“Anti-racism” trainings and suicide
Commenter “huxley” observes, first quoting commenter “Irish Otter49” in a discussion of the man who committed suicide after being insulted in an anti-racism training mandated by his employer:
“So he took his own life because he couldn’t deal with harsh words from a stupid female woke black race hustler? Very sad.”
IrishOtter49:
Well, yes. I believe I’m with you.
I rather dislike the anti-racism folks, but if someone imputes that I am a white supremacist, or really any other smear, it’s on me if I kill myself.
Maybe lawfare in this case is good tactics, but in the long run it reinforces the woke “hate speech” strategy which works against conservatives and the Constitution.
The thing is, this is not a case of a random person coming up to someone and calling him a name. This was done by a person whose business it is to do this as a professional hired by another business which is an employer. As far as I can tell, the training is mandatory and therefore a condition of the job. According to this article, it can render the targeted person “unemployable” and cause the person to be ostracized.
Nor does it ordinarily involve a simple nasty comment. In my post on the subject, when I described these trainings as “struggle sessions,” I was being only somewhat hyperbolic. They are actually forms of brainwashing meant to break a person down psychologically and then reconstruct that person’s value system in order to get the person to see the world – and himself or herself – differently and with guilt and remorse (if white) or blaming others (if black). They are public humiliations in front of colleagues, as well, and the trainers have methods of invalidating all attempts by the target at self-defense, labeling them racist no matter what the person says in his or her own defense.
There is no way out except for the very strongest among us. People on the right are probably more resistant, for the simple reason that they don’t already buy into the premises. But people on the left or even in the middle are very vulnerable. You might think you could shake it off quite easily, and perhaps you could. But don’t be so sure, unless you’ve undergone something similar and been able to emerge intact.
When I was quite young, about twelve or so, I read a book entitled The Rape of the Mind (yes; I seem to have had an early interest in the topic). It was about brainwashing. Orwell also gives an account of brainwashing, helped by torture, in his masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston Smith resists, but in the end he’s a broken man who loves Big Brother.
I’m not saying an anti-racism training is the equivalent of imprisonment and torture; it is not. But you might be surprised at how destructive and effective and relentless the pressure can be, especially to someone with a tendency to any sort of self-doubt or conscience. Group pressure is an especially powerful tool.
This is from the book’s description at Amazon:
In The Rape of the Mind [the author, Meerlo] goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people’s minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized “rape of the mind.” He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion.
The first chapter is called “You Too Would Confess.”
What does Meerlo mean by “verbocracy”? This:
Propagandistic lies and catchphrases are an inexorable feature of totalitarianism. Repeated countless times from countless angles, the effect is to drill the desired thinking until accepted as truth. “Double talk” characterizes much of the narrative, with words like “freedom” redefined to support the lies. Words become emotional triggers and conditioners instead of sources of independent thought.
In such a training, the idea that white people are all guilty of some sort of white original sin that cannot be expunged or denied but only accepted and atoned for, and that black people are always the innocent victims, is a big part of this. The more the white person mounts a defense, the more guilty and anti anti-racist (therefore, racist) the person is deemed to be. It is an intense and sophisticated psychological public pressure that taps into a highly emotional element of people in America today: their attitudes towards race and the racial history of the country.
Whenever accused of racism the correct response is “ OK , what’s your point “
Neo, at the State Dept we began having these sessions (the Dept trainers called them workshops) during the Obama years. I attended up until I couldn’t stand them any longer, and afterwards simply refused to attend any more of them. They stopped or slowed down for awhile (2017-2021), but started back up in earnest in January 2021. To my thinking they WERE struggle sessions, and I even called them such when explaining why I would no longer attend. Even my liberal colleagues agreed and understood, but my Leftist colleagues were deep into them and would attack those who voiced a different view.
In my case I could get away with not attending, and even calling them out for what I saw them as, because I was tenured and within a few years of retirement. Not everyone in corporate American is so lucky. They have to play the game to keep their jobs or have any chance of moving up the ladder. I feel so strongly for them.
I believe this is why this sickness, this darkness, has to be met at the level of law and defunding. DeSantis gets this, and has approached it at its root level in Florida. I sincerely do not believe that any of the Republicans running for 2024 other than DeSantis and Ramaswamy understand what we’re facing and have the fortitude to start what is required to turn back the tide.
Without meaning to offend anyone commenting here, I do not believe Trump truly sees it for the evil it is nor will do much of any substance to address it. Of course I will vote for him if he’s the nominee in Nov ’24, but do we really have to keep repeating that line?
Jonathan Kay posted a lengthy article at Quillette in July about the Bilkszto case, with details and dates about how the lawsuit and its sequelae unfolded over the two years between the 2021 lecture when Bilkszto and Ojo-Thompson first sparred and Bilkszto’s suicide on July 13. Kay includes links to other cases involving transgender as well as “anti-racism” bullying along with reproducing relevant correspondence. It’s long but worth reading in full.
As Kay says, “[The Bilkszto case] is part of the pattern of hypocrisy that surrounds the DEI industry more generally: While these consciousness-raising sessions are typically conducted on the conceit of teaching participants to be ‘brave’ and ‘disruptive,’ the well-paid corporate trainers who lead them often demand a climate of craven subservience.”
https://quillette.com/2023/07/21/rip-richard-bilkszto/
Suicide makes me very angry. Long ago a woman whom I loved and with whom I was intimate put the barrel of a pistol in her mouth and blew her brains out. The night she did this she dropped by my apartment, but I was at work. At first after her suicide I was heartbroken beyond measure. I’d think: if only I had been home that night . . . could I have talked her out of it, prevented her from taking her own life? But as time went by I realized the futility of that line of thinking, and I put those thoughts aside. Instead I became very angry with her. That anger has long since gone away. I rarely, almost never, think about her anymore. Except when I read stories like the one neo posted about Bilkszto. And then I get angry all over again. I’m angry now as I write this. But the anger will go away soon. It always does.
“Life and Death in Shanghai” by Nien Cheng is an impactful read of the Cultural Revolution and the struggle sessions people went through. Some people were driven to suicide by the stress, both mental and physical, that was placed upon them.
Colleagues struggled against colleagues, tudents against teachers. All because of a political power struggle none of them really knew about. Hopefully, we do see this political struggle now and can have means to fight it.
The primary responsibility for a suicide is the victim. The other victims are always the people who loved them. I have nothing but contempt for people who use their power positions to drive people to this desperate measure. The hurt they inflict on the suicide is always magnified by the long-lasting hurt inflicted on loved ones and colleagues.
Any company that, as a condition of continued employment, imposes mandatory ‘training’ upon its employees, training that insists upon ancestral, collective guilt strictly based upon race has created a hostile work environment for the employees of that race.
Class action lawsuits are the peaceful remedy to that condition. If legal redress of grievance cannot be obtained, it ensures eventual violence because group identification creates tribalism.
Advancing the narrative is of course the left’s motivation. These people employ evil in the service of what they claim to be the greater good. But evil cannot create good, it can only tear down and destroy good.
Fanatics place ideology above every moral precept. Thus fanaticism has no inherent limit upon its rationalizations and thus no limit upon the coercion it is willing to employ.
Nor can its advocates be reasoned out of their ideological premises for fanatics place reality itself in service of and subservient to the ideological premises to which they have committed themselves.
Once fanaticism gains majority approval, it can only be stopped with greater force than it can wield. That’s where this path is leading us.
I myself was the victim of similar accusations and threats. In my opinion, what makes all the difference is the support — or lack thereof — by family, friends, and colleagues.
In my case, the support of family was: “You didn’t say anything wrong, but you should learn to just shut up and stop causing problems.” Regarding friends and colleagues (they used to be the same, but no longer are): a small number made a perfunctory supporting remark (in an email response to an email), and then faded away; the rest said nothing or actively opposed me. To this day, they all seem to think we are still friends. Weird.
Do you remember that rocket scientist (or maybe it was a brain surgeon) who wore an “inappropriate” shirt to a press conference? He was a brilliant man who was part of an historic mission. And they destroyed him. He wound up crying on national television, making a devastating apology for the horrible sin he had committed. I’m guessing his colleagues had utterly abandoned him. Otherwise they all would have made a group appearance, wearing stupid shirts, and soundly mocking the idiots who complained in the first place. And there would have been no tears.
I’m guessing in the case of Bilkszto, he received very little support. A typical person can only be alone for so long.
I quit a job I enjoyed when the company brought in a new DEI EVP who felt she had to do something to justify her salary. Or maybe she was a believer. So there was an email announcing a required Implicit Bias training. I sent the following to the person I reported to:
• I’ve taken all of the company’s training to date; the previous training was relevant and business-related, but I’m not going to take implicit bias training, as I object to its implementation on many levels. For example:
o It’s not the company’s business to do social engineering on its employees.
o It’s not the company’s business to be my psychiatrist.
o It’s not the company’s business to attempt to tweak my thoughts or my personality.
o It’s not the company’s business to “fix” me; I have a wife and a priest devoted to that impossible task.
• Implicit bias training is a bridge too far, and I won’t cross it.
So I quit rather than take the training. But really, it was easy to leave the company as I was only working for the exceptional pay, great coworkers and interesting work. But I wonder: If I had been 30 years old instead of 70 and needed the money, would I have quit or would I have taken the training? Do you quit for the principle of the thing, and fail your family? I’m so fortunate I didn’t have that dilemma. I probably would have failed my conscience, but fed my family.
A typical person can only be alone for so long.
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Let’s be atypical.
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In my case, the support of family was: “You didn’t say anything wrong, but you should learn to just shut up and stop causing problems.”
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Sounds predictable.
What Geoffrey Britain wrote above is a good summation of the peril we are in today. The Left is trying to reintroduce tribalism into every aspect of our lives. Divide and conquer is their method and they rationalize their divisiveness by saying that they are on the right side of the history. Unless it is kept in check and reversed soon, I fear violence will come into play.
I’m guessing in the case of Bilkszto, he received very little support. A typical person can only be alone for so long.
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His personal anguish was derived from having been a loyalist of the Toronto school system.
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The Toronto school board is elected, by the way. The voters are feckless.
Art.
Do you think part of his issue is feeling abandoned by the people/institution with which he identified?
Decades ago, in a child-rearing workshop at church, the pastor asked me how my parents handled peer-group pressure directed at us.
“My parents didn’t think their kids had any peers.”
He laughed and said, “I guess I can see that.”
In retrospect, and perhaps overthinking it, maybe I could see some armor built in at the price of some loneliness. Not that the latter actually bothered me.
To the extent one’s self-image depends on what others think of you, perhaps that’s a vulnerability and a tool for others with evil intent to manipulate.
So, good on my parents.
It’s a tragedy, what happened to this man. I’d be surprised if anybody in the grievance industry thought so, though. Either it serves as a warning, or at least a cause for self celebration.
“I’m not saying an anti-racism training is the equivalent of imprisonment and torture; it is not.”
I disagree. Maybe not on the scale of the Bastille, but it fits the definition – can’t leave, endless psychological attack.
Kiki (5:38 pm) offers,
“Whenever accused of racism the correct response is “OK, what’s your point“
Mine is a [choose one and only one: bemused; weary] “so what else is new?”
Irish: Thanks for that meaningful personal story.
I do not advocate any form of involuntary death in response to wokeness training sessions, but targeting oneself is the least appropriate option. Two things are logically assumed in the scenario: (1) The suicide victim likely had at least a faint notion in that direction before the event, and (2) one person clearly harbored hardcore racist thoughts and brought those to the session with an agenda to spread the ideology.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the worst racist at a wokeness training session?
It doesn’t take rocket science to answer that question.
remember orwell’s room 101, where they broke down winston smith, so he ‘would live big brother’
Fortunately, during my tenure in life, I’ve always been a somewhat hardened, call upon if needed asshole. Probably from a decade and a half of an alcoholic stepfather ala “Stand By Me”. I’ve seen abuse. Me not recognizing Bob Johnson in a dress as a her ain’t it.
Fortunately also, I entered and rode the IT crest 1970-2000. This gave me a much better “Piss off, I’m not doing it.” than most people. If you’re working on upgrading the fiche process that’s about to lap itself clockwise, nobody’s going to fire you.
Never had a problem saying “That’s not what happened.” either.
Maybe that life style denied me riches but I don’t give a crap. (More of that attitude.)
I don’t live in a community where it’s needed but a work friend in Chicago had business cards printed titled Race Card with a couple paragraphs of appropriate rebut on it.
He enjoyed handing them out.
The problem is you can lose a job as a direct result of claims made by others.
I had a job where I had clearly — and was known by the management — to have busted my ass for 4 consecutive 60h weeks to make a deadline. And did so enough that my direct supervisor even noticed my work ethic. Also, at around the same time, everyone was forced to sign an ack that there would be no toleration of harassment or other in the workplace. I complained because what we were forced to sign had no suggestion of any kind of due process — someone could make a claim and it would be taken as gospel with no chance to question it or otherwise make counter charges. I was assured twice — once by my supervisor, later by the company’s main attorney, that my concerns were unfounded, that due process would be followed. About 4 months after I worked that 60 hour a week month, One of my co-workers and I noted a pretty girl that we’d both spotted at a bus stop outside our offices. AT NO TIME was anything crude or rude said. No graphic comments about her body beyond the fact that she was attractive or pretty. No suggestions of ANY kind regarding anything more than appreciation of her youth and attractiveness.
A female co-worker overheard it, made some snide comment about what we were saying, and I was, admittedly, dismissive — pretty much, “Yeah, yeah.”
Within half an hour my supervisor summoned the two of us into his office, and read us the riot act, during which it was pretty clear we needed to keep our mouths shut.
An hour or so after that, I was sacked, with zero opportunity to know what claims had been made — almost certainly absolute lies, given what I know for a fact I DID say — and damned sure zero due process.
Note that this was at least a DECADE before, “Me Too”, as well.
The current workplace situation is beyond hostile to men in particular, and totally unacceptable. People can make unfounded accusations and you can wind up in deep shit without any possible response.
I went to HR myself in another given scenario where *I* would happily ignored the situation, but certain words were uttered about the interaction that made me determined to get ahead of it before such claims were made to HR that fucked *ME* over. I tried to just cover my ass, to make it clear that I only wanted my side before them IF such comments were repeated, but HR decided they HAAAAD to get involved and it was a general clusterfuck that exasperated the (probably minor) issue between the two of us.
Political Correctness is, in general, a horrifically destructive force in the workplace, creating a strong inability for co-workers to deal with problems rationally and casually.
For me the distinction is that it has been arranged by your employer and done in the workplace as part of your duties. Your employer has a higher duty of care to provide a safe workplace free from bullying and harrassment. Here the employer has not only failed to provide a safe workplace, they have facilitated and caused the harm. Any damaged caused by the words of the speaker are aggravated by the fact it was done in front of witnesses, in the workplace and endorsed (at least tacitly) by the employer.
They deserve every lawsuit they receive, and it does not create a wider general principle of liability for speech.
Banned Lizard –
“one person clearly harbored hardcore racist thoughts and brought those to the session with an agenda to spread the ideology.”
If you’re thinking that the people running these presentations are racist, then remember that according to the left’s “oppression matrix”, people who aren’t white *cannot* be racist. Oppressed people can’t be racist (and there are numerous professors and scholarly cites that will “explain” why this is the case). Since whites oppress the other races, therefore only whites can be racist.
You can snort and dismiss that as the pablum it is. But if you’re into the progressive ideology, it’s not pablum. It’s gospel truth. So if a DEI trainer who’s a black woman gets up in front of her audience, and declares that all white men are racist misogynists, she fully believes that she is not being racist, nor is she being sexist, when she states that. And any progressives in the audience will believe similarly.
Telemachus – “I do not believe Trump truly sees it for the evil it is nor will do much of any substance to address it.”
Trump knows that there’s an issue. Remember that he banned it from the Federal government late in 2020. Whether he knows how serious it is, or just sees it as a more general problem, is anyone’s guess. But he did take action against it during his first time in office.
“when I described these trainings as “struggle sessions,” I was being only somewhat hyperbolic.”
I don’t think you were being hyperbolic at all. When I first heard about these “training sessions”, struggle sessions and self-criticisms were the very first thing that came to mind. Nothing that I’ve heard since then has dissuaded me from that belief, and others who are familiar with the terms and have actually had to sit through them (I’ve personally managed to avoid that so far) have all agreed. It very much appears to be simple Maoism, repackaged as “anti-racism” and “anti-sexism” training.
The intensity might not be the same as what the Chinese had to go through under Mao (though I suspect that under some “trainers”, it is). But at its core, it’s still the same thing, guided by the same basic strategies.
junior:
In China, struggle sessions often involved beatings and other physical abuse. That’s the distinction I’m making.
The harassers may be guilty of stochastic murder — using the Left’s own rules.
See Abraxas here about stochastic terrorism charges against Trump.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/09/26/open-thread-9-26-23/#comment-2700130
This whole thing is straight out of the Communist playbook. They brainwashed POWs in Korea this way.
I went through my first survival school in 1957 and there was big emphasis on resisting the brainwashing techniques. When you’re starving and have scurvy resisting isn’t easy, but it’s necessary to beat these sub-humans.
Knowledge is key. You have to know in your heart that they’re lying SOBs. Do not give them an inch with their lies. Demand detailed proof that what they claim is true. They can’t provide it. You know they’re only using mind tricks to break you down.
Employees of these companies who know this is all BS, should quietly band together and start a class action lawsuit for unethical practices on the job site.
Employees that have been let go because of this crap should get together and sue the companies. Fight back. It’s the only way to stop these monsters.
Do you think part of his issue is feeling abandoned by the people/institution with which he identified?
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The article about him in Quilette says as much.
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The man was a childless bachelor, a demographic segment which has high suicide rates. No other indicia of homosexuality in the obituary. Cremated. No sort of church service. Survived by his mother and by an older brother who has children and grandchildren.
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No clue how his family reacted to his professional problems. I think for many of us, family and such friends as you have add to your sense of isolation. You can’t talk to clergymen; most of them make a hash of the straightforward tasks they have to do, much less the more challenging ones. You can’t talk to the mental health trade, either. About 3/4 of them are ineffectual when they’re not trying to injure you.
I do not know if anyone else here has made the same observations, or had the same experiences that I have had. The feminist leadership– those who do the designing, organizing, and training of the female masses, are truly evil, and they have been using indoctrination strategies for years. They have also taught their heirs, the next generation of male-hating, family-destroying, reputation-destroying women. Women as old as 55–girls who grew up trained to believe that women should rule the world and they are determined to help make that happen. These women are masters at indoctrination, because they have been trained to believe that anything they can do to help to make that happen is acceptable. If they destroy marriages–oh well.
I know of one successful small rural community–ideal in so many ways. The gals from the university came after two of the leadership wives.Worked them over for three years using the same story–you should be free, you married too young, you can work for the university, etc. The women from the university worked over these two wives in their forties until such time as both left their families and divorced their husbands believing that they deserved to “be free”. How do I know it was deliberate? Because, over the course of those years both women were repeating the same story, using the same words, making the same complaints, using the same language.
I know one woman (aged 50) whose mother was active NOW and divorced her husband upon receipt of her own doctorate. She never let the daughter engage meaningfully with her father and for years father and daughter didn’t see each other. Suddenly, about seven years ago she came back into his life. Every phone call repeatedly explains to him why women who are not feminists (his second wife is not) are evil. Women who were raised Christian can never be free (his second wife is Christian). Over, and Over, and Over again, this dear man who just wants “to be there for my daughter” is indoctrinated in an attempt to destroy his marriage. She works him over deliberately, for example when she calls the first question she asks “is your wife in the room?” He has been married for more than 40 years to his second wife. The daughter’s speech pattern comes straight out of the “How to Indoctrinate” handbook.
Do you want to know why there is a sudden surge in grey divorce? It’s because that generation that was raised by single mothers are coming to the realization that they will not inherit!
Daughters who never got to spend meaningful time with their fathers, daughters whose mothers did everything possible to destroy their ex-husbands, and daughters whose mothers themselves are masters at indoctrination. These daughters will probably not receive very much when their father dies. Their father has gone on and created a new family. Oh whoops! “well, we didn’t mean that”! Another problem for the old fem nazis to eradicate. This generation of daughters 55 and under has been trained to indoctrinate, to destroy marriages and families. They are well organized, and deliberate.
I always refused to attend this kind of crap. Then again I was called unmanageable. For example, the last third of my 30+ years in aerospace I refused to travel for the company and specifically refused to fly.
Related:
“Widespread Mass Looting Overnight in Philly”
https://pjmedia.com/columns/paula-bolyard/2023/09/26/breaking-widespread-mass-looting-in-philly-video-live-police-scanner-n1730165
Just another “Biden” “achievement”!
File under: Reparations today; reparations tomorrow; reparations forever….
I often think about how to raise my children to resist brainwashing.
Or more specifically, how do you raise children who could tolerate the narrative suddenly shifting against them and thus can resist the threat of it?
If, as Charles Mead suggests, the ‘self’ is a negotiation between the ‘Me’ the internalized version of how you are perceived by others and the ‘I’ the unpredictable reaction of the individual themselves, then there are two alternatives, you could potentiate the ‘I’ or anchor the ‘Me’.
The strong “I-types’ inclination is to give the middle finger to anyone who tells them what to do, let alone what to think. The archetypes of this are the artist, the rebel, the cowboy, these people reject social convention and often live outside of society. If you are this person, then you’re probably not in a big company anyway. Or you’ve found a special niche inside of a big organization, like special operations in the Army, or Skunkworks in Lockheed, or the trading desk in a bank. But these people are by definition outliers. It’s probably easier to chart your own path with a small business or a professional license that lets you earn your own living, whether as a doctor, lawyer or accountant in solo or small group practice. Small farmers or entrepreneurs are other examples.
How do you potentiate them? Give them a strong internal compass. They need to develop an internally consistent set of rules for making decisions, then they need to be encouraged to use those rules again and again. They need to learn to accept the occasional blowback or bad consequences as the price of being free, being true to themselves. They learn to judge their actions according to their own rules that they believe in. Following their own rules is its own reward.
Another thing to practice is holding the mirror up for yourself. Put yourself in situations where you’d normally be self-conscious, i.e., concerned with how people see you. Whether you are dancing or speaking in public, focus on being in the moment, not worrying about what the people around you think, but just on being or expressing your true self. True beauty, true talent is being able to express that inner truth. Bravery is truth and truth is beauty.
Probably the most important practical thing for the ‘I-type’ to learn is how to pick
your battles, to distinguish which hills you can take and which are worth dying on anyway. The enemy is cunning and may try and lure you into the open with provocations in order to destroy you.
If you’re a ‘Me’ type, you’re wired to be very well socialized, to think of the group, the community. This may just be who you are, there’s probably a genetic component that interacts with how you were raised. It doesn’t make you a bad person, but it makes you more vulnerable to blackmail and intimidation. Focus on developing strong deep anchors for your ‘Me’. Family, old friends, a religious community. People who, when told something bad about you, will say, “That’s BS, I’ve known Dave for years and that’s not him.” Or “Maybe that happened, maybe it didn’t, but even if it did that’s not who Dave really is.” Avoid fickle sources for your “Me”, the worst of which are probably social media. Any organization which revolves around virtue signaling is going to be especially toxic. The church where all you do is show up or the service organization where everyone congratulates themselves on how ideologically-correct they are, will cast you aside in blink of an eye. The church where you all go together to get arrested at abortion clinics or travel to Haiti to build houses or drive a van around at midnight to feed and minister to the lost has a pretty good idea of who you really are. If you’re going to identify with a group, it needs to be one where life is hard because those groups only really survive and succeed when members are loyal to each other.
Of course, the self is a negotiation between the “I” and the “Me” and everyone could stand to strengthen their internal compass, love their true selves and deepen their anchor points.
The enemy knows these things and is trying to suppress them. That is why they came up with the idea of ‘toxic masculinity’, that is why they stopped teaching the Western canon, that is why they are destroying the family, that is why they attack religious communities.
From a religious perspective, ” My ancestors were slaves” is not an excuse that will work on judgement day. This ” social justice” stuff not only insist that whites are responsible for other people’s sins, it implies that blacks are not fully responsible for their own .
That’s what family dinner is for; The teacher said WHAT?
Just another “Biden” “achievement”!
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The principal perpetrator there is their sorosphere DA, re-elected by the burghers of Philadelphia.
it implies that blacks are not fully responsible for their own .
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No, it implies that blacks are higher status than deplorables and cannot be held responsible for anything by cops or by ordinary people due to their status.
50 shades of feminism and other class-disordered ideologies, a subset of Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry), Inequity, Exclusion (DIE) #HateLovesAbortion
Self-abortion.
On a positive note…a great example of courage is offered by Jennifer Sey, former brand president at Levi Strauss and apparently the planned next CEO of the company. She walked away rather than shut up about her Covid-school-lockdown views, and turned down a $1M severance package because it would have come with a nondisclosure agreement.
https://news.yahoo.com/levis-brand-president-says-she-221405785.html
@jennifersey at twitter
neo:
I’m aware of the struggle session format and I did mention the mandatory factor in a later comment. I was not thinking of a single random insult without context.
I agree that mandatory indoctrination in a job setting is not a good thing and such abuse can be quite intimidating.
Reading the Quillette article I see that Billstzko killed himself over two years after the initial incident and he was not isolated without support. He also obtained a judgment against Ojo-Thompson:
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Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) took the incident more seriously, determining that Bilkszto was owed seven weeks of lost pay due to the mental stress he’d endured.
The WSIB judgment, later obtained by the National Post, concluded that Ojo-Thompson’s behaviour “was abusive, egregious and vexatious, and rises to the level of workplace harassment and bullying,” and that she’d intended to “cause reputational damage and to ‘make an example’” of Bilkszto.
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Sure, Bilkszto had a terrible experience, but people have terrible experiences all the time without killing themselves. My read is that there is more to his story.
That said, I do hope Ojo’s karma catches up with her.
huxley:
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that you are unaware of struggle sessions and indoctrination. But I was using your exchange with IrishOtter as a springboard to discuss those things.
Nor do I think Bilkszto’s suicide was an inevitable result of the anti-racism training. You are certainly correct that what causes one person to kill himself or herself does not do that to everyone, and that other factors are almost certainly at work in some sort of synergistic manner. But it’s also pretty clear that without the persecution that was sparked by the training session, the guy would still be alive today. It seems to me, reading his story, that the session was just the beginning, and what bothered him even more was the virtue-signaling piling-on from others who effectively abandoned him after years of knowing him and working with him.
and what bothered him even more was the virtue-signaling piling-on from others who effectively abandoned him after years of knowing him and working with him.
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You learn who your friends are. For most of us, the true number is ‘not many’. He didn’t have much family, either. Even if you do, they’re often a disappointment as well.
What was done to him—and to many, many others—was, in fact, a horrifying betrayal.
No doubt he was stunned, left reeling, slugged in his psychological solar plexus.
He couldn’t handle the betrayal.
He was, essentially, slaughtered.
Darkness by goons.
Totalitarian societies thrive on betrayal.
Encourage it.
Sanctify it.
Teach it.
Indoctrinate it.
Demand it.
Whether it’s the betrayal by children of their parents.
Or by workers of their colleagues.
Or by so-called friends of their friends.
One MUST betray others for the “higher” cause.
For a “morality” that transcends mere—bourgeois, white, middle class, BIBLICAL—morality.
(Just like one MUST lie for the higher cause, for a transcendent morality…)
FOR THE HIGHER TRUTH.
File under: New—“Biden”/Trudeau/WEF/WTF—World Order.
We are living in perilous times, where evil has become the law of the land.
Has become VIRTUE.
And so, time to step up…
Barry…”Totalitarian societies thrive on betrayal”
See Anna Funder’s ‘Stasiland’, in which she describes her visit to the former East Germany in 1994, five years after the Wall came down.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/33672.html
But it’s also pretty clear that without the persecution that was sparked by the training session, the guy would still be alive today.
neo:
I’m not as sure. In my view he could just as well have been one hard trauma away from spiraling into suicide. Divorce, death of a loved one, loss of a job — all these could have done the job too.
Through bad luck, a cat’s curiosity and sheer bloody-mindedness, I’ve had my share of being the minority of one in groups, going up hard against the leader. It was upsetting, frightening and I was often depressed afterward. Sometimes I was ostracized.
I went through this enough times to see how it worked. I got stronger. These words of a hippie teacher on mind control, which he called “head-cop,” helped:
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I began to teach, out loud, that there was such a thing as head-cop, and that you could get your head copped, and that you ought to be sure you weren’t getting your head coppped, and that you ought to know what the symptoms of head-cop were … I tried to teach a little head-cop prophylaxis in the scene.
Some of my earlier [teaching] was on account of seeing the outstanding potential, not just for institutional, but for personal mind control. And I realized that this was the real level of magic, and that people who were dishonest at this level were who the real black magicians were. I learned that there was such a thing as black magic.
If someone cops your head so bad that they send you on another whole chain of life that leads you down a lot of bad things and ruins your potential and you don’t ever recover, they’ve got your soul.
Copped your head and got your soul.
–Stephen Gaskin (circa 1967)
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It’s in hippie lingo, which I offer for your amusement rather than persuasion.
Gaskin taught personal responsibility and honesty. He was an important teacher for me.
huxley:
I have another post coming on the subject. Of course, we can’t know the secrets of the human heart. But from all I’ve read, I continue to strongly think that, without the training and especially the persecution sparked by it, he would be alive today. He was 60 years old, professionally successful and very well-respected, unmarried (gay) but not secretive or shameful about that fact, beloved by a large family including lots of nieces and nephews, and had a 94-year-old mother still alive.
I am reminded of the friend and coworker I lost to suicide several years ago. He was an ultraliberal in his early 60s. His widow’s visitors noted the prominent Obama family photo in their living room.
He didn’t leave a note. Neither the widow nor the rest of us knew clearly why he did it. Not long before he got up early, grabbed a knife from the kitchen and ended it in the backyard garden, he confided to me that he was experiencing a lot of general inflammatory pain. He was visibly stiff and may have needed better physical help. I don’t know if that was the reason.
We were shaken and left wondering. At the wake, a fellow friend of the family told me that suicide is sometimes prompted by an impulse – short term impulsive decision, long term consequence.
Like accidents, suicide is a risk for everyone.
I’m not a psychologist, and I don’t play one on TV, but it is my belief that if you teach a kid to hate himself there will be bad results.