February 19, 2016

The UW-Madison swastika incident.

This morning I'm reading about an incident that took place on campus last month, on January 26th. It's gone viral overnight after a student put up a Facebook post (now removed) showing this picture of the door in a UW dorm and expressing the view that if there had been an equivalent anti-black incident, "the campus would mobilize" and "professors would bring it up in lectures."



The Facebook post led almost immediately to a response from campus officials — "Statement on Sellery Hall incident":
University Housing and the Division of Student Life responded to this incident immediately, providing support to the targeted students and identifying the perpetrator. After investigating, we notified the Sellery Hall community via email and organized a discussion and support group, in keeping with the context of the situation and appropriate protocols.

When a bias incident occurs, our first priority is to respond immediately to the community most directly affected....
That's the explanation for why we hadn't heard about it yet from university officials. Of course, nothing prevented the students from reacting and speaking however they wanted. The Facebook post is one such reaction — interestingly, it's a reaction not to the incident itself, but to the absence of reaction to it.

The UW official response continues with an invitation "to attend a Town Hall on Anti-Semitism on Tuesday, Feb. 23, at 7:30 p.m. at Gordon Dining & Event Center as we discuss actions that will continue to address intolerance and hate."

I'm frustrated by the absence of reporting on the question of the motive for putting this stuff on the door. It so often seems to be the case that perpetrators of incidents like this are not expressing their own feelings of hate but trying to make people think that there are haters and that the problem of hate is an emergency that must get attention now. Which was this? Or is there something else that could have happened? — I'm wondering as I wade through this obscure passage in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
The student [who wrote the Facebook post] said she was upset that students campuswide hadn't been told about it, and that the university wasn't using it as an opportunity to educate students about why taping hate symbols on a Jewish student's door isn't a harmless "prank."

"You do not expect to wake up and see this," Greg Steinberger, executive director of the University of Wisconsin Hillel Foundation for Jewish student life, said during the news conference. But he said he thought the university had responded appropriately.

The student whose door was covered with swastikas also wrote about it on Facebook, calling it an "insensitive joke/prank gone wrong by two people who had no idea what they were doing," according to WISC-TV in Madison.

The victim wrote that he believed anti-Semitism should be addressed. However, he also didn't want to "demonize two guys that I have gotten to know well and who were not cognizant of how anti-Semitic their actions were."
It's possible that it was just a stupid idea of how to be outrageously funny. That's a problem, but it's not the problem of anti-Semitism. It's fine to have a "Town Hall on Anti-Semitism," nevertheless. But responses to problems should be keyed to what the problem actually is. I still don't know. Pranks that incorporate transgressive speech?

95 comments:

Big Mike said...

Convince me that those images were not put up by a Jewish student to create a bogus anti-Semitism incident.

MadisonMan said...

Something similar happened in my dorm waaaay back when, and you know what? The students handled it themselves without guidance (think: Pinkbelly), although I think maybe an RA was involved afterwards.

Net result: The person -- today he would be called a "victim" -- who was pranked knew the dorm floor had his back, and the perp knew he had overstepped.

That is how free speech should work.

Now, instead, the UW has an entire set of Deanlets drawing a huge salary to deal with such things. Students are infantilized; Administrators don't think they know how to react properly.

MaxedOutMama said...

I have really, really hard time believing that two college students don't understand the significance of swastikas and Hitler pics.

Which leaves me with the idea that this was some sort of inside joke or something, or a type of frat prank/hazing ritual, since the student involved is excusing the perps to an extent.

Rick said...

Big Mike said... [hush]​[hide comment]
Convince me that those images were not put up by a Jewish student to create a bogus anti-Semitism incident.


Someone admitted doing it, accepted punishment, and it wasn't the student whose door was "pranked".

Wince said...

Too soon, huh?

Bob Ellison said...

Lawrence from Office Space reinforces MadisonMan's point here.

buwaya said...

People pay attention to this stuff?
Haven't they anything better to do?
If boy A insults boy B, they should sort it out between themselves. Maybe the school can help by providing a ring and boxing gloves.

Browndog said...

I don't know about sticker swastikas, but I know that poop swastikas are a hate crime against blacks.

There is a lot of anti-antisemitism on today's college campuses, but you only see it "reported" on web sites like Campus Reform and College Insurrection.

It would not surprise me in the least that many college students don't know anything about Hitler. Give it another 10 years and I'd bet most would think Hitler isn't a real person; it's just a euphemism for a "non-liberal".

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Hm. I wonder if it's possible to remove some scotch taped photocopies, throw them in the trash and move on with one's life.

rhhardin said...

Nobody cares about swastikas or nooses or any of the knee-jerk offense symbols. It's PC acting.

Sal said...

Finally, campus administrators have important work to do.

Ann Althouse said...

"Convince me that those images were not put up by a Jewish student to create a bogus anti-Semitism incident."

The strongest evidence that it's not is that nobody promoted it. It stayed quiet for weeks.

jr565 said...

Oh my god! There were swastikas on the door! Clearly that was meant for the black students. Racism is ripe on campus. The KKK was probably running around campus, better stay away from the windows!
Was there also a swastika made with feces? That's the dead giveaway that the campus is racist straight up.
We need to get black lives matter there, and have the campus president fired!

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

One time my daughters (maybe 7 and 5 at the time), who were super into The Sound of Music, drew a bunch of swastikas on the driveway with sidewalk chalk, and then drew a circle around and a line through them, to express their disapproval of Nazis. Except they kind of forgot to draw the circle/line thing around a couple of them. I'm glad that a klaxon didn't sound to alert the entire neighborhood that there was a family of white supremacists living in the white house on the corner.

Ann Althouse said...

Also, one photo of Hitler is sideways and another is upside down. That's not how to make it look threatening. There's no lasting mark, like a swastika drawn with a Sharpie. Just easily removable xeroxes taped on.

exhelodrvr1 said...

Nazi Lives Matter!!

buwaya said...

Right, here's a job for retired people to justify their pensions. They get to patrol student housing and enforce housekeeping rules, take down un-PC posters, suppress drunkenness, keep the boys off the girls and vice versa.
Two birds with one stone.

Peter said...

Perhaps Althouse is pointing out that even if all minorities are supposed to be protected on campus, some minorities are more protected than others?

While that's surely true, if the correction offered is amping up to the full SJW-outrage response, I'd guess most of us would just as soon leave the matter uncorrected.

Wince said...

Hitler blowing his swastika pinwheel.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

"If it weren't for fake hate crimes, there would be no hate crimes at all."

-Glenn Reynolds


John Henry

traditionalguy said...

Crazy in Wisconsin. Hold on to your Reichmarks boys, the Fuhrer will rise again.

Is this a drug problem or just too much time on their hands?

Virgil Hilts said...

Just a plug for http://www.fakehatecrimes.org/

chickelit said...

The perpetraitors are using anti-Walker and anti-Trump tactics.

Adamsunderground said...

Steep and unpredictable are the wages of mislaid celery

rhhardin said...

Overreaction is the feminine side of politics.

rhhardin said...

The ironic cross.

Sebastian said...

"It so often seems to be the case that perpetrators of incidents like this are not expressing their own feelings of hate but trying to make people think that there are haters and that the problem of hate is an emergency that must get attention now" It does seem that way. Though this particular instance may be more prank than hoax, I invite you to think deeply about why it does.

rcocean said...

I hope UW Jews avoid bookstores because some of the WW 2 history books have swastikas and/or Hitler picture on the cover.

Triggering.

rcocean said...

I agree with RH. All the College PC is a result of having women in power.

Dan Hossley said...

If the so-called victim didn't take offense, why should anyone else? Ah! the speech code was violated...must call the police...must raise awareness in the community...must have meetings that lead to discussions..in order to assuage the feelings of the precious little snowflakes.

Sean Gleeson said...

I would guess that the offending students were foreign; most persons raised in American culture would inherently know that Hitler iconography is not a funny prank, but in some other parts of the world, Hitler is regarded more casually. (See the "Hitler's Cross Cafe" in Mumbai, for instance. We would naturally recoil at using this murderous warmongering dictator as a goofy mascot for an eatery, and yet Little Caesars is a national chain of pizzerias here.) This would explain how the victim attributes the prank to mere ignorance rather than malice.

Balfegor said...

RE MaxedoutMama:

I have really, really hard time believing that two college students don't understand the significance of swastikas and Hitler pics.

I dunno, "Nazi" has cheapened into a joke nowadays, now that it gets used for anyone and everyone who offends anyone else. I feel like there was a kid of arc through the 20th century, where in the 40's, 50's, and even 60's, Hitler was a real person, and Nazis were real people (who gave us moon rockets!), and then sometime in the 70's and 80's (or perhaps later -- the 90's?) they became secular stand-ins for the devil. And then in the 00's, po-faced horror over any invocation of the Nazis became faintly ridiculous, like peasants throwing fits over the evil eye. You can only compare the President of the US to Hitler so many times before people stop caring.

College students today were born in the late 90's. Their entire lives, people around them have compared the state of Israel to Nazi Germany and trifling "microaggressions" to yellow stars for Jews. I think it's genuinely possible that "Hitler" and "National Socialism" have lost their mystic resonance for their generation. Hitler might as well be the Corsican Ogre, the Antichrist Bonaparte. The magic is gone.

mccullough said...

So some SJW is making a big deal out of an inappropriate joke/prank that was resolved to the satisfaction of the student who was pranked and I he pranksters.

Sounds like a seminar on not overreacting and inflaming passions is needed. Also a seminar on how people with useless grievance studies degrees or professorships blow shit out of proportion in order to feather their own nests because it's better than working for a living.

You can understand part of Trump's appeal.

Rae said...

Liberal college towns are hotbeds of racism, sexism and violence.

rcocean said...

Funny how a picture of Stalin or the hammer & Sickle isn't a PC crime but Hitler is.

Points of view.

Fernandinande said...

FWIW, I know a guy who uses swastikas in his art, and another who has a big collection of Nazi stuff. Shocking, I know. The first is a Navajo, the second a Jew.

He says he was initially shocked and a bit frightened, but after he found out who did it he didn't feel threatened.

"I don't think they realized what they were posting, but once they saw my reaction to it, it kind of changed their perspective on things," Walters tells 27 News. "I don't excuse their actions, but I think that the way they've reacted to it has been very appropriate and it's met my terms or standards for sincerity."

holdfast said...

The victim wrote that he believed anti-Semitism should be addressed. However, he also didn't want to "demonize two guys that I have gotten to know well and who were not cognizant of how anti-Semitic their actions were."

He concluded that the students were punished "and have learned a great deal since."


Sounds like the "victim" is a mensch and the issue has been dealt with.

The Godfather said...

We are surrounded by anti-Semitism today, but it has nothing to do with Hitler and the Germans. It has to do with radical Muslims and their apologists and left-wing opponents of Israel. I think it's fine to educate young people about where anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry can lead. For a generation or two after the Holocaust, most civilized Westerners eschewed anti-Semitism, even though before WWII it was taken for granted; now, anti-Semitism is beginning to be "respectable" again.

Jim Howard said...

Nazis shot my father in WWII. He was severely wounded and died young at age 56.

Nazis are real people to me and my siblings.

I agree with Balfegor. These days the cry-bullies on campus use 'Nazi' the way a 6 year old uses 'poo-poo head'.

To me it is Holocaust-denial to throw the word 'Nazi' around in the context of American politics or campus life.

Patrick Henry was right! said...

I would assume that this is another fake hate crime with no charges to be filed against the faker and no media firestorm of outrage against the fanning of division. In other words, business as usual.

Bay Area Guy said...

I take a backseat to nobody in my opposition to the Nazis. They were an evil, aggressive, militaristic cult in WWII, with Stalin and the Communists running a very close second.

But, let's get real.

Some attention-seeking college goof wanted to make a few waves on his dorm floor.

Is this really a big deal? No, of course not. It's the imperfect analog of the Left -- who do make a federal case out of every, tiny, miniscule slight they can find. They have a lot of enablers on the College Campus to promote these phony grievances.

This doesn't even account for the fact , noted above, that even money says its a fake "hate-crime" by some Leftist designed to make us all aware about something or other.

So, I would have my college age son, smack the guy, once on the head, for being a putz, and then move on from this. Nothing really to see. The Nazis aren't coming back.

jr565 said...

Next time I see someone with a Che Guevara t shirt I'm going to pull the outrage card. And won't rest till the person wearing it is kicked off campus, the president fired and all lefties forced to undergo sensitivity training. Because Che was a dick. And reminding me of his dickishness is a hate crime triggering me to feel sad/mad. Something must be done.

Balfegor said...

jr565:

Next time I see someone with a Che Guevara t shirt I'm going to pull the outrage card. And won't rest till the person wearing it is kicked off campus, the president fired and all lefties forced to undergo sensitivity training. Because Che was a dick. And reminding me of his dickishness is a hate crime triggering me to feel sad/mad. Something must be done.

Aren't all the cool kids going around with Himmler T-shirts these days? Political mass murder is the hot new thing.

jg said...

99% likely hoax, 1% doesn't matter anyway, since the vast majority of society would be happy to mob-beatdown any lone skinhead (which is all you'll find in a college) actually bullying anyone.

Peter said...

"Nazi" has cheapened into a joke nowadays"

Nazis, in the popular imagination, have become comic-book villains; Hitler has become the Joker.

Nonetheless, all-too-real, contemporary Nazis can be viewed on ISIS propaganda videos.

jg said...

printer. how lazy. for real effect, carve with a knife, spraypaint, animal blood ... something more passionate and committed than scotch tape.

jg said...

blame me not reading. already an admitted 'prank'. glad we can joke about it, now.

trumpintroublenow said...

Looks like a hollow door ... Should be easier to carry around than a mattress.

n.n said...

The Nazi swastika is a quintessential reminder of the "final solution" advocated by the pro-choice cult, discrimination under class diversity schemes, and selective exclusion with constructed congruences established by the "=" movement, ruled by The Supreme Court, and celebrated by Obama.

Sigivald said...

Convince me that those images were not put up by a Jewish student to create a bogus anti-Semitism incident."

Well, the way the student didn't raise the furor and has said it was a stupid, mistaken prank by friends that are known to not be anti-Semites kinda undermines the hypothesis ...

Freeman Hunt said...

Based on what the door owner said, it sounds like two of his friends made a bad joke. Now they know. Everyone is fine. The images weren't put up out of hatred. Why have speakers and meetings?

Ron Winkleheimer said...

I don't want to excuse the behavior, but I would point out that WWII ended 71 years ago and teaching kids actual history seems to have fallen out of favor. And the BDS Movement on campus often practices anti-antisemitism, so how exactly are college kids supposed to know what is acceptable and what is reprehensible?

Sal said...

Nothing has changed in Germany

rhhardin said...

Goering was head of the humane society, the Tierschutzverein.

Jon said...

"Swastikas blurred by 27 News"

Really? I mean, REALLY?

And I'm supposed to take these nitwits seriously?

These people make the Victorians seem like a bunch of wild-eyed crazies.

The whole world has gone insane.

Etienne said...

Anytime someone puts a picture of Hitler on their door, then a beating to within an inch of their life is the appropriate response. If the bastard dies, c'est la vie...

Lewis Wetzel said...

"Anytime someone puts a picture of Hitler on their door, then a beating to within an inch of their life is the appropriate response."
So much for free speech.
Why doesn't this Hitler = hate speech work both ways?
If someone says that you are like Hitler, it's not a compliment if you are Caucasian and especially not if you are German. Nazis are about the only people you can hate and kill, these days. Nazis wish they had the good press of Muslim terrorists.

Balfegor said...

Re: Jon:

"Swastikas blurred by 27 News"

Really? I mean, REALLY?

And I'm supposed to take these nitwits seriously?

These people make the Victorians seem like a bunch of wild-eyed crazies.

The whole world has gone insane
.

The swastika is a mystic symbol of terrible occult power. You know, all that Black Sun Ahnenerbe stuff. Nazi alchmeists completed the Great Work before the fall of the Reich, and so contrived that if mortal eyes behold the swastika in the correct occult configuration, it binds their souls to facilitate the resurrection of Hitler. Why do you think they ban the swastika in Germany today? They're just being careful!

holdfast said...

Back in college I somewhat unloaded on a dorm mate who was displaying the WW II Japanese flag (the one with the stripes, not the current red dot) in his dorm room. I had just been learning about the Japanese treatment of POWs and the massacre of Canadian soldiers who attempted to surrender at Hong Kong. I essentially told him that the flag was the Asian equivalent of the Swastika (in hindsight, something of an exaggeration) and that he was an asshole for displaying it (I still think that's true). Anyway, he took it down and we stayed friends.

Static Ping said...

It is quite possible that college kids do not have an appropriate understanding of Hitler/Nazis. The list of things that I was ignorant of going into college was long. (Hitler was not on that list.) That's one of the reasons to go to college: to learn things, especially things you would not normally be exposed. That's why the current college environment is so toxic; things are being suppressed for the sake of PC.

It also has to be understood that what is appropriate is often situational. Close friends will often tolerate or even celebrate pranks that they would find highly offensive from strangers. However, bringing those pranks into a public square drags other people into the fun. If the pranksters had tossed all this stuff over the victim's bed as opposed to the front door, this probably would have been less of an issue.

walter said...

Sure they weren't referring to Walker? My public sector buds were invoking that label during the siege.

Bill Peschel said...

I would have given that hate crime a C-. Lazy use of symbols and indifferent placement diminished the impact of the threat. No one but a freshman would take this hate seriously.

Balfegor said...

RE: holdfast:

Back in college I somewhat unloaded on a dorm mate who was displaying the WW II Japanese flag (the one with the stripes, not the current red dot) in his dorm room. I had just been learning about the Japanese treatment of POWs and the massacre of Canadian soldiers who attempted to surrender at Hong Kong. I essentially told him that the flag was the Asian equivalent of the Swastika (in hindsight, something of an exaggeration) and that he was an asshole for displaying it (I still think that's true). Anyway, he took it down and we stayed friends.

The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force still uses the Imperial Naval Ensign -- the one with the red disc with the rays -- as their flag.

traditionalguy said...

The hagencruz or reversed cross was an occult symbol that Nazi cult felt contained a spiritual power. At Rallies they swung around tens of thousands of them on banners, and the crowds were literally enchanted Into a near sexual orgasm when Hitler spoke .

We called that his Charisma. But it was much more. So by all means blur them out.

Balfegor said...

Re: traditionalguy

Hakenkreuz. Hook-cross, I think.

RichardJohnson said...

When I was a college freshman, I wore a brown shirt on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. I wanted to see if anyone noted the correspondence of a brown shirt on such an anniversary. No one said anything.

Etienne said...

So much for free speech.

Free speech doesn't mean you won't have to pay. Free speech is always the precursor to extreme violence.

James Pawlak said...

Free speech (And academic freedom) should allow such postings. They should also allow a very public release of the name(s) of those posting such items.

David said...

The problem is that UW has students so clueless that they do not realize that putting swastikas and Hitler poster on a Jew's door is a problem.

Gusty Winds said...

Isn't Madison a protected bastion of left wing pro-Muslim anti-Semitism?

mccullough said...

Richard Johnson,

The SA was effectively dissolved in 1934, four years before Kristallnacht. They were superseded you the SS, who didn't wear brown shirts.

Maybe you should have had the double lightning bolt on your shirt.

Alex said...

Honestly as a Jew this kind of stuff does not bother me. What bothers me is Syed Farook and his like. You know, actual violence.

Alex said...

David said...
The problem is that UW has students so clueless that they do not realize that putting swastikas and Hitler poster on a Jew's door is a problem.

2/19/16, 2:42 PM


Why should anti-semitism be uniquely punished? All hate-crimes are bad right? Including hate speech against white people.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

The shocking thing is that residence hall rules allow items to be taped to the woodwork. Plastic sticky tape either pulls the finish off the woodwork, or leaves stickum on the surface, or both.

Back in the 60's folks could take a joke. I remember some of the guys at USAFA rolled a big rock in front of Micky Roth's door one Easter morning.

wildswan said...

n.n.
You said: "discrimination under class diversity schemes, and selective exclusion with constructed congruences established by the "=" movement"

To what does this refer? Is this biodemography in some phase unknown to me? Is there an article? a book? What, what, what, what?

n.n said...

wildswan:

Discrimination under class diversity schemes is self-documenting. I presume your question refers to constructed congruences. That is a general reference to application of pro-choice or selective (i.e. unprincipled) exclusion; but, specifically to the normalization of politically favorable orientations, behaviors, associations, etc., while selectively excluding others. They could have supported rejection and tolerance where possible, but instead chose to establish selective exclusion as a precedent.

n.n said...

Alex:

All hate-crimes are bad right?

The premise of class crimes is that a majority is less vulnerable to suffering fear, hate, and discrimination. This premise is based on a social construct that deprecates individual dignity, and principles, in favor of "skin color"-oriented classifications, and reactive doctrines (e.g. pro-choice). While it may be valid, its realization nurtures prejudice, and dreams of redistributive and retributive change. It is counterproductive to realizing universal human rights, improving the moral character of humanity, and mitigating progressive corruption and dysfunction in human communities.

Freeman Hunt said...

In college I knew two guys, one white and one black, who thought it was hilarious to go to busy, public areas, usually the line outside the cafeteria at mealtimes, and pretend to get into heated arguments that culminated in both of them yelling outrageously offensive things at each other.

YoungHegelian said...

The guys involved work it out among themselves. It's all cool.

They went down to the local beer hall afterwards, stood around the piano & sang the Horst Wessel Lied,*** & fell into a drunken stupor while plotting to take over Bavaria. They're good now.

*** link NSFW --- It goes to youtube, but your company's firewall may flag it as "hate speech". Trust me, I've sold firewalls & their content filtering add-ons for 20 years. I know what they look for.

cacimbo said...

What is the skin color, ethnic heritage, gender and religion of the perpetrators? When the perpetrators are white that information is in the first paragraph if not the headline.

wildswan said...

n.n. Thanks - although in a way I still don't understand. Is this legal jargon commonly used in affirmative action cases to avoid acknowledging the (functional) use of racial preferences and quotas?

The reason I ask is that it seems so evident to me that "selective exclusion" is a double edged sword; it seems like segregation under another name; and it seems to be a doctrine that once entrenched could be and will be used to exclude blacks.

And a constructed congruence - is that altering the required test scores or altering the test so that a designated number of minorities pass with the "same" (constructed congruence) score as the majority?

gadfly said...

Don't we all love the Wisconsin University System and the constant stepping on the First Amendment. But an ex-lumber town named Menominee in northwestern Wisconsin, next to the Red Cedar River, became a national disgrace when Professor Jim Miller posted a picture of his favorite character in his favorite television series on his office door. He immediately attacked by the UW-Stout Campus Police Chief who mostly gives out parking tickets and she is a bit stout.

The poster showed Captain Mal Reynolds (Nathan Killian) of the Firefly-class spaceship Serenity giving a lecture: "You don't know me, son, so let me explain. If I ever kill you, you'll be awake. You'll be facing me. And you'll be armed."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iAOtkpFGhc&feature=plcp

ken in tx said...

People Who don't know the difference between the Maltese Cross, the Iron Cross and das Hakenkreuz are almost as annoying as those who don't know the difference between the Stars and Bars and the Confederate naval ensign.

BTW, there was a Hitler Cafe in Seoul, Korea when I was there. A green swastika on a street map in Korea indicates a Buddhist temple.

Lewis Wetzel said...

RichardJohnson said...
When I was a college freshman, I wore a brown shirt on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. I wanted to see if anyone noted the correspondence of a brown shirt on such an anniversary. No one said anything.

I once went into a friend's bar (the friend's last name was "Donelly") on Saint Patrick's Day and ordered a Black & Tan. I waited for the response. There was none. She was proudly Irish Catholic and had never heard of the Black and Tans.
Kids these days.

Lewis Wetzel said...

"The SA was effectively dissolved in 1934, four years before Kristallnacht. They were superseded you the SS, who didn't wear brown shirts."
Sanders once said that he got into politics because of the example of the German elections of 1932, when Hitler was elected chancellor.
The guy is a moron. When Hitler was elected he already had a private army, the SA, active in at least two countries, Germany and Austria. Hitler became popular and politically powerful, and then he was elected, not the other way around.

n.n said...

wildswan:

While there is a functional use of racial preferences and quotas, their use is illegitimate in that they mask latent racism or ulterior motives, and specifically they endorse class diversity schemes rather than acknowledging diversity as a property of individual human life.

The pro-choice doctrine has been applied to diverse policies in order to enact selective exclusion. It is best known for selective child policy (e.g. reactive parenthood), but the doctrine of selective principles has been applied to a diverse spectrum of moral, scientific, legal, and social issues.

Constructed (e.g. selective) congruences or radial equivalence may be used to justify discrimination through reduction of merit. It has also been used to force equality between normal and transgender orientations, and notably these congruences have been carefully constructed to exclude orientations and behaviors based on prejudice or opportunism rather than principle. A principle other than pro-choice or selective principles, which cannot and are not replicated consistently.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Yale historian Timothy Snyder has just published a book Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.
When I grew up, in the 70s and 80s, the usual explanation for the evil of Hitler and the Nazis was that they needed a scapegoat, an 'other' to take the blame for Germany's economic and political problems. Snyder's argument is that race was the first justification for everything the Nazis did. A powerful military and a brutal, oppressive state did not use a race war to justify itself, rather the race war required a powerful military and a brutal state. According to Nazi philosophy, competition between the races was at the foundation of what it meant to be human. It explained all of human history, and all of the relations between human beings. Nothing else was important but race war. Race was to the Nazis what economic class was (and is) to the commies.

YoungHegelian said...

@Terry,

. According to Nazi philosophy, competition between the races was at the foundation of what it meant to be human. It explained all of human history, and all of the relations between human beings. Nothing else was important but race war. Race was to the Nazis what economic class was (and is) to the commies.

"The Reich is but a vessel. It is the Volk that fills it" ---- Mein Kampf

I'm so glad that Snyder has written a tome that explains this clearly for yet another generation. National Socialist doctrine is really adamant & clear on racial struggle as the engine of history, but one almost never hears that stated clearly.

I guess the post-war right was just too uncomfortable with emphasizing the racial aspect of National Socialism since it seem to come too close to their own racial policies back home, & the Left didn't want to have pointed out that replace "racial struggle" with "class struggle" & Stalinism & Nazism looked remarkably alike.

wildswan said...

n.n. Thanks but

still trying to understand because in studying current eugenics - biodemography - I sometimes come across something like what you are saying and can't understand it then either.

Is it Jurgen Habermas's ideas?

Gahrie said...

I guess the post-war right was just too uncomfortable with emphasizing the racial aspect of National Socialism since it seem to come too close to their own racial policies back home,

What policies were those. and how were they worse than the Jim Crow laws instituted and enforced by the Left?

Gahrie said...

Next time I see someone with a Che Guevara t shirt I'm going to pull the outrage card.

There are two teachers at the high school I teach at that have Che posters in their room. No one seems to understand why I am pissed about it.

Laura said...

Hypothetical: What should the campus response be to an undergraduate's loss of multiple senior pictures, stored out of view in her desk and never recovered? Mixed floors, international quad, possessive boyfriend, and petty roommate?

Laura said...

Add to that hypothetical: The Nordic student attracted the stares of Muslim students in the lower cafeteria and the ire of her Jewish roommates, who could be careless with locking the dormitory door. Where did the pictures go?

William said...

The truth is that nearly 100% of this supposed racist/sexist/anti-x stuff is posted by students and "soft-subject" faculty trying to cause trouble on campus. They are a bunch of juvenile delinquents and should never be taken seriously until there is a pattern of this behavior and clear and convincing evidence of something more than feelings being hurt.

Sharc said...

Sigivald said:

"the student didn't raise the furor"

Godwinian slip.