This is a completely infuriating story about the people trying to use the kinetic power of moralizing to melt all art and culture down to pablum. I hope this film gets the attention of gutsy people with money and the wide distribution it deserves.
Abigail Disney, a grandniece of Walt Disney, had been the executive director of “Jihad Rehab” and called it “freaking brilliant” in an email to Ms. Smaker. Now she disavowed it.
The film “landed like a truckload of hate,” Ms. Disney wrote in an open letter.
3/ Stop fucking reducing people to their skin color. It's gross and immoral behavior, and it's crazy to me that it's not only allowed but incentivized in so many liberal spaces.
4/This woman basically dedicated her life to understanding the roots of terrorism in a sophisticated, humanizing manner, and learned Arabic to do so. Now she's broke and a pariah because a bunch of assholes who never saw the film joined a deranged pileon.This is terrible for art.
5/ The only thin lining here -- and I guess it's very thin given how powerful she is -- is that a bunch of people in this world now know to be very, very careful about working with Abigail Disney, who will betray you in a nanosecond if that's the expedient route.
6/ On this, which some are bringing up: In my experience, every time a pileon grows to the point where folks who haven't seen/read the thing in question denounce it, the Open Letter contains plainly false or misleading claims. I'm aware of zero exceptions. indiewire.com/2022/03/muslim…
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This is such a weird, low-simmer sort of menacing, to have the cops tweeting at you to dictate what you are allowed to say about someone's sex. JFC am I grateful for the First Amendment.
2/The "individual" being "targeted" -- meaning true statements are being uttered about their sex -- is a serial sexual abuser of children. It says right in the cops' report they transitioned. So it's hate speech to point out that a male child molester is male. Got it. Good stuff.
3/ Anyway, to be clear this is the preferred policy of a lot of folks -- to involve any relevant authorities, ranging from school admins etc. right up to the cops themselves (where that's a possibility), to force people to not talk about biological sex. Seems worth a discussion.
Left is a quote from a critical article about "The UnRedacted" by Assia Boundaoui, a filmmaker. Right is a direct quote from the film in which Meg Smaker, the filmmaker, is talking to a detainee
The level of straight-up lying that goes into these outrage campaigns is disgraceful
2/ Writing in the Guardian, Thaslima Begum botches this completely. The man in question says he *used to* talk like that, when he was in Guantanamo. In context it's a massive difference. Journalists are absolutely complicit in this ridiculous campaign.
3/ Also misleading. One man mentioned acknowledging his wrongdoing pre-Gitmo but then wouldn't answer natural followup questions about what he did. He cut off contact, but the questioning itself was anything but aggressive or inappropriate.
2/ You can't tout a zero percent regret rate if you are no longer in touch with a third of your patients
3/ What percentage of these young people ever experiences one sessions of decent counseling that doesn't jump to conclusions about gender rather than explore truama etc.? The scene is a mess
1/ I'm writing about this report for my newsletter. It's really sloppily done. In some cases they just find nothing and pretend it's something. I've complained about this sort of "research" on online extremism for years -- it really bugs me.
1/ The scientific literature is now larded with dozens or hundreds of articles on sex/gender that don't even attempt to make sense or follow agreed-upon rules of evidence and reasoning. The "no scientific evidence supports" sentence is both wrong and a complete logical jumble
2/ "Some of the male-female athletic differences stem from reproductive biology."
"Nuh-uh. If that were true, how could Serena Williams win a Grand Slam while about two months pregnant?"
"?????????????????????????? I gotta go"
3/ Maybe academics will have insights on this, but when I come upon sentences like this -- it one has four academics' names on it -- I'm surious is the authors themselves believe what they are saying and/or believe that the sentence is logically coherent.
Yeah this is infuriating. Parker explicitly tweeted that New York Magazine should fire me. If she's gonna participate in the "cancel culture" discourse an explanation for why she changed her tune would be useful
3/Parker helped create a truly gonzo situation within journalism, then, in response to that situation, we signed the letter, then she flipped her shit that anyone would sign a letter in response to the situation she and her buddies caused. Don't like the term "gaslighting" but uh