MODERN DAY MAOIST “STRUGGLE SESSION” AND PUBLIC SHAMING CARRIED OUT BY HARD LEFT THOUGHT POLICE AT YALE
(INTELLIHUB) — A simple email defending so-called offensive Halloween costumes has unleashed a modern-day Maoist style “struggle session” on the campus of Yale University.
The literal demands by hard left Yale students to purge University employees over political disagreements came after an email was sent by Yale’s Intercultural Affairs Council that requested students not engage in “cultural appropriation” when it came time to choose a Halloween costume.
Associate Master of Silliman College Erica Christakis then made the apparent fireable offense of mildly rebuking the email request by noting that she found the idea that the school was trying to impose choices on students while limiting their freedom of speech to be troubling.
As the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) noted, “Christakis drew on her experiences as a child development specialist to question whether a university should dictate what students should and shouldn’t wear on Halloween”.
“I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do,” Christakis wrote.
“But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.”
Christakis also highlighted the absurdity of declaring a small child racist for simply wanting to dress up like their favorite Disney characters.
“Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.”
The absurd and truly disturbing response to Christakis mostly milquetoast email response is the perfect example of how far left the so-called social justice movement has gone with what can be described as the modern day reenactment of Maoist inspired thought police.
More than 740 anti free speech authoritarians masquerading as knowledge seeking Yale students signed a letter that literally claimed that Christakis having her own opinion and expressing it to the public amounted to suppressing the viewpoints of minority students. Most of the signees also refused to discuss the matter with Christakis and her husband, Master of Silliman College Nicholas Christakis.
Then came the Mao inspired, ” bended-knee apology” seeking mob.
On Thursday, at least 100 students confronted Nicholas and demanded he apologize for simply supporting his wife’s free speech inspired views. Despite trying to apologize to the students for any “pain” that they had experienced, Christakis committed the original sin of the new PC religion by refusing to agree to suppress free speech.
As the Daily Caller reported, “That didn’t suit his inquisitors, and they proceeded to engage in something that resembled an improvised show trial. Christakis was belittled for eliminating the pretense that his college was a ‘safe space’ and was cursed at as students cheered on.”
“When trying to speak, he was shouted down by his chief accuser, ensuring he never got a good chance to defend himself.”
Also noted by the Daily Caller was an op-ed written by one of the hard left thought police that attacked the Master for “instigating more debate” and valuing free speech over making her home “less threatening.”
In an important article on this hard left rabid crusade, Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart.com detailed perhaps the most important takeaway from this truly disturbing chain of events and that is the striking resemblance the mob had to the “struggle sessions” of Maoist China.
“Students of history will notice an alarming similarity in the video above to the “struggle sessions” of Maoist China, a form of public shaming in which perceived enemies of the Party would be surrounded in a public place by Red Guards, Mao’s most zealous supporters,” Yiannopoulos noted. “The Red Guards would hurl abuse at their target until they confessed to their crimes.”
“Uninformed critics might argue that the Red Guards were a weapon of the Communist state, and not a genuine grassroots movement, but they’d be wrong: the Red Guards started out as a student movement, on Chinese campuses. Afraid yet?”
While this specific instance is definitely one of the more crazy examples of hard left PC zealots in action, this type of behavior and attempted censorship isn’t restricted to Yale University.
In fact, on campuses across the country hard left students and activist groups have used the idea of “safe spaces” to claim that simple opinions that they disagree with are actually hurting their emotional well-being and should therefore be completely censored.
“This safety argument has allowed these precious snowflake totalitarians to suppress speech on campus. Free speech means nothing to them when it comes at the price of exposing their fragile little minds to ideas they don’t like,” wrote Scott Greer in the Daily Caller report on the rabid mob.
“Thanks to spineless administrators that rush to appease each and every need of designated minority groups, activists are able to get away with this inane rationale for censorship.”
At this point one has to wonder if saving these colleges from the leftist thought police is even worth it.
What do you think? Are American colleges, now increasingly controlled by students and activist groups whose views stand in stark contrast to the American Constitution, so far gone that they are beyond being saved?
You can view more videos of the Mao inspired rabid mob here.
About the Author:
Alex Thomas is a reporter and opinion journalist who has worked in the alternative media for over three years. His work has been featured on numerous news outlets including Infowars and RT. Alex is an exclusive weapon of Intellihub.com. Established in 2013, Intellihub.com is ranked in the upper 1% traffic tier on the World Wide Web.
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