“In the fall of
2016,” New York University professor Michael Rectenwald recently told The Daily
Caller, “I was noting an increase of this social justice ideology on
campuses, and it started to really alarm me. I saw it coming home to roost here
at NYU, with the creation of the bias reporting hotline, and with the
cancellation of the Milo Yiannopoulos talk because someone might walk past it
and hear something which might ‘trigger’ them.”
Rectenwald, himself a leftist, created an
initially anonymous Twitter account, @antipcnyuprof,
to speak out against that ideology and the “absolutely anti-education and
anti-intellectual” classroom indoctrination he was witnessing, as well as the
collectivist surveillance state that the campus was becoming, as students were
urged to report each other for the sin of committing microaggressions.
In October of that
year, he outed himself as the man behind the controversial Twitter account, and
“all hell broke loose.” He swiftly found himself the target of shunning and harassment
from his colleagues and the NYU administration. In true Cultural Revolution
fashion, several colleagues in his department in the Liberal Studies Diversity,
Equity and Inclusion Working Group published an open letter declaring him
guilty of incorrect thinking. “The thing that is interesting here is that they
were saying that because I don’t think like them, I am sick and mentally
ill,” Rectenwald said to the Daily Caller.
Instead of
kowtowing to the campus totalitarians, Rectenwald
declared himself done with the Left in a February 2017 tweet (“The Left has
utterly and completely lost its way and I no longer want anything to do with
it.”) and has gone on to be an even more fervent defender of free speech and
academic freedom. He has appeared often in conservative media to discuss those
issues and the harassment he has received from the Left.
Recently
Rectenwald even filed a lawsuit against NYU and four of his colleagues for
defamation. He consented to answering some questions for FrontPage Mag about
his conflict with the NYU ideologues.
Mark Tapson: A year ago on
Twitter you wrote, “Goodbye to the Left, goodbye.” Can you describe your
intellectual journey from “left-liberal activist” to outspoken “deplorable” and
what drove that seemingly sudden transition?
My public criticisms of “social justice” ideology and
politically correct authoritarianism resonated with large swaths of the
political right. I gained a sizeable new audience and support network – through
Twitter, Facebook and via hundreds of supportive emails. I also drew backing
from “cultural libertarians,” as Paul Joseph Watson dubbed this newly-emergent
“counterculture.” It should come as no surprise that many Trumpists backed me,
especially given Trump’s regular (although non-specific) criticisms of
political correctness.
Criticism of political correctness was supposed to be the
exclusive province of the rightwing. For most observers, it was almost
inconceivable that an anti-P.C. critic could come from another political
quarter. Unsurprisingly, then, the majority of people who discovered my case,
including some reporters, simply assumed that I was a conservative. As one
Twitter troll put it: “You’re anti-P.C.? You must be a rightwing nut-job.” But
as I explained in numerous interviews and essays, I was not a Trump supporter;
I was never a right-winger, or an alt-right-winger; I was never a conservative
of any variety. I wasn’t even a classical John Stuart Mill liberal.
In fact, for several years, I had identified as a left or
libertarian communist. My politics were to the left (and considerably critical
of the authoritarianism) of Bolshevism! I published essays in socialist journals on several topics, including a
Marxist critique of postmodern theory, analyses of identity politics and
intersectionality theory (here and here), analyses of political economy (here and here), and an examination of the prospects for socialism in the
context of transhumanism. I became
a respected Marxist thinker and essayist. I had flirted with a Trotskyist sect,
and later became affiliated with a loosely organized left or libertarian
communist group.
It wasn’t only strangers who mistook
me for rightwing or conservative. So too did many who knew better. An anti-Trump mania and reactionary fervor now gripped
liberals and leftists of nearly all stripes. Previously unaffiliated and
warring left and liberal factions consolidated and circled the wagons. Anyone
who failed to signal complete fidelity to “the resistance” risked being
savaged.
After my appearance on Fox Business News, such rabid ideologues ambushed me. The
social-justice-sympathetic members of the left communist group to which I
belonged denounced me in a series of group emails. Several members conducted a
preposterous cyber show-trial, bringing charges against me and calling for
votes on a number of alleged transgressions. From what I could tell, my worst
offences included appearing on Fox News, sounding remotely like a member of an
opposing political tribe, receiving positive coverage in right-leaning media,
and criticizing leftist milieus just as Trump became President.
I denied that these self-appointed
judges held any moral authority over me and declared their arbitrations null
and void. Meanwhile, the elders of the group (one a supposed friend of mine)
had remained silent, allowing the abuse to go on unabated for a day. When the
elders finally chimed in, they called for my official expulsion. I told them
not to bother as I wanted nothing further to do with them; I quit. In their
collectivist zeal, they later stripped my name from three essays that I’d
written for publication on their website, and assigned their authorship to
someone else entirely. Upon discovering this fraudulence, I publicly berated
them for plagiarism. A prominent member of the American Association of
University Professors noticed my complaint and investigated the alleged breach
of intellectual integrity. Verifying my authorship of the essays, he condemned
the group’s actions in a popular blog. Only then did the benevolent dictators return my name to the essays’
mastheads.
Friends and acquaintances from other
communities also turned on me with a vengeance, joining in the groupthink
repudiation. After my appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News, the Twitter attack was so fierce,
vitriolic, and sustained that my associate Lori Price and I spent a whole night
blocking and muting tweeters.
But the worst banishment came from the
NYU Liberal Studies community – to which I had contributed a great deal, and of
which I had striven for years to be a well-regarded member. Soon after the open
letter appeared, I recognized a virtual universal shunning by my faculty
colleagues. One after another, colleagues unfriended and blocked me on
Facebook. The few that didn’t simply avoided me entirely, until I saved them
the trouble and unfriended them. Most stinging were the betrayals of those who
once relied on my generosity, some whose careers I had supported and
considerably advanced.
Despite the harsh treatment doled out
to me by the social justice left and the warm reception I received from the
right, I did not become a right-winger, or a conservative. But after the
social-justice-infiltrated left showed me its gnarly fangs and drove me out, I
could no longer identify as a leftist.
MT: As a staunch
First Amendment defender, do you think it is possible to reverse the culture of
politically correct totalitarianism that seems to be dominating academia today,
and how can we do that?
MR: It is possible but reversing a forty-year trend
that has finally resulted in what we have today – the complete takeover of
academic pedagogy, philosophy, and policy by “social justice” ideology – will
take a long, sustained effort, and the support of elements of the culture
outside of academe, including media pundits, writers, independent scholars,
public intellectuals, and a growing body of disaffected and vocal academic
apostates and other renegades willing to take risks – as Bret Weinstein, Jordan
Peterson, and others, including myself, have done. The way will be treacherous
because the “social justice” left controls academic departments and
administrations almost entirely, and everyone else within academia has been
cowed into submission for fear of being “called out” as well. We are dealing
with a Maoist-like Red Guard as we undergo a soft cultural revolution of our
own. David Horowitz has been right all this time about the communists lurking
in academia. Their impact has now been manifested through the “social justice”
movement.
I put “social
justice” in scare quotes because this term is a misnomer if there ever was one.
Although the movement trades on a euphemistic name and the good will that
movements that have gone by the same name have earned, including the Civil
Rights movement, contemporary “social justice” has nothing to do with justice
and is anything but benevolent. It is a movement based on postmodernist
theoretical notions and as I have pointed out (here and here), the postmodern adoption of Stalinist and Maoist disciplinary
mechanisms, such as “autocritique” and “struggle sessions.” It is totalitarian
through and through. We must learn from and employ the tactics that served to
defeat totalitarian leftism in the past.
MT: Apart from personal
vindication, of course, is there some larger objective you are hoping to
accomplish through this defamation lawsuit against NYU?
MR: I want to make clear
that social justice activists cannot get away with replacing the First
Amendment with their own speech codes. They are not the official arbiters of
acceptable speech, despite their self-arrogation as such.
The First Amendment does not protect all speech. It does not,
for example, protect speech that leads to illegal activity and/or imminent
violence. It does not protect defamation, slander, or libel. The First
Amendment does not protect speakers from liability for the foreseeable
consequences of their speech.
The “social justice” leftists are now claiming that I am a hypocrite
because I am suing over insults, and that I am seeking a safe space of my own.
But they apparently do not understand the difference between an incidental a
differing opinion, an insult, and the real damages of defamation. I never
claimed to be a free speech absolutist. And my own exercise of free speech and
so-called academic freedom amounted to criticism of the “social justice”
ideology and the mechanisms prevalent in academia and beyond. I never once
mentioned any individuals by name. I never once engaged in ad hominem argumentation.
My attackers, however, showed no such restraint. In fact, they
maliciously and mendaciously attacked me using official university email list
servs, with the explicit aim of damaging my professional reputation and
destroying my career.
Meanwhile, irony, contradiction, and hypocrisy are all on their
side. Based on the postmodern theoretical notion of “social and linguistic
constructivism,” the “social justice” left deems language use a material act.
Thus, they excuse shutting down speech they disapprove of, “by any means
necessary.” Yet “social justice” leftists actually have no problem with truly
damaging language use – as long as it’s being undertaken by them, that is.
While Antifa, the “social justice” extracurricular infantry, burns down
campuses to prevent the airing of “dangerous” speech, the “social justice”
leftists seek safe spaces – not as protection from the violence of their
compeers, but from the so-called “discursive violence” of non-PC-left speakers.
Yet “social justice” ideologues undertake the most virulent forms of libel and
defamation when dealing with speakers who express views at variance with their
own.
Ironically, precisely while calling me
a “racist,” “sexist,” “bully,” and “Satan,” I was bullied, abused and pelted
with racist, sexist and other remarks that denigrated me on the basis of my
race and sex or gender. The irony, double standard and hypocrisy are
astounding. If the reverse had been the case, all hell would have broken loose.
The defendants apparently thought that individual rights are not real and that
because I am of a certain category they could make such statements with
impunity. But the law doesn’t agree.
So, while this suit is not merely symbolic – I have actually
suffered from defamation, from malicious and mendacious speech intended to
destroy me professionally and otherwise – it is also meant as a symbolic case
in point, as an example to demonstrate the intent and scope of the First
Amendment, which differs markedly from “social justice” speech rules. The main
“social justice” speech rule is this: “social justice” leftists can say (and
do) whatever they want to say (and do). And they can shut down whatever they
don’t want said (or done) – “by any means possible.” The only problem is that they
are legally wrong.
MT: You have a new book
in the works about the postmodern roots of social justice ideology. Can you
tell us a little about that and when we can expect it?
MR: The book is a memoir
whose central argument is that the contemporary “social justice” creed and
movement is the child of postmodern theory, while also incorporating some of
the methods of Stalinism and Maoism. Just as postmodern theory lay dying in the
academy, it gave birth to a child: “social justice” ideology.
I demonstrate the genealogy of “social justice” by recalling and
retracing my own graduate education in Critical Theory (The Frankfurt School)
and postmodern theory (deconstruction, poststructuralism, Lacanian
psychoanalytic theory, third-wave feminist theory, Science Studies, gender and
transgender theory, and so on). The book explains just how social justice
derives from postmodern theoretical notions and how and why these notions are
not only philosophically wrong but also extremely pernicious. I recall my own indoctrination
into these schools of thought, as well my emergence from them. The book is 95%
complete, so hopefully it will appear in matter of a few months. The tentative
(and hopefully final) title is Springtime
for Snowflakes: ‘Social Justice’ and Its Postmodern Parent. (I am currently
on the market for a new publisher.)
MT: With a title like Springtime
for Snowflakes, it's bound to be a great read. Thanks, Professor Rectenwald,
and congratulations on your escape from the dark side into the light!
From FrontPage Mag, 1/21/18