Michelle Goldberg, as you remember is afraid of diversity and decided to
blame women and feminist of color for everything as far as I can tell because FOR THE MOVEMENT!
This time Goldberg
wants to weigh in on #CancelColbert, which again is all the women of color’s
fault. I’m shocked, shocked I say.
“It’s increasingly clear that we are entering a new era of political correctness. Recently, we’ve seen the calls to #CacelColbert because of something outrageous said by Stephen Colbert’s blowhard alter ego, who has been saying outrageous tings regularly for nine years. Then there’s the sudden demand for ‘trigger warnings’ on college syllabi, meant to protect students from encountering ideas or images that may traumatize them…
First, this paragraph really stuck out to me because I’m in a class where
I would love trigger warnings before this one kid speaks. Jesus Christ, he can’t
shut the fuck up about how wrong suicide is and how those people who would kill
themselves are selfish, or oh, yeah his rape joke in class because that’s
appropriate. And there is totally no overlap as to people who have suffered
sexual trauma and suicide. Pardon my tangent, but this seems way more like preserving the status quo than considering the best interests of the left. Additionally, the complete indifference and dismissal of the concerns of the people saying this is racist is very telling, because yes Virginia, liberals can be racists too.
Goldberg goes on to explain that it is happening overseas too because
CENSORSHIP! She continues:
“Call it left-wing anti-liberalism: the idea, captured by Herbert Marcuse in this 1965 essay ‘Repressive Tolerance,’ that social justice demands curbs on freedom of expression. ‘[I]t is possible to define the direction in which prevailing institutions, policies, opinions would have to be changed in order to improve the chance of a peace which is not identical with cold war and a little hot war, and a satisfaction of needs which does not feed on poverty, oppression, movements, and exploitation,’ he wrote. ‘Consequently, it is also possible to identify policies, opinions, movements which would promote this chance, and those which would do the opposite. Suppression of the regressive ones is a prerequisite for the strengthening of the progressive ones.” *for those not aware, Marcuse is a philosopher who immigrated from Germany to the US, and someone Noam Chomsky knew and liked, but didn’t care for Marcuse’s work.*
Without reading the whole Marcuse essay, I can say no one is censoring
anyone. Colbert and god help us, Goldberg can say whatever the fuck they want,
but there are consequences for the things you say. I’m so fucking tired of
people thinking you can say whatever the fuck you want and walk away. Check
your privilege. Goldberg goes on to cite a scholar of radical feminist, which
is fine, but I think people who read this blog will be able to identify the
importance and the shortcomings of radical feminism so we won’t review that, if
necessary I’m happy to, but I doubt it is necessary see McKinnon and Dworkin.
Goldberg continues:
“There’s disenchantment not just with electoral politics, but with liberal values as a whole. ‘White liberal’ has, once again, emerged as a favorite left-wing epithet.“At times like this, politics contract. On the surface, the rhetoric appears more ambitious and utopian that ever—witness, for example, the apparently sincere claim by Suey Park, creator of the #CancelColbert hashtag, that Twitter activists intend to ‘dismantle the state.’ But at the same time, activism becomes less about winning converts and changing the world and more about created protected enclaves and policing speech.”
Pro tip: let’s not use the word policing as if a subjugated group has the
power to police anyone but themselves. Particularly, when there is a system of
policing people of color and women that is institutional policy and then the
self-policing that goes on in these communities as an active protection against
more discrimination. Secondly, to me changing and being more aware of the
language we use, our action, etc., and how they contribute to the systematic
oppression of others is changing the world. But Goldberg seems much more
interested in having her swansong about whiteness being oppressed as if
expanding the rights of others is somehow a zero sum game. I also have to
reject Goldberg’s definition of liberalism which seems to be Clintonlike
Democrats, well that is liberal, that is center. Want to join the liberal left?
Let’s throw out The Electoral College and overturn McCutcheon and Citizen’s
United.
Goldberg cites Ellen Willis about how the left-wing is anti-liberal,
“’It’s the general repressiveness of the social climate that encourages moves to ban offensive speech or define any form of sexual oppression in the workplace as sexual harassment. The main effect of these maneuvers is to foment confusion, cynicism and sexual witch-hunts, trivialize sexual violence, and legitimize conservative demands for censorship—while at the same time ceding the moral high ground of free expression to the right.’”
Goldberg then descends into a well, they’ll learn their lesson when the
right comes to power and we realize how important free speech is…Like with
Occupy? Or sex work? Or the NSA? Oh, wait these are things happening when the “left”
is in power. You know I must have missed Goldberg’s piece railing against the
use of the NSA as an invasion of privacy and an infringement of free speech. And
obviously, Goldberg just wrote a piece about the importance of diverse views in
feminism, when she misrepresented the statements made by black feminism, and
pretty much told women of color to sit down and shut up. That wasn’t a form of
censorship at all.
See the argument Goldberg is making is the sit down, shut up, and wait
your turn argument. Sure, stop-and-frisky is a thing, but we have to defeat the
Republicans, so wait. Sure, hipster racism keeps being a thing, and we’re not
sure who benefits from these jokes, but wait your turn. Sure, women’s rights
are being attacked across the US, and a disproportional number of these bills disastrously
impact low-income women, but that can wait, we have to pledge unyielding
support of President Obama and Obamacare, even if we lose the birth control
mandate. So I ask, what is the left Goldberg is trying to save? Because
without women and people of color, but mostly women of color, the left is
looking a lot like the right.
