Has political correctness actually gone mad?

The Christmas messages filling my inbox were hate-filled and disgusting, but of their common themes, only one was scary: some declared their intention to get me fired from my own (nontenured, adjunct) job teaching journalism. They never did call my bosses, but the bullying tactic struck me as disturbingly familiar.

That’s because I’d also encountered it from online liberals.

Much has been written about the toxicity of internet “call out” culture over the past five years. But less has been said about the prevalence of efforts to fire people, one of that culture’s creepiest and most authoritarian features.

Some of the specific examples are well known. Justine Sacco was fired from her PR job after making an anti-racist joke widely misunderstood as a racist joke (humor on the internet often goes awry in this way). Journalists have been particularly vulnerable given the obligation to tweet with a distinct voice and be “controversial.” In 2011, Nir Rosen, a writer on the war in Iraq, was forced to resign from his fellowship at New York University Law School after tweeting (with inexcusable callousness) about CBS correspondent Lara Logan’s rape during the Egyptian uprising.
...
Identitarians didn’t invent the tactic, and the self-styled “alt-right” aren’t the first conservatives to use it. During Gamergate, reactionaries on Reddit organized to try to fire people they disagreed with, and pro-Israel groups have a long record of petitioning universities to dismiss academics for criticizing Israeli policy. And as Ellen Schrecker showed in her 1994 book, The Age of McCarthyism, the punishments for political dissent during the Red Scare were mostly economic. Accused communists lost jobs in many industries. What’s going on now hasn’t been comparable to McCarthyism yet, only because social justice Twitter didn’t have state power, but now that the alt-right has a man on the National Security Council, the historical parallel may draw, uncomfortably, closer.

“You’re fired” tactics make sense for the alt-right, which is crusading for a meaner society in which bullies reign and workers can be fired more easily. Progressives, supposedly, are fighting for the opposite vision. That the threat to get an interlocutor fired from her job would become a common mode of political discourse even for progressives shows how deeply neoliberalism pervades our culture. Particularly in the educated classes, many now view themselves as little managers, or entrepreneurs. Those who offend become the poorly-performing help. Their livelihoods are disposable, and they deserve to be made to feel their precarity. Only in a society with almost no safety nets, in which few people have the job security afforded by union protections or tenure, could random bullies on the internet terrify us by tagging our bosses. People who do this are not serving any kind of progressive movement; indeed they are working hard at strengthening neoliberalism in all its ruthlessness and anxiety. When workers feel less secure, only bosses benefit.

Some will protest that self-identified feminists tagging a man’s boss over a sexist tweet are not engaged in a morally equivalent project from that of the white yahoos threatening the employment of my friend George, who was making fun of racism. But the two projects are the same, and not only because both violate the (important) principle of free speech. If you’re looking to create a society with less racism and sexism, you should be especially opposed to “You’re Fired” liberalism, because—as recent elections in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere have demonstrated—precarity and economic terror tend to exacerbate exactly such bigotries.
Click to expand...

https://thebaffler.com/blog/youre-fired-featherstone
 
Pogue Mahone said:
If found this article a really fascinating read, for anyone who is curious about the origin story behind the online element of the alt-right.

@Adebesi
Click to expand...

Haven't read the whole thing but it's very interesting. Manages to really show the alt-right as this sort of confused, uncertain group...a group who kind of recognise the bullshit of old, typically conservative values to an extent, and yet find themselves alienated from modern, liberal culture (or at least what they perceive as a liberal culture) and thus end up in their own little sub-group, sort of hateful to just about everyone who isn't them, but with an additionally startling lack of self-awareness in spite of the fact that they really try to be (and seemingly think they are) quite self-aware.
 
PC gone mad. Fight for our right to objectify women publicly!


C5CXjAmW8AAOYoU.jpg



C5CXkY2WMAIudNA.jpg
 
Interesting mix of "they're all lesbians" and "they're all sluts" there.
 
Why is the Mail using a photo from the 50s?
 
Oh, I see. I thought it was because the Mail's office is still in the 1950s.
 
They should give you a column, chief.

Women often tell me that I have a little column.
 
You can't work for them, mate - you have a conscience. :)
 
Jippy said:
PC gone mad. Fight for our right to objectify women publicly!


C5CXjAmW8AAOYoU.jpg



C5CXkY2WMAIudNA.jpg
Click to expand...
Used to work at a manufacturing company and as the shop floor workplace became more integrated many of the woman found a simple way to get their point accross. Nude pictures of men.

Suddenly the guys were all in favor of banning nudes pictures at work.
 
Don't do it, chief, you'll Traveller your rep! Just look how a Guardian reader commented on a review of the Beeb's nasty Nazi drama SS-GB:

A horrifying glimpse into life under the Daily Mail.
Click to expand...
:lol:
 
Her name sounds like it should be on the menu.
 
"I'd like one of those brains with astroturf in it, please."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.