The Motte and Bailey tactic used by CRT apologists is described by The Woke Temple on Twitter:
Also on Twitter, I spotted another description by Moe Lastman:
It’s a textbook motte-and-Bailey.No one is opposing “ideas”, they are opposing the pedagogy which is founded in CRT that teaches white children to be ashamed of the color of their skin and black children to feel like they are powerless victims.
First, a Tweet from Obaid Omer:
Yes, indeed. If we're going to abuse 10-year olds by telling them that they are oppressors (or victims of their oppressor-classmates), shouldn't we at least warn them first? And yes, many schools are abusing children like this.
I have no way of proving this, but I am imagining a group of woke young adults sitting around in the privacy of someone's apartment talking about sex, violence, rape, you-name-it. I doubt that any of them give each other "trigger warnings" in private. That demand is reserved for professors in public spaces only. Even though the "trigger warning" is supposedly about the topic, not the person mentioning the topic.
Ed Snowden has begun writing at Substack. He has named his column "Continuing Ed." In his first post he discusses the most dangerous form of censorship, beginning his essay with a quote by Serbian-Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš. Kiš, who narrowly escaped the Holocaust and whose work was eventually suppressed in Yugoslavia, wrote passionately on this struggle:
Whichever way you look at it, censorship is the tangible manifestation of a pathological state, the symptom of a chronic illness which develops side by side with it: self-censorship. Invisible but present, far from the eyes of the public, buried deep down in the most secret parts of the spirit, it is far more efficient than [official] censorship. While both of them induce (or are induced?) by the same means — threats, fear, blackmail — this second ill camouflages, or at any rate does not denounce, the existence of any outside constraint. The fight against censorship is open and dangerous, therefore heroic, while the battle against self-censorship is anonymous, lonely and unwitnessed, and it makes its subject feel humiliated and ashamed of collaborating.
Snowden's essay is a commentary on this most dangerous form of censorship: self-censorship:
“Lonely and unwitnessed,” “dangerous and condemnable” — Kiš's perfect and tragic adjectives — describe how many people feel today, when confronted with the internet's many opportunities for self-presentation, and equally many opportunities for self-destruction. Under the pitiless eye of mass surveillance, which funnels the most tentative keystroke into our permanent records, we begin to surveil ourselves.Unlike in Kiš's milieu, or in contemporary North Korea, or Saudi Arabia, the coercive apparatus doesn't have to be the secret police knocking at the door. For fear of losing a job, or of losing an admission to school, or of losing the right to live in the country of your birth, or merely of social ostracism, many of today's best minds in so-called free, democratic states have stopped trying to say what they think and feel and have fallen silent. That, or they adopt the party-line of whatever party they would like to be invited to — whatever party their livelihoods depend on.
I constantly feel that urge to self-censor, because I know that I'm pissing off people who will be vocal, many of whom I consider to be friends. I assume--perhaps presumptively--that many more will agree but will be silent). I often speak up anyway because I know that silent acquiescence by the supposed owners of this country is not a healthy want to run the country. I motivate myself to speak out by thinking of the many brave people who have spoken out against ignorance and injustice under conditions that are far more dangerous than anything I have ever faced.
A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
As a general rule, people should publicly say the sorts of things that they are thinking. The American experiment requires that we collaborate with each other, and the best way is by using our words instead of throwing rocks and shooting guns. When we talk openly, we will offend others, and that is the unavoidable cost of free speech. When we bravely say the things we are thinking, we are able to function imperfectly as a coordinated whole, e pluribus unum. When a person self-censors, that person is only pretending to be part of the body politic. A wide-open national cacauphonous chattering is what bubbles up, in the aggregate into public policy. Any form of censorship thus degrades democracy and impairs social flourishing, even to the extent that idea seems like a terrible and offensive idea.
As Snowden describes, self-censorship is insidious. No one will come to your rescue because you are not making any public call for help. Further, it's easy to get used to self-censorship because there is a constant immediate cheap payback: it is extraordinarily rare that anyone will criticize you for failing to speak your mind on an important topic. Our self-censorship constitutes a payment to an intellectual protection racket. Institutions and governments won't shit on you so much when you muzzle your words and thoughts. That deal works out well enough for those who are willing to look in the mirror everyday to see someone lacking the courage of their convictions.
Many people who only read left-leaning legacy media falsely assume that they are well-informed. They take their own select slice of information as a proxy for the full gamut of available information. Many do this because they don't want to spend an admittedly exhausting amounts of time doubling or tripling their news gathering time, much less doing the extra-hard work of processing conflicting accounts from various sources of information. Limiting our news gathering intellectually crimps us, but then we don't know what we don't know, so ignorance becomes bliss. Ignorance feels powerful and omniscient.
I'm posting these concerns because I keep hearing from people who are absolutely convinced that they know that criticism of CRT (Critical Race Theory) is a sham because they've heard about it at NYT/WaPo/NPR. These same news sources also tell us that Christoper Rufo is to be ignored because some Republicans find some of his ideas attractive. There is a much bigger world out there than left-learning legacy media. I lean left on many issues, but I keep encountering ad hominem attacks that I am a "conservative" or "Republican" because I don't pass the DNC purity test. Such simplistic and silo-driven reasoning!
I have been provoked to write this article because I noticed several people on FB citing WaPo's recent piece that starts off by straw-manning Rufo's concerns with this sentence: "Critical race theory holds that racism is systemic in the United States, not just a collection of individuals prejudices--—an idea that feels obvious to some and offensive to others." And with this single sentence, WaPo's entire article becomes a fraud. But those who choose to trust WaPo as authority wouldn't know it. If anyone wants to be truly informed, please consider Rufo's response to WaPo's article on Twitter. Of course, you don't HAVE TO read Rufo's response. But don't consider yourself well-informed unless you do.
[Added June 22, 2021]
The Washington Post walks back many steps.
Krystal Ball's commentary is spot. The Left constantly ignores Joe Rogan's many left-leaning positions and it's to their own detriment. One problem is that Joe is too damned independent and doesn't pass the left's political purity tests. Krystal also suggests a time-of-genesis and a motive for this dysfunction: Joe's words in support of Bernie Sanders during the primary.