Michelle Goldberg crosses the line from good-faith debates about tactics into victim-blaming the targets of reactionary violence for the existence of reactionary violence.
Perfectly stated. nicely done. The most depressing part about this is the most liberal people in my life fall for this schtick, it's depressing how effective it is
Ah, Michelle Goldberg, author of 2014's "Feminism's Toxic Twitter Wars" and pro-TERF "What is a Woman?" pieces. Huge shock that she's still such trash.
If you discuss the right's reaction to liberal activism without mentioning how this reaction has been deliberately cultivated by Republican politicians for over 50 years, and the rightist media since the end of the Fairness Doctrine, you're missing the main point of conflict. The MSM deliberately ignored this deliberate Republican strategy whenever possible until the rise of Trump - then it was something that he was responsible for. The Times and some other outlets have actually been getting better about describing this reality since Trump made it impossible to ignore, but this column by Goldberg reverts to the old attitude.
"Random, powerless people being mean to you on Twitter, and I can’t stress this enough, is not evidence of hegemonic power or ascendent [sic] cultural dominance."
I've been saying this since the 2016 anti-PC crusade!
While the "common sense" liberals profited off of their college campus free speech/debate hysteria (which was always about undermining academia and not some great unmasking of a secret leftist plot) and Jordan Peterson claimed he'd be jailed for misgendering someone after a hate speech law passed in Canada, it does not surprise me at all that years later it is actually the Right who ended up using power and legislation to ban race, gender and sexuality topics from being discussed in classrooms, make life a living hell for many transgender people and further restrict abortion access.
For this people Twitter discourse is both "not real life" when they want to dismiss/ridicule certain people and also "goes too far" whenever they want to claim it's the cause for reactionary attitudes and people voting Republican.
Perfectly stated. nicely done. The most depressing part about this is the most liberal people in my life fall for this schtick, it's depressing how effective it is
Ah, Michelle Goldberg, author of 2014's "Feminism's Toxic Twitter Wars" and pro-TERF "What is a Woman?" pieces. Huge shock that she's still such trash.
If you discuss the right's reaction to liberal activism without mentioning how this reaction has been deliberately cultivated by Republican politicians for over 50 years, and the rightist media since the end of the Fairness Doctrine, you're missing the main point of conflict. The MSM deliberately ignored this deliberate Republican strategy whenever possible until the rise of Trump - then it was something that he was responsible for. The Times and some other outlets have actually been getting better about describing this reality since Trump made it impossible to ignore, but this column by Goldberg reverts to the old attitude.
An intelligent, thoughtful, direct hit of an article.
I wouldn't have hit you if you hadn't made me so mad.
Wasn't Goldberg a good guy before, or am I thinking of someone else?
FWIW, I have been a fan since her book "Kingdom Coming" in 2006. But she occasionally is spectacularly awful, as here.
"Random, powerless people being mean to you on Twitter, and I can’t stress this enough, is not evidence of hegemonic power or ascendent [sic] cultural dominance."
I've been saying this since the 2016 anti-PC crusade!
While the "common sense" liberals profited off of their college campus free speech/debate hysteria (which was always about undermining academia and not some great unmasking of a secret leftist plot) and Jordan Peterson claimed he'd be jailed for misgendering someone after a hate speech law passed in Canada, it does not surprise me at all that years later it is actually the Right who ended up using power and legislation to ban race, gender and sexuality topics from being discussed in classrooms, make life a living hell for many transgender people and further restrict abortion access.
For this people Twitter discourse is both "not real life" when they want to dismiss/ridicule certain people and also "goes too far" whenever they want to claim it's the cause for reactionary attitudes and people voting Republican.