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Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

thefire.org

71–80 of 119 posts

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

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post #52
post #48

Some rando on Twitter reposting an screenshot of an anonymous person claims the following: https://twitter.com/barrydeutsch/status/1618697230382399488 > This article hasn't framed the incident accurately at all. the incident was two theta girls posted a Snapchat story of them reading Mein Kampf as part of their costumes at a pregame and laughing, clearly in a joking way, not at all in a historical way. The joke was i…

> laughing, clearly in a joking way, not at all in a historical way What should the penalty be for laughing in a non-"historical way"?

A indigenous circle practice

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the student in question should have exactly one response to the Stanford administration I would have assumed everyone would have rushed to check out copies of books this PIH deems harmful. More concretely, PIH is described as a "reporting system." Are Stanford's librarians violating their confidentiality duty? (EDIT: Never mind, it looks like a public-reporting system [1] to the let the campus rabbi get upset at wh…

I've generally followed the belief that if an authority body says should not do something, I definitely want to know what that something is. This is continual additional blow back from the woke, hive mind virus.

> blow back from the woke, hive mind virus

It's a childish rejection of authority. A spoiler instinct built into all of us which precedes "wokeness" by millennia. It usually manifests as children being snots and adults being insufferable. It's also entirely necessary for change, progress and revolution.

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#73
post #52
post #48

Some rando on Twitter reposting an screenshot of an anonymous person claims the following: https://twitter.com/barrydeutsch/status/1618697230382399488 > This article hasn't framed the incident accurately at all. the incident was two theta girls posted a Snapchat story of them reading Mein Kampf as part of their costumes at a pregame and laughing, clearly in a joking way, not at all in a historical way. The joke was i…

> laughing, clearly in a joking way, not at all in a historical way What should the penalty be for laughing in a non-"historical way"?

Mein Kampf is reportedly and famously an extremely boring book, so if you can laugh at it you can laugh at anything.

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#74
post #3

Can have fun with this particularly if it’s a 20th century European history course assignment. If books cause harm, then pretty much any religious text will be (very) offensive to another as it’s heretical etc. psychology texts probably really offend Scientologists, and I’m sure you can come up with other combinations without too much effort. Das Kapital, any civil war history covering the western campaign and it’s g…

You would have to ask the individual(s) who profess to have been harmed. Claiming "it must be X" and then dismissing X is approaching a straw man. Restorative justice practices are notoriously antithetical to the adversarial justice system we're used to dealing with. Assumptions we make in adversarial justice systems like open observation to ensure a public check on proceedings are not part of restorative practices.…

Indeed, similar logic was often used by Communist states to justify their judicial systems. The adversarial justice system of the US was an example of bourgeoisie justice, designed to uphold bourgeoisie capital relations. The Soviet judicial system was thought to be an instance of Proletarian Justice [1].

[1]: Vyshinskii on Proletarian Justice: https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1924-2/socialist-legality/soci...

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#75
post #57

In cases like these, details and context are important, and unfortunately they are very scant here. Specifically, one may draw a distinction between someone reading Mein Kampf and posting a selfie on social media with the book (it's not clear whether a selfie was involved but social media posting was). There's no issue with reading mein kampf, but if it's being used as a prop on social media for the purpose of Jew-ba…

I can imagine with things like this there come a day when sitting in a library someone spies upon another reader reading something they claim is triggering them. Let's say religious vs non religious people or ultra conservative vs ultra progressives. Or any high voltage topic with extreme opinions.

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#76
post #27

Just a reminder that a .org does not mean "trustworthy". https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Foundation_for_Individ... In this case, the discussion and the tenor of the conversation is almost certainly cherry picked to serve a particular agenda. On its face, the actions by Stanford in this article seem...not good. But I also suspect that this is making a mountain out of a molehill for political gain.

FIRE is a relatively new free speech advocacy organization started after the ACLU abandoned its very principled stance on free speech rights, which it had adopted in the 1970s, mostly famously in the Skokie Case where it supported a neo-Nazi organization.

Now, many of the organizers and funders of FIRE clearly have conservative leanings. But as far as I can tell, so far FIRE's advocacy has been just as principled and non-partisan as the ACLU once was. See, for example, FIRE pushing back against de Santis' retaliation against Disney: https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/ronald-kl-collins-first-a... Or this recent case opposing a school board's overly broad censorship of sexually explicit material in its libraries: https://www.thefire.org/cases/penncrest-school-district-bans...

But, yes, by appearances many of their high-profile cases involve liberal colleges, but that's because of the strain of pro-censorship ideology which has become prevalent in liberal circles, causing a dramatic swing in the left's attitudes regarding free speech. Today, advocacy for expansive free speech rights has largely fallen into the hands of a mishmash of cross-partisan people and organizations, more so than in the past, where support on the left had once been more prevalent. And funding, specifically, now seems to be coming more from the right. But if once upon a time the ACLU, whose membership and funding predominately came from the left--even decades ago, not to mention today--could do it, then there's no reason why FIRE can't.

OTOH, the ACLU did a 180 on free speech because over time too much of its membership and, especially, funding came from the left.[1] And the left's attitudes wrt free speech has changed. So hopefully FIRE will make it a priority to expand its funding and membership bases, so it's less susceptible to political shifts.

[1] This isn't a rant against the ACLU. They still do alot of good work. The ACLU has been having these debates in the public for years, and plenty of long-time ACLU supporters have become disenchanted with changes at the ACLU, including previous ACLU leaders, particularly wrt free speech. The reasons for changes at the ACLU are well known and not seriously disputed. The only disputes concern the philosophical justifications for the changes in policy.

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#77

Heh, I've seen this same mechanic abused twice recently-- once in a workplace violence claim, and another in a sextortion case. Rather than make a false accusation against someone (or any accusation, really) you vaguely allude to how they did something that "triggers a trauma response from [your] past" and gaslight/coerce/shame them into admitting guilt ("acknowledging harm"). That settles all dispute over the integr…

About 20 years ago, but the people who said it got shouted down and gaslit into accepting blame for being violent

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from the ACLU The ACLU has a track record of defending the rights of the unfavorable, even irredeemable. Are there examples that lump them in with this nonsense?

The Atlantic[0][1] has run a number of articles about the ACLU's changing values, and refusal to grapple critically with more authoritarian voices in the halls of power. There was also a New Republic article[2] discussing strife within the ACLU itself; "Finally, there are those within the ACLU who scoff at the First Amendment completely, arguing that it is “disproportionately enjoyed by people of power and privilege”…

> Finally, there are those within the ACLU who scoff at the First Amendment completely, arguing that it is “disproportionately enjoyed by people of power and privilege” and therefore, presumably, of little or no value to others.

The thing about the First Amendment, as it is now interpreted, is that it's a bit like how the law bars rich and poor alike from sleeping on park benches and under bridges. The speech of the privileged is tremendously more powerful than the speech of the marginalized. Allowing the powerful to say any old thing without fear of consequence poses a direct threat of harm to marginalized groups. Therefore, an absolute right to free speech is more threatening to the marginalized than a more measured approach wherein the right of the privileged to spew hate is far less defensible.

I suggest you read Andy Wingo's essay on this subject and let it really sink in: https://www.wingolog.org/archives/2017/09/04/the-hardest-thi...

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#79
post #61
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> laughing, clearly in a joking way, not at all in a historical way What should the penalty be for laughing in a non-"historical way"?

The penalty according to Stanford Daily would be "reckoning". This is all very silly.

Battling the temptation to laugh in a joking way.

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from the ACLU The ACLU has a track record of defending the rights of the unfavorable, even irredeemable. Are there examples that lump them in with this nonsense?

“Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.” That’s Chase Strangio, part of ACLU leadership, fighting to ban a book she doesn’t like: https://www.iwf.org/2020/11/16/some-in-aclu-have-new-cause-b... You might object that the ACLU also fights against book bans, and that Strangio wasn’t necessarily expressing official ACLU policy, and those would be good points. But the ACLU tole…

Imagine the ACLU and tolerating people expressing opinions they disagree with.
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