Here’s the thread that prompted NYU to email my students, referring them to the CDC’s “authoritative” position on face masks (that is, the one the CDC now takes, having said the opposite before April), and reaffirming NYU’s strict mask mandate (which I never urged the class to violate).
As you’ll see, these tweets are venomous, calling for my termination:
Somehow this thread has made quite a splash, as friends at other schools have contacted me about it, expressing concern about my status at NYU.
I’ve been teaching propaganda (how to study it, not do it) for years now; and while there’s always disagreement, and resistance—both good things—I’ve never had anything like this happen.
One reply on “The tweets attacking me”
So sorry to hear of this (inevitable) development, though the cancel culture comment on the tweet fits the issue to a T (“I did not spend the time to watch even a minute of this, sorry”), i.e., “I am to indignant to even give anyone the benefit the doubt on something I have made up my mind on.” Challenging debate is now viewed as offensive, and to protect themselves they will even tattle directly to big institutions. It’s a disturbing time for free thinkers. The call has gone out recently in some circles for stealth and/or other types of cognitive intervention, as most “key words,”—in many way like internet censorship algorithms—are lightning rods for visceral rejection and quick scorn.
As has been noted in many of your lectures, and what I have observed personally, is that many “progressives” seem to be the most blinded. I am reminded of how the famed illusionist Derren Brown has been quoted as saying that film students are indeed the most easily hypnotised. Expert analyzers of the visual realm, or unwitting victims of their own paradigms? I had considered myself “progressive” but I think “enlightenment” would be the only catagory worth striving for since enlightenment, readily accessible to anyone with a bit of curiosity and courage, seems to begin always with the questioning of ALL BELIEFS, with occam’s razor at the ready, everything (joyously) up for reevaluation and reinvention.
The so-called left’s intellectual hubris is their achilles heel, and their ego’s glue. And yet it is often an identity forged in othering: let’s all laugh at the idiots on the right that have been simplified into a caricature by the media they are loyal to. There is flowering and general acceptance of victimism too, which the lumbering figure of Trump (and his portrayal in the press) has played into perfectly. Being a victim is a touchy subject, no wonder it is never discussed. It would be genuinely healthy for us all. But no, their publications are the cool kid’s victim club, full of quirk historicism, snappy editing and sexy futurism, emotive op-ed narrating about their “feelings” all generally owned by the same umbrella media corps like Advance. The left can’t understand the right’s acerbic fatigue, and the right is baffled by the left’s gullibility; only an observing consciousness can “understand” either one. To each other, it’s as if they are speaking in different, mutually offensive dialects. However I don’t see the playing field as remotely equal. Where is large swaths of funding coming from for some of the major current events? Understand this and many things become clear.
I do believe the left could do for some a.m.-ice-cold-water-in-the-face, zen-reed-across-the-back waking up. In this unprecedented crisis of credibility, in print media, and at international levels due to Big Tech supreme dominance (read Google [and Youtube], Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) as well as their concurrent roles as disturbing dystopian “community guidelines” censors, most on the left would be shocked to find themselves the unwitting fascists. Approving censorship. Approving of fake science Fauci propaganda (he’s not Trump). Approving of doddering tele-prompter cue reading Biden (he’s not Trump). And when he’s not teleprompted he says 2,000,000 have died of Covid “probably by the time I finish this sentence.” Have these liberal NPR-lovin’ progressives been knowingly fooled by others? Of course, but only perhaps by 1% of the population (if that), a mixture of globalist elites and an ever growing number of bandwagoners who by now get the picture and are on board with stock options. The rest are just part of the trickle-down through the machinations of the hierarchy, beholden to a given slant, some cut and paste, quoting Reuters and Atlantic Monthly or some other publication their posh ivy-league college insisted was a “respectable” news outlet, and get home in time to stream Netflix or get your tindr date home and unmasked. It’s just the new rules, the new normal.
They will no doubt be very offended by this idea too, that they are being subtly groomed for fascism, and thus will not accept any such accusation. But fascism starts small, generally with a bunch of new words and new obediences. We always jump to the cinematic final product of fascism—it seems so distant and stiffly historical, but it began modestly, mere droplets before a storm, a sense of eerieness. But we can trace the early psychological inroads, the years prior to the full-blown insanity. We like to convince ourselves that fascists are always other people less noble than ourselves—that we couldn’t possibly become so manipulated. And yet European fascism achieved majority status in their respective cultures, and of course it never left. And our rampant egos only gained ground. And of these egos, who will forego the comforts of groupthink? Fascism is in our genes. Think social epigenetics, something just awaiting activation suddenly begins firing, and the present accelerates more.
At this historic junction on planet earth, to put it simply, we are getting played. In seeing only left and right, and desperately clinging to “once-prestigious mass media outlets” and rejecting everything else as conspiracy, we are being divided and conquered. Such legacy outlets will never again be believable for those dissidents, and perhaps billions more, who manage to survive the cranked up onslaught of the coming vaccine propaganda. Quantum communicative leap? Artists of the world unite!
It’s not left vs. right, it’s masters vs. slaves. And we’re currently in the first week of boot camp, learning how to say Sir, yes Sir. And its been 7 months. Ironically, in only a few hours of curious research glints of truth could become evident for anyone with an open mind to dry falseness into its ridiculous pitiful husk. But our minds are not open, we just want to tune in for 10 minutes a day, long enough to be told what to do by the internet—the latest absurd caprice to test and train the reaction time of our compliance—and then greedily return back to enjoying our personal, private (well, not really anymore, and soon even far less) lives, pretending that everything will just get better on its own. The world could be going to hell in a hand basket, but Netflix will still be streaming to the binge-watcher, when in fact the truth of the matter is reality churning out a far more sordid and fascinating plot than any series could ever dream of.