Wednesday, January 31, 2018

"In the fall of 2016," New York University professor Michael Rectenwald recently Click 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 become 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.

A commentary on last night's viral Twitter attack on me. Goodbye to the Left, goodbye. pic.twitter.com/OgpdRA9EAU
— Michael Rectenwald (@antipcnyuprof) February 22, 2017

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?

Michael Rectenwald: In hindsight, I think that the transition was less sudden than it might have appeared. I had gone from a left-liberal activist to a left communist before I became "deplorable." I narrate the history of the transition in my book, discussed below. But I'll tell something of the transition here.

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 differing of 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!

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Fourth Amendment and Section 702

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments of 2008 (FAA) authorizes the government to seize and search the international communications of American citizens without probable cause or warrants in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Some thought that it should not be extended beyond December 31, 2017, its expiration date, unless Congress cured its constitutional infirmity.

It was not.

Members of Congress are bound by oath or affirmation to uphold and defend the Constitution period; no commas, semicolons, or question marks. The murderous abominations of the 9/11 terror attacks changed nothing on that score.

The Supreme Court admonished in Ex Parte Milligan:

The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism…

As a cornerstone of our liberty-centered constitutional universe, the Fourth Amendment makes citizen privacy the rule and government encroachments the exception. Warrants issued by neutral magistrates based upon probable cause with particularized evidence that crime is afoot are ordinarily required to justify government invasions of privacy.

In the narrow circumstances that excuse warrants, a government search or seizure must still satisfy a standard of reasonableness.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis elaborated in Olmstead v. United States (dissenting):

The makers of our Constitution…sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The American Revolution was ignited by opposition to hated British Writs of Assistance, general search warrants that empowered every petty colonial official to rummage through homes or businesses in search of smuggled goods.

An address by William Pitt the Elder to the British Parliament thundered throughout the colonies, and epitomized the spirit of the Amendment:

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter, —but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.

Speaking through Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court decreed in Kyllo v. United States that the Fourth Amendment today should be interpreted should be adapted to secure “that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted” notwithstanding staggering advances in technology.

At that time, government encroachments on privacy were minimal. Federal criminal laws were few. Investigations were minimal. And no intelligence community existed to snoop on Americans to gather foreign intelligence.

Section 702 authorizes invasions of citizen privacy orders of magnitude beyond the degree of privacy that existed when the Fourth Amendment was ratified in 1791. It empowers the National Security Agency singly or in conjunction with sister intelligence agencies to intercept, store and search the international communications of U.S. persons with a targeted communicant reasonably thought to be located outside the United States and in possession of foreign intelligence information.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) does not review each discrete NSA interception to insure the target is a foreigner outside the United States or that the communications intercepted relate to foreign intelligence, including international terrorism.

Instead, the FISC simply approves annually surveillance procedures that the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence certify are calculated to target only foreigners located abroad for foreign intelligence purposes.

The latter is broadly defined to include any information that relates to the foreign affairs of the United States.

The government has employed section 702 to collect more than 250 million internet transactions annually as of 2011, which includes communications between two foreigners as well as those involving a U.S. person.

According to an affidavit of Bill Binney, former high-level NSA official and perhaps the foremost expert in the world on electronic surveillance:

When I was at the NSA, each analyst was theoretically required to review 40,000 to 50,000 questionable records each day. The analyst gets overwhelmed, and the actual known targets — from the metadata analysis — get ignored…The NSA cannot identify future terrorism because 99.9999% of what it collects and analyzes is foreseeably irrelevant.

The intelligence community is clueless as to how many of the 250 million annual internet warrantless interceptions under section 702 involve the international communications of U.S. persons.

But the Fourth Amendment vice does not cease after the seizures. The communications are typically stored for at least five years and searched without warrants or probable cause for either to discover foreign intelligence or evidence of crime— a second Fourth Amendment transgression.

Supreme Court decisions establish that the government must obtain a warrant that satisfies the Fourth Amendment to intercept or search the contents of communications of U.S. persons for either criminal justice or domestic security purposes. The high court has not approved an exception when the communications are seized and searched pursuant to section 702 for law enforcement or foreign intelligence purposes.

Title III wiretap orders under the Omnibus Crime Control Act are vastly less intrusive on privacy. They require a warrant that satisfies the Fourth Amendment by specifying the phone line to be tapped, the conversations to be seized, and the crime under investigation.

Moreover, reasonable measures must be taken by the government to avoid recording “innocent” conversations. And the targets of the warrants and their communicants are typically notified of the wiretap within 90 days of its termination to enable them to challenge its legality.

In contrast, surveillance under section 702 does not require a warrant. It does not require probable cause. It does not require suspicion of criminality. It is not confined to communications involving only foreign powers or their agents. There is no mechanism for monitoring the seizure of the communications to exclude those portions irrelevant to foreign intelligence. And the communicants whose conversations are intercepted, stored, and searched are not notified of the invasions of privacy unless they are lead to a criminal prosecution.

In the vast majority of cases, U.S. persons will never learn that the privacy of their international communications had been compromised.

Even if no warrant were required under the Fourth Amendment for the seizure, storage and search of the international communications of U.S. persons under section 702, it would still fail the reasonableness test.

While the government interest in national security is of the highest order, Section 702 sweeps far more broadly to include anything relevant to the foreign policy of the United States, for example, the emission of greenhouse gases or free trade agreements.

It also authorizes searches of citizen communications for crimes unrelated to national security and not based on probable cause. And as Bill Binney’s affidavit underscored, the stupendous volume of communications capture by section 702 cripples the NSA’s ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Proponents of extending Section 702 argue that government officials have refrained from using its alarming powers to oppress U.S. persons. But as Thomas Jefferson advised, “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

Moreover, Justice Brandeis correctly taught that, “every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

In sum, Section 702 should not be extended unless it requires a warrant to seize or search international communications of U.S. persons based upon probable cause to believe they contain evidence of international terrorism and with particularity describe the means of seizing or searching the communications. Further, U.S. persons should be notified within 90 days of any interception or search.

The Fourth Amendment is too important to be left to the intelligence community.

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Islamist Auto Attack in Philadelphia

Cupcake Harvard

Tariq Ramadan Rape

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

For Profit More Selective Than Harvard

Monday, January 29, 2018

The News is Fake

Sunday, January 28, 2018

Bach's Children

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor ( Rock Version ) - Tom Bergner

Emerson, Lake & Palmer-Toccata (California Jam 1974, remastered by RudenkoArt)

Nationalizing 5G

Part Muslim Duterte 42 Virgins

Boomerang Employees

Saturday, January 27, 2018

John Fogarty on Fortunate Son

Trump “S” Word Bad; Hillary “B” Word Good: For Those Keeping Score At Home

Friday, January 26, 2018

HUM 112 REL 212 1979 Islamic Revolution Iran Protest 2018 & Hijabs

President, Netanyahu at Davos

Obama Ordered Spying on Candidate Trump

Rod’s Podcast USciences eLearning

FBI Mueller Cover Up of Florida Saudis on 9/11

Viking Myths

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Lunch Interviews

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Instructional Design

Module References & Attributions

Supplementary Resources

Leftist Professor Fights Left

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Fourth Amendment and Section 702