Uncracked Monday: Privilege and "Narrative"

Today we present a couple of links, important in how they're interconnected.

First, if you have ever heard some fucking pseudoactivist douchebag talking about "privilege" online (no doubt while DEMANDING that someone else be silenced and not allowed to speak, usually to avoid having said douchebag's idiotic statements refuted by someone with a modicum of rational capability), you might have asked yourself "Wait, would I count as privileged?"
And if you did, you're an idiot, because that's a stupid fucking question. But now, you can get your question answered, as there is actually a convenient online test you can take to see just how privileged you are (or aren't).
That is not a joke, by the way; the implication is that it is a totally serious checklist-style test to determine where you rank in "privilege", no doubts for the purpose of expressing online victimhood, or bashing your chest in online forum threads with mea culpas about acknowledging your privilege so you can be purified in the holy fires of "political awareness" that thus allows you (in spite of your privilege) to make authoritative (politically correct) statements about the evils of western civilization, while condemning and silencing others for their ("unacknowledged") privilege.

I post this here because, as far as I can see, never has a pseudo-activist article done so much to inadvertently discredit its own cause as this.  Everyone is having great fun taking the test to find out how privileged they are!  It shows off just how much of a fucking stupid concept this whole thing really is.

You can't measure either human sensitivity or human accomplishment by a checklist of supposed disadvantages.  Much less human rights.  And I have never, ever seen the concept of "privileged" used for any purpose other than as a rhetorical tool by otherwise poorly-armed fashionable-college-leftists to try to silence any debate on one of their pet subjects before other people can interject with their pesky Truth.  And that's the fucking toxicity of the "privilege" idea: it suggests that before looking at certain arguments, and judging said arguments on their reasoning, on whether or not they are TRUE, we first must look at the person making the argument, and whether or not they fit a list of approved characteristics.  The highest of which is not actually to be in any way truly disadvantaged; in fact, the top-ranking person permitted to speak, whose voice (lip-service aside) clearly matters far more than that of, say, a black woman from a third-world country (who certainly does score high on the Privilege test), is the Liberal College Student/Graduate/Postgrad who, in spite of usually coming out of the most advantaged of backgrounds, has "checked" and "recognized" their privilege, and received the education they believe allows them to now qualified as the Intellectual Elite that have the right to determine for all the rest what is right or wrong, or who should get to speak or not speak, and whether or not we should actually pay attention to what is being said.  Because "truth" means NOTHING to these people (like good little postmodern relativists, they don't believe there is such a thing), what matters is "narrative".

Do you think I'm overstating my case?
Let us consider then, the recent incident with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who's initial presentation of an honorary degree at Brandeis University was rescinded.  It demonstrated that to pseudo-activists, "muslim" trumps "woman".  Not just woman, in that case, but Third-world Black Atheist Woman Victim of Genital Mutilation; she had every qualifier and she still lost the privilege game in the eyes of the First-world Upper Middle Class (mostly White) College Pseudo-activists because she did not fit their "narrative" about how a good third-world black woman ought to behave.  She was "insensitive" by "criticizing" Islam; note that they also don't give a fuck about Islam per se, but again it fits the larger "narrative": people who criticize Islam are usually evil patriarchal religious right-wingers who believe in western civilization and are thus Enemy #1.  To have a black female atheist criticizing Islam is, to them, in many ways worse than if a White Male Baptist were to have done so, because she risks harming the precious narrative, she risks confusing the whole story they've invented in their heads as a way to avoid having to deal with the actual tools that depend upon examining truth.
She's like a traitor.

Its clearly not just about "insensitivity".  Consider that a few years earlier Brandeis had given an honorary degree to a guy (Tony Kushner) who said some very offensive things about the state of Israel (to the point of suggesting it should not exist), and when challenged at the time, the college actually made this statement:

"(Brandeis) bestows honorary degrees as a means of acknowledging the outstanding accomplishments or contributions of individual men and women in any of a number of fields of human endeavor. Just as Brandeis does not inquire into the political opinions and beliefs of faculty or staff before appointing them, or students before offering admission, so too the University does not select honorary degree recipients on the basis of their political beliefs or opinions."

Apparently consistency or lack of hypocrisy is not a trait Brandeis values.

So if you believe in wiping out Israel, then apparently you're OK, even if you're a white guy, as long as you're saying in the right "narrative" (i.e. as a self-loathing liberal douchebag, and not, say, some redneck with a confederate flag; again, its all about the 'story', not what's true or not, the same statement of fact can be embraced or rejected by the Pseudoactivists based on who's making the statement).  But if you are a black woman who was genitally mutilated as a child, had to escape your country in fear of your life, and then had a dear friend murdered by a religious fanatic because he made a film about your story (with a note literally stabbed into his chest saying you were next), you're "privileged".

And that's the thing, "privilege" is always used, contrary to the claims of its Swine proponents, as a contest: as a comparison game to see who we should be most politically correct about.   The dude who wants Israel wiped off the face of the earth is not "privileged" compared to those lucky lucky jews (they haven't had anything bad happen to them in a while, right?), but Ayan Hirsi Ali is "privileged" compared to anyone who's still a Muslim because some Cultural Studies Major somewhere has decided it is so, in order to consistently fit the reality-bubble of Pseudoactivist Douchebaggery.  The whole thing is a grading scale for an intentionally constructed view of the world that rejects fact in favor of a specific 'story', rather than any true or accurate marker of suffering.  And even if it was the latter, it'd still be pretty fucking stupid.

 RPGPundit

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