Australian Olympic breakdancer Rachael Gunn has a PhD in breakdancing and dance culture. “All my moves are original,” she told reporters after her performance.
It turns out Gunn is a grievance studies scholar. One of her research papers about break dancing becoming an Olympic Sport.
This is too much. In another one of Gunn’s papers she deconstructs breakdancing culture to challenge the fact she doesn’t practice very much & questions why she’s excluded from the art-form’s hierarchy of respect.
Gunn is part of a very powerful academic movement that is at war with the concept of meritocracy. Learn more.
In grievance studies ideology, social judgement of 'marginalised' people is considered 'oppression'. This provides some adherents with a rationalisation for liberating themselves from external standards - a kind of narcissistic psychological forcefield.
This is "discourse engineering," a large and growing industry that's sustained by left-wing philanthropy, government research projects, and grants. It's about circumventing discussion and debate (democracy) to align public opinion with elite policy consensus. 🧵
If you take it for granted that this work is committed to combatting false claims, everything appears above board. But the devil is in the details - look closely, and you’ll reliably find evidence that they’re developing tools to engineer opinion. 2/n
If you try to speak frankly with a discourse engineer, it often feels like they’re not fully aware of the implications of their work. I was seated next to a disinformation expert on a flight from LA to Melbourne - she was returning from a symposium at Stanford. She struck me as well-meaning, genuinely trying to solve real problems, but so deeply embedded in her institutional culture that she could no longer distinguish facts from received opinion. At one point she said, “We just have to decide what kind of society we want to live in and curate information around that.” She had no idea she’d just unravelled the entire premise of liberal democracy. 3/n
Many of his fans wouldn't know that the famous intellectual Noam Chomsky was responsible for casting doubt on the first reports of the Khmer Rouge atrocities. He didn't deny the killings outright - but his scepticism muddied the waters at a critical moment. 🧵
2/ In 1977, Chomsky co-wrote Distortions at Fourth Hand in The Nation, accusing Western media of a "vast propaganda campaign" against the Khmer Rouge. He questioned refugee testimony, claiming it was exaggerated or fabricated.
3/ He favourably cited Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution by Hildebrand & Porter - a book that repeated Khmer Rouge PR spin & downplayed the violence as a postwar necessity.
The "Woke Right" (WR) is gaining traction as a pejorative term for an emerging right-wing political movement. I'm not fond of it and will explain why in this thread. Let's start with what’s being called "The Woke Right." 🧵
2/ WR, also called the New Right, Dissident Right, or Postliberal Right (a term I prefer), is tough to define. It’s an evolving intellectual/political movement made up of many influencers with conflicting, often clashing ideas.
3/ It's helpful to think of an emergent intellectual movement as a stew of ideas, where individual ingredients break down, change, and come together over time to form a more cohesive and identifiable dish.
A university is defined by what it deems most important, & this can be seen in what it is researching & teaching. It can evolve drastically over time as when modern secular colleges emerged from religious institutions. I posit something new has emerged in recent history. THREAD.
2. In 2016, a brilliant social psychologist by the name of @JonHaidt described what he saw as a schism forming within the university system. He claimed that US colleges were caught between two irreconcilable missions, truth & change, & referenced quotes to exemplify each outlook.
3. The first was from John Stuart Mill, which reflects a liberal arts perspective. Embedded in this spirit of curious humility is a belief that objective reality exists & is accessible to all inquiring minds as long as they're willing & able to overcome their subjective biases.
New Left identitarians, like Claudine Gay, discovered they could mimic forms of expertise as a means to power for their DEI activism. Her academic work is representative of a vast body of laundered research & credentials that prop up the entire DEI edifice. 1/n
In an audacious hoax project, @peterboghossian, @HPluckrose, & @ConceptualJames submitted ludicrous research papers to highly esteemed journals in DEI-related fields to expose the activist racket. 7 absurd papers were published, most in top-tier journals. 2/n
Up until now, laundering poorly researched ideology through peer review to secure legitimacy among elites had a cultural forcefield around it. Activist scholars & their students would level relentless ad hominem attacks & accusations of "isms" at anyone who questioned their legitimacy. The forcefield seems to be semi-permeable now. 3/n
This documentary is a case study of the ideology & ethos embedded in DEI bureaucracies. It covers the relationship between identity studies, student activists, and the DEI administration of a college in Olympia, Washington. Part 1/3.