The Wise, The Fool and The Cowards

On the letter against Steven Pinker and the Tyranny of the Offended

(This is a translation of my Portuguese article, originally published on Poder360)

I regret to inform that this article will be, again, about identity politics, cancellation culture and the tyranny of the offended. It is about the creation of a “reformed society,” a new civilization that feigns to protect the neediest while it is being built, brick by brick, over the unstable foundations of the emotionally weak, where the prevailing logic is based on the reasoning of the most unbalanced, most childish and with the greatest amount of bad faith.

Do not think that I am happy to talk about this. For me, discussing identity is as absurd as debating pineapple on pizza — everyone has a taste, and each taste is subjective, personal and non-transferable. The problem, of course, is that we are on the verge of seeing pineapple on pizza mandated by law, and even I, who like that combination, will fight for the right not to eat it.

Note that the expression I coined is “tyranny of the offended,” not tyranny of the weak. This is a crucial point in understanding the situation. No participant in this collective hysteria intends to protect the weakest, but those who complain the most, those who shout the loudest, those who manage to mobilize the most people — in other words, those who have the most power. It is no coincidence that we do not see any protest or hashtag defending the poor, the elderly or children. But last week, lucidity had a small victory.

There are countless examples of cancellation, but the case I write about today stood out for targeting Steven Pinker, Harvard linguist, psychologist and author of several popular science bestsellers. Pinker was targeted not by a colleague, but by more than 600 of them. In a letter addressed to the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), “members of the language community” ask that Pinker be removed from the lists of “distinguished academics” and media experts. The letter demands that the LSA “distance itself” from Pinker because he would be at odds with its principles of “racial justice.”

The letter lists six situations that illustrate Pinker’s alleged racism. The examples are embarrassing, but revealing: they illustrate the dishonest selectivity of those who begin the kangaroo court with the verdict, retrospectively mining everything that can reinforce the conviction they already have. This becomes even easier, of course, when the author is prolific — the more books published, the higher the chance that something untoward will be found. As the phrase attributed to Cardinal Richelieu says, “Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough in them to hang him.” For linguists, this ploy must be even easier.

The first example of Pinker’s alleged racism was a 2015 tweet in which he said, “Data: the police don’t shoot blacks disproportionately.” The tweet linked to a New York Times article in which the author examines official statistics showing that, on the one hand, 31.8% of the people who were shot by the police were black. This is more than twice the proportion of blacks in the total population, 13.2%. But on the other hand, blacks also make up a larger share among those who are detained by the police (28.9% of detainees are black). For the author of the article, the same figures that reveal blacks suffer more violence from the police, compared to their share of the population, also reveal that they are arrested more often, and therefore are more likely to to have police encounters and thus suffer from police violence. [The question to be asked then would be: why are blacks arrested more often? The answer may be “because of racism in the police,” but it may also be because blacks in the United States commit more crimes. And if that is the answer, then the next question may be: why do they commit more crimes? Because they have lower wages, and a lower level of education, for example. And why do they have the lowest level of education and wages? Because of the political racism that confines blacks in areas with no school, no jobs, etc. This is just an imaginary exercise in search of answers — which needs to start with the right questions. For those interested, here’s a more recent article on this data. ]

Pinker’s sins were analyzed — and debunked — by Reason. I encourage everyone to read it to understand how far this collective psychopathy has come. But I want to talk about just one more of these examples to warn everyone about what may be on its way to Brazil, the country where even social sciences are imported, even if they do not suit our situation, or are much inferior to what we produce. I think it’s important to be prepared because politics and society have to be analyzed as a film, not a photo. If the static picture of the situation does not scare you, try to examine the progression of this film and predict where it is going. See what part of the film we were at when President Fernando Henrique Cardoso made the shameful gesture of officially complaining to FOX for a joke about Brazil in an episode of the Simpsons. See who took offense at those who refused to call Dilma presidenta, when we already have a word that encompasses all genders. See if these people demanding a gendered word were the same ones who refuse to accept the word actress, because “it diminishes women.”

In the USA, it is no longer necessary to see where the film is going, because the film is almost finishing. I’m no alarmist, even though at times I look like the illegitimate son of Cassandra and Poe’s raven, but the situation in the United States is frightening for anyone who is minimally honest and attentive — and here is Noam Chomsky and dozens of other thinkers proving my point.

They signed an open letter denouncing “an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty” and condemning “calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.”

Until recently, very few on the left had the intelligence or courage to denounce what has been happening. The generalised silence of the Brazilian press is proof of this, with the honorable exception made by the press derogatorily classified as “right wing.” Who knows, maybe now, with Chomsky’s authorisation, the one who have been too cowardly will feel bold enough to open their mouth. But going back to diatribe against Pinker, in the fifth example of the letter he is accused of racism through a concept that should give shivers down the spine of any sensible person: a dystopian and Orwellian invention called dogwhistle.

According to the witch-hunting linguist-snitches who denounced Pinker to his association, Pinker used a trick in which he manages to be racist and announce that he is racist, but without letting his enemies notice. That’s where the expression “dogwhistle” comes from — like an ultrasonic whistle, only eugenicist cronies or dogs are able to get the message. Do you know those right-wingers on the verge of a schizophrenia attack who come out in search of “secret symbols” made by members of the Iluminatti revealed “secretly” on Instagram? So. In the leftist version, they are those guys full of energy and with lots of free time, who go around looking for a racist who can whistle and wink at his accomplices all at the same time. In Pinker’s case, his whistle would have been as follows: he used the expression “urban violence”, in a clear attempt to “send one message to an outgroup while at the same time sending a second (often taboo, controversial, or inflammatory) message to an ingroup” of fellow racists. “But how is the word urban racist?”, may ask an intelligent person. The linguists’ letter explains (and you would need to be a linguist to understand): “Urban,’ as a dogwhistle, signals covert and, crucially, deniable support of views that essentialize Black people as lesser-than, and, often, as criminals.” That’s it, folks: who needs visible racism when we have the invisible type to condemn? But the LSA, unlike academic institutions that succumbed to pressure from the salivating packs, did not think there was enough evidence against Pinker for his academic ostracism.

The thing about seeing racism where it is expected — or perhaps where it is desired — reminds me of the time on twitter when I mentioned that I trusted a journalist I know more than the Arab intellectual known as Angry Arab, who had lectured at the university where I did my master’s degree, AUB, in Lebanon. In a tweet, I told a person who was debating with me that the Angry Arab sobriquet was very appropriate. It is obvious that I was referring to the “angry” part of his pseudonym, but the idiotic Arabist, a certain Asa Winstanley, had no doubt about it: he called me a racist, since — he presumed — I could only be referring to a perceived Arab inferiority of the man, not to his state of mind. You can see who is prejudiced in this conversation.

But to end this article on a lighter note, and in with some enlightenment, here is a tweet from Marcellus Wiley, a former NFL player. Under the words “better wise up,” Wiley posted one of the simplest and profoundest syntheses I’ve ever seen:

“America is not divided by race, color, gender, or sexual orientation. America is divided into wise people and fools. And fools divide themselves by race, color, gender, or sexual orientation.”