This is supposedly an anonymous letter from a UC Berkeley History professor, who fears firing if his identity were known.

This would definitely result in firing, but many will question the source.


There are many hard-hitting points that deserve to be heard if we believe in free speech, regardless of the source.

https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/uc-berkeley-history-professors-open-letter-against-blm-police-brutality-and-cultural-orthodoxy/

I should have said he or she

And then I stop thinking about Berkeley in any serious way.

Awesome!

We have an anonymous article in a conservative rag with a miniscule readership citing a piece from Zero Hedge, a right-wing gold bug website, which quotes one Wilfred Reilly with a link that leads not to Reilly but to a woman named Tracy Beans, who adoringly posts tons of DJT tweets. With a provenance like that, it's a wonder the WSJ hasn't published it.

It surely couldn't be fraudulent. Could it?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2020 09:53PM by Lot's Wife.

I don't care if the letter is real. Doubt it but don't care because I am STILL pissed about Boalt hiring whom? John effin Yoo.

well said! One would think that we would be more sceptical after waking up from a cult...

Exactly, praydude. We left a cult and entered the world only to discover that the world was succumbing to cult-like thinking and behavior.

For some, the world of extra-evidentiary populism remains comfortable. But hopefully not for many.

Bureau of Land Management?

Poor "Free Man"

I was tempted to remove this whole thread for politics and bickering, but I thought it would be better to pull a couple of the problematic replies and add an admin note.

The link in the original post is to a letter purportedly written by a UC Berkeley history professor who is a person of color. Lot's Wife is correct in saying that we have no way of knowing who wrote the letter and that it may be a complete fabrication. Given the effectiveness of black propaganda (no pun intended) in conflicts, her warning should be taken seriously. See here for details on propaganda types: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda#Types

However, arguments should be judged on their merits and not ignored solely because of their source, or lack it.

There is internal evidence in the letter to suggest that its author has political motivations. Note the use of the word "Democrat" as an adjective instead of a noun. The people who use the term in this manner usually do so either because they are following a tactic devised by political opponents of the Democratic party, or because they've heard the term used that way and are following it out of ignorance. A university professor is unlikely to be ignorant of this error, so it is more likely a deliberate political statement. The author also complains that donations to BLM are going to the Democratic party, which is again a political statement.

Could this letter have been written by an African American professor at Berkeley? Sure. Could it have been written by a professor who is a person of color but not of African ancestry? Could be. It's also possible that the letter is a fabrication by someone trying to fool a mass audience. We just don't know. But we do know that the author seems to have a political axe to grind, and that may be the most telling part.

What bothers me most about the current conflict in our nation is the polarization. We really need to be talking to each other and listening to each other's stories. Human connection is a proven way to begin to heal wounds. Instead, too many people ascribe evil motives to those with whom they disagree. Instead of listening to what someone is saying and discussing our differences and similarities, the new normal seems to be to lump those who don't agree with us into a huge ball with everything we despise. "Us vs. them." "If you're not with us, you're against us." Nothing good can come from such polarization.

This is why I ask people here to be kind. Please respond politely to what others say, and not to what you think they might believe. We're all individuals and we're all human beings. Please remember to treat each other that way.

Thanks,

CZ (ever hopeful admin)

CZ,

You are asking us to take seriously a piece of racist propaganda with asserted facts that are untrue. Do not some of those assertions violate the RfM rules?

I'll bring up a not dissimilar example. There is a poster on RfM who has on multiple occasions posted either directly or by link "The Protocols of the Elders of Israel." I and one or two others have complained about that well-known anti-Semitic forgery and the admins rightfully took it down immediately.

But if that tract is impermissible, why is Free Man's evidently fraudulent--and factually incorrect--article acceptable? Does a set of racist assertions have to be a century old before it violates RfM rules?

I agree that we should ideally have dialogue between people of differing views. But your stance as outlined in this post seems to indicate that if someone posts the Turner Diaries or some of the anti-white propaganda, we must treat it with respect rather than denouncing it as the hate that it is.

One of the things that happens when a cult or political movement gains power is that it stakes out positions that would previously have been anathema to the overall community. Then people seek a compromise between the original pole and the new, more extreme one. The result is a "compromise" that society would not have countenanced before. To put the point bluntly--and historically accurately--the ascent of Hitler in the early 1930s shifted the German center from believing Jews should not be the objects of discrimination to arguing over whether the solution to "the Jewish problem" (thanks, Tevai, for the note on "the") was genocide or the more modest process of confiscating all that people's goods and driving them out of the country. Either policy was, from today's perspective, appalling and yet that is where compromise took the country.

So I sincerely ask, do we have to respect lies? Must we treat with delicacy racist, misogynistic, or otherwise bigoted rants? Are those not themselves against the RfM rules? Obviously this is your call. But I would ask you to consider why this fraudulent piece of propaganda is preferable to other such documents that RfM has expunged.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/16/2020 02:24PM by Lot's Wife.

Hi LW,

Thanks for your post. Let me see if I can clarify a few items.


Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You are asking us to take seriously a piece of
> racist propaganda with asserted facts that are
> untrue.

I am not asking anyone to take the letter seriously. I am merely asking that it be judged on its merits, or lack thereof. Addressing the content of writing does not mean that you have to respect it.

I agreed with you that it could be a fabrication, but I also noted that it could be a genuine letter from someone with a political axe to grind.

There is a strategic problem with attacking the letter for lack of proof of authenticity instead of addressing the ideas that it contains. What if the author is exposed and the letter turns out to be genuine? One will have then lost one's credibility with those who aren't already in the same camp, i.e. those one really needs to convince. Won't they just say, "Fake news!", "[Critic] got it wrong.", "[The other side] always lies.", etc.

Addressing the content of the letter puts one on more solid ground. You stated above that the letter contains "asserted facts that are not true", and yet you did not address a single one. These should be easy to point out and refute. I agree that the letter is a polemic and has a harsh tone. I certainly don't agree with much of what it says. But I don't agree that it should just be judged by its provenance alone.

> Do not some of those assertions violate
> the RfM rules?

We often allow links to easily refutable material in order to point out how ridiculous it is. RfM is not intended as a safe space on all topics (preaching and bickering are the main exceptions to this). You certainly saw fit to write two responses to it instead of reporting it as political.

The things is, LW, that you're good at arguing facts. In this case, you didn't. Of course, your time and attention are limited and there is no requirement that you be the one to address the matter. But enough people did respond that it seemed to be worth leaving up. I did pull a couple of posts in the thread because of out-and-out ad hominem attacks and attempted mind-reading by people I respect who should have known better.

We could certainly sweep things that we don't agree with under the rug; while that might make RfM "cleaner", it doesn't keep the material away from its target audience. I think comparing the letter with "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and "The Turner Diaries" is a bit inflammatory. Both are older material and have been thoroughly addressed in the past. And I truthfully wouldn't mind a thoughtful discussion of those in terms of propaganda value and how they have affected our society for the worse.

Yes, we often pull links to items like "The Protocols..." because they are off-topic and can get posted multiple times by wackos who are pushing their wacko agendas. I'd pull links to "The Turner Diaries" if there weren't a thoughtful reason behind having them here. And yet, I have read "The Turner Diaries" along with the long afterward written by (IIRC) The Southern Poverty Law Center. I thought it was important to understand where white supremacists got some of their bizarre thinking. (The writing is ludicrously awful, BTW. The author's next book, "Hunter", is improved in that area, but still not particularly good.)

My point is that we can be thoughtful and strategic about material without having to respect it or accept its ideas.

CZ

Thanks for clarifying your position, CZ.

As you probably noticed, in my post above and in the one that was removed I did not say the letter was fraudulent. I said it appeared that way. If it is verified, so much the better. But I don't think that will happen, which is presumably why the real media have not touched the piece.

I would add, however, that fraudulence is grounds on which one can question the contents of a piece. The Protocols of the Elders of Israel, which I have read several times, was the product of Russian anti-Semites who wanted to encourage the pogroms that troubled the country in the late 19th century and even in 1905, a couple of years after Protocols was published. That Henry Ford liked it and published it in the United States does not in any way render it credible or even worthy of consideration. Indeed, it is when things like that are not analyzed--provenance as well as substance--that societies get messed up.

I believe firmly that shining light on bad speech is key to the strength of a democracy. But that requires leaving up the critiques as well. If a single poster constantly culls stuff from tendentious sources, or uses something like race to establish credibility, those facts deserve mention. If that poster wants to post those ideas as his or her own, then sure let's have at it. But the very purpose of the link was to make Free Man's views look authoritative, to give him cover.

I realize this is a tricky issue for RfM: on the one hand there are the rules against misogyny and racism--rules that are almost never enforced--and on the other, the desire to promote free speech and debate. I don't have a problem with the latter--actually, I prefer it--but if the rules are to be bent for racist nonsense, surely there should be equally capacious tolerance for questioning the provenance of that nonsense.

In short, I don't have a problem with leaving this thread up. I just think that by the same token the posts that were expunged, some of which I evidently did not see, should be given a pass. Recall that there are minorities on this site, people to whom a lot of this material is profoundly offensive. Are they/we supposed to tone down their/our criticism of people who constantly insult us?

No need to reply. I've made my points.

LW



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/16/2020 06:47PM by Lot's Wife.

Is not part of the current modus operandi of our "higher" institutions of learning.

I know because I teach at one.

I daresay there are other university lecturers and even professors here.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/16/2020 10:27PM by Lot's Wife.

"I daresay there are other university lecturers and even professors here."

^thingsithink raises hand^

What do you teach, if that is not too intrusive a question?

Very cool.

European? Asian? African? All of the above?

bothsiderism

Guess who's pushing this letter now? RT, the Russian propaganda machine.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/491889-anonymous-uc-berkeley-professor-blm/

More on the Zero Hedge source. Quoting a certain famous orange person, "Sad!" LOL

"Google bans website ZeroHedge from its ad platform over comments on protest articles"

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-bans-two-websites-its-ad-platform-over-protest-articles-n1231176

"Google has banned ZeroHedge, a far-right website that often traffics in conspiracy theories, from its advertising platform over policy violations found in the comments section of stories about recent Black Lives Matter protests."

how many Berkley history professors can there be? Conservative nonetheless?

https://history.berkeley.edu/people/faculty

If you include visiting or emeritus faculty

https://history.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/emeriti
https://history.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/visiting

There is no way a professor at Berkeley, whose job is to communicate via the written word, would come up with gems like this:

"If we use the precise same methodology. . ." as opposed to "the same methodology" or "precisely the same methodology."

"Silencing orthodoxy tactics" as opposed to "tactics to silence orthodoxy."

"Dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position." How do you cancel someone in a precarious position?

"Barrage of alleged unity."

"Explain why . . . the massacre of European Jewry hasn’t led to equivalent rates of dysfunction and low SES performance among Jewish Americans." Uh, because the American Jews are still alive? Note also the pejorative word "Jewry," which a historian would never use.

"An integral institutional promulgator."

"The Democratic National Convention" as opposed to "the Democratic National Committee."

There is no way a professor at a good university would produce such bilge. The author is a fraud.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/16/2020 11:47PM by Lot's Wife.

Yup !

The author of Free Man's article states that he is a black professor of history at Berkeley. The roster provided by [|] indicates that there are three black history professors there, and their CVs rule them out as the authors of that screed. Again, it is fraudulent.

It's really just a fabricated attack on the Democratic Party and Joe Biden. Thus

"Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party more broadly. To explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to Black Lives Matter, an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately redirected to ActBlue Charities, an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election campaigns for Democrat candidates. Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American cities with the worst rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are overwhelmingly Democrat-run. Minneapolis itself has been entirely in the hands of Democrats for over five decades; the ‘systemic racism’ there was built by successive Democrat administrations.

The patronizing and condescending attitudes of Democrat leaders towards the black community, exemplified by nearly every Biden statement on the black race, all but guarantee a perpetual state of misery, resentment, poverty, and the attendant grievance politics which are simultaneously annihilating American political discourse and black lives. And yet, donating to BLM is bankrolling the election campaigns of men like Mayor Frey, who saw their cities devolve into violence."

Needless to say, the notion that BLM money goes to ActBlue has been disproved. Anyone who believes this stuff is still looking for that 52nd card.

>Needless to say, the notion that BLM money goes to ActBlue has been disproved. Anyone who believes this stuff is still looking for that 52nd card.

Disproved indeed - see :

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jun/12/ryan-fournier/conservative-pundits-share-false-claim-about-black/

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/donations-to-black-lives-matter-group-dont-go-to-dnc/

https://apnews.com/afs:Content:9043930562

Even Sinclair debunks it:

https://abc6onyourside.com/news/nation-world/as-black-lives-matter-donations-surge-some-want-to-know-where-the-money-goes

I’m with Beth, Berkeley cannot be forgiven for hiring John effin Yoo, literally a war criminal who ought to be locked up forever.

And I get LW’s point about the letters writing style, but she knows well enough that academics are terrible offenders of the English language That’s proverbial. There are numerous annual contests Dedicated to this.

And per always in America, Charity and Grift pretty much mean the same thing, and BLM isn’t immune.


But to the point: click donate from this site certainly does goes directly to ActBlue:

https://blacklivesmatter.com/

https://blacklivesmatter.com/

(Oh dear. That’s it. No more posting from a phone. Clumsy fingers and bleary eyes signalling clearly enough: stop.)

>But to the point: click donate from this site certainly does goes directly to ActBlue

But the fallacy is that it then goes to the Biden campaign.
ActBlue serves as a clearinghouse for donations to nonprofits and, yes, political campaigns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActBlue

"ActBlue is technically independent of the Democratic Party itself and does not endorse individual candidates.[2] The organization is open to Democratic campaigns, candidates, committees, and progressive 501(c)4 organizations."

The Republicans have a similar organization WinRed.

I agree with Lot's Wife on this. Also, why would a so-called anonymous author give so many self-identifying hints. It belies the the claim of losing their job for speaking out. Self-identifying as a history professor at a named prestigious university, and black to boot,simply smacks of a lame effort to give themselves some credibility.

Interesting, but suspect.

Academic types -- being for all of their professional development ensconced in a highly competitive and unforgivingly rigid philosophy of scientific skepticism -- always source their data. It is habitual reflex to do so.

Even if, as this piece suggests, the argument is delivered with an accompanying tome of supporting data, that data would be cross-referenced for access.

Skeptical.

More interested in the supporting data than a mere opinion piece which might play well on reddit