The rational conspiracy theorist?

The philosophy of conspiracy theories

“We have some grounds to be suspicious of the utterances of the members of our influential institutions. Thus, when conspiracies are alleged about them (or when authorities are in disagreement about whether some conspiratorial claim is true), some will claim that the right thing to do is to go and look at the individual arguments and their evidence. However, … it is not that easy. Sometimes the evidence we are presented with is either distorted or fabricated, and often our judgements about the evidence are informed by who we take to be the right kind of authority to arbitrate on the matter. For example, many of the arguments and evidence for claims of conspiracy require significant theoretical knowledge before you can go and make sense of them, like the various 9/11 conspiracy theories that alleged the Twin Towers collapsed in a way that resembled a controlled demolition…

In this respect, trust really is our only arbiter on subjects on which we know very little (or nothing at all), and this once again raises the awkward question: ‘Just how much do we trust the influential institutions in our society?”

Excerpt from Matthew R.X. Dentith’s book ‘The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories’

Critical Citizens or Paranoid Nutcases?

“One of the central questions that will need to be answered here if we hope to find out why conspirational thought is recently gaining such support and to find out how to respond to it, is the following: what mindset leads to the belief in conspiracy theories?”

“So far we know that conspiracy theories are explanations of a certain kind that explain something. What makes these explanations now conspiracy theories is that they invoke secretly conspiring agents as a salient cause in the explanation…”

“But because the definition is that broad, we also know immediately that conspiracy theories in this sense can be rationally believed. In fact all of us believe several conspiracy theories.”

“But that means that a lot more work needs to be done, both on the side of philosophy and on the side of sociology and psychology, to understand what goes wrong with conspiracy theories.”

“My suspicion is, though, that … familiar pitfalls of bad reasoning and bad epistemological practice will only partly explain the phenomenon of the rise of conspirational thought, at least for Western Europe.”

“The picture of the lazy, gullible, ignorant conspiracy theorists seems inappropriate for many cases. [i.e. that they believe whatever they see]  … They are sceptics, they look at the information they receive via mainstream channels more critically than others and are enlightened and better informed than the average citizen. Indeed, the strategies they use in choosing the theory to believe are often consistent with recommended criteria for good explanations, choose the theory that can explain more aspects, choose a theory that is supported by more evidence, choose a theory that doesn’t postulate a great number of unlikely events…”

Read more by Daniel Cohnitz in his paper (freely available)

In their own words

Why are those searching for truth labelled conspiracy theorists?

“Conspiracy theories often arise from evidence. Once the government releases an explanation of a particular event, conspiracy theories develop because evidence exists that disproves or calls their explanations into question. There is nothing insane or dubious about questioning the government’s explanation, unless of course, sanity is defined as believing everything the government tells you. Being that the government lies to us regularly, believing everything the government tells you falls under utter stupidity, not sanity.”

Read more by Bill Linder in Digital Journal

To wrap up…

Modern philosophy hasn’t yet landed on a robust distinction between an unwarranted conspiracy theory, and one with some merit.

When it comes to conspiracy theories, disinformation and fake news, we’re treading a difficult path. On the one hand, we feel democracy is suffering given the lack of accepted truths and beliefs in a given community. On the other, progression requires someone to challenge the status quo to uncover a hidden truth, or deliver justice.

The rise of conspiracy theories correlates with the rise of the internet. We are able to self-publish, which means piecing together different pieces of information which is in contrast to ‘official’ stories, is much easier to do. I believe this is a good thing – but perhaps we are in a bit of ‘culture shock’ adjusting to life in the internet age.

Water vs Power

Egypt-Ethiopia tensions over new dam rise again

“Ethiopia is pushing on with construction of its massive new dam, despite growing objections from Egypt.

Egypt has long held the majority rights to the Nile and relies almost entirely on the river for its water needs.

“Construction has never stopped, and will never stop, until the project is completed […] We are not concerned by what Egypt thinks – Ethiopia is committed to benefiting from its water resources without causing harm to anyone,” Ethiopia’s Minister of Irrigation, Water and Electricity, Seleshi Bekele, said.

Once completed, The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) will be Africa’s largest hydroelectric power plant and will help solve a national energy crisis in Ethiopia.”

Read more by Mohammed Vall in Al-Jazeera

Egyptian media pundits still debate the validity of Ethiopia’s dam, ignoring wider issues of water scarcity

“But instead of assessing the country’s water consumption, thinking of ways to limit waste and securing alternative sources of clean water, Egyptian officials have been busy pushing for further studies on the dam, which is already 63 percent complete.

Egypt understandably wants to maintain some degree of economic advantage over its African neighbours, but further negotiations over its historically large water share and the GERD may also mean officials need to be prepared to discuss a long list of incompetencies and issues they are either not willing to debate, or don’t have solutions to, such as: population growth, pollution, inefficient irrigation and the lack of proper treatment plants countrywide. Government officials need to consider the dam issue not just as one of resources, but as a matter of managing those resources.”

Read more by Heba El-Sherif in Mada Masr

Fairly harnessing common resources

“The dam is … taking into account international laws and equitable utilization of common resources. True to its name the grand dam epitomizes Ethiopia’s Renaissance. Ethiopia wants to make a leap from agriculture-led economy to an industry-driven one. As such it needs it badly. Here it is important to note that the per capita income of Ethiopians is 800 USD while that of Egypt is 3514 USD.

…

Ethiopians today have embarked on a historic chapter that narrates bequeathing poverty-unshackled country to the coming generation. That is why Ethiopians have placed focus on GERD to discharge historic responsibilities. Till the dam sees the day’s light, Ethiopians will work day and night.”

Read more in the Ethiopian Herald via AllAfrica.com

Post-nuclear disaster

Risky stalemate as science battles human fears at Fukushima

“The amount of radioactive water at Fukushima is still growing, by 150 tons a day and the country desperately needs to figure out what to do with it.

Packaged fish sold at supermarkets carry official “safe” stickers. … To pass, the fish must meet what is believed to be the world’s most stringent requirement: the radioactive cesium level has to be less than half that allowed under Japan’s national standard and one-twelfth of the US or EU limit, said Yoshiharu Nemoto, a senior researcher at the Onahama testing station.

That message isn’t reaching consumers. A survey by Japan’s Consumer Agency in October found that nearly half of Japanese people weren’t aware of the tests, and that consumers are more likely to focus on alarming information about possible health impacts in extreme cases, rather than facts about radiation and safety standards.”

Read more by Mari Yamaguchi in Associated Press

Levels of radiation in food post-Fukushima disaster

“Japanese Mothers Find High Levels of Radiation in Food Post-Fukushima Disaster

The “Mothers’ Radiation Lab” in Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture is staffed by local mothers who test foods, water, soil and other local materials for nuclear radiation.

In the aftermath of the 9.1-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that caused the nuclear power plant in Fukushima to leak radioactive materials, a group of Japanese mothers work to ensure local food is safe to eat. Despite lacking a scientific background or university education, they are passionate about keeping the public informed.”

Watch on Link TV
(6 minutes, well worth a watch)

Message from the Editor

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Old ideas – still relevant today

For democracy and freedom – vote Leave

“The main point is that we are voting about democracy, and democracy is about freedom, and democracy and freedom matter.”

“…a vote to leave is the democratic thing to do, and will be of great significance.  The demos can strike a blow against the collusion and entanglement of the UK with a very undemocratic institution, and can land a blow on those ‘mind forg’d manacles’ too. Settling for a good king rather than a bad parliament should, now we have been asked, be turned down.”

Read more by John Fitzpatrick in the Kent Law School Blog

We have nothing to fear but the fear of Brexit itself

“The British people did not vote to leave the EU with a proviso that there would be no economic costs. In fact, the case for remaining, in both the government’s official communications and in much of the general campaigning, focused almost entirely on the alleged economic damage that would result from leaving.” …

“People heard these ‘economic’ arguments and yet a majority still voted to leave. This means a huge number of people rejected the economic case, either as exaggerated gloom-mongering and/or as a risk worth taking. What is clear from the vote is that, to a very significant section of the electorate, improving our democracy by bringing political decision-making back home was more important than the possible impact of Brexit on their living standards.”

Read more by Phil Mullen in Spiked

(and this other article by Phil Mullen)

Tony Benn on democracy and the EU – 20th November 1991

“Some people genuinely believe that we shall never get social justice from the British Government, but we shall get it from Jacques Delors; They believe that a good king is better than a bad Parliament. I have never taken that view. Others believe that the change is inevitable, and that the common currency will protect us from inflation and will provide a wage policy. They believe that it will control speculation and that Britain cannot survive alone. None of those arguments persuade me…”

Read Tony Benn’s speech here

Recent articles

Is there anything to recommend here? Many remainers think that Brexiteers can’t possibly still be in favour of Brexit – would be good to prove this point wrong

Cheer up Remainers, Brexit will be a liberation

“Everything to do with Brexit is axiomatically catastrophic [according to Remainers]. The British economy is keeping its end up at present with exports increasing and GDP gently growing? No, cry the Remainers, the economy has already collapsed! Unemployment is at a 42-year-low? No, penury beckons! The number of EU-born workers in the UK rose last year after the Brexit vote? No, we’re slamming the doors in their faces!

Every obstacle the EU is placing in Britain’s way is deemed to be further proof of Brexit imbecility. The Irish border is currently being presented as an insoluble problem. Yet as the former Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson has observed, this is nonsense. Only five per cent of Northern Ireland trade goes across that border; neither north nor south wants a “hard” physical border; and existing electronic measures can be made to solve the problem.”

Read more by Melanie Phillips in The Times

The elites are in revolt against the people

“The EU oligarchy, desperate to soften the mass democratic blow that 17.4million Brits delivered to it last June, is marshalling the Irish to its low, shameful cause. It is cajoling the Irish government to make its nation, and its border with the UK-ruled north of Ireland, into a stumbling block in the Brexit talks. And the Irish political elite, craving the political blessings of Brussels far more those of its own people, is playing along. It has decided that being a patsy of the EU will bring it political benefit. Which it might in the short term. But it forgets at its peril the strength of democratic anti-EU feeling among its own populace.”

Read more by Brendan O’Neill in spiked

My fellow dons tolerated us leavers, until we won

“But I’m not a victim and we shouldn’t blame Oxbridge for the Brexit blues”

“The real lesson of the Brexit referendum is that the UK faces a crisis of social disintegration. Those who can afford to do so are isolating themselves from the rest of society. Big social institutions, such as political parties, labour organisations and the National Health Service, were traditionally points of interaction for people from different walks of life. They no longer serve this integrative function and it is difficult to say that there is any sort of common outlook among UK citizens. Brexit has revealed the gulf that exists between the different sectors of society and the lack of empathy on the part of those who are accustomed to getting their own way.”

Read more by Chris Bickerton in The Times

A Status Symbol

“Free Speech Week” Puts Berkeley Back in the Crosshairs

“Why didn’t he [Richard Spencer] just speak at the local holiday inn? Because being on a campus gives you a certain cache […] Students are grappling with the ways in which they see their universities as being complicit with what’s happening, and they don’t want to be complicit themselves. They are struggling for power on the campus and they are struggling to define the mission of the campus.”

Listen to Angus Johnson  ‘On The Media’ podcast

Maintaining a Safe Space

Violating the university home

“For many students the campus is not just where they study. It’s where they live; it’s where they work; it’s where they spend their free time; it’s where they fall in love. Figuring out how to make the campus reflect their values is a perennial student project going back hundreds of years.”

Listen to Angus Johnson  ‘On The Media’ podcast

Safe spaces, academic freedom, and the university as a complex association

“Adults commenting on university students from off-campus will often say “there is a real problem with students not understanding that their ideas should be up for challenge all of the time.” But nobody who lives off of a university campus lives that way. We go home at the end of the day […] There is a limit to what we can do mentally, psychologically and emotionally. The more seriously we take the challenges, the sharper that limit is.”

Read more by Jacob T. Levy in Bleeding Heart Libertarians

Silencing the Wrong Voices

If you don’t like no-platforming, maybe it’s you who’s the ‘special snowflake’

“Let us remember when we speak of “free speech” that those arguments presume everyone’s voice has an equal voice in society […] Bindel and Tatchell as activists for feminism and gay rights have recognised the truth about free speech: free speech is in the eye of the beholder. It is the frequent defence of the oppressor who knows that minorities lack the same power to exercise their own free speech in approved ways.”

Read more by Sean Fay in The Independent

‘No-platforming’ the privileged is not ‘silencing’, it’s doing the right thing

“‘No-platforming’ Germaine Greer would not be ‘silencing’; it would actually be doing something to address an imbalance. Someone like Greer enjoys far more privilege than a trans woman who lives in fear most days of verbal or physical attack just for going to a public bathroom. Who do you think is the real victim of oppression here?”

Read more by Jonathan Boniface in The Queerness

To wrap up…

There’s a case to be made on both sides. The classic liberal arguments – that abhorrent views are best drawn out and defeated in public; that anything less than absolute free speech opens the door to tyranny of the majority – do still carry weight.

But it’s important to realise the arguments for no-platforming are sensible and deserve an engaged debate.

The charge commonly made against no-platforming advocates is that they want to shut down arguments without bothering to engage with the substance. The irony is that their opponents, in dismissing no-platforming out of hand, are guilty of exactly that.

The Myanmar Constitution

Myanmar’s military: The power Aung San Suu Kyi can’t control

‘The military junta, which ruled the country with an iron fist from 1962 until 2011 […] still controls the security forces, the police and key cabinet positions in the government. And there’s nothing Suu Kyi can do about it.

[…]

In the Constitution, the role of the commander-in-chief — who is the ultimate military authority — often overrides that of the President. Along with nominating military candidates for seats in both houses of parliament, the Constitution also allows the commander-in-chief, in the event of a state of emergency “the right to take over and exercise State sovereign power”.’

Read more by Jamie Tarabay for CNN

The threat of military coup

In defense of the tragic, impotent silence of Aung San Suu Kyi

‘Few have bothered to dig into the deeply complex political minefield that is modern Myanmar. Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy, despite winning the country’s 2015 poll in a landslide with almost 80 percent of the vote, are very much the junior, powerless partners in an invidious power sharing arrangement that seems to have so easily tricked the rest of the world.

[…]

All of this is part of a trap that Suu Kyi has found herself in, possibly willingly a first, set by the generals. Sanctions have been taken off by the West, investment has poured in, military chiefs are welcomed in western capitals, yet the generals still run the place and conflict continues apace. Now, the generals appear to be actively determined to tear her reputation down and make her stand by helplessly watching.’

Read more by Michael Sainsbury for La Croix International

Her invisible actions

Myanmar Cardinal Defends Aung San Suu Kyi on Eve of Pope Trip

‘[Cardinal Charles Bo, Myanmar’s Catholic cardinal, has said] “Aung Sung constitutionally has no voice to say anything to the military. And she is in her own clever way trying to negotiate with the military so there will be cooperation between the government and the military.”

‘International criticism of Aung San Suu Kyi, including by the U.N. leadership, U.S, European Union and even some of her fellow Nobel laureates, is “very unfair,” Bo said.

“Time will prove that she has her own agenda of moving the country toward democracy,” he said.’

Read more from VOA News

In defense of Aung San Suu Kyi

‘“It is clear that the military want to drive out Muslim people from these areas but [Suu Kyi’s] government has not allowed it to do so,” Sithu Aung Myint, a prominent political commentator based in Yangon, told Quartz.

[…]

‘The military also has the backing of the Arakan National Party (ANP), a nationalist, anti-Rohingya organization that has the most seats in the Rakhine State parliament. “ANP has same idea as the military,” Sithu Aung Myint said. “They also want to drive out Muslim people, and they accuse that all Muslims are migrants from Bangladesh.”

‘Despite all her failings, according to this version of events, Suu Kyi may be all that stands between the Rohingya and an all-out genocide.’

Read more by Devjyot Ghoshal for Quartz

To wrap up…

On this reading, the very constitution that liberated Suu Kyi and her country from military rule contains within it a latent, near-Damoclean threat of a return to the junta. It seems plausible that, as a result, she fears any condemnation from her will result in more harm being caused to a much greater number of people.

In light of this, it’s worth revisiting the statement she made back in September when she first broke her silence on the crisis:

“After half a century or more of authoritarian rule, now we are in the process of nurturing our nation. We are a young and fragile country facing many problems, but we have to cope with them all. We cannot just concentrate on the few.”

TCP/IP vs DOI

We can stop hacking and trolls, but it would ruin the internet

“Cyberterrorism fears are through the roof. Ransomware is wreaking havoc on corporations, hospitals and individuals. Printers can be hacked to take down the world’s largest websites. Put simply, the internet is a mess.

You’re probably familiar with all this hand-wringing. What you might not know is that a solution has been around for decades, and in principle we could apply it tomorrow.”

“[However, that other solution] could become an “authoritarian internet power grab“. [It could] lead to “real-time surveillance and tracking of each device and individual connected to the web”. Just as a medical record would be subdivided, you too could become a “super identifier” whose various devices and internet activities all link back to you.”

“So yes, we could fix the internet, and do away with all the crooks, trolls and general troublemakers. But perhaps these malcontents are the price we pay for a free and open online society.”

Read more by Sally Adee and Carl Miller in the New Scientist

The Authoritarian Internet Power Grab

“A new navigational and addressing technology, Digital Object Architecture (DOA), could enable the real-time surveillance and tracking of each device and individual connected to the web. Some governments are advocating that DOA be the singular and mandatory addressing system for the Internet of Things. They also want this system to be centrally controlled by the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union, which has contractual rights to the underlying intellectual property.”

Read more by Gordon M. Goldstein in the Hudson Institute

The Internet Engineering Task Force

Memo Decries ‘American, White, Male’ Culture at Internet Engineering Task Force

It’s no secret that women aren’t exactly welcomed with open arms in tech spaces. But a recent memo sent around the Internet Engineering Task Force—the open community that develops internet standards—calls out a culture of hostile behaviour and lacking diversity in arrestingly specific terms.

It reports that excuses are made for parties at fault and that people who do speak out about harassment or hostility can be met with gaslighting: “Further, anyone expressing concern about the behavior is typically admonished to be less sensitive; that is, a recipient of an attack who then complains is often criticized or dismissed.”

It’s not just open hostility that’s a problem; the memo nods to an informal experiment conducted by a women’s group within the IETF called Systers in 2012 that revealed behind-the-scenes biases against women specifically in the organisation. They put forward a large number of female candidates for management positions, but despite the disproportionate number, no women were selected.

Read more by Victoria Turk in Vice

IPv6

Famously, in 1943, Thomas Watson, president of IBM said “there is a world market for maybe 5 computers”. In 2017, 8.4 billion ‘things’ are connected to the internet. Each device needs an IP address so information can be sent to them. However, the world has begun to run out of IP addresses. As a result, IPv6 has been in the works to replace the predecessor, IPv4, since the late 90s. This is still proving an issue – particularly for those in developing countries.

Challenges for regions where where deployment is not taking off

“But still mostly in the developing world IPv6 deployment rate is far behind. As part of the 2016 IPv6 BPF initiative we have also tried to find the deployment challenges in the developing nations. It has been observed from the survey that still there are lacks of motivations, few technical challenges remains and lastly in most of the countries no real initiatives from the governments to promote or encourage IPv6 deployment to fulfill the need of connecting the unconnected.”

Read more in the Internet Governance Forum

Per country IPv6 Adoption

• [Green] Regions where IPv6 is more widely deployed (the darker the green, the greater the deployment) and users experience infrequent issues connecting to IPv6-enabled websites.
• [Orange] Regions where IPv6 is more widely deployed but users still experience significant reliability or latency issues connecting to IPv6-enabled websites.
• [Red] Regions where IPv6 is not widely deployed and users experience significant reliability or latency issues connecting to IPv6-enabled websites.

See stats from Google here

To wrap up…

I found the best site to follow tech regulation is The Register. There’s little narrative of debates going on in the mainstream media, which is possibly why this newsletter was so hard to curate.

It’s also the reason why these debates seem to centre so much around one particular type of thinking. The majority of people who are governing the internet are white, male and from America, and so these issues are reflected in the one-track discussion. We are literally building a new digital world – the implications of which will affect everyone’s politics. There needs to be more diversity. I would love to see some more mainstream articles that articulate the debates going on governing bodies like ICANN, IETF, ITU and others.

Also – I am on the look out for people to help me curate newsletters for the ECC. If you’d like to work with me then please use the contact page to get in touch.

Chris Heaton-Harris

Tory whip ‘wanted names of Brexit lecturers for book research’

“Jo Johnson, the universities minister, said Mr Heaton-Harris was acting on a long-standing personal interest in how British attitudes towards Europe had changed.”

“I’ve spoken to him [and he] was pursuing inquiries of his own which may in time, I think, lead to a book on these questions. It was more of an academic inquiry rather than an attempt to constrain the freedom which academics rightly have,” Mr Johnson told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.”

Read more in The Times

Tory MP requests details of universities’ Brexit teaching amid claims students are being brainwashed by Remainers

Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley, said Mr Heaton-Harris was perfectly within his rights to ask for the information.

He said: “The problem is that everybody knows that universities are not opening the minds of their students they are just indoctrinating them with the left wing political propaganda of the professors and lecturers.

“Everybody knows that is what is happening. I speak to lots of students and they all say that what you get is one way traffic of left wing indoctrination with lecturers forcing their opinions on their students.

Read more in The Telegraph

Studies demonstrating Groupthink

New Study Indicates Existence of Eight Conservative Social Psychologists

However you measure it, and for all samples measured so far, social psychology leans heavily to the left and has very few people right of center. Von Hippel and Buss’s new data confirms the story that a few of us told in a recent paper (Duarte, Crawford, Stern, Haidt, Jussim & Tetlock, 2015) in which we created the graph below, which shows just how fast psychology has been moving to the left since the 1990s. The ratio of Democrats to Republicans (diamonds) and liberals to conservatives (circles) was roughly 3 to 1 for most of the 20th century. But it skyrockets beginning in the 1990s as the Greatest Generation retires and the Baby Boomers take over.

Read more by Jonathan Haidt in Heterodox Academy

New report reveals dangerous effects of sizeable left wing skew within UK Universities

• Strong left-liberal skew in British academia, which has risen since 1960s
• Left-liberals make up around 75% of academics; conservatives only 12%
• 90% of British Universities censored free speech on campus last year
• IQ not the explanation, with top 5% of IQ roughly split between left and right
• Excessive ideological homogeneity risks bias in scholarship, which may prompt governments to defund research
• University gatekeepers must seek ideological diversity or lose trust of public and government

Read more in the Adam Smith Institute

Analysis

Fighting Groupthink at Universities

“You want diversity in any intellectual organization – that’s how good ideas arise. They have to do battle with less good ideas. If everybody accepts roughly the same paradigms for inquiry and there are certain expectations about what counts as a good result for your research, that’s not very good for diversity and it’s not very good for intellectual improvement.

[The problem with homogeneity is] it discourages people from getting into the profession because they feel they will be discriminated against… What you want in any profession … you want bright undergraduates as being something they would be interested in getting into. If the barrier to entry is very high and there is some requirement that you have to tailor your views to fit the views of your colleagues then [they’ll do something else].”

Watch Louis Menand on Bigthink.com

Why British academics are guilty of groupthink [Brexit focus]

“But perhaps it is no surprise that academics working in profoundly undemocratic, process-driven, hyper-bureaucratic institutions feel such a strong affinity with the EU. One explanation lies in the extent to which the idea of academic research as the pure pursuit of knowledge has been systematically undermined in recent decades.

Academics are now groomed from their early careers to comply with a whole series of diktats and an assessment of the quality and worthiness of their research. Since it has become second nature to subordinate one’s professional judgement to process-driven conformity, academics can seamlessly merge their own interests with the EU’s labyrinthine funding structures and bureaucratic world view.”

Read more by Paul A Taylor in the Conversation

N.B. Comment section is very interesting

Political groupthink is bad for our universities

“Traditionally, elites were conservative, even if professors were always the most radical of elites. But their relative economic position has deteriorated. And political opinion is defined today less by economic interests than by social issues. The well-educated are generally more socially liberal than the traditional working class base of parties of the left, among whom Mr Trump and Nigel Farage win significant support…

All communities are subject to groupthink, and in the academic world the rise of peer review and the importance of grant funding have reinforced it. The word “diversity” is today used endlessly on campuses. But it is too often associated with reduced tolerance of the diversity of thought and opinion that should be the defining characteristic of the university.”

Read more by John Kay in the FT

To wrap up…

Here’s a couple of interesting bits I found when researching this topic. When you search for ‘groupthink universities’ – broadly a right-wing interpretation comes up. When you search for ‘diversity in universities’ – broadly a left-wing interpretation of this problem is displayed. Why is it that these groups can’t communicate and work together? Why are there different languages for fairly similar problems?

Finally – the comments sections under the groupthink pieces are incredibly illuminating. Issues are taken with the use of individual words, the methods of gathering statistics are deplored. The Adam Smith Institute study may well rest on poor statistics – but why aren’t academics actually researching this problem themselves? If the studies are poor, then it shouldn’t take too long (and too much funding) to survey professors in a way that befits current social science practice and gets to the root of the problem? Surely this research would also be able to uncover discrimination against other groups too?

Hashtag Justice

Prosecution through the legal channels

“the prosecuting authorities in Britain have relegated the search for truth in many high-profile cases to a secondary concern, in favour of publicly affirming and validating the experience of those making allegations.”

p.109 “Why Rape Culture is a Dangerous Myth”

“No one has ever made a formal complaint against Richardson in relation to sexual assault. Instead, the internet has been used to jump straight to punishing him. He has, effectively, been lynched by an online Twitter mob, which has used the untested, ambiguous historical allegations of Richardson’s models to attempt to destroy his career and body of work”.

[In relation to 2014 accusations against ‘fashion’ photographer Terry Richardson]

“Why Rape Culture is a Dangerous Myth”

Boycott Gardies

In 2014 – students came forward to tell their stories of assault at ‘Gardie’s’ – a popular chippy in Cambridge. A campaign: “Boycott Gardies” ran on Facebook, asking the owner to fire the employee else they would not go to his business. It amassed 1000s of signatures in days…

“[The owner]… had to be informed about the campaign by two Iranian students, who happened to know him personally. He was taken aback by the allegations, not least because no one from the Boycott Gardies campaign had told him about the allegations. They had not given him the opportunity to investigate or take action. Instead, they had immediately set up a Facebook page.

The campaign put the owner in an impossible position. The group were unable to provide the times or dates of any of the allegations, meaning that he would have to review hundreds of hours of CCTV [to ascertain his employees guilt or innocence]…”

“Why Rape Culture is a Dangerous Myth”

Is every woman a victim?

Women vs feminism

“Old ideas of sexually chaste and vulnerable women having to ward off predatory men are being rehabilitated at a time when women, especially those in wealthy, Western countries, have greater financial and legal independence than ever before”

“The problem for women was not just that feminist campaigns defined sexual harassment far too broadly; more importantly, they did not focus on improving women’s pay and conditions or raising their status in the workplace. Instead, sexual harassment came to be viewed as a problem solely of men’s bad behaviour.”

Read more by Joanna Williams in Women vs Feminism

#MeToo: Seing sexual harrasment everywhere

“According to the BBC, as of yesterday the #MeToo hashtag had been shared over 200,000 times. And it’s not like those declaring solidarity with the victims of Weinstein’s alleged behaviour are actually reporting anecdotes of hardcore sexual harassment or rape. (Weinstein, it is important to remember now that the vague term ‘sexual abuse’ is being thrown around, is accused of classical, forced intercourse-type rape.) No, what one sees on the #MeToo threads is hundreds of charges like ‘I was 19, he plied me with alcohol, forced a tongue kiss and touched my chest. I blamed myself for being drunk.’

It’s all getting balled up together: the subjective and the conflicted with the clear-cut and very serious.”

Read more by Stephanie Gutmann in spiked

Why feminism is bad for feminism

“Without oppression, there can be no uprising. Thus, feminism depends on women being victims… Women are indoctrinated into feminism under the belief that they have been oppressed by “the patriarchy.”

If a woman, like myself, can’t identify any signs of having suffered under this daunting omnipresence of oppression, it is because she has internalized it from a young age. She has been subconsciously infiltrated by this all-powerful villain. Thus, feminism robs women of their ability to even take authority over their own thoughts and opinions, as they have already been corrupted by the patriarchy.

Feminism leaves women entirely at the mercy of the very system it claims to subvert. Don’t worry, your failures and insecurities aren’t your fault. How can they be, when your thoughts aren’t even your own? It’s not you, it’s the patriarchy.”

Read more by Kayla Kibbe in Study Breaks

Totalitarianism

Liberty lost through harassment narrative

“The ‘hostile workplace’ clause, on the other hand, which has become an integral part of sexual harassment policy and has even, to my regret, passed review by the Supreme Court, seems to me reactionary and totalitarian. Mere offensiveness, which is open to subjective interpretation, is not harassment. The problem with the ‘hostile workplace’ concept is that it is culturally parochial: it imposes a genteel white lady’s standard of decorum on everyone, and when blindly applied by management, it imperialistically exports white middle-class manners, appropriate to an office, into the vigorously physical and more realistic working-class realm. The mincing minuets and sexual etiquette of the scribal class of paperpushers make no sense outside their carpeted cubicles of fluorescent light.”

From Vamps and Tramps by Camille Paglia

“A pain-free world will be achievable only under totalitarianism. There is no such thing as risk-free anything. In fact, all valuable human things come to us from risk and loss”.

Sex, Art and American Culture by Camille Paglia

To wrap up…

Some of you may have seen an anecdote I wrote in April about being harassed on the N243 home and then being cornered by a man who had an erect penis sticking out of his trousers on Cambridge Heath Road in London. This has been a difficult newsletter to curate – I hope that I’ve pulled together the strongest versions of each piece.

However, this research has been a worthwhile process. I hadn’t thought about the counter view to ‘raising awareness’ could be ‘hashtag justice’.

Battle of Ideas 2017

I’m speaking at the Battle of Ideas this weekend in the London Barbican on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday I’m arguing that Berlin is the world’s greatest city and on Sunday I’ll be discussing the vice & virtue of social media. If you’re also attending please do come and say hi – I love hearing what you all think about the ECC – whether good or bad!