“Sacred totems . . . have no fixed meaning.”
I mean: LOL?
Eric Kaufmann is in a tizzy over the potential possibility of someone being called racist.
I mean: LOL?
Eric Kaufmann is in a tizzy over the potential possibility of someone being called racist.
I forgot to mention: #Quillette!
Where real, falsifying scientists and all the ordinary people go to publish their measurements!
Some are very innovative and could even be peer-reviewed. E.g., the application of calipers in the measurement of anti-racism.
Where real, falsifying scientists and all the ordinary people go to publish their measurements!
Some are very innovative and could even be peer-reviewed. E.g., the application of calipers in the measurement of anti-racism.
Eric Kaufmann continues the habit of trollish surveys where you go in assuming that your survey respondents are quite foolish if not a bit stupid. It's his version of making real science out of his own ideological leanings. I bet it's fun while you do it!
There's a slight problem, though.
Eric gets a little carried away. His strident interpretation--giddily anticipated when he decided to almost-troll his survey participants--becomes a little detached from what the survey actually asked and answered.
Eric gets a little carried away. His strident interpretation--giddily anticipated when he decided to almost-troll his survey participants--becomes a little detached from what the survey actually asked and answered.
In research, we might think his interpretation isn't tenable. But, hey!, this is #Quillette.
See, if you ask questions that suggest something will be changed to "better reflect" demographic composition, you don't see what "better reflect" means in participants' minds.
See, if you ask questions that suggest something will be changed to "better reflect" demographic composition, you don't see what "better reflect" means in participants' minds.
Not to speak of how the "public consultation" imagined in several of the questions will lead to different outcomes of what "better reflect" means. Almost like, the current and very public discussion changes the outcome on what mainstream views on confederate statues are.
So, Eric, it's not actually good research to then claim that you found out that your participants are asking for "strict equality quotas"! Very scary though "strict equality quotas" may be! The horror, the horror.
But, there's more! Eric, when you asked your questions about names, museum, statues, and other cultural symbols better reflecting US demographics (including Native American histories and cultures), you didn't seem to realize a particularly big thing.
You see, Indigenous and Black people also have traditions, and those traditions also have antiquity and aesthetic excellence. They also have--imagine that!--a mass of people who are attached to them.
So, when it's clear that Eric Kaufmann only considers White, European-descended stuff to fall under the general phrase "rather than antiquity, mass attachment, tradition, or aesthetic excellence," that's a white nationalist tell.
My, my, gently hedged survey questions are hammered into white supremacist claims:
This "de-Europeanizing cultural revolution would include blasting Mount Rushmore, tearing down numerous grand old buildings, and letting the nation’s great public parks go to seed."
Recall:
This "de-Europeanizing cultural revolution would include blasting Mount Rushmore, tearing down numerous grand old buildings, and letting the nation’s great public parks go to seed."
Recall:
Rather telling that what was a suggestion of "moving away from the grid system to follow the more natural trails originally used by Native people" is now the incendiary-sounding "letting the nation's great public parks go to seed."
#Quillette is peddling white supremacist rants.
#Quillette is peddling white supremacist rants.
Now watch as Eric Kaufmann adds all kinds of "Quota"s in his figure, quotas that were not mentioned in the questions the survey asked.
Quotas are very scary to many #Quillette readers. The labels on this figure are the equivalent of Kaufmann shining a flashlight under his face.
Quotas are very scary to many #Quillette readers. The labels on this figure are the equivalent of Kaufmann shining a flashlight under his face.
Of course, putting a flashlight under your face while you tell a scary story to an easily spooked audience is very fun.
But it's not research.
But it's not research.
The article keeps ranting on for about 2,500 more words, making claims that have no connection to the trollish survey that's discussed in the first half of the very long piece.
I'll provide a few summary points.
I'll provide a few summary points.
Taking down statues of slave traders, confederate leaders, and murderers is destroying "the country's traditions" which have been powerfully formed--almost by themselves--from "a wide palette of historical material" and which symbolize "unity, excellence, and authenticity."
To criticize past slave traders and genocidal leaders is "left-modernist ideology" and akin to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Refusing certain symbols or statues expresses a belief that "people are slates that can be wiped clean and restored to their pristine, blank condition."
I get the sense that Eric Kaufmann is a bit paranoid about protests like #BlackLivesMatter. He heaves Orwell into his piece by claiming what Orwell said about a centralized, authoritarian one-party government can somehow be applied to the demands of dispersed street protests.
His worry: "What happens when taboos tack opposite. . .toward an authoritarian censorship of critics of atheism and gay marriage, in the name of preventing 'harm'? This barely perceptible change, from negative to positive liberalism, has enormous implications for human freedom."
All right, so he's afraid of that. He stokes the fear by his moves to (a) present a trollish survey so that US American self-identified liberals appear as "leftist-modernist," (b) claim this "leftist-modernism" is the mainstream, plus (c) ignore right-wing government control.
Mix in many value-laden adjectives, plus metaphors of bird flocks, stir vigorously and voilà: A soup of some paranoia.
Apparently, paranoia makes you write that "The Right have been caught flat-footed" by a "dominant ideology of left-modernism" without mentioning that the country you're in and the country you're writing about have controlling right-wing governments.
Eric Kaufmann's fever dream: "The skeptic is outed from the flock as a racist, sexist, or transphobe. People soon get the message and duly fall into line, reinforcing the weight of public opinion and social conformity in a self-fulfilling loop, making it ever harder to dissent."
Has Eric Kaufmann heard what happened to the Canadian MP who recently and just once called out another MP for his racism?
Kaufmann lived in Canada. The story was on the news in the UK.
Clearly, Kaufmann is not drawing an evidence-based picture of the current political world.
Kaufmann lived in Canada. The story was on the news in the UK.
Clearly, Kaufmann is not drawing an evidence-based picture of the current political world.
What you can do with a distorted, paranoid picture like this is say that there's a scary "woke steamroller" which squashes everything and which will "iron out American distinctiveness."
Because if every country is against slave trading and holding, if every country has gay marriage and doesn't argue about it, if every country recognizes Indigenous histories and cultures for what they are, then what distinction is there between countries? The horror, the horror.
Anyone else think it's a bit odd that a man who grew up in Canada and has lived for over 20 years in the UK (though once for one year he indeed was a fellow at a US uni!) is droning on about his worry that US "distinctiveness is being hollowed out in the name of anti-racism"?
@threadreaderapp unroll
PS: On Eric Kaufmann’s shady quantitative maneuvers, please read this thorough thread.
PPS: Apposite tweet on the subject of place names in North America. I'm afraid Eric Kaufmann, in distant London, Eng., might be quite worried about the implications of this map.
