There is much to commend these suggestions, however, as an Australian obliged to support the ABC and SBS through my taxes I applaud anyone who puts in effort to get offensive, incendiary, or malicious commentators sacked.
The ABC and SBS staff are simply not good faith actors. They are mostly selected for ideological conformism to the regime in the first place. If they go off the rails to the point where they attract significant pushback, so be it. There are no other mechanisms to correct their behaviour. The complaints procedures are a joke.
ABC and SBS staff who make careers out of demoralising, ridiculing and mocking any number of easy targets are scum. The days of Richard Carleton going after hard targets (asking Bob Hawke "how does it feel to have blood on your hands") have been over decades.
They inflict real damage to people. The list of designated targets speaks for itself: Catholic priests, the Exclusive Brethren (formerly the Plymouth Brethren), Jews, the SAS, Pauline Hanson etc.
The witch hunt against Cardinal Pell was driven in no small part by the ABC. It helped create the miscarriage of justice that Pell endured. Similarly, the repeated insinuations of war crimes directed at the SAS have had profound consequences for any number of people and have weakened public support for the Army.
And Lattouf was willfully playing with sectarian animosities in a city which has seen repeated, unprovoked, criminal violence of a kind that would have been inconceivable a few years ago.
ABC and SBS journalists and commentators should be fair game. They are not fragile, decent, people. They are there to cause harm. They should be held accountable.
I share concerns about groupthink - but target the organisation, not an individual. I have increasingly come to the view that there is a problem with groupthink and publicly funded entities (media, government bureaucracy, universities). Grist for a future post. It’s all about the incentives.
I am not generally someone who makes complaints. I have only ever once made an official complaint about a colleague. I have never written to a media outlet or somewhere else to complain. The best way I can deal with negative stereotypes is to behave in a way which does not comport with them, not to try to stop people believing those stereotypes (see Lee Jussim).
I had a mob after me over 10 years ago once - because of a blog post I wrote - happy to tell you what happened over a coffee one day. People rang my boss, saying I should be sacked. I was in a foetal position on the floor, as I was a very junior academic.
Rather than convincing me of the error of my ways, it concreted them, it’s just that I don’t talk about my views publicly any more. However, all my friends saw what happened, and many of them dislike or disrespect the particular group who went after me as a result, and several came to believe what I believed. “If there wasn’t truth to what you said, they wouldn’t have tried to shut you up.”
I’m sure to those who chased me, it looked like a victory. It was not a victory: it just suppressed the view, without making anyone think differently. It’s just that people hide their private truths, until there’s a preference cascade, and it becomes socially acceptable to speak one’s views publicly. Suppressing speech encourages conspiratorial thinking. I cannot believe the conspiracies that I have been accused of being part of in the last year (!!!!) - suffice to say I’m not in any conspiracies and I don’t have a conspiratorial bone in my body. I just want to have respectful conversations with diverse people.
There are no easy answers. At an instinctive level, I detest the free speech advocates because of my personal experience and frustration with the limitless stupidity of Australian intellectual life. Anyone who plays the victim wins the argument and claiming that one's opponents are stifling free speech is a lazy way to make one's case. Straw man arguments all round. Parodying other peoples’ opinions rather than engaging with them. As a former high school debater I gave up on following controversies in academia or the media long ago. Life is just too short.
There have to be reasonable ways to hold people to account for inaccurate and malicious public speech. The European/Roman tradition offers alternatives but I doubt that our institutions have the intelligence or integrity to apply this.
Organised malice is shocking in its effects. Sorry to hear that you got a taste of this. Good people attract it because sociopaths perceive good nature as weakness.
On a wider cultural level Australia is decomposing. The old traditions of free thinking, the Andersonian legacy at the uniiversity of Sydney and the Push, have evaporated without a trace. What is left feels cold and alien, very nasty.
BTW are you by any chance related to the late David Barnett the journalist and onetime press secretary to Malcolm Fraser? Was a great fan of his.
No I’m not related to David (at least as far as I know). My original Barnett forebear was a London East End pickpocket, transported in the Third Fleet for stealing a hanky.
I really do feel that you are right and civil discussion at universities is decomposing. I’m trying my best to hold it together. Sometimes I feel like Canute, trying to hold back an inevitable tide. The thing is - in class when we have civil debates - the students love it. it’s what most people want from their lecturers. Most intelligent people don’t actually want colour-by-number solutions where there’s no discussion.
Universities can only do so much. They cannot function as behavioural oases of civility. Families (where they exist and are functional) as well as schools have to prepare youngsters for the respectful exchange of ideas and expression of feeling.
To make a suggestion, people within the system can help (where possible) integrate formal instruction in rhetoric, logic etc into curricula or offer options designed to appeal to youngsters with the right instincts. No need to frighten the horses in senior mgt: a voluntary workshop on practical skills in formulating arguments, listening skills, faculty supervised but informal debating events. Sorry if I am telling you how to chew gum. But I like to focus on practical stuff, rather than returning to a priori arguments over rights.
Ultimately the culture goes where it goes. We are witnessing a big shift in behaviour. Post-Guttenberg vast numbers learned how to parse texts, comprehend at a sophisticated level. Digital entertainment and the mobile phone have killed serious reading and cut off the styles of intellectual engagement. The old humanistic culture is dying. This terrifies and saddens me beyond words.
Fortunately, people are doing their own thing and a handful in the shadows are bound to get it right.
My advice (constantly given) is to seek help from neuroscientists, especially clinicians. Find out the techniques used to handle difficult people. In my last job I had a shocking experience with a colleague who gratuitously accused me of insensitivity towards a semi-protected class of people. I had made a remark in a confidential setting, amongst colleagues at a training day. Was carpeted in the best Stalinist fashion. I was in shock at the very aggressive and tgreatening counselling session To retrieve the situation, I turned the tables and asked the most senior mgt present what they would have me do, what practical action could I take to do better. It stumped the bastard. The next day HR arranged one on one coaching from a consultant with a degree in neuroscience. Outstanding stuff. I proved my interpersonal skills, albeit at considerable cost to my employer.
Anyway, chin up. Life in academia still easier than fighting cave bears for a place to sleep during the Ice Ages.
Staying away from who started this trend of saying outrageous thing to get attention, like a kid having a tantrum. There are a couple of basic human outcomes of this sort of behaviour. The first one is “ Piss me off and suffer the consequences” The second is those who live by the sword should be willing to die by the sword. If you are a free spirit who gets your kicks by insulting or bad mouthing people. The victim of this offensive behaviour is highly likely to reach for their lawyer. Or social media account. Just ask Britney Higgins what happens when you are careless with the truth online
Defamation is wrongful - yes, the Higgins case is illustrative. It is an exception to free speech: you are not allowed to say false things about people to ruin their reputation. Interestingly, defamation was introduced to prevent duelling.
The problem is - an eye for an eye - we all go blind. It turns into mutually assured cancellation. No one learns anything, no one has a proper conversation. It’s all just outrage, outrage, outrage. As a lecturer - I want to learn from people (including people who think differently from me) - I don’t want to just scream at others.
Inducing employers and denying funding, even access to financial services wasn’t wrong for decades and is only wrong now because the other side is punching back. If punching back in kind is wrong, then yes.
This idea of being the bigger man and not retaliating is feminine and fails the human nature test, and survival test.
So, No. I will punch back and so will everyone who wants to survive.
Your thesis is inhuman, No.
* Special note; If this is the Australian social contract and law very well, no American can endure passivity a moment longer, in particular as it created the privilege of unchecked aggression unto murder. No.
But Australia’s business is her, er, ah “its” business.
The national public broadcaster, the ABC, perfected low intensity defamation and misinformation decades ago. They have been at the heart of any number of contrived, malicious, moral panics targetting rivals of the Left. They are shameless. And can be quite dangerous.
Any number of old Lefties I know personally no longer watch it because of the remorseless, joyless, ideological bullshit.
It is indeed more relevant than ever. I am grateful for your clarity, insight and wisdom.
There is much to commend these suggestions, however, as an Australian obliged to support the ABC and SBS through my taxes I applaud anyone who puts in effort to get offensive, incendiary, or malicious commentators sacked.
The ABC and SBS staff are simply not good faith actors. They are mostly selected for ideological conformism to the regime in the first place. If they go off the rails to the point where they attract significant pushback, so be it. There are no other mechanisms to correct their behaviour. The complaints procedures are a joke.
ABC and SBS staff who make careers out of demoralising, ridiculing and mocking any number of easy targets are scum. The days of Richard Carleton going after hard targets (asking Bob Hawke "how does it feel to have blood on your hands") have been over decades.
They inflict real damage to people. The list of designated targets speaks for itself: Catholic priests, the Exclusive Brethren (formerly the Plymouth Brethren), Jews, the SAS, Pauline Hanson etc.
The witch hunt against Cardinal Pell was driven in no small part by the ABC. It helped create the miscarriage of justice that Pell endured. Similarly, the repeated insinuations of war crimes directed at the SAS have had profound consequences for any number of people and have weakened public support for the Army.
And Lattouf was willfully playing with sectarian animosities in a city which has seen repeated, unprovoked, criminal violence of a kind that would have been inconceivable a few years ago.
ABC and SBS journalists and commentators should be fair game. They are not fragile, decent, people. They are there to cause harm. They should be held accountable.
I share concerns about groupthink - but target the organisation, not an individual. I have increasingly come to the view that there is a problem with groupthink and publicly funded entities (media, government bureaucracy, universities). Grist for a future post. It’s all about the incentives.
I am not generally someone who makes complaints. I have only ever once made an official complaint about a colleague. I have never written to a media outlet or somewhere else to complain. The best way I can deal with negative stereotypes is to behave in a way which does not comport with them, not to try to stop people believing those stereotypes (see Lee Jussim).
I had a mob after me over 10 years ago once - because of a blog post I wrote - happy to tell you what happened over a coffee one day. People rang my boss, saying I should be sacked. I was in a foetal position on the floor, as I was a very junior academic.
Rather than convincing me of the error of my ways, it concreted them, it’s just that I don’t talk about my views publicly any more. However, all my friends saw what happened, and many of them dislike or disrespect the particular group who went after me as a result, and several came to believe what I believed. “If there wasn’t truth to what you said, they wouldn’t have tried to shut you up.”
I’m sure to those who chased me, it looked like a victory. It was not a victory: it just suppressed the view, without making anyone think differently. It’s just that people hide their private truths, until there’s a preference cascade, and it becomes socially acceptable to speak one’s views publicly. Suppressing speech encourages conspiratorial thinking. I cannot believe the conspiracies that I have been accused of being part of in the last year (!!!!) - suffice to say I’m not in any conspiracies and I don’t have a conspiratorial bone in my body. I just want to have respectful conversations with diverse people.
There are no easy answers. At an instinctive level, I detest the free speech advocates because of my personal experience and frustration with the limitless stupidity of Australian intellectual life. Anyone who plays the victim wins the argument and claiming that one's opponents are stifling free speech is a lazy way to make one's case. Straw man arguments all round. Parodying other peoples’ opinions rather than engaging with them. As a former high school debater I gave up on following controversies in academia or the media long ago. Life is just too short.
There have to be reasonable ways to hold people to account for inaccurate and malicious public speech. The European/Roman tradition offers alternatives but I doubt that our institutions have the intelligence or integrity to apply this.
Organised malice is shocking in its effects. Sorry to hear that you got a taste of this. Good people attract it because sociopaths perceive good nature as weakness.
On a wider cultural level Australia is decomposing. The old traditions of free thinking, the Andersonian legacy at the uniiversity of Sydney and the Push, have evaporated without a trace. What is left feels cold and alien, very nasty.
BTW are you by any chance related to the late David Barnett the journalist and onetime press secretary to Malcolm Fraser? Was a great fan of his.
No I’m not related to David (at least as far as I know). My original Barnett forebear was a London East End pickpocket, transported in the Third Fleet for stealing a hanky.
I really do feel that you are right and civil discussion at universities is decomposing. I’m trying my best to hold it together. Sometimes I feel like Canute, trying to hold back an inevitable tide. The thing is - in class when we have civil debates - the students love it. it’s what most people want from their lecturers. Most intelligent people don’t actually want colour-by-number solutions where there’s no discussion.
Universities can only do so much. They cannot function as behavioural oases of civility. Families (where they exist and are functional) as well as schools have to prepare youngsters for the respectful exchange of ideas and expression of feeling.
To make a suggestion, people within the system can help (where possible) integrate formal instruction in rhetoric, logic etc into curricula or offer options designed to appeal to youngsters with the right instincts. No need to frighten the horses in senior mgt: a voluntary workshop on practical skills in formulating arguments, listening skills, faculty supervised but informal debating events. Sorry if I am telling you how to chew gum. But I like to focus on practical stuff, rather than returning to a priori arguments over rights.
Ultimately the culture goes where it goes. We are witnessing a big shift in behaviour. Post-Guttenberg vast numbers learned how to parse texts, comprehend at a sophisticated level. Digital entertainment and the mobile phone have killed serious reading and cut off the styles of intellectual engagement. The old humanistic culture is dying. This terrifies and saddens me beyond words.
Fortunately, people are doing their own thing and a handful in the shadows are bound to get it right.
My advice (constantly given) is to seek help from neuroscientists, especially clinicians. Find out the techniques used to handle difficult people. In my last job I had a shocking experience with a colleague who gratuitously accused me of insensitivity towards a semi-protected class of people. I had made a remark in a confidential setting, amongst colleagues at a training day. Was carpeted in the best Stalinist fashion. I was in shock at the very aggressive and tgreatening counselling session To retrieve the situation, I turned the tables and asked the most senior mgt present what they would have me do, what practical action could I take to do better. It stumped the bastard. The next day HR arranged one on one coaching from a consultant with a degree in neuroscience. Outstanding stuff. I proved my interpersonal skills, albeit at considerable cost to my employer.
Anyway, chin up. Life in academia still easier than fighting cave bears for a place to sleep during the Ice Ages.
Staying away from who started this trend of saying outrageous thing to get attention, like a kid having a tantrum. There are a couple of basic human outcomes of this sort of behaviour. The first one is “ Piss me off and suffer the consequences” The second is those who live by the sword should be willing to die by the sword. If you are a free spirit who gets your kicks by insulting or bad mouthing people. The victim of this offensive behaviour is highly likely to reach for their lawyer. Or social media account. Just ask Britney Higgins what happens when you are careless with the truth online
Defamation is wrongful - yes, the Higgins case is illustrative. It is an exception to free speech: you are not allowed to say false things about people to ruin their reputation. Interestingly, defamation was introduced to prevent duelling.
The problem is - an eye for an eye - we all go blind. It turns into mutually assured cancellation. No one learns anything, no one has a proper conversation. It’s all just outrage, outrage, outrage. As a lecturer - I want to learn from people (including people who think differently from me) - I don’t want to just scream at others.
Inducing employers and denying funding, even access to financial services wasn’t wrong for decades and is only wrong now because the other side is punching back. If punching back in kind is wrong, then yes.
This idea of being the bigger man and not retaliating is feminine and fails the human nature test, and survival test.
So, No. I will punch back and so will everyone who wants to survive.
Your thesis is inhuman, No.
* Special note; If this is the Australian social contract and law very well, no American can endure passivity a moment longer, in particular as it created the privilege of unchecked aggression unto murder. No.
But Australia’s business is her, er, ah “its” business.
The national public broadcaster, the ABC, perfected low intensity defamation and misinformation decades ago. They have been at the heart of any number of contrived, malicious, moral panics targetting rivals of the Left. They are shameless. And can be quite dangerous.
Any number of old Lefties I know personally no longer watch it because of the remorseless, joyless, ideological bullshit.
Australia has their own business…