I have recently had a discussion with a progressive colleague, which started with his telling me how he promotes “diversity” and generally DEI. I responded with this link of mine, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/marxian-misnomers-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-in-academia/, to which he replied with an email that was followed by my response. I will not, for the sake of his privacy, display his emails, but their content will be clear from mine that I will. It seems to be an instructive example of the two different ways of thinking about the current ideological climate, mine being conservative, of course.
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Dear …,
Thank you so much for your reply.
I don’t think you could infer from what I had written that I am against “having diversity of viewpoints, diversity of opinions, and different ways of assigning value to things like knowledge, understanding, and behavior.” On the contrary, it is exactly that kind of diversity, “the fruitful diversity of ideas that an academic institution is supposed to nurture,” to quote myself, that I fully support. That, however, has nothing to do with the “diversity” implied by DEI, a politically mandated and truly politicized implementation of racism and the progressive “divide et impera” methodology. The goal of that politics, as usual with politics, is power, by ensuring that certain groups in the US attain unmerited token privileges originating from policies introduced by a particular political party. Those groups will thus know to whom they should be thankful when it comes to elections.
I do not know if you have followed the case of Norman Wang who has been persecuted by [University of Pittsburgh] for publishing a peer-reviewed analysis of the effects of another manifestation of the same kind of racialist policies, “affirmative action,” another misleading sobriquet. None of those privileges serve anybody except politicians, but all lead to tremendous harm—first to those they pretend to help but also to entire society—and ultimately to the loss of freedom. That is why it is so threatening [to conservatives—this is the response to a question in the email].
Conservatives like myself, to whom you attribute “a vehement and well-coordinated political attack,” are, unfortunately, much less organized than and nowhere as coordinated as the progressives, whose attack is not only multi-prong—employing sex, race, justice system, immigration, religion, and education—but also very effective. The political vanguard of those progressives, the Squad, are openly racist and antisemitic. But the ideology comes from elite schools, thoroughly and for a long time permeated by Marxism, tolerating no diversity that you and I seek. The “diversity” that is offered these days to the “kids,” students, is such that they are afraid to express any hint of dissent—and that segues to being afraid of holding a dissenting opinion. And to doublethink. They are fully aware what treatment they could be given by their schools and fellow students, increasingly violent in this country as it moves to anomie, and how their job prospects may look if they don’t toe the Party line. Nowadays, they are also afraid of being Jews, a logical development. Speaking of feeling unwelcome. Ask me if I feel welcome, or even safe, especially with all that’s happened after the 10/7 pogrom. Do you?
I have seen all that—it’s nothing new. The same totalitarianism in nicer wrapping and trappings of America rather than Russia. It may be harder to see that for those whose vision of social trends is truncated by the lack of personal exposure to their entire continuum. I could go on and on, like your fellow […], but I don’t really think listening to a different opinion should get a separate label, “DEI.” It used to be a norm, or so I’ve thought. I am looking forward to our continuing exchange, an example of true diversity. Here is some more of my stuff, from over 2 years ago: https://www.thecollegefix.com/professor-from-soviet-union-warns-anti-racism-agenda-in-u-s-is-rehashing-of-marxism/.
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Dear …,
I am glad we are on the same page regarding the meaning of "diversity" as it should be, the one I stated in the references I cited. The problem, as I am sure you are aware while trying to fit it into the DEI Marxian formula, is that the content of that formula has nothing to do with that meaning. In a fittingly Orwellian fashion, it is opposite. That is why I have written what I have, both to you and in several general access places. I too am selective about social topics to pay attention to. There are only two broad ones for me: antisemitism and the accelerating sliding of this society into progressive totalitarianism, both well familiar to me. And progressive it is—I am using this term in the sense it was applied to the Western fellow-travelers by the Soviet ideologues: "progressive humanity," "progressive intelligentsia" (curiously, I don’t remember any “progressive” workers or farmers). And just like with Soviet totalitarianism, antisemitism here, while having the usual religious roots, builds as a necessary attribute of the totalitarian ideology upon the old prejudice.
This is why antisemitism is now rampant on elite campuses—without even the Soviet-invented “anti-Zionism” disguise anymore. In your response, you skipped entirely that facet of “DEI,” whose "inclusion" excludes Jews (https://www.newsweek.com/antisemitism-growing-problem-among-college-diversity-administrators-opinion-1661416), whose "diversity" prohibits Jews, Zionism, and conservatism, and which by its “equity” penalizes the success of Jews as a group, as it does the success of Asians as a group and of anybody who reaches it on merits rather than on assignment to an “oppressed” group. That is what the persecution of Wang is about, which you dismiss as some anonymous generic “bad behavior,” and whose sin you fail to name. I have no idea what behavior on his side you consider "bad." In contrast to the administrators, he misused no ideology. Those are facts that constitute what you without a minimal discussion label "right-wing propaganda.” It is ironic that in the very next sentence you define propaganda as demonization of an idea.
It is also ironic that you accuse conservatives of weaponizing words while listing the buzzwords of DEI, purely progressive invention, intended exactly for what you accuse the conservatives of: dividing society. Divide et impera, to repeat myself. I should add to that the recent well-weaponized progressive discoveries: "systemic racism," "white fragility," "implicit bias," "anti-racism." All serving the same purpose: to cultivate and politically exploit enmity, suspicion, discord, and shame between and within groups defined by the very criterion racists have used. Somehow, the ”racial” problem has reached its maximum exactly when this “systemically racist” country elected twice the biggest diversity hire of all, President Obama, just to prove to itself, once and for all, how nonracist it is.
Contemporary progressivism is reflective of the ideological peculiarities of the majority of US Jews, proverbially earning like Episcopalians and voting like Puerto Ricans. While having been able to reach unprecedented comparative safety and opulence thanks to the capitalism of the goldene medina, many have been involved in the causes directed to destroying that same capitalism - or, to avoid obfuscating labels, destroying freedom: economic, academic, and, ultimately, freedom of thought. You regrettably did not react to my mentioning the students’ fear of expressing dissent. Under totalitarianism, there is a label for every dissenting thought: "right-wing propaganda," "slandering socialism," "vestiges of bourgeois thinking." “Racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” “islamophobia”—the list keeps growing. The only thing that remains here is putting those labels in law books to formally—not just by “canceling”—punish the thought criminals, as it was in the Soviet Penal Code.
The progressive Jews are led in their ideology not only by the Judaism-misderived misdirected compassion to the "poor" and the misunderstood "tikkun olam," which is presented more like "The Internationale" and a Marxist slogan than its midrashic meaning, but also by their misplaced shame for fulfilling the "rich Jew" antisemitic stereotype and the subconscious fear of losing those riches (if not life) due to others' envy, as it has happened throughout centuries. Nothing original about that capitalist/anti-capitalism contradiction either: Savva Morozov, a very wealthy (non-Jewish) capitalist in pre-Soviet Russia and a compassionate man, massively helped Bolsheviks who had sworn to destroy capitalism. Enrico Berlinguer, the nominally Jewish head of the Italian Communist Party, was a millionaire. I don't need to remind you on whose side the majority of techno-millionaires, including nominal Jews among them, are here, in the US. Soros, whose criticism by the "right" is verboten because of his nominal Jewishness, has been doing everything he can to destroy this society.
That's what Angela Davis has been doing all her life, from supplying weapons to Black Panthers, to kissing Brezhnev and Honecker, to supporting Arab Jew-murderers and the genocidal BDS movement. It is not me who condemned her for what you call her "imperfections," but Solzhenitsyn, in his "Warning to the West." He surely knew much better than would I what she was and where the West was rolling to, propelled by the communists and their apologists. He also intimately knew what communism meant. His knowledge was not from the anecdotes like yours about "transgenders," "immigrants," and "alternative family structures"—all obfuscating misnomers - but from observing from prison holes the consequences of monopolizing the Truth, what the progressives and their communist predecessors have done, the diversity of ideas be damned once power has been reached. You may think this society is far from that—but so did the Russian "bourgeois" intelligentsia just before and after Bolsheviks seized power. Tolerance to communism here has reached its pinnacle, with open communists, terrorist supporters and Israel-haters like Angela Davis extolled by Marxism-impregnated US universities.
You talk about the antisemitism of the "right"—at the time when open Jew-hate is rampant on campuses across the country, supported by the studied indifference of the administrators. You ignore that entirely, along with my question about your level of comfort with that. The BDS, the SJP, the "Free Palestine," the unrestrained support for Hamas, the NOI, the "black caucus" including Obama happily meeting with Farrakhan (keeping the photo shyly sub rosa until after his finishing his 2nd term), the pogromist Sharpton, the antisemitic "Squad" including "our own" Summer Lee, the Democrat administration declaring the Western Wall "occupied territory" and calling for ethnic cleansing of Judea and the "two-state solution" right after the 10/7 pogrom - none of this comes from the "right." The "right," which includes a 101 years old friend of mine who spent his young years in the Gulag (you may find his enlightening book at https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Little-Snakes-Stalins-Assassins/dp/1683481976), is no threat to the Jews, Israel, and the US. The militant totalitarian progressivism is, with its DEI and other society-destroying Marxian stuff. Antisemites on the “right” are marginals, uniformly condemned, unlike their legitimacy and logical presence among the progressives.
Now, you may dismiss all this as “right-wing propaganda” or respond substantively. I’d prefer the latter, of course, but I’ll understand if you choose the former.
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Number one then :). I do too appreciate the opportunity to learn about that alternative reality of yours :). Agreeing to disagree.
