Monday, August 17, 2015

Security Threats Are the New Shut Up

I usually say that "security is the new shut up", more here and here.

It's the way that mealy mouthed administrators on university and college campuses, and venue-owners and local police become the compliant, tyrannical Free Speech Mutawa of the Western world, and shut down lectures and speeches by various 'politically incorrect' (read: non-leftist) speakers.

Apparently though, we've moved a little beyond "security is the new shut up" to "bomb threats are the new shut up".

Hard to keep up with how the Shut Up morphs!

Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery (yeah, whatever, not so sure about that, we used to call that "copying" when I was a kid, or "plagiarism", but whatevs, right...), but apparently, bomb threats are the greatest compliment of all, and the newest shut up. 

"But bomb threats have become commonplace to those of us who are critics of the intersectional third-wave feminist hierarchy. Despite being branded violent misogynistic manbaby shitlords, it’s only ever us who get our events disrupted by furious harpies panicking that someone might tell the empress she’s wearing no clothes. And then ask her to please, for the love of God, put some on."

"Honestly, though, bomb threats are a blast because they show how utterly the other side has lost the argument. All that’s left for them is violence. Those of us on the side of common sense skip the impossibly gauche step of leveraging threats for sympathy and to demand money from useful idiots, but in the game of social status it’s all fair game, darling."

The thing is, though, it doesn't matter that the other side has "lost" the argument. 

They still own the space, because they own the magical leftist Shut Up Scepter.
 
The left takes the Shut Up very seriously. 

If you control the flow of information, and the language, and the physical space where debate ought to happen, but doesn't, then you control the narrative and the argument and therefore, in time, the prevailing public opinion.

I think these episodes prove Mark Steyn's Rule of Politicians (which could just as equally be applied to university administrators): you cannot expect them to do the right thing. You have to make it consistently and unrelentingly difficult, if not bloody well impossible for them to do the wrong thing

It has to be very painful to do the wrong thing. 

There have to be excruciating consequences for doing the wrong thing. 

That's the only strategy that will keep any sort of equilibrium between us and the dark forces of the Shut Up, and I don't say 'victory' firstly because they never rest and secondly because we have so very much catching up to do.