Thursday, June 12, 2014

Social Justice Warrior smear campaign: Sarah Kendzior, David Graeber and friends edition

I think that Social Justice Warrior Sarah Kendzior has serious ethical problems - she appears to work as a journalist, but she has no qualms about misrepresenting others as I talk about here.

She is supported, without question, by a cadre of SJWs including anthropologist David Graeber, and some Twitterer named Perfectly Cromulent, along with a random sampling of other zanies who together attempted to smear feminist writer Katha Pollitt.

The mind-boggling shamelessness of SJWs can best be understood in these tweets by Perfectly Cromulent:


What does this anonymous Tweeter think that Katha Pollitt should apologize for? Well therein lies a classic tale of SJW bad faith, hysteria, lies, stupidity and witch hunts.

Sarah Kendzior claimed that she received rape threats online. This would surprise nobody who has been paying attention - women get abuse and rape threats all the time on the Internet. But Kendzior's spin on it was this:
For the past few weeks, I have been receiving rape threats and constant harassment from people who describe themselves as leftists or communists, and apparently want to rape their way to revolution. I have attempted to handle these threats privately. I mentioned them on Twitter twice: once to violentfanon, whose podcast I nearly had to cancel on because of the intensity of the threats, and one to Kenzo Shibata, in a Twitter conversation.
And then later...
The left has a rape problem. Someone should write about it. But it is not going to be me. I have had enough threats this year.
However, it appears that neither Kendzior, violentfanon nor Kenzo Shibata want to come forward with the names of the self-described "leftists" and "communists." But without providing any kind of evidence that the rape threats are by leftists and communists, should we be expected to believe Sarah Kendzior without question?

And the answer is  YES, we are expected to believe Sarah Kendzior without question. That is the SJW way. And if you dare NOT believe Sarah Kendzior - or her friends - without question, you will be accused of being out to get Sarah Kendzior. 


We will get to "that vile Nation article" in a moment - but just so you know, Pollitt didn't write it.

Really you have to almost admire Sarah Kendzior for her absolute and perfect lack of shame, calling Katha Pollitt "Soulless and cruel" for simply asking a question related to Kendzior's claims.

Now it's true that Kendzior herself did not claim that people at Salon and Jacobin were sending rape threats to her. She mentioned Salon and Jacobin in various places in her blog post on the subject and then said this:
So in one day, two leftist publications used rape threats to me to belittle me, humiliate me and defame me. And then others accuse me of wanting attention.
And then her friend and fellow Atlantic contributor Joshua Foust took that and ran with it, tweeting this:


Over 48 hours later he finally tweeted this:



The responses to his tweet are pretty amusing, including this:

. Translation: "I was totally wrong and slanderous, but FUCK YOU ANYWAY!!!!"

What I find fascinating is that during those 48 hours between Foust's claim and retraction, Sarah Kendzior was actively tweeting and knew of Foust's claim and appears to have neglected to inform Foust of the error. 

Meanwhile, David Graeber, someone that Katha Pollitt followed on Twitter, posted something in reference to Foust's claim. He has since deleted the tweet that Pollitt had responded to:


So to recap:
  1. Joshua Foust falsely claimed that writers at Salon and Jacobin were sending rape threats to Sarah Kendzior.
  2. Sarah Kendzior apparently did not correct Foust although she was often on Twitter during that time.
  3. David Graeber accepted Foust's false claim. David Graeber seemed to have accepted Foust's false claim, according to Katha Pollitt (see this for an explanation of the change.)
  4. Katha Pollitt questioned David Graeber about it.


"Shameless" does not begin to describe the black hole where SJW ethics should be.

Now back to "that vile Nation article." Kendzior is referring to "Feminism's Toxic Twitter Wars" by Michelle Goldberg. As I've documented here many times, the Social Justice Warrior Mikki Kendall division are absolutely besides themselves with rabid hatred for Goldberg and the Nation for simply telling the truth: Mikki Kendall is a bully who has no qualms about smearing people.

And I can confirm this myself from first-hand experience. I first became aware of who Mikki Kendall was when I found her smearing me by name as a "racist" in my Google search results. Kendall knew nothing about me except that people she knew on the Internet were calling me that. And she didn't bother to find out anything about me. She just mindlessly reblogged the smear with her karnythia Tumblr. And when I asked her to remove it she refused, and instead invented reasons for why the smear showing up in Google results was my own fault. 

But Social Justice Warriors don't always come right out and call you a racist, sometimes they just imply you are, as Kendzior does by claiming that Pollitt was "mad" that she defended black feminists.

Anybody who knows anything about Katha Pollitt realizes what utter bullshit this is. 

But fortunately for Kendzior, the world of Twitter is full of stupid and ignorant people out hunting for witches. Kendzior has power through them - for what stupid people lack in brainpower, they make up through sheer force of numbers. And if you are a shameless demagogue like Sarah Kendzior, that's exactly what you want.

A second fascinating aspect of this controversy is how quickly Kendzior turned the issue of rape threats into an excuse to attack Pollitt for the Goldberg article in the Nation. It's almost like she was waiting for the opportunity.

I do find it odd that Kendzior refuses to provide evidence of the claimed leftists and communists who are sending her rape threats. When Rebecca Watson was the target of rape threats and death threats from fellow atheists thanks to Richard Dawkins-instigated outrage she was not at all shy about naming and shaming the perps. In fact she even put up a Page o' Hate.

If Rebecca Watson can name and shame the perps I see no reason why Sarah Kendzior can't do it. If there are communists and leftists making rape threats, the world should know who they are. 

And until Kendzior does name them, people have every right to question her claims as to the identity of the perps. Being the target of rape threats does NOT mean that every single thing you say from that day forward must be accepted on faith.

But of course in the SJW utopia, belief without critical thinking is the ideal.