You are too kind and self-questioning, Professor Krueger. It goes to your credit as a person and as a scholar. That you even entertain this question, "Do I, as a white man, have anything to say?" is testimony to your willingness to engage even the forces of obscurantism. Those who, without valid arguments or not willing to make the effort to find any, use an extracurricular trump card. It was done, you know, broadly and efficiently in other times and places. Scientists who questioned the Ptolemaic cosmography were accused of heresy, and silenced. The "he's a Jew" trump card was very popular in Nazi Germany. The ideologues have their goals, but the opportunist mass is quick to follow where some advantage for them may manifest through playing such cards. Academia was never above it.
And the problem with prejudice, is that we stand on a divide. There is a push, in today's culture, to completely dismiss the concept of common humanity and present the world as a battlefield of groups categorised by strict and shallow identities which (despite all the talk on intersectionality) are believed antithetical and forbidden to ever mingle and truly communicate. This push is a bid for power (because, much though Derrida was a bloated fraud, the entirety of his epistemological tools can perfectly be used against his present forgetful heirs), and not even by the supposedly disadvantaged groups, but by the increasing number of convenience activists who speak in their name and have the grit and tools to sway the credulous and well intentioned to follow their lead.
In the case of academia, to suppress rivals and competition and advance one's scholarly and institutional standing. In the case of politics, to push through rules that will allow more and more hooks to silence opposition. In the case of business, to pour money into a nearly infinite number of mainly ineffective training programmes aimed at enriching the programme's personnel and at instilling a creed that will in turn continue to feed the need for such training.
The entire ideological system works on grievances on one hand (which will attract almost everybody at one stage, because it is hard to find someone who has never been victimised in some respect), and a promise of salvation through dogmas on the other (another attractive thing, as it excuses people from having to think and question in unexpected ways). It is for all intents and purposes a proselytising lay religion. Like all such religions, it aims to become universally accepted and to annihilate opposition.
And another thought. The entire race thing, posed in the way it is posed in the US -- and bleeding, unfortunately, over all the English speaking countries, because of the reality of cultural hegemony -- is a peculiarly American curse. I do not know how much it stands out from within, but to an external eye it is blatant... this race concept based on skin colour comes directly from the racist past of the United States, it is a crude slaver mentality category that does not contemplate ethnicity or culture but a broad, vague phenotype by which to divide human beings into groups, always superior vs inferior.
The Europeans with pale skin are not the same "race". For over two millennia we talked of race to mean peoples with common background, culture, usages, and vague similar looks, all these together. One reads the texts up to the 18th century: the French are called a race, and so the English, and the Welsh, the Scots, the Germans, the Dutch and the Flemish. The same all over the continent: a thousand races, whose looks are the least distinguishing trait.
And Africans are not the same race either. Go tell that to Hutu and Tutsi and see where you end. One of my mates at Oxford was the son of a Zulu prince; he used to laugh when we spoke of racism (granted, it was the 70s), saying that he would take a white devil any time over a lowly Xhosa, and blamed the apartheid for having given power to a race, the Xhosa, whom his people considered inferior.
Populations all over the world entertain prejudices, and racial prejudices, according to their history and tradition. To overcome these, the tools of modern anti-western-anti-racism are not going to work. But they make for a lot of righteous claims that only remove the chance for discussion and the hope to find solutions, which can never be easy or one-sided.
The entire discourse today hinges on a concept of race that is the one developed during the 19th century and perfected by the theorists of Nazism. I am amazed that this does not get brought up more often. Perhaps it is another of our beloved taboos.
That someone's ideas, thoughts, books or art should be first judged by that person's sex and ethnicity is the height of barbarism and explictly anti-thought and anti-human.
The reason the Race & Gender Red Guard will never not cling to this argument is twofold: 1) being marked as a member of a Protected Victim class is too valuable of a credential to relinquish, why would you willingly give up a weapon that allows you to win every argument and send your opponents cowering in fear? (not to mention its use in employment etc); and 2) the liberal class who governs academia funded, built and wielded the great superweapon of our time, the Bigotry Accusation, imagining that it would only be turned on conservatives and other political opponents.
But the Bigotry Accusation has escaped the lab and is probably one of the strongest forces in modern America, the modern heresy/blasphemy charge, the ultimate trump card, the way to muzzle all dissent (esp among liberal academics).
Fundamentalist "antiracism" is now the official belief system of every educational and cultural institution in the Anglosphere and unless you pledge fealty to it, you can expect to be marked as an enemy of the state. The ideological takeover aka Long March is complete and once again our colleges are run by a priesthood of theocrats.
So. Brit as I am, I live in Canada and am a double citizen. I recall the incident. Trudeau, hot air balloon of trite progressive tropes that he is, never said that a Jewish MP stood with Nazis. He said (and it can be found in the minutes of Parliament), in reply to a question of a Conservative MP, that Conservative MPs could stand with people who fly swastikas and the Confederate flag, while he and his government chose to stand with Canadians who approved of vaccine mandates. It was at the time of the Freedom Convoy occupation of the capital, and the debate was quite heated (many of the Convoy, in fact, flew swastikas and the Confederate flag, although by no means all -- I was in Ottawa and the centre of the city was paralised for days, the disruption justified a state of emergency, despite the government handled it very poorly... the following inquiry has ascertained as much).
The rhetoric used in Parliament is almost always overblown, and Trudeau's is bombastic, paternalistic and better-than-thou, always ready to use the sense of guilt of people to get what he wants. Not much worse than others, though. It is how politicians have done their business since the beginning of Henry II Assizes... appeals to the hearts and guts of people rather than reason, because reason never seems to stir people enough to decide anything.
But you see, that is the problem. Trudeau saw a punchline in the fact that his opponents supported a group some of whom carried swastikas, and used it. It happened that some of his opponents were Jews, and took offence at the fact that he had mentioned the flying of swastikas (a fact) by the group in support of whom his opponents spoke. So, the issue was promptly shifted, as it always happen in this case.
I find it to be a sign of the general sanctimonious prudery that has infected our culture. Taboos like "Jews and Nazis, never shall the twain be compared". It makes no sense. It is just like stating that you cannot say that the position or behaviour of a Black person objectively aligns with White Supremacy.
It is a stark loss to the understanding of how our human minds and souls work. For it is even more enlightening when you see the cognitive dissonance of a victim throwing their weight in with people who may endorse positions that victimised the victim. Yet if one says it, the talk must immediately stop as though you said that the victim IS the abuser, and not just an abuser, but the exact abuser that abused them, therefore somewhat negating the abuse itself.
Trudeau's rhetoric was aimed at making the Conservative supporters of the Freedom Convoy ashamed of their support because the Freedom Convoy included a distinct minority of people who displayed swastikas and the Confederate flag. Nobody can deny that this was true. But the reaction, instead of dismissing the rhetorical bluster with, "Yes, a minority of them may be unsavoury, but their claims are right", as should be done, followed the rules of Victimhood Taboo: some of the MPs were Jews, and the issue became "How do you dare tell Jews that they support people who wave swastikas."
Sorry, a number of those people waved swastikas. Trudeau tried to use it to make you feel bad. You cannot mention Nazi symbols in connection with Jews is not a logical reply.
Just so you know. I am fundamentally European and still on board with science, so, this idea that vaccines are bad does not pass muster with me. In Europe and the UK people were not free to refuse the vaccine and lockdowns were enforced by the police on the streets. One may debate about how much restriction of personal freedom and to what extent is acceptable, but in democracy we give our governments the mandate to protect the health of the general population, even with extreme means in serious circumstances, and certainly with compulsory vaccines against infectious diseases. I am old enough to be one of those who got the polio and smallpox vaccine; it was compulsory, unvaccinated children were not allowed in school. Vaccines of all kinds saved the lives of hundreds of millions. And governments must act according to what is the general consensus among doctors and scientists, about medical things.
I do not know where you live, here in Canada we have had it easy, even if in Toronto and some other big cities the hospitals for a while were tottering. But I got daily news from my relatives in Europe, where population density is ridiculously high, and their health systems for several months were on the verge of collapse and still have not fully recovered. People died because they could not be treated as the relative small number of ICUs were suddenly full. I have had several friends who died of COVID, and not all were old.
So you see, when you talk of genocide in relation to the COVID vaccine, you lose what respect I could have for your arguments (aside from the fact that genocide is a word that has a very specific meaning which is not applicable even remotely here). There can be discussion on many aspects of the measures to be taken in front of a pandemic, but the anti-vaccination position is untenable.
And of course Trudeau got the jab. Multiple times. He is not irresponsible. Nor is Poilievre. Nor Johnson, or Sunak, or Starmer. Even the politicians who were against strict lockdowns did strongly encourage vaccination, everywhere. I will never understand what goes on in the mind of people who believe that vaccines are evil.
Nature abhors a vacuum but it is fond of extinction. So all may well end up being well at Family level (or if unlucky at an Order Level), but the Species and Genus may not fare so well.
In Britain at least, the Bigotry Accusation over anti-Semitism defined as any strong critique of the actions of the State of Israel has ended more than a political career, and is an ongoing infight, quite bloody, between Zionist Jews and Jews who oppose the expansionist stance of Israel. Premising that I am a staunch supporter of the existence and security of the State of Israel (but reserve the right to critique and oppose the actions of its government that I find wrong, damaging or immoral)... the statement that the children of the survivors of the Holocaust cannot ever do something similar to what the Nazis did is exactly the same as saying that Black people cannot be racist.
We are all human. Nothing within the capability of human behaviour, from the highest good to the deepest evil, is impossible to us. No victim state prevents victims from becoming in turn abusers under different circumstances.
To believe otherwise is, actually, the very foundation of racism: the belief that broad categories of people, identified by their history and appearance, have a certain ethical character, good or bad, and will invariably display it.
Prof Krueger was not just edited out but targeted for elimination started years ago, and culminated in what can only be described as a putsch..
You are too kind and self-questioning, Professor Krueger. It goes to your credit as a person and as a scholar. That you even entertain this question, "Do I, as a white man, have anything to say?" is testimony to your willingness to engage even the forces of obscurantism. Those who, without valid arguments or not willing to make the effort to find any, use an extracurricular trump card. It was done, you know, broadly and efficiently in other times and places. Scientists who questioned the Ptolemaic cosmography were accused of heresy, and silenced. The "he's a Jew" trump card was very popular in Nazi Germany. The ideologues have their goals, but the opportunist mass is quick to follow where some advantage for them may manifest through playing such cards. Academia was never above it.
And the problem with prejudice, is that we stand on a divide. There is a push, in today's culture, to completely dismiss the concept of common humanity and present the world as a battlefield of groups categorised by strict and shallow identities which (despite all the talk on intersectionality) are believed antithetical and forbidden to ever mingle and truly communicate. This push is a bid for power (because, much though Derrida was a bloated fraud, the entirety of his epistemological tools can perfectly be used against his present forgetful heirs), and not even by the supposedly disadvantaged groups, but by the increasing number of convenience activists who speak in their name and have the grit and tools to sway the credulous and well intentioned to follow their lead.
In the case of academia, to suppress rivals and competition and advance one's scholarly and institutional standing. In the case of politics, to push through rules that will allow more and more hooks to silence opposition. In the case of business, to pour money into a nearly infinite number of mainly ineffective training programmes aimed at enriching the programme's personnel and at instilling a creed that will in turn continue to feed the need for such training.
The entire ideological system works on grievances on one hand (which will attract almost everybody at one stage, because it is hard to find someone who has never been victimised in some respect), and a promise of salvation through dogmas on the other (another attractive thing, as it excuses people from having to think and question in unexpected ways). It is for all intents and purposes a proselytising lay religion. Like all such religions, it aims to become universally accepted and to annihilate opposition.
And another thought. The entire race thing, posed in the way it is posed in the US -- and bleeding, unfortunately, over all the English speaking countries, because of the reality of cultural hegemony -- is a peculiarly American curse. I do not know how much it stands out from within, but to an external eye it is blatant... this race concept based on skin colour comes directly from the racist past of the United States, it is a crude slaver mentality category that does not contemplate ethnicity or culture but a broad, vague phenotype by which to divide human beings into groups, always superior vs inferior.
The Europeans with pale skin are not the same "race". For over two millennia we talked of race to mean peoples with common background, culture, usages, and vague similar looks, all these together. One reads the texts up to the 18th century: the French are called a race, and so the English, and the Welsh, the Scots, the Germans, the Dutch and the Flemish. The same all over the continent: a thousand races, whose looks are the least distinguishing trait.
And Africans are not the same race either. Go tell that to Hutu and Tutsi and see where you end. One of my mates at Oxford was the son of a Zulu prince; he used to laugh when we spoke of racism (granted, it was the 70s), saying that he would take a white devil any time over a lowly Xhosa, and blamed the apartheid for having given power to a race, the Xhosa, whom his people considered inferior.
Populations all over the world entertain prejudices, and racial prejudices, according to their history and tradition. To overcome these, the tools of modern anti-western-anti-racism are not going to work. But they make for a lot of righteous claims that only remove the chance for discussion and the hope to find solutions, which can never be easy or one-sided.
The entire discourse today hinges on a concept of race that is the one developed during the 19th century and perfected by the theorists of Nazism. I am amazed that this does not get brought up more often. Perhaps it is another of our beloved taboos.
That someone's ideas, thoughts, books or art should be first judged by that person's sex and ethnicity is the height of barbarism and explictly anti-thought and anti-human.
The reason the Race & Gender Red Guard will never not cling to this argument is twofold: 1) being marked as a member of a Protected Victim class is too valuable of a credential to relinquish, why would you willingly give up a weapon that allows you to win every argument and send your opponents cowering in fear? (not to mention its use in employment etc); and 2) the liberal class who governs academia funded, built and wielded the great superweapon of our time, the Bigotry Accusation, imagining that it would only be turned on conservatives and other political opponents.
But the Bigotry Accusation has escaped the lab and is probably one of the strongest forces in modern America, the modern heresy/blasphemy charge, the ultimate trump card, the way to muzzle all dissent (esp among liberal academics).
Fundamentalist "antiracism" is now the official belief system of every educational and cultural institution in the Anglosphere and unless you pledge fealty to it, you can expect to be marked as an enemy of the state. The ideological takeover aka Long March is complete and once again our colleges are run by a priesthood of theocrats.
So. Brit as I am, I live in Canada and am a double citizen. I recall the incident. Trudeau, hot air balloon of trite progressive tropes that he is, never said that a Jewish MP stood with Nazis. He said (and it can be found in the minutes of Parliament), in reply to a question of a Conservative MP, that Conservative MPs could stand with people who fly swastikas and the Confederate flag, while he and his government chose to stand with Canadians who approved of vaccine mandates. It was at the time of the Freedom Convoy occupation of the capital, and the debate was quite heated (many of the Convoy, in fact, flew swastikas and the Confederate flag, although by no means all -- I was in Ottawa and the centre of the city was paralised for days, the disruption justified a state of emergency, despite the government handled it very poorly... the following inquiry has ascertained as much).
The rhetoric used in Parliament is almost always overblown, and Trudeau's is bombastic, paternalistic and better-than-thou, always ready to use the sense of guilt of people to get what he wants. Not much worse than others, though. It is how politicians have done their business since the beginning of Henry II Assizes... appeals to the hearts and guts of people rather than reason, because reason never seems to stir people enough to decide anything.
But you see, that is the problem. Trudeau saw a punchline in the fact that his opponents supported a group some of whom carried swastikas, and used it. It happened that some of his opponents were Jews, and took offence at the fact that he had mentioned the flying of swastikas (a fact) by the group in support of whom his opponents spoke. So, the issue was promptly shifted, as it always happen in this case.
I find it to be a sign of the general sanctimonious prudery that has infected our culture. Taboos like "Jews and Nazis, never shall the twain be compared". It makes no sense. It is just like stating that you cannot say that the position or behaviour of a Black person objectively aligns with White Supremacy.
It is a stark loss to the understanding of how our human minds and souls work. For it is even more enlightening when you see the cognitive dissonance of a victim throwing their weight in with people who may endorse positions that victimised the victim. Yet if one says it, the talk must immediately stop as though you said that the victim IS the abuser, and not just an abuser, but the exact abuser that abused them, therefore somewhat negating the abuse itself.
Trudeau's rhetoric was aimed at making the Conservative supporters of the Freedom Convoy ashamed of their support because the Freedom Convoy included a distinct minority of people who displayed swastikas and the Confederate flag. Nobody can deny that this was true. But the reaction, instead of dismissing the rhetorical bluster with, "Yes, a minority of them may be unsavoury, but their claims are right", as should be done, followed the rules of Victimhood Taboo: some of the MPs were Jews, and the issue became "How do you dare tell Jews that they support people who wave swastikas."
Sorry, a number of those people waved swastikas. Trudeau tried to use it to make you feel bad. You cannot mention Nazi symbols in connection with Jews is not a logical reply.
Just so you know. I am fundamentally European and still on board with science, so, this idea that vaccines are bad does not pass muster with me. In Europe and the UK people were not free to refuse the vaccine and lockdowns were enforced by the police on the streets. One may debate about how much restriction of personal freedom and to what extent is acceptable, but in democracy we give our governments the mandate to protect the health of the general population, even with extreme means in serious circumstances, and certainly with compulsory vaccines against infectious diseases. I am old enough to be one of those who got the polio and smallpox vaccine; it was compulsory, unvaccinated children were not allowed in school. Vaccines of all kinds saved the lives of hundreds of millions. And governments must act according to what is the general consensus among doctors and scientists, about medical things.
I do not know where you live, here in Canada we have had it easy, even if in Toronto and some other big cities the hospitals for a while were tottering. But I got daily news from my relatives in Europe, where population density is ridiculously high, and their health systems for several months were on the verge of collapse and still have not fully recovered. People died because they could not be treated as the relative small number of ICUs were suddenly full. I have had several friends who died of COVID, and not all were old.
So you see, when you talk of genocide in relation to the COVID vaccine, you lose what respect I could have for your arguments (aside from the fact that genocide is a word that has a very specific meaning which is not applicable even remotely here). There can be discussion on many aspects of the measures to be taken in front of a pandemic, but the anti-vaccination position is untenable.
And of course Trudeau got the jab. Multiple times. He is not irresponsible. Nor is Poilievre. Nor Johnson, or Sunak, or Starmer. Even the politicians who were against strict lockdowns did strongly encourage vaccination, everywhere. I will never understand what goes on in the mind of people who believe that vaccines are evil.
Nature abhors a vacuum but it is fond of extinction. So all may well end up being well at Family level (or if unlucky at an Order Level), but the Species and Genus may not fare so well.
In Britain at least, the Bigotry Accusation over anti-Semitism defined as any strong critique of the actions of the State of Israel has ended more than a political career, and is an ongoing infight, quite bloody, between Zionist Jews and Jews who oppose the expansionist stance of Israel. Premising that I am a staunch supporter of the existence and security of the State of Israel (but reserve the right to critique and oppose the actions of its government that I find wrong, damaging or immoral)... the statement that the children of the survivors of the Holocaust cannot ever do something similar to what the Nazis did is exactly the same as saying that Black people cannot be racist.
We are all human. Nothing within the capability of human behaviour, from the highest good to the deepest evil, is impossible to us. No victim state prevents victims from becoming in turn abusers under different circumstances.
To believe otherwise is, actually, the very foundation of racism: the belief that broad categories of people, identified by their history and appearance, have a certain ethical character, good or bad, and will invariably display it.