The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 26
As most New Discourses fans will know, back in October 2018, James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose burst onto the scene with a scandalous expose of Critical Social Justice scholarship within academia. This effort to show the world what was going on in the humanities and (to lesser extent) social sciences research literature was billed the “Grievance Studies Affair,” and the trio told their story in detail when the Wall Street Journal ended up breaking the story. The expose involved their having written 20 academic papers in about 10 months and seeing 7 of those accepted, 4 published, and 1 (about dog sex) having received recognition for excellence in scholarship. A further 7 papers were still under consideration or revision, and it has been assessed that at least 4 of these would probably also have been accepted (and eventually published).
Among these papers, one very controversial example rewrote a chapter of Adolf Hitler’s infamous book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) and was accepted for publication by the feminist social work journal Affilia (title: “Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism,” available in full here). This paper has predictably garnered a great deal of attention and has been the center of much controversy, including recently in an article by the progressive Israeli magazine Haaretz, where Swedish “Hitler expert” Mikael Nilsson recently brought the issue back up (dated March 21, 2021) two and a half years later. His objective was to discredit the entire Grievance Studies Affair by showing the infamous “Feminist Mein Kampf” paper to have been a fraud (and darling of “right-wing” nonsense). He even makes the argument that the paper rewrites the least bad part of Mein Kampf, which is easily revealed to be horrifically misguided and believable only by removing the relevant context of the chapter.
On this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay, who helped to write the paper and perpetrate the Grievance Studies Affair, talks about the project and the creation of this particular paper at unprecedented length and in unprecedented detail, revealing Nilssen not to know what he’s talking about. If you have ever wondered about what the backstory of the creation of the “Feminist Mein Kampf” paper really was, including why its authors did it, you won’t want to miss this long-form discussion and rare response to yet another underinformed critic of Lindsay, Boghossian, and Pluckrose’s work.
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3 comments
Yes, there is no good part of Mein Kampf or the thought process. Rather than explore the deficits in critical thinking that allowed this paper to be published, they are attacking the authors. The operational steps in the paper on how to solidify the movement immediately made me pause due to the multiple leaps of logic and apparent radicalism. I give you credit for continuing to try to argue rationally with irrationality. Not sure I have the patience. Unfortunately we will all need to speak up at some point and resist or we will suffer the same fate as others who ignored totalitarianism until it was too late I fear.
Arbiter = worker (in German).
Where can I find more info on China’s influence in our politics.