Stop Mocking the “Antifa Giraffe Professor”: Here’s Why

NOTE: Mike and I are having an ongoing conversation on Letter.wiki regarding Neofascist Ideologies, Antifa and more. You may follow our conversation here: https://letter.wiki/conversation/59

—————————————–

Ok, so here’s the deal. Almost a year ago I began writing about Antifa and trying to figure out what the heck was going on. I don’t believe in violence and I do believe that reason and civil discourse are superior to screaming and skirmishes in the street. In fact, my observation of the situation was that it was drawing more attention to the folks that Antifa was protesting and was doing more harm than good. It just didn’t seem to be productive or effective.

About that same time, I saw that Professor Mike Isaacson was to appear on “Tucker Carlson” to explain Antifa. I was most anxious to hear what he had to say as I was really trying to understand this movement as more than a crazy mob.

Well, the interview didn’t go well. It was a total hit job. When asked if he was denying another’s right to speech rights, Isaacson said no, that was not the case—it was a mischaracterization. When asked if he personally believed in committing violence, Isaacson denied that as well. He didn’t say shut down free speech, he said opposing the ideas of problematic speech through peaceful community organizing. Carlson kept up with the “so what you’re saying is” tactic that left Isaacson looking ridiculous, even when Isaacson attempted to redirect the conversation to the topic of NONVIOLENT CIVIL DISCOURSE.

The Isaacson situation went into full-on attack mode and mockery post-interview when Far Left Watch started going through all the tweets Isaacson had ever made and pulled up one, taken out of context, which was then used to claim “Antifa Professor Calls For Killing Police” | The Daily Caller or, per Gateway Pundit, Isaacson “argued that Antifa terrorists have a right to beat people they disagree with.”

There were other problematic tweets, but by the time Isaacson clarified that he was (obviously clumsily) critiquing policing as an institution, it was too late. Death threats rolled in. They were graphic and scary to read.

Then, there was the Professor Giraffe meme that was created, as well as the Professor Pez Dispenser Meme. And if that wasn’t enough, the New York Post dug up his profile on a “kink” website, where mutually consenting adults match their interests for whatever… I don’t care. That has nothing to do with his ideas. His sex life is his business (and apparently the Post’s business.)

Ok, now that we’ve gotten all the dirt out of the way, here’s the deal. Isaacson has a publication called “You Can’t Punch Every Nazi” which he presents at workshops and guess what? It’s excellent. It addresses ways to “disabuse” those espousing fascist ideologies with actual WORDS, not PUNCHES. It also clarifies the terminology used, since many rational folks are pretty tired of the implication they are a Nazi, a Neo-Nazi, or a Nazi sympathizer if they are not in agreement with Antifa’s methods.

(Note: I found it very comparable to Street Epistemology, a dialogue technique used to “disabuse” people adhering to religious ideologies, supernatural beliefs, superstitions, etc. SE is based on the work of philosophy professor Dr. Peter Boghossian. I’ll link to an explanation of that methodology below.)

So, while we were all busy attacking, threatening and mocking Isaacson as a person, turns out we completely missed the fact that he actually has some really great ideas on how to deal with the problem of fascist ideologues through rational civil discourse. 

Isaacson begins with the hypothetical: what if someone you know or care about is dabbling in fascist ideology? “Regardless of how you feel about all of this, you don’t want to see this person go down a path that almost inevitably leads to prison, early death, and a lifetime of increasing social isolation. You care about the people around you, and you don’t want to see them harmed.” 

Huh? You mean Isaacson doesn’t just believe you punch it out of the person? Just knock some sense into them and they’ll be fine? No, he uses WORDS. In fact, he uses these kinds of words.Ask them open-ended questions to interrogate the origins of their beliefs. Examples of such questions might include:

  • Why do you think that’s true?

 

  • Why is that important to you?

 

  • How did you come to believe that?”

 

Sound familiar? That’s discourse. That’s called Socratic questioning.

Isaacson believes often times a person will embrace fascist ideologies due to a sense of injustice. He recommends looking into common life changes or trauma. For example, a person may start to wonder about fascism due to loss of job, loss of home, loss of business, isolation and loneliness. Understanding this might lead to a more productive conversation.

Most enlightening to me was the similarity between fascist ideologies and closely held religious beliefs, which we already know can lead to all sorts of violence and havoc.

“Fascist ideologies function in much the same way religions or self-help programs might. These ideologies give their adherents a general explanation for the injustice of the world and provide a ready self-improvement program for the individual to rise above it. For this reason, some scholars who have studied fascist ideologies refer to them as political religions.  For this reason, adherents to fascist ideologies flock to them for the same diverse reasons one might join a church.”

This is a language I can begin to understand. He goes into detail about the underlying belief systems. The parallels between closely held religious beliefs and fascist ideologies are incredible. One example:

“Radical Traditionalism: Some racists are so interested in having a religious justification for their bigotry that they decide to appeal to all of them. Radical traditionalists analyze Vedic, Nordic and sometimes Christian texts as containing hidden information to reveal universal truths. They believe that traditional lifeways are an accumulation of ancient wisdom that has been abandoned since the Enlightenment. Consciously anti-rational, they rebuke science in favor of a mythology of benevolent kingdoms, secret evils, and adversarial races.”

So, beyond the one-on-one methodology, Isaacson recently agreed to discuss his ideas on a vlog called “Millennial Woes,” AKA Colin Robertson. Robertson is a Scot and describes himself as an alt-right neoreactionary inspired by the works of  Theodore Dalrymple. He is apparently quite popular on YouTube and has a large following. He has 20K followers on Twitter alone. His YouTube channel has almost 50K subscribers. The interview with Isaacson has been viewed more than 30K times generating 1000-plus comments.

In a blog post about his goals, Isaacson wrote: “His (Woes) followers however are not so committed. It takes a certain level of commitment to put your face in front of a camera and go for broke on YouTube with nazi race theory. It takes a minimum commitment to watch such a troll while browsing on the internet. If Millennial Woes admits the error of his ways, he is disgraced. If his followers do, it was an unfortunate phase. Ultimately, my goal is not to argue with Millennial Woes at all, but rather to speak to the insecurity of his followers.”

http://www.vulgareconomics.com/2017/12/why-i-went-on-nazis-podcast-approaches.html

Interesting to me is that in today’s hostile speech climate, centrists are not allowed to talk to these folks like Millennial Woes because then they are condemned as Alt-Right themselves or, at the very least, Nazi sympathizers. But that’s exactly what we need to do is reason our way through this ideology and debate it. (Is it true?)

“You Can’t Punch Every Nazi” goes into much more detail, of course. I hope you will take a look. It is a work in progress and Isaacson welcomes input, but I do believe he has the beginnings of an epistemology that deserves attention. Perhaps we can help.

Full pdf version of “You Can’t Punch Every Nazi”:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx5aakHAtxFJcFZBSjZkYlJpX0k/view

Street Epistemology: A Primer on Beliefs and Finding Truth