Amia Srinivasan’s specialty, it seems to me, is making sense of moral ambivalence: detecting, dissecting, and sometimes defending its reasonability, even in the face of unavoidable and urgent decisions.

[“Knot” by Anni Albers]

In a new piece at the London Review of Books, she turns her attention to the tangle of issues surrounding student protests, free speech, and academic freedom.

It begins with the matter of signing open letters:

An open letter​ is an unloved thing. Written by committee and in haste, it is a monument to compromise: a minimal statement to which all signatories can agree, or – worse – a maximal statement that no signatory fully believes. Some academics have a general policy against signing them. I discovered that was true of some of my Oxford colleagues last year, when I drafted and circulated an open letter condemning Israel’s attack on Gaza and calling for a ceasefire. Some, like those who are in precarious employment or whose immigration status isn’t settled, have good reasons for adopting such a policy. Others understandably don’t want to put their name to something that doesn’t perfectly represent their views, especially when it might be read as a declaration of faith. I always cringe at the self-importance of the genre: though open letters can sometimes exert influence, stiffly worded exhortations hardly suffice to stop states, militaries, bombs. And yet, a ‘no open letters’ policy can serve as a convenient excuse when one is hesitant to stand up for one’s political principles.

Srinivasan has signed several open letters about Gaza, and recently signed an open letter committing her to “an academic and cultural boycott of Columbia University”, owing to how it handled student protestors. Then:

In April​ I was asked to sign a letter opposing the University of Cambridge’s investigation into Nathan Cofnas, a Leverhulme early career fellow in philosophy. A self-described ‘race realist’, Cofnas has written widely in defence of abhorrently racist – particularly anti-Black – views, invoking what he claims are the findings of the science of heredity.

She shares her many reservations about signing the open letter, but also her reason for ultimately signing it:

Do we think that students should be able to trigger investigations into academics on the grounds that their extramural speech makes them feel unsafe? Do we want to fuel the right’s sense of grievance towards the university, when their minority presence within it is owed to the robust correlation between education and political liberalism, not some Marxist plot? Do we want to empower university administrators to fire academics on the grounds that they are attracting negative publicity? Do we think there is any guarantee that a further strengthened institutional power will only be wielded against those whose views and politics we abhor? If we say yes, what picture of power – theirs and ours – does that presume?

But that’s not the end of the discussion, for there’s the question of whether her taking a principled stand is her also being a sucker for her political opponents:

‘free speech’ and ‘academic freedom’ are, for many on the right, ideological notions, weapons to be wielded against the left and the institutions it is (falsely) believed to control, the university most of all… [and] the free-speech brigade has… found justifications for the draconian repression of student protest.

There’s also the question of the extent to which the “free speech brigade” understands how academic freedom and freedom of speech come apart, or how even different considerations in favor of free speech might be in tension with each other:

After signing the letter criticising the investigation into Cofnas, I was written to by someone from the Committee for Academic Freedom, which bills itself as a non-partisan group of academics from across the political spectrum. He asked me whether I might consider signing up to the CAF’s ‘three principles’. I looked them up: ‘I. Staff and students at UK universities should be free, within the limits of the law, to express any opinion without fear of reprisal.’ ‘II. Staff and students at UK universities should not be compelled to express any opinion against their belief or conscience.’ ‘III. UK universities should not promote as a matter of official policy any political agenda or affiliate themselves with organisations promoting such agendas.’ I thought about it for a bit. I’m on board with Principle II, so long as we don’t think that asking staff and students to use someone’s correct pronouns is akin to demanding they swear a loyalty oath. Principle I is problematic, because it doesn’t register that academic freedom essentially involves viewpoint-based discrimination – that indeed the whole point of academic freedom is to protect academics’ rights to exercise their expert judgment in hiring, peer review, promotion, examining, conferring degrees and so on. And Principle III would prevent universities from condemning, say, Israel’s systematic destruction of universities and schools in Gaza, which I think as educational institutions they are entitled to do.

Discussion welcome, but read the whole thing first.

The post Srinivasan on Open Letters, Protests, Free Speech, and Academic Freedom first appeared on Daily Nous.

Nobody expects The Anti-Zionist Inquisition!

Like their befuddled medieval Catholic progenitors in the classic Monty Python skit, they descend upon you without warning! Amongst their diverse weaponry are surprise, and fear, and ruthless efficiency, and fanatical devotion to the Church of Anti-Zionism! Blasphemers, heretics, and other apostates of the Church literally wee themselves at the thought of being publicly accused of non-anti-Zionism and subjected to their fearsome inquisitorial methods!

Yes, I’m speaking from personal experience, having recently survived a visit from the Anti-Zionist Inquisition on Twitter. What happened is, I noticed that the pro-Palestinian student protesters in the USA, or many of them, were wearing “Covid” masks. So I tweeted about it. Here are some of those Tweets …

I don’t know what I was thinking at the time. I was probably possessed by a Zionist demon! Anyway, the next thing I knew, the Anti-Zionist Inquisition was onto me. Paul Cudenec, an anarchist writer who I’d been friendly with for several years, and a Cardinal in the Church, rushed onto Twitter to demand that I publicly “condemn Zionist genocide,” and answer to charges of potential Zionist sympathies, and otherwise recant my heresy and blasphemy. I didn’t do that for Paul. I don’t do that for anyone. As I noted in a previous column, I don’t condemn things on command, not Hamas, not Zionism, not anything, for anyone. Nor do I perform any other kind of tricks. If that’s what you’re into, get a fucking dog.

My unresponsive anti-authoritarian response did not sit well with Cardinal Cudenec, so he whipped out one of the Anti-Zionist Inquisition’s most feared and most ruthlessly efficient weapons, the Online Character Assassination. “Why is CJ Hopkins now devoting all his efforts to attacking critics of the Israeli genocide?” he shrieked. Could it be that CJ Hopkins is controlled opposition? Is he now, or has he ever been, a Zionist?

The Anti-Zionist faithful answered the call. I was instantly besieged by a swarm of morons demanding that I publicly deny that I’m a Zionist, and affirm that “the Zionists” own the US government, and most other Western governments, and the banks, and media, and … well, I think you’re probably familiar with that narrative.

Wait … no, it’s not what you’re thinking. These people are not anti-Semites! They are anti-Zionists! They have absolutely nothing to do with the idiotic anti-Semitic garbage that, for example, white-supremacist groups like Aryan Brotherhood or Aryan Nations are into, you know, all that garbage about the “Zionist Occupation Government” and how “the Jews own everything,” and “the Great Replacement,” and all that. I am serious. I know some of these people, personally. They are anti-Zionists, not anti-Semites. They just happen to be totally obsessed with the Jews, and Israel, and Zionism, to the point where anyone who refuses to conform to their simplistic worldview and political analysis is perceived as an enemy, or a “Zionist,” or a “Zionist-entity sympathizer.”

So, that was fun, my appearance before the Anti-Zionist Inquisition. Plus, it inspired me to conduct one of my online courses on basic smear-artist tactics, which I offer as a public service whenever the occasion arises.

It also moved me to tweet a few words of advice to my Anti-Zionist Inquisitors, which I will reproduce below for my readers who have the sense (and the luxury) not to be on Twitter.

Ready? OK, here we go …

I hate to bum people out, but repeating the words “Zionism” and “genocide” over and over is not a political strategy. If you want to stop slaughters like the one going on in Gaza someday, get a political strategy. Start with a political analysis. Use a map. Identify who is aligned with what.

For example, which of the Middle East countries on this map are playing ball with the global-capitalist empire? Which aren’t? Which countries has the empire invaded, destabilized, and restructured since 1989? Why has it done that? Where are there still pockets of resistance?

Forget about ideology for a second. Every country has an ideology or a narrative to justify its actions. Try to look at the map through the eyes of the empire. Who is playing ball with you? Who is not? What needs to be done about that? What is your goal as an empire in this region?

Again, forget about ideology, and try to think strategically. Take Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is an Islamic theocracy. It’s the largest US export market in the Middle East. The US is its largest trading partner. Do you think the empire cares about its ideology?

Now take a look at Israel. What function does Israel perform for the empire? Do you think the empire cares about Israel’s national ideology, i.e. Zionism, any more than it cares about Saudi Arabia’s national ideology? If so, why do you think that?

Think strategy, not ideology. Does Israel maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons because of Zionism? Why is the empire determined to ensure that Israel remains the only country with nuclear weapons in the Middle East? Does Israel receive billions in support from the empire because of Zionism? Did the empire invade and restructure Iraq because of Zionism? Libya? Syria? Why is Iran a problem for the empire?

Answer those questions and you may be on your way to developing something resembling a political analysis, which you can use to generate an actual political strategy. Then, someday, maybe, that political strategy might help you to stop slaughters like the one in Gaza.

Or, don’t think about any of the above questions, and just keep shouting “ZIONIST GENOCIDE!” over and over and referring to Israel as “the Zionist entity.” That’s been working really well so far.

Oh, and, if anyone is still unclear about my political views and desperate to fix that, well, might I suggest that they actually read my books, or my columns, which are all available online.

Or, if it’s too much work to do that, just ask some fanatical idiot on Twitter.

###

CJ Hopkins
May 9, 2024

Addendum: Having been subjected to the desperate rationalizations of assorted apoplectic hypocrites pretending they don’t understand my “problem” with pro-Palestinian protesters wearing “Covid” masks, en masse, at demos, for three days, I have attempted to clear that up for them on Twitter (see below). I sincerely hope this will bring an end to their hypocritical bullshit, and their nasty little character-assassination campaign. (May 12, 2024)

And, for the “YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE WHO THINKS THEY’RE POLITICAL SYMBOLS” crowd …

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

https://medium.com/media/6b685a5d1d12e2e50871e0d14ceab711/href

The US secretary of state and a Bilderberg surveillance tech oligarch have both made some very interesting admissions about the burgeoning protest movement against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza and the problems it poses for the empire they help run.

During a vitriolic rant about university demonstrators at the Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security on Tuesday, Palantir CEO Alex Karp came right out and said that if those on the side of the protesters win the debate on this issue, the west will lose the ability to wage wars.

For those who don’t know, Palantir is a CIA-backed surveillance and data mining tech company with intimate ties to both the US intelligence cartel and to Israel, playing a crucial role in both the US empire’s sprawling surveillance network and Israeli atrocities against Palestinians. Karp is a billionaire who sits on the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group and regularly features at the World Economic Forum and other platforms of plutocratic empire management.

Palantir on Twitter: ""We think these things that are happening across college campuses are a sideshow. No, they are the show.""If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West, ever."#Palantir CEO Alex Karp at #SCSPAIExpo2024 pic.twitter.com/MwQoDlSMFw / Twitter"

"We think these things that are happening across college campuses are a sideshow. No, they are the show.""If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West, ever."#Palantir CEO Alex Karp at #SCSPAIExpo2024 pic.twitter.com/MwQoDlSMFw

“We kind of just think these things that are happening, across college campuses especially, are like a sideshow — no, they are the show,” Karp said during his rant. “Because if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the west, ever.”

Everyone should listen very carefully to Karp’s words here, because he’s giving the whole game away. He’s making it very clear how crucial it is for the empire to stomp out this protest movement and the zeitgeist upon which it rides, because the very existence of the imperial war machine depends on it. At a time when most imperial spinmeisters are trying to dismiss the importance of this movement and what young people are doing on college campuses around the world, this is a really extraordinary admission from someone who lives deep in the guts of the imperial hydra.

Such conferences are great for obtaining useful information from swamp monsters that you don’t normally hear, because when they’re surrounded by like-minded empire goons they tend to get a lot more loose-tongued than they are when they’re more aware that they have an audience of normal people.

We saw this illustrated again in a conversation between Senator Mitt Romney and Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the McCain Institute last week, during which both acknowledged some facts that generally go unstated by such creatures.

https://medium.com/media/62d026268019c153449f2a77f29653cb/href

After bemoaning Israel’s lack of success at “PR” regarding its Gaza assault, Romney just came right out and said that this was “why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature” — with “us” meaning himself and his fellow lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“How this narrative has evolved, yeah, it’s a great question,” Blinken responded, saying that at the beginning of his career in Washington everyone was getting their information from television and physical newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

“Now, of course, we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond,” Blinken continued. “And of course, the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. And you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of images dominates. And we can’t — we can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”

Notice how he said the word “narrative” three times? That’s how empire managers talk to each other, because that’s how they think about everything.

This is because empire managers are always acutely aware of something that normal human beings are not: that real power comes from manipulating the stories — narratives — that people tell themselves about their reality.

They understand that humans are storytelling animals whose inner lives are typically dominated by mental narratives about what’s happening, so if you can control those narratives, you can control the humans.

They understand that power is controlling what happens, but true power is controlling what people think about what happens.

They understand that whoever controls the narrative controls the world.

That’s what’s going on with all the mass media propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, plutocrat-funded think tanks, and mainstream culture manufacturing in New York and Hollywood. A few clever manipulators understand that you can control a society by controlling its dominant narratives.

Our rulers don’t think about things like normal people think about them. They don’t think in terms of doing the right thing or acting in a way that benefits everyone. They don’t think in terms of truth and honesty or the lack thereof. They only think in terms of what stories people are telling each other, and how those stories can be changed in a way that advances the interests of the empire they manage.

Empire managers — and highly manipulative people in general — do not use language in the way that normal people use it. Normal human beings use language to connect and communicate, whereas manipulators use it only to extract things they want from people and exert control over them. They do this by working to control the narratives that people have about their material reality.

That’s why when Romney and Blinken are talking to each other about why people are so upset at Israel, it never even occurs to them to discuss how Israel’s public image is being hurt by its own actions, or to suggest that it could improve that image by simply ceasing to behave in a monstrous way. All they talk about is “the narrative” of what Israel is doing, and how people having the ability to share ideas and information with each other online makes that narrative harder to control.

So while normal people are looking at the bloodshed and horror in Gaza and screaming it needs to stop at the top of our lungs, our rulers are hearing us and thinking, “Oh no, we need to find a way to get them to stop believing that narrative and get them to believe another one.”

That’s what we’re seeing with all the attempts to stomp out free speech both at demonstrations and online. They understand that if they lose control of the narrative, they won’t be able to deploy their armies anymore.

So please don’t make the mistake of thinking your attempts to disrupt their narrative control aren’t working. Don’t let anyone tell you your protests don’t make a difference or your dissident speech poses no threat to the powerful. If what you’re doing wasn’t working, empire managers wouldn’t be losing their minds right now.

_______________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Featured images via World Economic Forum (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED)

Simon Myerson

The President of Leeds Jewish Representative Council, Judge Laurence Saffer, is facing calls to suspend and investigate its hard-line Zionist Chair, Simon Myerson KC for crude and abusive social media posts.

The call for Myerson’s suspension comes from James Wilson, who published his letter to the President of Leeds Jewish Representative Council on Twitter/X on this week. In April 2023 Myerson re-posted a tweet by Twitter/X user Tom Doran which accused Wilson of being ‘the scum of the earth’ and in some way responsible for the death of Pete Newbon, a director of anti-left pressure group ‘Labour against Antisemitism’ (LAAS).

I am calling on Leeds Jewish Representative Council to immediately suspend and investigate their Chair Simon Myerson KC.

I am calling on them to do this because Mr Myerson has repeated crude dehumanising abuse of the kind used of Jewish people by the Nazis in the 1930s.… pic.twitter.com/1eKWSCPouV

— James Wilson (@per_incuriam2) May 7, 2024

James Wilson’s post containing his letter to Saffer

Wilson was the claimant in Wilson v Mendelsohn, Newbon and Cantor. He was recently awarded £30,000 in damages by a judge for defamation and misuse of private information. Newbon died by suicide in January 2022.

Doran’s tweet and Myerson’s re-tweet led to the High Court judge awarding Wilson increased damages. The judge said Doran’s tweet was crude abuse of the same dehumanising kind used against Jewish people by the Nazis in the 1930s. Despite the judge’s findings, it appears Myerson has not apologised to Wilson.

Myerson is also the part-time judge who was recently reprimanded by the Lord Chancellor and Lady Chief Justice for engaging in political in political controversy and posting offensive tweets. It is not known whether Mr Myerson KC continues to hold judicial office in light of his very public intervention in relation to a Green Party councillor. Skwawkbox has contacted the Judicial Press Office for comment.

Myerson recently called for the Green Party to suspend one of its elected councillors over his social media posts on the issue of Gaza. Myerson was also interviewed by LBC radio demanding the councillor’s immediate suspension. The hypocrisy of calling for another person to be suspended for their social media posts despite a judicial finding that he has engaged in crude abuse seems not to have been raised.

It is not known what, if any, action Leeds Jewish Representative Council will take about Myerson. The Council represents over 8,000 Jewish people who live in Leeds.

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