Post: #26

(04-27-2014 02:21 PM)runsonmagic Wrote:  Witchhunts are becoming more and more common. A full list of people purged from their jobs for their political or social views can be found here. The most recent and famous is the Modzilla CEO. Now it looks like another tech startup founder is about to go.

Just checking, you aren't talking about Donald Sterling of the LA Clippers? He was a lawyer, not a tech startup founder, so it's unlikely.

He is on the hot seat right now and definitely brought this witchhunt on himself. And if the league commish does decide to force him to sell the team, good riddance. he has been a cheapstake and inept owner for decades.

Post: #27

As long as there are prevailing orthodoxies, there will be enforcers of that orthodoxy. Groups--all goups--have a collective mind, and instinctively dislike any voices that contradict the prevailing ideology.

Those who serve the priesthood in the temple of the ruling faith (lackeys like Thomas Friedman and a thousand others) can expect big rewards for their service.

Those who dissent can expect quite different treatment.

As sociologist Gustave Le Bon noted, crowds are inherently feminine, in that they have a fickle nature, are easily roused to emotion, and turn irrational immediately. You can't always survive the witch hunts, unfortunately. The autos da fe of medieval Spain, or the Stalinist trials of the 1930s, or many other examples demonstrate this clearly.

At some point, you need to have the armament and weaponry to besiege the castle. In the meantime, these are some good guidelines:

1. Be right. Fundamentally, all people are suckers for the truth. If what you are saying resonates because of its inherent value, people will recognize it, however grudgingly. They won't like it, to be sure. But reality can only be denied for so long.

2. Have allies. Without the help of German princes and various Imperial Electors, Martin Luther would have been clapped into jail very quickly and silenced. Or he would have ended up as Huss or Bruno, burned at the stake. The voice alone in the wilderness is a vulnerable one.

3. Own what you say. Constant retreating and backing down does nothing for your credibility. If you have an opinion, defend it to the death. No one respects a chickenshit. There are far too many who are unwilling to stand up and admit what they have said or believe. But when you do that, the other side has nowhere to go.

4. Minimize your exposure. He who is self-employed or lives overseas is much less susceptible to witch hunting than someone who works in a corporate environment.

5. Pick your battles. Sometimes, it is best not to tweak the tiger's tail.


Q

Post: #28

^^Dude, you're practically writing my article for me. I've got some headings in my notes that are almost identical.

Post: #29

Quote:Do not apologize! They will press you hard for an apology and repeatedly imply that if you will just apologize, all will be forgiven. Don't be fooled! They are simply looking for a public confession that will confirm their accusations, give them PR cover, and provide them with the necessary ammunition to expel you. Apologizing does nothing more than hand them the very weapon they are seeking.

Makes me wonder if in the early stages of a witch the target often fails to realize it's a witch hunt. Instead they fall into the trap of thinking that it's all a "misunderstanding" and that the mob can be reasoned with.

It seems like the same reason that people will talk to the police even when it's in their best interest not to, because they're so sure of their own innocence that of course once they explain themselves sufficiently all of it will get cleared up in the process. Then they learn the hard way they were only digging themselves into a deeper hole.

That was the sense I got when Paul Graham (of Y Combinator) got accused of sexism. He started churning out more articles trying to "clarify" earlier comments. To the mob chasing him, it just made him look more guilty and that they needed to push harder in order to elicit a confession.

A lot of the attacks that have been going on look like the modern day form of what was known as a Struggle Session:

Quote:A struggle session was a form of public humiliation used by the Communist Party of China in the Mao Zedong era to shape public opinion and to humiliate, persecute, and/or execute political rivals and class enemies. In general, the victim of a struggle session was forced to admit to various crimes before a crowd of people who would verbally and physically abuse the victim until he or she confessed.

Post: #30

Back in the day, people different than the group used to get scalped. Now they just lose their jobs. It's just a newer form of "conversion therapy", helped by technology.

Post: #31

All of these posts except mine are how to fight back and WIN by being morally right etc.

Roosh in particular I believe was already self-employed , and in fact his popularity and renown was _necessary_ for there to be a witch hunt at all. In addition, the controversy probably only _increased_ support and to some degree may have benefitted him financially among his readers.

I very much respect those who call out stupidity and narrow-mindedness; because without them we'd still have people being being burned at the stake for blasphemy. I'm just not the type.

In my real life experience, being an anonymous character seeking the approval of an educational institution ( a degree); the best strategy was the exact opposite.

Make believe they are right while you need them. Comply with whatever shit they want you do to. It's not like a samurai who has to kill himself, it's usually an apology, some symbol that they are right in their belief system.

Pick your battles. To argue one has to fight to the death over every minuscule dispute just isn't realistic.

Actually, I believe going into therapy as the school forced me to do benefitted me. I got a very cheap rate lol.

They also offered to have me go on "leave" for a semester which for me was a non-starter. I probably would have fought them with a lawsuit if they had tried that. The aging (had been previously pretty hot) feminist dean of the school was really personally enraged at me, thought I would make a terrible therapist. She had lapsed into total female emotional reasoning.

But I was studying to be a psychotherapist, and getting to experience psychotherapy was educational.

If you are not self-employed with customers who themselves believe they're rebellious, you may be subject to the oversight of some institution.

All institutions are asking at on time or another "Do these jeans make me look fat?" llolzzlllz.

Handle that as you like....

As I get closer and closer to my passive income goals, I don't particularly want to say "fuck you" to anyone I worked for.. I just want to.. not be there- be someplace better.

Post: #32

(04-27-2014 09:42 PM)magellan Wrote:  Fuck you money cures all.

We'll see how it works for Donald Sterling.

Post: #33

Well, my post on the subject is now up:
http://www.returnofkings.com/34731/how-t...witch-hunt

Post: #34

(04-29-2014 03:06 PM)Hotwheels Wrote:  

(04-27-2014 09:42 PM)magellan Wrote:  Fuck you money cures all.

We'll see how it works for Donald Sterling.

At his age, every week he stays alive is a victory, let alone being able to walk and talk.

Post: #35

Just an addendum to all those "digital witchhunt" happening these days:

In present day North Korea and China about 30 years ago, if you say anything that the law prohibit you from speaking, you will certainly be punished by losing your jobs (in China) or be executed (in North Korea). From the looks of it, USA isn't exactly at such magnitude yet but it certainly is heading toward that direction.

The problem is though, why are most of Americans disallowing freedom of speech? Aren't they smart enough to be prescient about the consequences of this trend?

Post: #36

Quote:

Quote:Online liberalism, as I’ve said many times, is not actually a series of political beliefs and alliances but instead a set of social cues that are adopted to demonstrate one’s class background — economic class, certainly, but more cultural class, the various linguistic and consumptive signals that assure those around you that you’re the right kind of person and which appear to be the only thing that America’s 20-something progressives really care about anymore. The dominance of personal branding and cultural signaling over political theory means that liberal attitudes change very rapidly and then congeal into a consensus that is supposedly so obviously correct that it does not need defending.

This, as Mr. deBoer writes, leads not only to philosophically inconsistent views, changing in roughly the same manner as fashion, but also to the headlong abandonment of principle as such. Considering the cases of athlete-shoplifter Jameis Winston, alleged child molester Woody Allen, deposed Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, and billionaire creep Donald Sterling, he writes: “In the past year, liberalism as an elite social phenomenon has abandoned first rights of the accused and second the right to free expression. The Jameis Winston and Woody Allen sexual-assault cases saw the rise of resistance to any discussion whatsoever of due process and rights of the accused . . . [And those] mentioning those rights at all were immediately and angrily denounced, and accused of insufficient resistance to (if not outright support for) rape and rape culture.”

But the point of discussions about subjects such as the case of Mr. Sterling, or of such political hippogriffs as “rape culture,” is not to say something about the subject; it is to say something about the speaker. It is the political-discourse version of conspicuous consumption. That matters relatively little in the case of such trivial figures as hashtag-activists Michelle Obama or Kim Kardashian, who occupy roughly comparable places in the cultural firmament. But when preening replaces thinking as a cultural habit, our ability to engage in responsible self-government is diminished.

What’s interesting to me in all this is the phrase “conspicuous consumption,” because this is the precise way I for years have been describing this phenomenon of social signaling, particularly as it creates political markers to assure others in the hive that you have pure thoughts — and therefore, necesssary goodness — on your side. And all it takes is compliance to the dubious liberal narrative prepared for you by ideological professorial mouthpieces themselves once drenched (as was Obama himself) in the miasma of leftist assertion and assumption. Creating a culture of useful idiots blinded to their own useful idiocy and indeed protected from self-discovery by their having been taught that all ideas are inherently subjective, that everyone has a right to his or her opinion (which they conflate into intellectual relativism), and that their empowerment allows them to accuse those who question their assumptions as somehow committing an act of intellectual violence — a kind of rhetorical hate crime.

All of this is, of course, by design, and is part and parcel of the long-march through the institutions. The genius — and simultaneous perfidy — of that agenda has been to convince the sheep-like followers of progressive cant that they are society’s true intellectuals, and that those who disagree with them only do so because they are impure, unworthy, unenlightened, and disconnected from the very impressive-sounding jargon that passes for “thought” in academia.

http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=53746

Post: #37

New firing:

Quote:Two upstate New York radio hosts have been fired over their on-air comments about Rochester's decision to cover gender reassignment surgery for city employees.

They made fun of transsexuals.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/U...2-15-16-41

Post: #38

By "witchhunt," we should limit the term to cases where the witches are doing the hunting.

Not every case where someone loses their job because of dumb shit they said is a witchhunt.

For example, that police commissioner in NH who was ranting about niggers rightly got pushed out, even if he was in a small town.

For other cases, the advice to own your words and fight back is appropriate. I am thinking of "Donglegate," where some attention whore tweeted the picture of two guys talking about dongles.

The guy apologized for it and got fired. He should have fought back and exposed the incident for what it was - faux offense in the service of attention whoring.

Post: #39

Rightly pushed out? Who's deciding that?

He said nigger in a private conversation at a restaurant with his wife. He shouldn't have been pushed out.

Post: #40

"5-SEP-2013: Barilla CEO, Guido Barilla pressured on gay marriage."

HAHA!

I remember that one!

I thought it was so funny because it was just this European CEO dude saying what he thought was an inoffensive remark, not knowing how butthurt his crazy American customers are about gay marriage.

That was a funny one.

Post: #41

Rap Genius cofounder fired because of comments he made about Elliot Rodger:

http://recode.net/2014/05/26/rap-genius-...dam-fired/

Gawker stirred up the mob with this article:

http://gawker.com/rap-genius-co-founders...0/+nitasha

Post: #42

He didn't even say anything wrong or offensive! It's not any worse than the scores of people bashing late Elliot's looks or style.