In another example of the real threat to free speech in the US, Right Wing violence, a professor at Drexel University has been put on leave because of violent threats by fascists.
An outspoken Drexel University professor has been placed on leave after receiving threats following a series of tweets posted after the Las Vegas massacre last week
George Ciccariello-Maher, an associate professor of politics and global studies, drew the ire of many right-wing news sites after claiming “the narrative of white victimization” was behind the deadly shooting in which 58 people were slain and nearly 500 injured.
“White people and men are told that they are entitled to everything,” Ciccariello-Maher wrote in a series of tweets attempting to explore why so many mass shootings are carried out by white men. “This is what happens when they don’t get what they want.”
Ciccariello-Maher has been the source of much controversy since Trump was elected, particularly in December when he tweeted “All I want for Christmas is #WhiteGenocide”, a joke about the white nationalist conspiracy that multiculturalism is secret code for white genocide. For this and his strong support of antifascist action, and specifically support of punching Nazis, Ciccariello-Maher has been targeted by fascists for nearly a year now.
This assault on freedom of speech and academic freedom is in response to Ciccariello-Maher pointing out some obvious truths.
Last week, I sent a string of relatively uncontroversial tweets in the aftermath of the Las Vegas massacre, in which I sought to answer a question about mass shootings in the United States: Why are these crimes almost always carried out by white men? “It’s the white supremacist patriarchy, stupid,” I tweeted, before then diagnosing a sense of double entitlement — as white people and as men — that, when frustrated, can occasionally lead to violent consequences.
My argument was not new, but rather reflects decades of research on how race and gender function in our society. To be both white and male is to be subject to a potent cocktail of entitlement to economic and political power, and to dominate nonwhite and female bodies. When that entitlement is frustrated, it can lead to what the criminologist Mike King calls “aggrieved whiteness,” an ambient furor based on the idea that white Americans have become oppressed victims of politically correct multiculturalism.
This is an important reminder that free speech on campus is under assault, but not by the left. It’s under assault by those who would reinforce the status quo.