Classicists and atheists of the world, unite!

The alt-right have a fondness for justifying their beliefs with mangled historical references and assertions that only white people have contributed significantly to culture. The historians and classicists have noticed, and are beginning to marshal resources to fight back. So here you go, a preliminary list of articles that rebut fascist claims. The Nazi wanna-bes are going to hate it. But, as Donna Zuckerberg frankly admits, there is a danger of temptation.

The Alt-Right is hungry to learn more about the ancient world. It believes that the classics are integral to education. It is utterly convinced that classical antiquity is relevant to the world we live in today, a comfort to classicists who have spent decades worrying that the field may be sliding into irrelevance in the eyes of the public.

The next four years are going to be a very difficult time for many people. But if we’re not careful, it could be a dangerously easy time for those who study ancient Greece and Rome. Classics, supported by the worst men on the Internet, could experience a renaissance and be propelled to a position of ultimate prestige within the humanities during the Trump administration, as it was in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Classics made great again.

This is my call to arms for all classicists. No matter how white and male Classics once was, we are not that anymore. In spite of the numerous obstacles that remain, our field is now more diverse than ever, and that is something to be proud of.

These men are positioning themselves as the defenders of Western Civilization. Classicists, when you see this rhetoric, fight back. We must not allow the Alt-Right to define what Classics will mean in Trump’s America.

But she also points out what needs to be done.

It is time for Classics as a discipline to say to these men: we will not give you more fodder for your ludicrous theory that white men are morally and intellectually superior to all other races and genders. We do not support your myopic vision of “Western Civilization.” Your version of antiquity is shallow, poorly contextualized, and unnuanced. When you use the classics to support your hateful ideas, we will push back by exposing just how weak your understanding is, how much you have invested in something about which you know so little.

She also provides a specific list of actions classics experts should take, as the alt-right continues to invade and appropriate their discipline, especially in light of the fact that classics already has a problem with people who see the field as “the study of one elite white man after another”. Boy, does this resonate: this is exactly the problem we have in atheism, too. Some of these solutions apply to us.

  1. When you hear someone —be they a student, a colleague, or an amateur — say that they are interested in Classics because of “the Greek miracle” or because Classics is “the foundation of Western civilization and culture,” challenge that viewpoint respectfully but forcefully. Engage them on their assumed definitions of “foundation,” “Western,” “civilization,” and “culture.” Point out that such ideas are a slippery slope to white supremacy. Seek better reasons for studying Classics.

  2. In your scholarship, focus on the parts of antiquity that aren’t elite white men. Read and cite the work of scholars who write about race, gender, and class in the ancient world. Be open about the marginalization and bias that exists within our discipline. Model a kind of Classics that isn’t quite so congenial to the neo-Nazis of the Alt-Right.

  3. As the Alt-Right becomes more vocal and normalized, we may face pressure to frame our research and teaching in a way that will appeal to this new audience of Classics enthusiasts. Resist that pressure.

  4. Do not write content for these men. Sometimes they publish articles such as “Mate, Hate is Great! A Philosophical Defense of Misogyny”; if you are approached to contribute to such a blog, refuse and write about the incident instead.

  5. Consider coming out in support of progressive student and community movements. Classics has a long history of regressive politics, and if we are serious about social justice and activism, we must speak out.

  6. Write to professional Classics organizations, including the Society for Classical Studies, and encourage them to take a stand against these groups. Samuel Huskey has written and shared a lovely example of such a letter.

  7. If you are so inclined, engage with the classical reception that these men produce. There is a narrative blooming that you can see in that Breitbart Guide to the Alt-Right, where the writers claim, “Skinheads, by and large, are low-information, low-IQ thugs driven by the thrill of violence and tribal hatred. The alternative right are a much smarter group of people — which perhaps suggests why the Left hates them so much. They’re dangerously bright.” But the Alt-Right are not “dangerously bright.” They are young men — if you’ll excuse the pun, the kids are alt-right — whose inane readings of classical texts often provide a window into their intellectual shortcomings.

  8. I am considering creating a Tumblr to document examples of Alt-Right Classics. If you are interested in contributing, contact the Eidolon team ([email protected]).

Note especially #4, which is particularly relevant given recent attempts to draft popular atheists to attend and speak at alt-right conferences. Zuckerberg’s response to that would be…don’t.

I have to add this statement from the Society for Classical Studies:

…the Society strongly supports efforts to include all groups among those who study and teach the ancient world, and to encourage understanding of antiquity by all. It vigorously and unequivocally opposes any attempt to distort the diverse realities of the Greek and Roman world by enlisting the Classics in the service of ideologies of exclusion, whether based on race, color, national origin, gender, or any other criterion. As scholars and teachers, we condemn the use of the texts, ideals, and images of the Greek and Roman world to promote racism or a view of the Classical world as the unique inheritance of a falsely-imagined and narrowly-conceived western civilization.

Anticlimax

The Mother of All Rallies took place in Washington DC yesterday. It was supposed to be a loud, proud, strong pro-Trump rally. It was a bust. About 500 people showed up.

Meanwhile, at the same time and also on the mall, fans of the Insane Clown Posse demonstrated. About 1500 of them showed up. They were there to defend their civil rights.

Gill and every other speaker at the Juggalo rally preached inclusivity with a passion that speakers at the pro-Trump rally reserved for subjects liker border security.

“We don’t care if you’re black, white, Hispanic, straight, gay, trans, fat as fuck or skinny as a broom stick,” Gill said, adding everyone is welcome to be or support Juggalos.

I can’t believe that today I’m sitting here admiring the righteousness of Juggalos, but I am. And it’s not just because I’m laughing at the Trumpkins.

What our students are learning

Atrios describes it perfectly.

Some Powerless College Students Are The Greatest Threat To Free Speech The World Has Ever Known

Anyone who has spent a bit of time around especially elite college campuses knows that while, yes, sometimes students protest right wing speakers – sometimes this is perfectly right and good and sometimes you can argue that they go too far and the heckler’s veto is rarely if ever appropriate but these things are always a bit more complicated than people make them out to be – it’s pressure from the top that tends to discourage left wing speakers from coming to campus. There are academics and activists on the campus circuit who every knows are “controversial,” quite often because of rather strong left wing views on things like war, carceral state, economics, racial issues, etc. Black “radicals,” commies, Palestinian activists, etc. Watch those pots of money mysteriously disappear if you try to put your hands in them to fund a visit by one of these speakers. To put it simply, it’s not controversial at all to advocate invading a country for lies, and then profiting handsomely off of that, but it is controversial to suggest that maybe, just maybe, when police are executing people in your communities that something more than accepting it quietly is necessary. Military and cops are good, the poor and the marginalized are suspect. And these are our liberal institutions!

Anyway, the administration and money have the power and more importantly the need to cater to power. The kids have protest. People get very upset about the kids. It’s always revealing.

We see it all the time. Armed Nazis chant racist slogans and threaten millions with death and deportation, and kill people; the police are on their side. Young people with a better sense of morality than our national leaders protest because they must, and the New York Times and other organs of the status quo get the vapors about antifa. It plays out like that over and over again. The only criticism I have of that summary is that it isn’t just the elite colleges — it goes on at state and community colleges, too.

But it is true that the richer the university, the more conservative its administration. Look at Harvard; it’s prestigious, that is so, but it’s also run by people who have been promoted for their zealotry in defending the endowment and propping up the richest people in the country. See the ethical blindness they proudly exhibit in the dismissal of Chelsea Manning:

A member of Manning’s support team challenged Elmendorf to explain why Harvard was so anxious about giving her the title of “visiting fellow” when in the same roster of this year’s fellows they had included Sean Spicer, Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary, and Trump’s former presidential campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with assaulting a reporter during the 2016 race.

They noted what they suggested was the absurdity of honouring two prominent members of a presidential campaign notorious for its bending of the truth and controversial stances on race issues in America.

Elmendorf further alienated the Manning team by responding that Spicer and Lewandowski “brought something to the table” and could teach the Harvard audience something. That, for the recipients of the phone conversation, implied that the whistleblower by contrast had nothing to contribute.

That she was regarded as less useful to educating the Harvard audience than two corrupt frauds is not surprising; what was surprising is that she got an invitation in the first place. The corrupt frauds represent Harvard values better than someone who exposed corruption in the execution of the war in Afghanistan. The crime isn’t murdering civilians, in Harvard’s eyes, it’s revealing those murders to the world.

A wee happy omen of radicalization in the correct direction, for a change

People are always complaining about those danged liberal universities, especially places like mine where we even have “liberal” in the category label. But I always wonder where they get these ideas, because in general students are here to learn, rather than push an agenda, and we keep them busy with things like math. The only exception is, that if you’d been here last year, you would have noticed our bulletin boards were flooded with student-selected Libertarian crapola…”Taxation is Theft” posters, and paeans to capitalism generously provided by right-wing think tanks. It was weird, because it wasn’t at all representative of overall campus sentiment, but was what our tiny minority of raving right-wingers were promoting (see also the Morris North Star, which seems to be happily defunct now).

This year, though, it’s a little different. I was brought up short when I passed a bulletin board and saw this posted:

Awww. The little leftist ragamuffins are getting emboldened. This makes me so happy.

It comes from an organization called crimethinc.

CrimethInc. is a rebel alliance—a decentralized network pledged to anonymous collective action—a breakout from the prisons of our age. We strive to reinvent our lives and our world according to the principles of self-determination and mutual aid.

We believe that you should be free to dispose of your limitless potential on your own terms: that no government, market, or ideology should be able to dictate what your life can be. If you agree, let’s do something about it.

Honestly, most of the noise on campuses gets made by the radical right — see also recent events at Berkeley — so it warms my heart to see that some of our students are finally waking up and making a few quiet protests. Bravo!

Say, isn’t this a prime example of “deplatforming”?

The Harvard Institute of Politics invited a number of people to be Fellows. It was the usual Wingnut Welfare event, where a collection of unqualified nincompoops who’s only reason for existence is to promote far right inanity were invited. Sean Spicer will be there. As will Joe Scarborough. And…

The roster of IOP fellows in 2017 includes Benghazi faker Jason Chaffetz, professional political thug Corey Lewandowski, professional bad liar Sean Spicer, and run-of-the-mill wingnuts Mary Katherine Ham and Guy Benson. (You should keep all these names in mind the next time you read conservative whinging about how oppressed they are. This is a nice gig here.) And, while I was contemplating what Lewandowski could possibly “impact” on students other than a seminar on how to go goon on female reporters, the really heavy shoe dropped.

The surprise was that they also invited…Chelsea Manning.

Which immediately prompted screeching from the conservatives.

Which was — unsurprisingly — effective.

“We are withdrawing the invitation to her to serve as a Visiting Fellow — and the perceived honor that it implies to some people — while maintaining the invitation for her to spend a day at the Kennedy School and speak in the Forum.

“I apologize to her and to the many concerned people from whom I have heard today for not recognizing upfront the full implications of our original invitation.”

Cowardly fuckers.

So…everyone, even the right wing, alt-right, Nazi centrist atheists, are all going to complain and denounce this decision?

Just remember, an invitation from the Kennedy School, which thinks Spicer, Lewandowski, and Chaffetz are worthy recipients of the ‘honor’, isn’t really an honor.

Humans are already a little bit porny

The internet has a lot of pornography, because human beings are fascinated by sex. How much, though? If you try to google the stats, unfortunately, mostly what you get is horrified anti-porn crusaders who are prone to inflating the numbers and calling it an epidemic, or a plague, or a perverted nightmare of hellish hedonism. But here’s one estimate that seems sober and reasonable:

● In 2010, out of the million most popular (most trafficked) websites in the world, 42,337 were sex-related sites. That’s about 4% of sites.

● From July 2009 to July 2010, about 13% of Web searches were for erotic content.

That sounds right: common, easily found when you look for it (and many people are looking for it!), but not exactly flooding your browser at the instant you turn it on. I know about the big name porn sites, like PornHub, and I’ve even seen them a few times, but that kind of content is also easily avoided…well, except for when some asshole gets the clever idea to email me piles of gay porn, but that’s what the delete key is for, and gmail filters.

I didn’t even know there were Twitter accounts that distribute pornography freely, until now. Now I know. Because Ted Cruz’s twitter account favorited a tweet by @SexuallPosts, and that’s all the internet is babbling about this morning.

OK, I know that the hypocrisy is delicious, but I just wish that we could get half as much mocking, laughing, smirking finger-pointing over Cruz’s sanctimonious public prudery that we get over his closet prurience. This is a man who tried to ban sex toys, who wants to control what people are allowed to do in the privacy of their bedrooms, and wants to oppress LGBT people. We ridicule when he’s caught watching a porn clip, which I’d guess nearly everyone reading this has done at some point in their life, and we call down a greater firestorm of scorn over that than we do his attempts at anti-human, anti-woman legislation, which I hope most of us deplore.

The difference is that you can get elected on a platform of denying abortion, hating gays, and suppressing sexuality, while the ‘revelation’ that you have seen moving pictures of naked people having sex, and maybe even liked it, can kill your political career. That seems backwards to me.

Moose and squirrel better than Boris and Natasha at undermining patriotism

Suddenly, I am reminded of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle the Moose, from Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. It’s become history.

Mr. Chairman, I am against all foreign aid, especially to places like Hawaii and Alaska,” says Senator Fussmussen from the floor of a cartoon Senate in 1962. In the visitors’ gallery, Russian agents Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale are deciding whether to use their secret “Goof Gas” gun to turn the Congress stupid, as they did to all the rocket scientists and professors in the last episode of “Bullwinkle.”

Another senator wants to raise taxes on everyone under the age of 67. He, of course, is 68. Yet a third stands up to demand, “We’ve got to get the government out of government!” The Pottsylvanian spies decide their weapon is unnecessary: Congress is already ignorant, corrupt and feckless.

Hahahahaha. Oh, Washington.

That joke was a wheeze half a century ago, a cornball classic that demonstrates the essential charm of the “Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends,” the cartoon show that originally aired between 1959 and 1964 about a moose and a squirrel navigating Cold War politics.

I’ve seen every episode of the show, although it’s so long ago I’ve almost forgotten every episode of the show. The reason is ritual.

In the 1960s, I was going to Sunday School almost every week. I didn’t mind, because I had friends there, I liked the teachers, and the “teaching” was trivially easy. I remember felt boards, crafts, and memorizing Bible verses, which I usually did on the walk over to the church. But mostly what I remember was Sunday mornings at my grandmother’s house, where Grandma would make French toast and we’d watch cartoons.

Sunday morning in 1963 did not provide a great variety of cartoons. We only received four channels, you know, and the TV was a black & white set, and the convention was that cartoons were for Saturday morning, so the stations only served up left-overs and oddballs. There was Davey and Goliath, a stop-motion series about a boy and his talking dog. It was moralistic pablum with a Christian message, which was probably why it was stuffed into Sunday. I hated it. There was Beany and Cecil, about a boy and his sea serpent. I liked that one, but it aired only sporadically, and it seemed they only showed about 3 episodes in random rotation. Sunday morning was really the dregs of programming, and I don’t think the stations cared what dumb thing they stuffed in there.

And then there was Rocky and Bullwinkle. You had to have been there. The animation was crude, the art work childish, and you could tell it was made on a shoestring — so it relied on the words. It improved my vocabulary far more than the Bible did. It was subversive; the show casually mocked all the stuff Davey and Goliath treated as sacred. It was constantly breaking the fourth wall, never shy about telling the boys and girls that this was just a cartoon, and a badly drawn one at that.

That was my Sunday lesson. From church I learned how boring sanctity could be. From Rocky and Bullwinkle, I learned irreverence. From Grandma I learned to appreciate well-made French toast, with a little nutmeg and cinnamon and real butter and maple syrup. These were important lessons!

For you youngsters who’ve never seen Rocky and Bullwinkle, the Goof Gas episode is on YouTube (with an awful intro tacked on). Watch and be appalled, but enjoy the cunning undermining of Cold War American values.

Also remember an age when “We’ve got to get the government out of government!” was considered ridiculous over-the-top satire of our politics, rather than the actual raison d’etre of an entire political party.

Buddhist atrocities

Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize for “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights”.

The Burmese Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of the legendary liberation movement leader Aung San. Following studies abroad, she returned home in 1988. From then on, she led the opposition to the military junta that had ruled Burma since 1962. She was one of the founders of the National League for Democracy (NLD), and was elected secretary general of the party. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, she opposed all use of violence and called on the military leaders to hand over power to a civilian government. The aim was to establish a democratic society in which the country’s ethnic groups could cooperate in harmony.

In the election in 1990, the NLD won a clear victory, but the generals prevented the legislative assembly from convening. Instead they continued to arrest members of the opposition and refused to release Suu Kyi from house arrest.

The Peace Prize had a significant impact in mobilizing world opinion in favor of Aung San Suu Kyi’s cause. However, she remained under house arrest for almost 15 of the 21 years from her arrest in July 1989 until her release on 13 November 2010, whereupon she was able to resume her political career and put her mark on the rapid democratization of Myanmar.

She is currently the de facto leader of Myanmar (although trying to puzzle out the tangle of factions running that country is not trivial), and representative of the Buddhist majority. A Buddhist majority which is currently active in perpetrating genocide. A Muslim minority, the Rohingya, have been living in Myanmar, and right now they’re being rounded up by the military and murdered.

“They’re killing children,” Matthew Smith, the chief executive of a human rights group called Fortify Rights, told me after interviewing refugees on the Bangladesh border. “In the least, we’re talking about crimes against humanity.”

“My two nephews, their heads were cut off,” one Rohingya survivor told Smith. “One was 6 years old and the other was 9.”

Other accounts describe soldiers throwing infants into a river to drown, and decapitating a grandmother. Hannah Beech, my Times colleague who has provided outstanding coverage from the border, put it this way: “I’ve covered refugee crises before, and this was by far the worst thing that I’ve ever seen.”

Even Buddhists. We tend to think of Buddhism as the nice peaceful religion (we conveniently ignore their history and the oppressive nature of Tibet), but this just goes to show that people with power can be horrible no matter what philosophy they pretend to have.

“We applauded Aung San Suu Kyi when she received her Nobel Prize because she symbolized courage in the face of tyranny,” noted Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Now that she’s in power, she symbolizes cowardly complicity in the deadly tyranny being visited on the Rohingya.”

InfoWars is afraid

That young lady who impudently scorned the InfoWars hack has done us a service. She’s shown us how to properly treat liars and nutjobs: cuss ’em out, flip ’em off, and walk away. They don’t deserve more.

Alex Jones brought on Owen Shryer, the hack, who whines about how he’s never been attacked so viciously, how he needs comforting because he’s so distressed…so he turns to reading scripture to console himself. Meanwhile, Jones is making funny voices to mock the girl, who is now, in his head, some kind of gun-running mobster leading an antifa army. It’s pathetic. It is pitiful hand-wringing. It shows how easy it is to make the InfoWars crew cry.

Make them cry more often.