E-Pluribus | Mar. 29, 2021
Here is a round up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Michael Tracey: Yes, There Is Such Thing As Gender Identity Ideology, And Saying So Is Not “Violence”
While not the main theme of his post, Michael Tracey decries the tendency of the more outspoken members of the Trans movement (though it translates well into other contexts as well) to see anything short of unconditional acceptance as a direct attack, often characterized as “harassment” or even “violence.” At times, this disproportionate reaction is even thrown at those predisposed to empathy (or at least sympathy) for the goals of the movement.
Unfortunately, writing this post in a manner that doesn’t just piously recite the ideology’s quasi-theological precepts — no matter how many qualifiers I add — could and probably will be interpreted by some as a violent attack on Trans and non-binary people. So if you’re one of the many anti-Substack crusaders out there agitating for the destruction of the platform, and you’re currently trawling through this post for evidence of my promoting “violence” or “harassment,” here’s your unambiguous qualifier: I am not advocating violence or harassment. I say this because it increasingly seems like any examination of these issues on any level other than uncritical affirmation is automatically construed as violence or harassment. This alleged “harm” is then cited to demand censorship or other forms of punishment, and the demands are frequently successful in generating panicked frenzies. Which, one would think, makes it even more vital to critically analyze the ideological underpinnings of an increasingly powerful political and cultural movement.
[…]
When Trans and gender non-binary journalists, activists, and “allies” are consistently at the vanguard of championing initiatives like hysterically demanding the censorship of Substack (and attempting to engineer a mass exodus from the platform), or agitating to have books purged from Amazon, or using the tattle-tale astroturf outfit Media Matters to pressure corporations to crack down on political speech, it is entirely fair to critically assess the ideological disposition which compels them to engage in such conduct. Unfortunately, they try to insulate themselves time and time again from any sort of critical interrogation by 1) Denying that their conduct is grounded in any discernible ideology, and 2) Interpreting any form of questioning as transphobic violence.
Read it all here.
Robert Zaretsky: France’s Authoritarian Drift
While we here at Pluribus primarily focus on these United States, illiberalism is cropping up amongst our allies as well. Robert Zaretsky, a professor at the University of Houston, writes at Persuasion that President Emmanuel Macron’s government appears to using the pandemic and the spectre of terrorism to justify laws that infringe more and more on the civil rights of the citizens of France.
In the early winter of 2020, Macron’s government promulgated a series of controversial laws. According to their defenders, the bills would guard France against the gathering storm of medical and ideological threats. The government claimed that these menaces, whether new variants of the coronavirus or of Islamism, not only posed a clear and present danger to the republic, but even shared a comparably infectious nature. As the hardline interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, promised, the law against radical Islamism would provide a “cure” for a nation “sickened” by the disease of radical Islamism.
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[T]his particular law is not a parliamentary one-off. It reflects Macron’s apparent conviction that republican principles can be reinforced through the republic’s already vast powers of surveillance and prohibition. These powers apply not only to suspected terrorists, but to citizens suspected of having participated in protest marches.
This seems to have been the logic of a “global security” law that Darmanin unveiled shortly after the law concerning Islamism. Designed “to protect those who protect us,” the bill sought to reassure the national gendarmerie that the government had their back. Given the pressures placed on the police since late 2018 — from the massive Gilets Jaunes movement to recent anti-lockdown demonstrations — this legislative initiative was perhaps inevitable.
Yet it soon became apparent that the law was indefensible. This was particularly true for one of its elements, Article 24, which penalized the taking and/or disseminating of images of police actions “with the intent of harming” those photographed. Remarkably, this prohibition seemed to apply to journalists as well as participants.
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For those who had been listening, Macron’s drift toward authoritarian rule was no surprise: As a candidate, he had telegraphed it and justified it. He vowed to be the “Jupiterian” ruler he believed the French wanted, imposing what he called a “vertical” approach to governance. This seemed to mean that directives were issued from the top and that debate, much less dissent, never issued from below. Declaring in a 2018 interview that he “completely shouldered the ‘verticality’ of power,” Macron added that he detested “the constant exercise of explaining the logic behind a decision.”
Read it all at Persuasion.
Jonah Goldberg: Elizabeth Warren: Senator From Massachusetts — or the Roman Empire?
In last Friday’s G-File column at The Dispatch, Jonah Goldberg took issue with Elizabeth Warren’s assertion that one of the reasons she would fight to break up Jeff Bezos’s Amazon was to knock them down to size where they were unable to “heckle senators with snotty tweets.” In addition to pointing out the practical reasons this would not work, Goldberg points out Warren’s attitude, at least in that tweet, is anathema to the way our system of government and those who serve in it should be viewed.
A U.S. senator says she wants to break up Amazon so that it won’t be “powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets.”
That would require a lot of breaking up. Amazon could still heckle Warren at half its size — even at one-100th its size. Jeff Bezos could give away all his shares and open a frozen banana stand and he could still heckle Elizabeth Warren. You see, as Milton Berle never said, size doesn’t matter.
Pretty much anyone can heckle senators on Twitter — and in person! It happens, like, 10,000 times a day. Businesses can heckle them too, and not just big ones. The owners of the Love Muffin Café or Four Seasons Landscaping are welcome to get involved.
The interesting — and disturbing — thing about Warren’s far snottier rejoinder is that she seems to think this shouldn’t be the case. Indeed, she seems to think mere disagreement amounts to heckling. Still worse, she thinks businesses — nay, whole sectors — should be broken up so that they won’t have the temerity to disagree with a bloviating and demagogic senator. I wonder if Warren is offended when NARAL “heckles” Ted Cruz. I’m kidding of course, I don’t wonder about that at all.
Read it all here.
Around Twitter
Classical music now under scrutiny:
New public poll on “cancel culture”:
Glenn Greenwald thread on corporate journalists and criticism:
From last week, a podcast on cancel culture with Jane Coaston, Will Wilkinson and Robby Soave:
