Pseudo-liberals are supposedly liberals, but they aren’t too fussed about being inconsistent in the way they apply their liberalism. And will employ methods that one would expect of an authoritarian regime, to the extent that one wonders how they would use their power, if the were in fact leaders of a government; or a secret police.
#NoHijabDay v #HijabDay
Women in Iran, as well as some other Islam dominated nations, like Saudi, have strict dress codes enforced. Some Iranian women started a social media protest, under the hashtag #NoHijabDay, posting pictures of themselves removing the hijab.
As soon as this took off, and especially when western non-Muslims and western based ex-Muslims started supporting this, with retweets and their own posts of support with the #NoHijabDay there were several negative responses in the west:
- Muslim organisations denounced it as Islamophobia, and many ‘moderate’ Muslims joined in the complaints.
- Pseudo-liberals complained about the persecution of Muslims and Islamophobia – it didn’t make western Muslims feel good to be told to take off their hijabs. Of course they weren’t being told that, but many messages did contain sentiments about how Islam oppresses women.
- Hijabi Muslim women in the west started #HijabDay, to protest what they mistakenly perceived to be demands that they should not were the hijab – and to be fair, some had been victims of varying degrees of responses, for some time.
- Many western pseudo-liberal non-Muslim women, and many young women who may have been persuaded to support their Muslim friends, jumped on board the #HijabDay protest, and started wearing hijabs and reporting on their experiences – some positive.
Remember, in the west women are free to wear the hijab, and any persecution of them is by individuals, or even groups, or even employees – but the ‘persecution’ was illegal, and varied; many Muslims have very little problem wearing their hijabs. But the Iranian women were forced to wear it – this is real oppression.
Many of the prominent pseudo-liberals completely lost sight of the original protest, by the genuinely persecuted Iranian women, and continued their responses to to those supporting #NoHijabDay, as if they were really wanted to ban western Muslim women wearing it. And that didn’t matter on your politics: left, centre, right. Western feminists* were particularly active, especially in denouncing any mem – with many declaring they don’t need our help, thank you. [They? Iranian women or these western feminists?]
[*Feminists – remember there are two or more groups of feminist. Check out this video if you want to figure that out: Christina Hoff Sommers and Dave Rubin: Feminism, Free Speech, Gamergate.]
No Platforming
This is the process of denying a platform to people that you disagree with. This happens a lot in university campuses. There are differences that depend on where you are – US or UK, for example – and most of it is in the US.
The targets are typically libertarians and those on the right, but can also include liberals that the pseudo-liberals disagree with.
It is best illustrated by example, so here’s a list of videos that discuss it or show it.
Richard Dawkins & NECSS
It’s not just on university campuses. Richard Dawkins was famously no platformed, … and then platformed, by a rather confused NECSS. Basically Dawkins tweeted a cartoon video.
The video mocked the rhetorical styles and shutting down of debate that both extreme feminists and Islamists go in for, by having a couple of characters sing a song. The song was very on topic, and the characters where actual caricatures of real people that engage in this sort of rhetoric.
Now this wasn’t realised by many online, who saw the characters has Islamophobic and misogynistic stereotypes – the first mistake.
This kicked up such a fuss that the NECSS who were to host Dawkins decided tweeting this was really bad form and ‘dis-invited’ him after plenty of complaints. Of course these things are never simple, because of course Rebecca Watson is anti-Dawkins, following the Dear Muslima incident; and guess what, some of the key people in the NECSS event were the Novella boys, who are buddies with Rebecca from the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe podcast – though of course it’s impossible to establish any infleunce from Rebecca, but, to use a favourite phrase of another pseudo-liberal, Cenk Uygur, “Just sayin’!”
Anyway, a lot of sensible people pointed out what the video was about, and some more sensible people got involved, and hey presto, Dawkins was dis-dis-invited… or whatever.
The point here is that the extreme feminists are often engaged in the no platforming, and often against liberals that are criticising religion.
Oh, not so much Christianity, but Islam, because, you know, Islam, with 1.6 billion followers, we are so often told, are a minority – so to hell with the minorities within the minority, the women oppressed in Iran and Saudi, the persecuted liberal bloggers in the Muslim world, the dead bloggers in Bangladesh. And heaven forbid you should try to associated ISIS with Islam.
Hence the cartoon video showing both the common rhetorical styles, and sometimes the common enemies.
More on the background to this and other pseudo-liberal antics here. Many of the pseudo-liberals think of themselves as keen social justice people, which in some respects they are – but the methods, the authoritarian behaviour earns them the label Social Justice Warriors.
Anyway, here’s a video source on the Dawkins no-platforming.
The Reaction to Richard Dawkins’ No-Platforming
Others
Tip: play the videos at high speed to get through them.
University No-Platforming is Bullshit: My Response to EssenceOfThought
Monica Richter on no-platforming as an illegitimate tool of activism
‘No-platforming’ on university campuses: political correctness and the subversion of free speech
There are plenty of other resource available, so Google it.
Ramblings 