The Compromised Humanities of UChicago 

Orwell kind of stuff

Yes! The idea that no valid histories exist and no valid meanings either!

@@camimons470 More like their validity is determined ad hoc by the woke priesthood.

​@@shadowlicked I'll leave this quote once again (I'm sure you've all heard it a million times lately, but indulge me for the one person among us who hasn't...): “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the [Woke/Communist] Party is always right.” George Orwell 1984

I think you’re playing a game here you don’t fully understand. Let’s say there is one ‘true’ history - do we teach our children every second of it? Of every country? Of course we don’t, because we couldn’t even if we wanted to. We usually choose to teach the history of our own country, and usually only selected time periods of it, and then against usually only a selection of facts from that time period (for instance, we might study the Revolution, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, WWII, and the Cold War for the USA, but we wouldn’t study every battle, every crisis, and every significant event in those time periods - we have to condense, make palatable). This is a universal problem. We can only teach a cross section or hollowed out history, one that can only really provide a broadstrokes understanding of it, at least to the average citizen. As he says in the video, this broadstrokes understanding takes the form of a narrative. We might teach the history of the USA as a persistent struggle toward greater freedom - freedom from the Crown, then freedom from slavery, then freedom from Nazism, then freedom from Communism, and today freedom from Islamism. We might also choose to portray it as a Marxist class struggle, or a history of ‘black liberation’, or a history of the development of ever more complex fashion trends. The actual narrative that is selected may be true or untrue - what matters is who is selecting it. The body that selects it is usually the government and occasionally an academic hierarchy. They choose what is taught. They choose the narrative. We are seeing that now, with the deletion of any narrative that doesn’t agree with the current political vogue. Therefore, we should actually defend multiple ‘histories’. We should defend the right of interpretation and analysis. What we’re seeing today is the restriction of that right, through cancel culture, no platform, and wokeness. As is said in the video, this is about black supremacy and domination. We have to defend our right to have our own history, or else there WILL be a sole history, and that will be what those in power desire it to be - BLM.

Fascism was spawned by Socialism. It's basically the same, but more honest.

"Robert Paxton (in “Anatomy of Fascism”) defined this political form as a mode of 'political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.' His model of fascism comprises: “polarization, political deadlock, mass mobilization against internal and external enemies, complicity by existing elites”.

Yup. Just yup. You are sadly correct, but try not to lose heart, at least, we can observe witb clear eyes.

What you say? Didn't China move into a paradise of prosperity and equity after the Red Guard finished their Cultural Revolution?

They are forced to.

Well you know you have to give them some credit - they're quite imaginative when it comes to all the convoluted schemes and language traps they have dreamed up to undermine Western civilization and amass power for themselves.

@@meerkat1954 "language traps" - you're absolutely spot-on. From my perspective, I'm an English language teacher and trying to keep up with the new double-speak and the new pliability of grammar is an entire syllabus in itself - I'm teaching students to 'take note' of these changes rather than acquire them. Having said that, most of my students have come from countries with authoritarian regimes and understand exactly what's happening ... kind of breaks my heart they have to go through this sh*t twice.

Exactly. How can a university teach dogma that hasn’t undergone real scrutiny as if it were knowledge?

Sorry man :/

There's still Hillsdale; a David amongst monolithic Goliaths.

@@Davidbwa9 True... but Hillsdale is not a research institution in my field. I'll just have to infiltrate somewhere.

Absolutely. Nothing grinds my gears quite like the phrase "Art is political". Politics is humanity at its basest. Art is humanity at its best.

Imagine what William Burroughs would have to say about our cultural moment.

That's why we have ar15s.

It's unchanged. I go here and it's the same. This is one statement from one department's admin; everyone needs to calm down.

Oh don't worry, they'll still be there. But now they'll be used in a true Orwellian sense, just like the Ministries of Truth, Peace and Love in 1984.

It's unchanged. I go here and it's fine. Everyone is freaking out over just a statement from one department.

@@katywinchester2459 I appreciate the response. And while the English department made this statement about their coming cycle of graduate admissions, immediately i wondered about the climate on your campus; do others compel beliefs or speak freely about differences?

@@serristori They take free speech incredibly seriously. One of the first presentations they made to us during orientation was an extensive speech about their freedom of expression policies. They don't cancel speakers. They let any political groups canvas on campus (I think unless it's like literally Nazis but even then they might). The culture is the same. Honestly, I just view this statement as the free speech of the English Dept's admin, and I'm sure there will be pushback from students and faculty. Everybody has opinions and everybody gets to express them on campus.

@@katywinchester2459 Let's hope there is push back, Chicago right now is holding the pilot light on liberal values.

If you go to the school and study because you love literature, they have to destroy literature and your love of it. Then they can fill that empty hole in your heart with their poison and resentments and weaponize your shell.

Turn into a tech campus.

🙏🙏🙏

If you time their births around 2035, it they might have a clear shot.

@Rebecca Mattis Too dense for Social Media.

They are going to train students to follow them in using literature to both attack existing literature for causing people to believe that violence is normal, and that engaging in it is pleasurable, and to create literature that causes people to believe that violence is normal, and engaging in it is pleasurable WHEN doing so reorganizes (destroys and recreates according to their vision) the conditions under which people live and die. TL;DR - Destroy love of violent old books, make new books to love that preach violent revolution.

@@jeffreyscott4997 With the important proviso that "violence" means "anything the current ideology does not agree with".

It means they're gonna get together and figure out how best to strategically embed threats of violence into their propaganda.

They are psychopaths at this point. Bastards. Most poor kids want to get away from violence.

Hard to believe an English degree could become less valuable, but here we are.

Becoming the latest "Studies" department.

RemoveKaBOB Square Pants Are you just trying to avoid getting banned by making your text so hard to read?

@@JFJD It's a valid response to censorship.

The Bezmenov hypothesis is too widely applied today. There were plenty of other reasons why things changed. Unless you want to claim that sex, drugs, rock and roll, punk rock, rap music, techno, alternative comics, the cinema of the 70's, blockbuster films, grunge, metal, big hair on MTV, video games and many other philosophically challenging phenomena upon the Soviet Union.

@@TheAnadromist So the BLM leaders who claim they were Marxist trained got their ideology and training from all the things you mentioned. Communism is a philosophy of conquest with the motto by any means necessary.

I'm fond of the Ayn Rand side things. But it cant accept some parts of the philosophy. Anyways, Randians have been constantly right about waaayyyy too many things for her to be ignored anymore. She and Piekoff seriously predicted all of this better than Yuri.

@@heritic1hero I'm with you 100% on that. Dunno if I buy her prescription completely, but she nails the prognosis. The accuracy to which parasitic behavior is described is chilling.

@@heritic1hero Rand is too much of an ideologue for my taste. I don't like ideologues. Yuri is more practical in terms of discussing practical implications of this stuff for societal systems. Also he valued religion as an antidote to Marxism which is something Rand foolishly didn't. The main thing that brought down Soviet Communism was religion, not capitalism.

Couldn't have said it better - "replace story with sermon" - everyone is in the pulpit now; things are getting evermore unbearable.

Here in America, I was on point throughout my life. Oprah stole the format from Phil Donahue and did the double minority cash-in. I called her as the general of the C!_!nt Economy, making Dr. Phil and a host of minor celebrities rich by pointing at them and selling a performance of their worth. My favorite is Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Good cocktail party quiz joke. What is the most important morpheme in Invisible Man? Before having sex with a white Communist Party woman, the main character tells her: "I rapeS better when I'm drunk." My capitalization. I did literary criticism.

Baldwin would be appalled at this crud. So too, Angelou. Morrison was instrumental in its advocacy.

DSM 5D I think you may just actually be racist and sexist.

@@sashavjs Not a pulpit, it's a 'platform'.

Locke will be next.

@@georger64 At least the French appreciated Hume (le bon David). The French for God's sake!!

PostHumeously hehehe

@@nicobruin8618 Good one!

Two things.. I think the person who started the petition was an American?! They want to eradicate *all* racists now and across time. Welcome to Year Zero comrades...

It is so soulless

@Rachel Nichols and Satanic (some evil merits being described in religious terms).

It sounds like they don't just need the right skin, but the right opinions too.

It blows my mind how much artists and musicians blow smoke up each others a$$e$. Those scenes were exciting when I was a teenager - early through mid 20s. Then you realize how disgusting it is - and how weak their conceptions on the purposes and interpretations of art really are.

...so you're uneducated on the topic? "I wanted to preserve my love for books" is a funny way for saying "I was too lazy to study english literature in an academic setting"

lilian schaffer It’s difficult to understand the logic of your statement. If it was laziness, wouldn’t I have failed to study anything at all? I studied History of Art with Philosophy & Italian followed by a Masters in Politics and Cultural Studies and I now teach English but perhaps you understand my motives better than me having read a short RU-vid comment.

Maybe it is about time english lit degrees are rendered meaningless (I have one).

@@manbearpig7521 Or you could go back to University with your diploma and have it stamped and registered as Pre-Woke.

They should rename it the "Ebonics Department"

Grammar is white supremacy.

Oh that made my convict colonising Australian heart giggle with irony. Delicious.

I would want more evidence for this vague claim.

University of chicago is private.

@@jpwright87 the loans given are not. Also, federal regulation and policies in general give administration way too much power while students have little choice as to what courses the can really take. And can't fight battles in court very well. Unless they pay directly out of pocket. Even then, there are requirements for achieving certian degrees. Which is fine, but it allows the college to sneak in nonsense requirements.

@@heritic1hero as someone who goes to UChicago, none of what you said was correct.

@@mschuhler So you're telling me Chicago rejected the Obama era regulations that allows affirmative action (race based discrimination) and self governance when to comes to crimes on campus. -- How they keep cases out of civil court. Which is essentially how social justice has been allowed to run rampant. Also, every university has govt loans. Where the student has next to no negotiating power on how much the university actually gets. It's close to scam the silly justifications for price inflation because those loans are handed out willy nilly by govt (fafsa)

That’s what I heard.

The market is incapable of fixing the current sociocultural issue. As a matter of fact the market profits off of the issue itself, which ironically is decadent bourgeois culture. The market wouldn’t even factor in to the success of any university that receives federal funding. People will continue to go to the prestigious schools regardless of the curriculum. The brand is all that really counts.

@@michaelgeinopolos6911 Ironic that even communist institutions and societies highly value maintaining the hierarchies of elite prestigious schools. Russia did and China continues to do so. They all teach the same evil BS, of course, but some evil BS is more "equal" than other evil BS, to use Orwell's saying.

The market cannot be free to fix this if universities are propped up with federal funds.

Yes. The school is fine. I go there and it's unchanged. Everyone is freaking out over one statement from one department's admin and we need to calm down.

Yes. It still is. I go here and it's fine. This is just one statement from one department's admin. Everyone needs to calm down.

@@katywinchester2459 are you concerned it’ll spread?