual violence. We’re already seeing that happen.
The speaker responds like a person with an actual functioning brain:
No I haven’t asked, because no violence has been committed on you, because violence is not a subjective feeling. Violence is an objective fact. I can objectively gauge whether or not someone has become violent.
Objectivist vs. subjectivist mindset. Again, exactly as Hicks describes in his book:
Objectivist: if it’s true, I’ll believe it.
Subjectivist: if I believe it, it’s true.
The speaker goes on:
And I would say to you, as a faculty member at a taxpayer-funded university, this is the foundation of liberal education. If you cannot understand that there is a difference between speech and violence, you don’t understand anything that undergirds the liberal arts or liberal education. And that is a real shame. And I say this with all respect and with great distress for our universities, if our teachers don’t understand the difference between ideas and violence, between speech and violence, then they are in no position to educate the next generation of Americans.
But they are educating the next generation of Americans, some of whom go on to work at Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. That’s why the cancel culture is invading those platforms. And that’s why Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are starting to suck.
The red meat studies used one such review system, known as GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluations). In properly prioritizing clinical trials over observational research, GRADE necessarily pushed epidemiology off its pedestal, and this caused the GRADE team of 40-plus researchers from more than 10 countries to conclude that reducing your intake of meat is very unlikely to make you healthier.
The nutrition establishment went ballistic. Even before publication of the Annals papers, 14 heavyweights in the field signed a letter demanding a preemptive “retraction” of the review. All the signers were members of a group called the True Health Initiative that advocates for a plant-based diet.
Well, of course they went ballistic. That’s what The Anointed do when people dare to disagree with them. I’ve mentioned before that whenever I need a perfect example of The Anointed in action, Dr. David Katz is happy to oblige. Here’s a recent tweet from Katz:
He’s cheering the vegan wackos at PCRM for asking the federal government to shut down scientific debate. Just take a moment to wrap your head around that.
Scientists disagree with each other all the time. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s how science advances. The researchers who produced the meat won’t kill you study aren’t accused of faking their data. They’ve simply reached a conclusion the vegan wackos don’t like. So PCRM is demanding the Annals of Internal Medicine be forced to retract the study. Here’s a direct quote from the petition:
AIM’s advertisement does far more than cause financial harm—it also promotes physical harm to those who follow its dangerous advice. The Physicians Committee therefore requests that FTC permanently prohibit AIM from disseminating, or causing the dissemination of, the advertisement at issue and require AIM to issue a public retraction of and corrective statement regarding the advertisement.
Anyone who’s looked at the studies on meat and health knows the conclusions are all over the place, as I recounted in this post. If Katz and the PCRM don’t know that, they’re scientific illiterates. I’m pretty sure they’re not scientific illiterates (although the failed NuVal system designed by Katz ranked sugar-laden soy milk as far healthier than a chicken breast), which means when they say there’s overwhelming evidence that meat causes disease, they’re just flat-out lying.
How do they justify lying about known facts and trying to silence other researchers who point out those known facts? Simple: by adopting the postmodernist mindset I’ve been writing about in this series of posts. According to postmodernists:
There is no objective reality.
Reason and logic are irrelevant.
Feelings are more important than reason.
Language is not a tool we use to discern the truth; it’s a weapon to be wielded.
It’s perfectly acceptable to label those who disagree with you as racists, sexists, etc. – the charges need not be true, merely effective.
In the hands of the “bad” people, free speech can cause actual harm.
To restore “true freedom,” freedom of speech must be withdrawn from those who support the oppressors, even unwittingly.
If you’re a supposed scientist but believe people shouldn’t kill animals to eat them, adopting the postmodernist philosophy must be quite liberating. You no longer have to deal with those annoying facts. You no longer have to consider studies showing that eating meat doesn’t cause heart disease or cancer. Because if you feeeeeel that eating meat is wrong, then by gosh, it’s wrong … and any lies you have to tell or any accusations you have to make to scare people away from meat are now perfectly acceptable. After all, you’re saving the oppressed animals – and if that requires silencing the people who disagree with you, well, that’s okay. The greater good is at stake.
For another example of the mindset at work, here’s a tweet by Kevin Bass, a big fan of the “cholesterol kills!” theory:
Goodness. I was under the impression that diet and health science was far from settled, with doctors and PhDs disagreeing with each other all the time. But apparently Kevin Bass (and only Kevin Bass) is so gifted and brilliant, so familiar with all the research and all its implications, he is 100 percent certain that his opinion on the matter is 100 percent correct – and anyone who disagrees with him should be charged with a felony and tossed in prison.
Yes, I’m sure that’s how science advances — and by demanding censorship and prison terms for those who disagree with him, Bass has proven himself a very good scientist indeed.
Like many people infected with the postmodernist mindset, Bass isn’t exactly a paragon of consistency. He likes to remind people in his tweets that by gosh, he has a degree in this field, and those of us who don’t have no business arguing with him. We must bow down before the degree.
So it was interesting when I found myself debating him on censorship and whether Facebook banning a low-carb diet group is simply a matter of “editorial focus.” (Facebook, of course, has no “editorial focus.” There are groups for vegans, carnivores, Jews, Catholics, atheists, Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, communists, etc., etc. They have no more of an “editorial focus” than the bookstore on Amazon.)
I reminded Bass my degree is in journalism, which included studying topics like censorship and editorial focus. So by continuing to argue with me, he was violating his own rule about bowing down before people with degrees. I paraphrased one of his own tweets, something to effect that the opinions he forms based on Google searches don’t equal my degree.
He responded by blocking me. That’s what happens when you confront postmodernists with arguments they can’t answer.
Here’s Bass proving he’s a major Basshole by tweeting a reaction to the news that Dr. Berry’s house was damaged by fire:
Once again, I was under the impression the “Cholesterol Kills!” theory was far from proven. Quite a few people, myself included, have had “high” cholesterol for decades, yet show zero calcium on a coronary calcium test. But Kevin Bass is 100 percent sure he’s 100 percent correct that cholesterol causes heart disease, and anyone who disagrees is causing people to die … so it’s good if that person’s house burns.
But that’s typical of the postmodern cancel culture. If you disagree with me, you are automatically an evil person, you deserve any bad thing that happens to you, and you deserve to be silenced. Only the opinions I agree with should be allowed in any public forum.
The subjectivist philosophers who taught that logic isn’t relevant and feelings matter more than reason didn’t create illogical people who are immune to facts, of course. They’ve always been around. More than 2,000 years ago, Aristotle explained that some people make decisions based on reason and logic, while others make decisions based on emotions.
What the subjectivists did was convince people that making decisions about what is and isn’t real based on feeeeelings is correct. The postmodernists then took that ball and ran with it, providing a rationale for assuming anyone who disagrees with you is evil and must be silenced – because if that’s what you feeeeel, it must be true.
Back in the day, universities served as a bulwark against such childish thinking by demanding mental rigor from their students. Then the postmodernists invaded the universities. Now childish thinking is encouraged by many professors. It’s a “different way of knowing,” ya see.
If you spend any time debating issues on social media (or in real life), you’re going to run into more and more of these people. Given everything we’ve covered in this series of posts, I’d suggest keeping a few things in mind when dealing with people infected by postmodernism and the cancel culture:
Logic, facts and reason will bounce off their heads like little rubber bullets.
Sure, cite the facts. Make the logical argument. Just remember that you’re dealing with people who aren’t the least bit persuaded by logic or evidence. Yes, they’ll occasionally cite a study or whatever, but don’t expect them to analyze it logically or even understand it. They’re not citing the study as part of a logical argument. They’re simply firing a weapon. If you point out a huge flaw in the study, or point out that the study actually negates their argument, they don’t care. That just means the weapon misfired. They’ll drop it and pick up another one.
If need be, they will simply make @#$% up.
Debate a postmodernist, and they’ll throw out all kinds of “facts” that simply aren’t true. Again, we’re talking about people who don’t believe in objective reality and who view words as weapons, not tools to discern the truth. So don’t be surprised when they tell you hundreds of studies have shown that meat causes colon cancer! If you challenge the “facts” – say, asking them for some kind of evidence – they’ll probably ignore the challenge and attempt to change the argument.
Sooner or later, they will start insisting you’re an evil person.
Dennis Prager wrote a column in which he opined that people adopt radical-left positions because it makes them feel morally superior while excusing them from dealing with hard realities. I agree. It’s easy-peasy to give a speech excoriating adults for not dealing with climate change to your satisfaction … without having to deal with the reality that we cannot possibly get rid of fossil fuels (yet) without crashing the world’s economies. It’s easy-peasy to support Free Health Care and Free College For All! … without having to explain how a country already running trillion-dollar deficits will pay for the “free” stuff. It’s easy-peasy to insist that people shouldn’t eat meat because innocent animals are killed … without having to deal with the reality that countless critters are killed to raise crops.
Because postmodernists feel free to jettison reason and ignore those little annoyances called “facts,” they can simply adopt a position that feeeeels morally superior, then assume anyone who doesn’t support the position must be evil … as opposed to being a realist.
So don’t be surprised when you make what you think is a logical, realistic argument, only to have your debate opponent announce that you’re obviously a racist, sexist, animal-murderer, planet-killer, tool of the big bad meat industry, or whatever. That’s the Alinsky strategy at work: if you can’t debate your opponent on the facts, change the argument by calling him a racist instead.
Don’t be offended, and don’t get sucked in. The label actually has nothing to do with anything you said or any position you’ve taken. Trust me, the postmodernist decided you’re an evil person before the debate even began. They don’t care about facts, and the childish belief in their own moral superiority is all they really have.
Which leads to …
If you’re feeling mischievous, you can have a helluva lot of fun by forgoing logic and reason and arguing exactly like they do.
I admit it: I do this now and then, just to watch a postmodernist’s head explode. Remember, you’re dealing with people whose belief system is based entirely on a feeeeling of moral superiority. You’ll never come up with a logical argument to shake that belief. You’ll never convince the postmodernist you’re not an evil person, just someone who deals with reality and facts.
So don’t bother. Don’t go on defense – that’s what they expect. Instead, go on offense and explain why the postmodernist’s position makes him a bad person. You don’t have to actually believe the postmodernist is a bad person, you understand. You just have to take that position for the fun of it. Then stand back and watch the meltdown.
For example: I’ve had vegans tell me that by eating meat, I’m contributing to global warming — and I’m animal murderer too. I reply that by eating soybean burgers, they’re responsible for countless critters being killed in soybean fields that require chemical fertilizers that are ruining the planet, then those soybean burgers are trucked all over the country in gas-guzzling trucks, thus contributing to global warming and further ruining the planet.
That part is factual. Then we move to the fun part, which would be something like …
Man, I can’t believe the way you vegans are okay with killing all those poor critters in the farm fields and ruining the planet just so you can feel good about yourself by eating a soybean burger. You should be ashamed of yourself. You clearly don’t care about animals or the environment like I do.
BOOM! The head explodes.
If you choose to borrow my method, just keep hammering home how evil the postmodernist’s behavior or position is. Don’t relent. Ignore any protestations or offers of evidence that no, no, no, the postmodernist is a Good Person. Do what they do: keep insisting they’re horrible people. Sooner or later (probably sooner) you’ll be blocked. Consider that a victory in a fun little game and go on with your day.
Unfortunately, it’s not a game to scientists who’ve been hounded out of their jobs for disputing the postmodernist narrative. For my final post in this series, we’ll look at a book that deals with that subject.
Since this series dealt with the postmodernist beliefs inspired by the subjectivist philosophers — and I happened to have my two best friends in town for a visit while writing it — we quickly whipped up our version of The Philosophers Song by Monty Python.
Campuses across the United States have become ground zero for silencing free speech. Universities founded to encourage diversity of thought and debate have become incubators of intolerance where non-sanctioned views are silenced through bullying, speech codes, “free speech zones,” and other illiberal means.
The quote above is from The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, by Kirsten Powers. Several conservative and libertarian authors have written about the cancel culture, but I wanted to get her perspective because she’s a liberal who worked for Bill Clinton. She says exactly what I hoped she’d say: true liberals should be fighting this nonsense. Throughout the book, she refers to the postmodernists who want to stifle speech as the illiberal left.
At the end of our previous episode, we saw this quote from postmodernist bigwig Herbert Marcuse, describing the policies needed to (ahem) restore freedom of thought:
They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc. Moreover, the restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions.
When Marcuse wrote those words in 1965, few people could imagine universities imposing “new and rigid restrictions on teachings” to somehow promote freedom of thought. After all, the first big campus protests in the 1960s weren’t about Vietnam; they were about the rights of students to engage in free speech.
Somewhere in hell, Marcuse is laughing himself silly. The big protests and riots on campuses today are certainly about speech, but the students are protesting and rioting because other people are saying things they don’t like — and the students want them to shut the hell up.
Evergreen made headlines in May 2017 when biology professor Bret Weinstein drew student protests and threats of violence for refusing to leave campus on the “Day of Absence.” Weinstein had told the director of a campus multicultural office via an email that he was not leaving campus on a day when white students and faculty were asked to voluntarily leave campus.
He was surrounded by a student mob and yelled at for refusing to participate, with the crowd chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Bret Weinstein’s got to go.”
Weinstein was forced to hold class off campus because he was told that campus police could not protect him.
Those quotes don’t capture just how triggered Weinstein’s students were. This video should do the trick:
A self-described “deeply progressive” professor was hounded, threatened and called a racist because he politely refused to (ahem) “voluntarily” segregate himself on the basis of his race. Let’s see if we can follow the logic here:
I will not be identified by my race = he’s a racist!
So decided the twenty-something mental midgets at Evergreen college. When Weinstein attempted a civil conversation, the students cursed him, shouted him down, and told him to JUST SHUT UP AND LISTEN!
In postmodern-speak, this is known as “engaging in a dialog.” Or as Powers puts in her book: The illiberal left doesn’t desire debate; it wants a monologue on one side and silence on the other.
The labels the students apply to Weinstein in the video are absurdly illogical. But remember, we’re talking about students whose minds have been polluted by postmodernists. As we learned from Professor Stephen Hicks in his book Explaining Postmodernism, the postmodernists believe that:
Reason and logic are irrelevant.
Language is not a tool we use to discern the truth; it’s a weapon to be wielded.
It’s perfectly acceptable to label those who disagree with you as racists, sexists, etc. – the charges need not be true, merely effective.
In the hands of the “bad” people, free speech can cause actual harm.
To restore “true freedom,” freedom of speech must be withdrawn from those who support the oppressors, even unwittingly..
Add it all up, and you have the prescription for the cancel culture. The appeal among college students is understandable. Sure, you’re a twenty-something who’s never actually accomplished anything. Sure, you’ll probably end up working at a coffee bar and living in your mom’s basement after you receive that oh-so-useful degree in Gender Studies or Art History. But in the meantime …
YOU get to elevate yourself in the eyes of your peers by declaring other people to be racists, sexists, homophobes, or whatever – and best of all, you’re not even required to present actual evidence supporting the charge!
YOU get to decide which speech is allowed and which speech is harmful to the oppressed and must be shut down.
YOU get to decide who should be fired, shouted down, de-platformed, etc. – because of course, YOU are qualified to make those decisions.
If you succeed in getting someone fired or de-platformed, YOU are elevated again in the eyes of your peers as a brave warrior because you “took a scalp” – while risking absolutely no harm to yourself.
It’s all about YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU!
After absurdly targeting him as a racist, the students took Weinstein’s scalp, thus depriving themselves of the opportunity to learn from a professor who was, by all accounts, a brilliant and dedicated educator. The only upside to the incident is that the following year, freshman enrollment at Evergreen dropped by 50%. Good to know there are still some college-bound students who want to be educated instead of indoctrinated.
It’s symbolic that Weinstein taught science — evolutionary biology, to be specific — because if there’s one area of academics you’d expect to be immune to postmodernist nonsense, it’s the hard sciences. Try telling a true scientist that there’s no objective reality, that logic and evidence have no relevance, or that feelings are more important than reason. A true scientists would laugh out loud.
Well, that used to be the case. Nowadays, thanks to the cancel culture, the true scientist might just keep quiet to avoid committing career suicide. Here’s a recent tweet from Weinstein himself:
The facts of human biology at odds with the entire history and diversity of life on Earth asserted by postmodernists are part of what’s often called The Narrative – a set of beliefs you must not question. You are required to simply accept them as true:
The only differences between males and females are the genitalia — all other observed differences are the result of social conditioning.
Male and female are nothing more than artificial social constructs — there are actually 57 genders. Or 112 genders. Or no genders. It depends on who you ask.
If people belonging to officially recognized victim groups are underrepresented in certain academic or professional fields, the only possible explanation is deep-seated bias by the oppressors.
Humans are causing the planet to become dangerously warm … uh, or if the planet isn’t exactly warming, the climate is still changing in some kind of bad way … and this has only been happening recently and is the result of capitalism.
If you are foolish or brave enough question any of these beliefs, the postmodernists will do everything in their power to destroy your reputation, your career and your life. As exhibit A, I present Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard. When asked why there are fewer women professors in fields like mathematics and astrophysics, Summers listed several possibilities … but made the ginormous mistake of suggesting that gender differences in aptitude may play a role. For this offense against The Narrative, he was forced to resign.
It didn’t matter that Summers was merely speculating that a known fact may be involved. IQ researchers have known for decades that while males and females have the same average IQ (100), there are far more males at both extremes of the bell curve. In other words, compared to females, males are several times more likely to be dunces or geniuses. Given this known fact, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are more males in fields requiring a genius IQ.
But according to The Narrative, if fewer women choose a career in astrophysics, the only acceptable explanation is bias. So they took Summers’ scalp.
You’ve probably heard the statistic that 97 percent of scientists agree that humans are warming the planet. What you probably haven’t heard is that 1) the vast majority of those scientists aren’t climate scientists, and 2) the 97 percent figure is drawn from the scientists willing to express an opinion. Two-thirds of the scientists (including climate scientists) declined to offer an opinion.
Hmmm, now why might that be the case? Perhaps because scientists know if they dispute The Narrative, they’ll find themselves out of work? (Kind of like what happened to the scientists who publicly disputed the Lipid Hypothesis.)
What a great technique for manufacturing a consensus. First, you make it clear that any scientist who dares to disagree will be targeted for extinction. Then you ask scientists to offer an opinion. Lo and behold, almost all the scientists who offer an opinion agree with you! Ladies and gentlemen, we have a consensus, so that proves we’re right!
I don’t care whether you buy into the man-made-global-warming theory or not. If you care about science, you shouldn’t want dissenters (or DENIERS!) silenced. You shouldn’t want we have a consensus! to put a stop to inquiry and debate. (By the way, we have a consensus was one of McGovern’s justifications for pushing the dietary guidelines on the public.)
But surely scientists are still scientists, and even if they keep quiet about their findings, they still respect the scientific method, right? Well, that depends on whether the (ahem) “scientist” is a postmodernist or not. Back in this post, I wrote about the nonsense coming from fields like gender studies. Academics in these departments write papers declaring (in tortured English) that all differences between males and females are socially constructed. Amazingly, people buy into that nonsense.
Years ago, I mentioned to a female co-worker that when my sister was an adolescent, she was unusually strong for a girl. (A couple of boys who picked on her learned that the hard way.) Thanks to my co-worker’s postmodernist college education, she took offense and demanded, “What do you mean FOR A GIRL?!”
“I mean she was unusually strong for a girl. You do realize males are much stronger on average than females, don’t you?”
“That’s because men are encouraged to exercise their bodies and women aren’t.”
Yes, she actually believed that. It’s as logical as saying men are taller on average because they’re encouraged to grow taller, or that men have deeper voices on average because they’re encouraged to have deeper voices. It’s also as logical as saying our roosters and our hens behave differently because of social conditioning.
True scientists can point to many reasons (higher testosterone, to name just one) that males are stronger, faster and more aggressive on average than females. So how to the postmodernists deal with these proven biological differences?
Simple. They just just declare that 1) reason, logic and the scientific method are sexist and can therefore be dismissed, and 2) they have discovered “different ways of knowing.” Thanks to these “different ways of knowing,” the postmodernists can declare that male and female are simply social constructs, not biological realities, and that if a biological male declares himself to be a female, well by gosh, he IS a female — and anyone who says otherwise is a hateful bigot who must be silenced.
This has created the absurd situation where biological males are competing in women’s track events, setting all kinds of new records, and going home with all the medals … because to admit that biological males have an inborn advantage would violate The Narrative.
Biological males who identify as transgender women are wreaking havoc in women’s rugby in Great Britain.
Women’s rugby referees in England are quitting their jobs over the inclusion of the male athletes, according to a report in The Sunday Times this weekend.
“Being forced to prioritize hurt feelings over broken bones exposes me to personal litigation from female players who have been damaged by players who are biologically male. This is driving female players and referees out of the game,” one referee told the British paper under the condition of anonymity.
Of course the referee would only speak under the condition of anonymity. If she expressed her concern for women getting bashed by biological males without being anonymous, the postmodernist outrage mob would be all over social media, calling her a bigot, a hater, a transphobe, etc., etc., and demanding her head on a platter.
Ironic, isn’t it? Because they will never, ever allow mere facts to get in the way of The Narrative, feminist gender-studies professors have created situations where biological males are kicking the crap out of females.
Perhaps you don’t care about any of this stuff. Perhaps you don’t care if biological males are allowed to compete as females, or if scientists who dispute the man-made-global-warming theory lose their livelihoods.
You should care. Because sooner or later, the postmodernist cancel culture will pick a target that matters to you. The Narrative keeps growing and expanding into ever-more-ridiculous arenas. It will soon include (if it doesn’t already) no-questions-allowed beliefs such as:
Raising animals for meat causes global warming
The amount of meat we’re allowed to eat must be limited to save the planet
In our previous two episodes, we began examining the mindset of people who feel entitled to silence others by quoting from Explaining Postmodernism by philosophy professor Stephen Hicks. Let’s jump in with another quote:
Postmodern accounts of human nature also consistently emphasize relations of conflict between those groups; and given the de-emphasized or eliminated role of reason, post-modern accounts hold that those conflicts are resolved primarily by the use of force, whether masked or naked; the use of force in turn leads to relations of dominance, submission, and oppression. Finally, postmodern themes in ethics and politics are characterized by an identification with and sympathy for the groups perceived to be oppressed in the conflicts, and a willingness to enter the fray on their behalf.
So here’s what we know about postmodernists so far:
Unlike the objectivist/Enlightenment thinkers, they believe logic and reason are irrelevant and don’t teach us anything about reality – because there is no objective reality
They believe feelings are more important than reason
They are monolithically far-left in their politics and are drawn to subjectivism because Marxism doesn’t fare well under any objective analysis
They believe reason and logic are tools of the oppressors
They believe many of us who employ reason and logic are unwitting tools of the oppressors
They believe their mission is to enter the fray on behalf of the oppressed
It shouldn’t surprise us that people with these beliefs have a rather different view of the purpose of speech and the value of freedom of speech. But before we get into that, let’s return to the book, where Hicks lays out the objectivist arguments for freedom of speech:
In contemporary language, here are the elements of those arguments that are still with us:
Reason is essential for knowing reality (Galileo and Locke).
Reason is a function of the individual (Locke, especially).
What the reasoning individual needs to pursue knowledge of reality is, above all, freedom—the freedom to think, to criticize, and to debate (Galileo, Locke, and Mill).
The individual’s freedom to pursue knowledge is of fundamental value to the other members of his society (Mill, especially).
A corollary of this argument is that when we set up specialized social institutions to seek and advance our knowledge of the truth—scientific societies, research institutes, colleges and universities—we should take special pains to protect, nurture, and encourage the freedom of creative minds.
Freedom of speech – the freedom to reason, criticize and debate – is how we eventually get to the truth. That’s how John Stuart Mill believed The Marketplace of Ideas benefits individuals and society as a whole. Postmodernists have a slightly different view:
Language is not about being aware of the world, or about distinguishing the true from the false, or even about argument in the traditional sense of validity, soundness, and probability. Accordingly, postmodernism recasts the nature of rhetoric: Rhetoric is persuasion in the absence of cognition.
Using language as a tool of conflict resolution is therefore not on their horizon. In a conflict that cannot reach peaceful resolution, the kind of tool that one wants is a weapon. And so given the conflict models of social relations that dominate postmodern discourse, it makes perfect sense that to most postmodernists language is primarily a weapon.
Now we’re getting to the crux of the matter. Viewing language as a weapon rather than as a tool to get to the truth leads to very different kinds of language:
This explains the harsh nature of much postmodern rhetoric. The regular deployments of ad hominem, the setting up of straw men, and the regular attempts to silence opposing voices are all logical consequences of the postmodern epistemology of language. Stanley Fish, as noted in Chapter Four, calls all opponents of racial preferences bigots and lumps them in with the Ku Klux Klan. Andrea Dworkin calls all heterosexual males rapists and repeatedly labels “Amerika” a fascist state. With such rhetoric, truth or falsity is not the issue: what matters primarily is the language’s effectiveness.
Dennis Prager, an affable conservative commentator who has been laughably accused of promoting “hate speech” by the wackadoodle left, recently wrote this in one of his columns:
As I constantly note, truth is a liberal and a conservative value but has never been a left-wing value. The left’s only criterion in determining whether or not to say something is not whether it is true or false but whether it is effective or ineffective.
Hicks continues with the same point:
On this hypothesis, postmodernists need not believe much of what they say. The word games and much of the use of anger and rage that are characteristic of much of their style can be a matter—not of using words to state things that they think are true—but rather of using words as weapons against an enemy that they still hope to destroy.
If you hate someone and want to hurt him, then hit him where it counts. The truth or falsity of the rumors does not matter, and whether those you tell believe you does not really matter. What matters is that you score a direct, damaging hit.
Saul Alinsky spelled out the strategy in his book Rules For Radicals. It can be summarized like this: If you can’t debate your opponent on the facts, change the argument by calling him a racist instead. If racist doesn’t work, you can always try sexist, homophobe, climate denier, animal murderer … whatever lures your opponent into a sidetrack debate he can’t possibly win.
I’m amazed at how many people still fall for this tactic. During the 2016 campaign, Jeb Bush used the term anchor babies in a discussion about whether kids whose mothers sneak across the border just before giving birth should automatically become U.S. citizens. One of the fine, objective news reporters covering the campaign immediately declared (loudly) that anchor babies is an offensive, racist term. Bush fell for it. Instead of ignoring the comment and continuing to debate the actual issue, he ended up arguing with the fine, objective news reporter about whether he was using racist language. Mission accomplished.
I recently had someone try the tactic on me during a Twitter debate. As so often happens in Twitter debates, my opponent felt free to raise challenging questions, which I answered, but simply ignored the challenging questions I asked him. I eventually told him to man up and answer my questions or go away. That drew a response something like this:
Man up?! Do you know how many men have committed suicide because they were told to just MAN UP instead of dealing with their mental-health issues? That phrase has caused more damage to men … blah-blah-blah.
This guy had been insulting me at every opportunity, by the way. He was quite fond of name-calling. But as soon as I suggested he man up, he wanted to sidetrack me into argument about how insensitive I am towards men suffering from mental health issues, as evidenced by my use of man up.
Unfortunately for him, I recognized the tactic and told him if he’s emotionally triggered by the term man up, he’s far too sensitive to be engaged in Twitter debates and should go get some therapy instead … and then man the @#$% up.
But I digress. The point is, postmodernists aren’t actually interested in debate and discussion. They don’t view language as a tool to get to the truth; they view language as a weapon, period. And just like any weapon, it can by wielded by bad people to hurt good people. Yup … they believe engaging in free speech causes actual harm if you say the (ahem) “wrong” things, as Hicks points out:
Postmodernists infer there is no distinction between speech and action, a distinction that liberals have traditionally prized. According to postmodernists, speech is itself something that is powerful because it constructs who we are and underlies all of the actions that we engage in. And as a form of action, it can and does cause harm to other people. Liberals, say postmodernists, should accept that any form of harmful action must be constrained. Therefore, they must accept censorship.
The oppressors have used reason, logic and free speech to harm the oppressed. Therefore, while the oppressed can say anything they choose, the oppressors must be censored to prevent them from causing even more harm. That’s the belief system.
This isn’t some paranoid interpretation. In their excellent book The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt describe how many young people today believe that if they’re exposed to ideas and speech they don’t like, they are actually being harmed. College students (full of the nonsense put in their heads by postmodernist professors) have rioted to prevent conservative speakers from appearing on campus. When asked why they felt justified in resorting to violence instead of just ignoring the speaker, the little snowflakes have given answers like I don’t have to tolerate people who are threatening my very existence!
Yeah, right … someone gives a speech you don’t like, makes arguments you don’t want to hear, and your life is in danger. Goodness, you’re just like Anne Frank, aren’t you? How very important and relevant you are, bravely standing up to those who threaten your very existence. But hey, if that’s what you feeeeel, then it has to be true. So go ahead and riot to prevent someone else from speaking. You’re entitled to defend yourself.
So who gets to distinguish between the oppressors and the oppressed? Who gets to decide who’s allowed to speak freely and who has to shut the hell up? Well, that’s where the fun really begins. Naturally, this wackadoodle belief system has created a stampede of people heading for the nearest door labeled I’m One Of The Oppressed … or the door labeled I’m Exempt From Censorship Because I Support The Oppressed.
If you can’t squeeze through either door, well, too bad for you … because now it’s okay to prevent you from speaking, lest you harm the oppressed. Delete your Wikipedia page, ban your Facebook group, take down your YouTube videos, suspend your Twitter account … whatever we have to do to stop you from causing actual harm to the oppressed with your bad words.
I began this series of posts by writing about people and groups that have been deleted, banned or otherwise de-platformed on social media sites: Malcolm Kendrick, Jimmy Moore, Uffe Ravnskov, me, a Banting diet group, etc. Perhaps you’re wondering how the twisted logic of it’s okay to censor the oppressors figures into it.
I believe this answers the question:
There you have it. Noakes may not be powerful himself, but he’s a shill for the meat and dairy industries … and by gosh, those industries are powerful. They’re run by powerful, powerful, evil people who oppress innocent little animals! Milking cows is a form of sexual abuse! Hens are rape victims! Meat is murder! And worse, they’re all causing global warming, which will harm the oppressed people in poor countries the most! (We know this is true, because Walter Willett told us so in the Eat-Lancet manifesto.)
As I pointed out in my speech Diet, Health and The Wisdom of Crowds, The Anointed like to believe that anyone who opposes their Grand Plans is either evil or stupid. It doesn’t matter if neither label makes any actual sense.
A lefty buddy of mine from my days in L.A. once commented that conservatives are CLIMATE DENIERS because we’re more interested in protecting oil-company profits than saving the planet. Being a logical sort, I pointed out that he’s single with no kids, while I actually have kids who will inhabit the planet long after I’m gone. I also have zero investments in the oil business. Was he actually suggesting I care more about Exxon’s profits than my children’s future well-being? How does that make any sense? But of course, logical arguments bounced off his head like little rubber bullets.
Remember, as far as the postmodernists are concerned, there’s a good chance you’ve been duped into being an unwitting tool of the oppressors. So if you promote a diet based on meats and eggs, it doesn’t matter that you’re not intentionally supporting the evil meat and dairy industries … you’re still engaging in speech that helps them to oppresses the innocent animals, so it’s okay to censor you.
If you’re a CHOLESTEROL DENIER, you’re undermining the attempt to scare people away from animal foods, which means you’re encouraging further oppression of the innocent animals — not to mention overheating the planet which will harm people in poor countries — so it’s okay to censor you.
If you convince people that grains are harmful, they might end up eating more animals foods instead … which means you’re encouraging further animal murder, cow sexual abuse and hen-raping, so it’s okay to censor you.
In the first post in the series, I asked why the people who support de-platforming don’t just make their own counter-arguments instead of attempting to silence those whose opinions they don’t like. Now you know. They believe that free speech produces an unfair fight in which the powerful (or their unwitting tools) will dominate the oppressed.
They believe that for people (and animals) to be truly free, we must restrict freedom, including freedom of speech. Here’s a quote from Herbert Marcuse, a major influence in the postmodernist movement, describing what must be done:
They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc. Moreover, the restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions.
So if you’re against, say, the expansion of Medicare, you should lose your freedom of speech and assembly. That’s the mentality. Unfortunately, his prescription for restoring freedom of thought through “rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions” is already being filled. I’ll get to that later.
I am oppressed in so many ways. I am oppressed by the patriarchy because I’m a woman. I am oppressed by restaurants that fail to offer a decent range of vegan options.
I am standing up for minorities who haven’t had the necessary education to know what their opinions should be. I have always supported censorship of those who have the wrong opinions.
Those statements are from a Twitter account that’s tongue-in-cheek. Unfortunately, they’re pretty close to what you’ll find written by people who aren’t kidding. Censorship of those who have the wrong opinions is what we’re seeing these days on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc.
In our last episode, we began examining the core philosophy of those who feel justified in de-platforming others. In his book Explaining Postmodernism, philosophy professor Stephen Hicks introduces us to the subjectivist philosophers whose ideas morphed into postmodernism. Unlike the Enlightenment thinkers who emphasized logic and reason (and whose views triggered major advancements in science and technology), the subjectivists insisted that:
Reason and logic are irrelevant because there is no objective truth
Feelings – especially morbid feelings — are a deeper guide than reason
If these ideas had merely kept generations of young philosophers up at night, they would have done little if any harm. Unfortunately, postmodernism eventually infected universities like a virus. And as Hicks explains, it happened largely because Marxism was such a bust.
Before Marxism was actually put into practice, Hicks writes, its proponents believed it was logical and reasonable – darned near scientific, in fact. But reality wasn’t so kind.
In practice the capitalist nations are increasingly productive and prosperous, with no end in sight. Not only are the rich getting fantastically richer, the poor in those countries are getting richer too. And by direct and brutal contrast, every socialist experiment has ended in dismal economic failure—from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, to North Korea and Vietnam, to Cuba, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. Morally and politically, in practice every liberal capitalist country has a solid record for being humane, for by and large respecting rights and freedoms, and for making it possible for people to put together fruitful and meaningful lives.
The crisis for the far Left was that the logic and evidence were going against socialism. Put yourselves in the shoes of an intelligent, informed socialist confronted with all this data. How would you react? You have a deep commitment to socialism: You feel that socialism is true; you want it to be true; upon socialism you have pinned all your dreams of a peaceful and prosperous future society and all your hopes for solving the ills of our current society. This is a moment of truth for anyone who has experienced the agony of a deeply cherished hypothesis run aground on the rocks of reality. What do you do? Do you abandon your theory and go with the facts—or do you try to find a way to maintain your belief in your theory?
We know the answer. If you feeeeel that socialism is correct but reason and evidence say otherwise, you of course adopt a philosophy that says reason and logic are irrelevant, while what you feeeel is true.
If values and politics are primarily a matter of a subjective leap into whatever fits one’s preferences, then we should find people making leaps into all sorts of political programs. This is not what we find in the case of postmodernism. Postmodernists are not individuals who have reached relativistic conclusions about epistemology and then found comfort in a wide variety of political persuasions. Postmodernists are monolithically far Left-wing in their politics.
And guess where many of those postmodernists ended up working?
With the collapse of the New Left , the socialist movement was dispirited and in disarray. No one was waiting expectantly for socialism to materialize. No one thought it could be achieved by appealing to the electorate. No one was in a position to mount a coup. And those willing to use violence were dead, in jail, or underground. What then was to be the next step for socialism? In 1974, Herbert Marcuse was asked whether he thought the New Left was history. He replied: “I don’t think it’s dead, and it will resurrect in the universities.”
And it certainly did.
The dominance of subjectivist and relativistic epistemologies in academic philosophy thus provided the academic Left with a new tactic. Confronted by harsh evidence and ruthless logic, the far Left had a reply: That is only logic and evidence; logic and evidence are subjective; you cannot really prove anything; feelings are deeper than logic; and our feelings say socialism.
If you adhere to a philosophy that says reason and logic are irrelevant, you of course have a very different view of what a proper education entails:
In education, postmodernism rejects the notion that the purpose of education is primarily to train a child’s cognitive capacity for reason in order to produce an adult capable of functioning independently in the world. That view of education is replaced with the view that education is to take an essentially indeterminate being and give it a social identity.
Postmodernist professors aren’t interested in teaching your children how to think. They’re much more interested in (ahem) teaching your children what to think. They want your children to have exactly the same “correct” beliefs the postmodernists themselves have – and one of those beliefs is that reason itself is a tool of the oppressors.
Many deconstruct reason, truth, and reality because they believe that in the name of reason, truth, and reality Western civilization has wrought dominance, oppression, and destruction. “Reason and power are one and the same,” Jean-François Lyotard states.
Postmodernism then becomes an activist strategy against the coalition of reason and power. Postmodernism, Frank Lentricchia explains, “seeks not to find the foundation and the conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.”
The purpose of education isn’t to teach you how to examine the evidence and think your way into logical, reasonable conclusions. Nope … because reason itself is oppressive, a tool of the powerful, and is thus a barrier to meaningful social change.
So when you make a logical, reasonable argument in favor of free speech, the postmodernists aren’t at all impressed. In fact, they’ll likely just interpret your logical, reasonable argument as proof that you’re aiding and abetting the oppressors – although it might not be your fault. You might simply be an unwitting tool for the oppressors. As Hicks explains later in the book:
We are constructed socially, the postmoderns argue, and we are, even as adults, not aware of the social construction that underlies the speech we are engaging in. We might feel as though we are speaking freely and making our own choices, but the unseen hand of social construction is making us what we are. What you think and what you do and even how you think are governed by your background beliefs.
So in order to prevent you from being an oppressor – unwitting or otherwise – it’s okay to tell you to shut up. We’ll get to the “shut up” part next time.
Back in December of 2018, the Wikipedia page about Fat Head was targeted for deletion. It only survived after I started poking the founder of Wikipedia on Twitter and he finally looked into the matter and intervened. This was after Wikipedia articles about Jimmy Moore, Uffe Ravnskov, Malcolm Kendrick, etc., etc., were targeted for deletion.
In May of 2019, Facebook banned a group called Banting 7-Day Meal Plans, which had 1.5 million members. After an uproar, the group was eventually reinstated.
In August, Jimmy Moore’s Jimmy Rants videos disappeared from YouTube, supposedly for violating community standards. It took some doing, but Jimmy finally got the suspension removed.
Also in August, we learned that Google (which owns YouTube), has altered its search algorithms to make it difficult to find diet and health sites deemed unorthodox. At one time, Google’s search rankings were a direct reflection of popularity. If your page and my page were both relevant to the search term and your site had more visitors, your page appeared above mine in the search results. Not anymore. Now Google employees monkey with the algorithm to steer people to the “correct” information – or more accurately, to steer them away from the BAD, BAD IDEAS.
Mercola.com, operated by Dr. Joseph Mercola, is one of the most trafficked websites providing alternative views to medical orthodoxy. If I were researching statins, I would certainly read several of the numerous essays questioning statin use and the cholesterol theory of heart disease. Essays at Mercola.com usually provide references to medical studies. Personally, since Dr. Mercola sells supplements and I am a supplement skeptic, I read his essays—like I read all medical essays—with a grain of salt.
Dr. Kelly Brogan is a psychiatrist who has helped thousands of women find alternatives to psychotropic drugs prescribed to treat depression and anxiety. In her book, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives, Brogan reports that one of every seven women and 25 percent of women in their 40s and 50s are on such drugs.
For their unorthodox views, Dr. Brogan, Dr. Mercola, and others like them are treated as medical heretics. Dr. Brogan and Dr. Mercola have documented how a change in Google’s search engine algorithm has essentially ended traffic to their websites.
Welcome to the brave new world of “de-platforming” ideas The Anointed don’t like. And it’s not just happening to people who disagree with The Anointed on diet and health — not by a long shot. If you write or say something that offends the sensibilities of The Anointed, there’s a good chance your Facebook group, or YouTube Account, or Twitter account or whatever will be suspended or banned.
If you have a large following and you really piss off The Anointed, they’ll try to destroy your career. They’ll demand bookstores stop carrying your books. They’ll go after advertisers who buy ad time on any TV shows where you appear. If you’re scheduled to give a speech, they’ll try to get it canceled – through threats of violence, if necessary. The message – often stated explicitly – is this: you should not be allowed to spread your harmful ideas to others, so we’re justified in silencing you.
I’ve written about why The Anointed are hostile to free speech several times before (this post includes links to a series), but let’s back up and ask some deep, philosophical questions, such as WHY DON’T THEY JUST MAKE THEIR OWN COUNTER-ARGUMENTS?! WHAT THE @#$% IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!
There’s plenty wrong with these people, and it begins with their core philosophy, which, unfortunately, many of them acquired in universities — you know, those supposed centers of open inquiry and freewheeling debate and discussion.
To explain how The Anointed operate, I’ve quoted from The Vision of The Anointed by Thomas Sowell, Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. They’re all great books. I hope you read them.
But to understand the core philosophy of people who feel justified de-platforming those whose “bad” opinions they don’t like, let’s turn to a philosophy book that I’ve only mentioned briefly: Explaining Postmodernism, by a philosophy professor named Stephen Hicks.
I’ve previously summarized the book like this:
Objectivist: if it’s true, I’ll believe it.
Subjectivist: If I believe it, it’s true.
Well, the book goes into a little more detail than that. If you want to know why so many university professors and other members of The Anointed have become big fans of censorship and de-platforming, Hicks explains their mindset pretty nicely.
The book begins by describing what postmodernism seeks to replace: the objectivist philosophy of The Enlightenment, which traces its roots (most of them, anyway) to British thinkers and philosophers: Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes (not British), John Locke and Adam Smith. The objectivists believed that:
Reality exists and is independent of our feelings, wishes, hopes or fears
Logic and reason are how we discern reality
The individual is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others
Not surprisingly, The Enlightenment thinkers emphasized rationalism, the scientific method and individual freedom. To quote Hicks:
Modern thinkers start from nature—instead of starting with some form of the supernatural, which had been the characteristic starting point of pre-modern, Medieval philosophy. Modern thinkers stress that perception and reason are the human means of knowing nature—in contrast to the pre-modern reliance upon tradition, faith, and mysticism. Modern thinkers stress human autonomy and the human capacity for forming one’s own character—in contrast to the pre-modern emphasis upon dependence and original sin. Modern thinkers emphasize the individual, seeing the individual as the unit of reality, holding that the individual’s mind is sovereign, and that the individual is the unit of value—in contrast to the pre-modernist, feudal subordination of the individual to higher political, social, or religious realities and authorities.
And later:
If one emphasizes that reason is the faculty of understanding nature, then that epistemology systematically applied yields science. Enlightenment thinkers laid the foundations of all the major branches of science.
Individualism and science are thus consequences of an epistemology of reason. Both applied systematically have enormous consequences. Individualism applied to politics yields liberal democracy … individualism applied to economics yields free markets and capitalism.
If you enjoy living in a prosperous, technically advanced society with a high degree of individual freedom, you have no friggin’ idea (unless you’ve studied a bit of history and philosophy) of the huge debt you owe to The Enlightenment thinkers.
Today, of course, many college professors tell us we can simply dismiss The Enlightenment thinkers as a bunch of dead white males. The irony (which is no doubt lost on the professors) is that postmodernist ideas were also conceived and promoted by dead white males.
The bigger irony is that the subjectivist philosophy that eventually morphed into postmodernism began as a reaction against The Enlightenment to save faith, tradition and mysticism from the onslaught of objective science. If you deeply believe that X is true but logic and reason say X is false, well then, there’s a simple solution: simply declare that reason and logic don’t matter.
One of the most influential subjectivist philosophers was Martin Heidegger. We’ll quote Hicks for a summary:
Heidegger and postmodernism Heidegger’s philosophy is the integration of the two main lines of German philosophy, the speculative metaphysical and the irrationalist epistemological. After Kant, the Continental tradition quickly and gleefully abandoned reason, putting wild speculation, clashing wills, and troubled emotion at the forefront.
In Heidegger’s synthesis of the Continental tradition, we can see clearly many of the ingredients of postmodernism. Heidegger offered to his followers the following conclusions, all of which are accepted by the mainstream of postmodernism with slight modifications:
1. Conflict and contradiction are the deepest truths of reality;
2. Reason is subjective and impotent to reach truths about reality;
3. Reason’s elements—words and concepts—are obstacles that must be un-crusted, subjected to Destruktion, or otherwise unmasked;
4. Logical contradiction is neither a sign of failure nor of anything particularly significant at all;
5. Feelings, especially morbid feelings of anxiety and dread, are a deeper guide than reason;
6. The entire Western tradition of philosophy—whether Platonic, Aristotelian, Lockean, or Cartesian—based as it is on the law of non-contradiction and the subject/object distinction, is the enemy to be overcome.
Later in the book:
Postmodernism rejects the reason and the individualism that the entire Enlightenment world depends upon.… Postmodernism’s essentials are the opposite of modernism’s. Instead of natural reality—anti-realism. Instead of experience and reason—linguistic social subjectivism
Objectivity is a myth; there is no Truth, no Right Way to read nature or a text. All interpretations are equally valid. Values are socially subjective products.
Declaring reason and logic to be irrelevant of course leads to some interesting contradictions. As Hicks points out, only a subjectivist could believe that:
All cultures are valid and equally deserving of respect, but Western culture is really, really bad
All values are subjective, but racism and sexism are really, really bad
Technology is destructive and bad, but it’s not fair that some people can afford more of it than others
Totally illogical and therefore rather stupid, right? Yes, you’d think so. But ya see, that’s because you — lacking the deep, philosophical insight that logic and reason are irrelevant — don’t understand that by gosh, I can be totally illogical and still be right … while you can be completely logical and still be wrong. That’s what the postmodernists believe.
So what does this have to do with why The Anointed consider it acceptable and perhaps even necessary to de-platform anyone who disagrees with them?
I don’t want this to be a mega-post, so we’ll get to that next time.
