Vox Exposes Racism in the Knitting Community, Revealing a Caucasian Woman Who Was Too Excited to Visit India

If you don't understand how that's racist, well, that's because you're racist, Racist.

The reason why you can't be too excited to visit a country largely populated by people of a slightly different genetic make-up than you is that you might "exoticize" them and you might expect them to deliver you some kind of spiritual uplift, which forces them to do unpaid labor as your Brown Gurus. And also appropriates their culture for your personal White Journey.

My culture isn't your Prom Dress, Hater. (This a reference to Social Justice Warriors attacking high school girls who like Asian and Indian fabrics. Apparently Round-Eye isn't allowed to wear anything but linen and sheephide.)

This story is from a couple of weeks ago but it's as timeless as suggesting that Jews are motivated by dual loyalty and money and the blood of Christian infants.

In January, Karen Templer, a popular knitting blogger, told her followers about an upcoming trip to India, kicking off the whole debate. The post, which discussed Templer's excitement about her childhood dream finally being fulfilled, praised India's culture and food and also noted Templer's "lifelong obsession with the literature and history of the continent."

Her innocuous comments about India were immediately attacked. One commenter, Alex, noted her "words feed into a colonial/imperialist mindset toward India and other non-Western countries." Vox author Jaya Saxena also jumped on board, saying the tone Templer used, as a white person, "felt like they thought India only existed to be all those things for them."

After several days of this and other ridiculous abuse, Templer apologized for the post, writing that her earlier post was "insensitive" and that "words matter."

A Quillette article had previously examined the Social Justice Warrior invasion of another formerly-pleasant hobby enjoyed by Normies (who must be either reeducated or destroyed.)

On and on it went. Templer patiently fielded these criticisms as best she could, but her inquisitors were not satisfied. "It is really disappointing," announced Joey, "to see your defensive and dismissive responses to the two thoughtful posts that point out some of the problematic aspects of your writing. As white person to another white person, we NEED to take feedback with respect and integrity. … Instead of your 'year of color' being about wearing brighter clothing, why don't you make 2019 investing in contributing to people of color, buying their art, listening to their podcasts, following them, contributing money to them, buying literature written by POC."

Comments like these set off a wave of critical voices across knitting communities on sites like Ravelry.com, the biggest source of online knitting patterns by independent designers from around the world and the home of many knitting chat forums. Most of the criticism amounted to sharing words written by knitting activists @su.krita and @thecolormustard, who posted "educational" content on their profiles for others to circulate. Instagram notes scorned Templer's "peak whiteness," and reminded her that “the world doesn’t owe you a patient explanation and education” and that as a "coloniser" she ought to "stay in [her] lane." Su.krita also warned her white knitter friends that if they stayed silent and didn't speak up against racism then they would be considered "part of the problem."

Well there's nothing racist or supremacist in any of those orders being given to someone of another race precisely because they are of a lesser race designed by God to be ordered around by superior races.

All of this proves the point of Peggy Noonan's column from yesterday, that America is entering a period of Maoist "struggle sessions," in which people are battered until they confess their toughtcrimes or even knitcrimes.

I'm omitting her digest of the history of the struggle sessions, but definitely read the whole thing.

Mao unleashed university and high school students to weed out enemies and hold them to account. The students became the paramilitary Red Guards. They were instructed by the party to "clear away the evil habits of the old society" and extinguish what came to be known as "the four olds" --old ideas and customs, old habits and culture. "Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons," the state newspaper instructed them.

With a vengeance they did.

In the struggle sessions the accused, often teachers suspected of lacking proletarian feeling, were paraded through streets and campuses, sometimes stadiums. It was important always to have a jeering crowd; it was important that the electric feeling that comes with the possibility of murder be present. Dunce caps, sometimes wastebaskets, were placed on the victims’ heads, and placards stipulating their crimes hung from their necks. The victims were accused, berated, assaulted. Many falsely confessed in the vain hope of mercy.

Were any "guilty"? It hardly mattered. Fear and terror were the point. A destroyed society is more easily dominated.

...

So I ask you to entertain an idea that has been on my mind. I don't want to be overdramatic, but the spirit of the struggle session has returned and is here, in part because of the internet, in part because of the extremity of our politics, in part because more people are lonely....

The air is full of accusation and humiliation. We have seen this spirit most famously on the campuses, where students protest harshly, sometimes violently, views they wish to suppress. Social media is full of swarming political and ideological mobs. In an interesting departure from democratic tradition, they don’t try to win the other side over. They only condemn and attempt to silence.

The spirit of the struggle session is all over Twitter . On literary Twitter social-justice warriors get advance copies of new books and denounce them for deviationism--as insensitive, racist, appropriative, anti-LGBTQ. Books on the eve of publication have been pulled, sometimes withdrawn by authors who apologize profusely. Everyone’s scared. And the tormentors are not satisfied by an apology. They're excited by it and prowl for more prey.

...

I don't know if we’re a crueler, more aggressive country than in the past. We're certainly a louder one, and more anonymous in our cruelties.

And none of it portends good.

Am I wrong? If so, comment below. We can have a struggle session.

This article is also on the general subject: moral outrage, especially of the look-at-me-and-my-massive-virtue public performance variety, is self-serving, and usually used to deflect feelings of inadequacy, assuage guilt about one's own sins, or to shore up one's sense of place in the social hierarchy.

A study was conducted where subjects read fabricated articles about climate change. Some of the subjects read articles that blamed Americans for "climate change." Some of the subjects read articles that blamed mostly the Chinese for "climate change."

When the subjects -- Americans themselves -- read that Americans were at fault, they felt personally implicated and began devising ways to lash out at other actors in society -- corporations, for example -- in order to wash away their own feelings of collective guilt.

When they read articles about the Chinese being mainly responsible -- in other words, "Not You" -- they didn't experience this deep need to smear some blame around and start attacking people.

The less shame they were made to feel -- the less of a "shame-load" they were carrying -- the less shame they had to redistribute to others.

This is an interesting insight into how Democrat/Social Justice Warrior/NeverTrump shame-attacks work. Pour endless streams of Sex and Race Shame on to people and they'll become your willing Zombies, attacking other people with race and sex shame attacks in order to dissipate their own shame.

Other findings:

The more guilt over one's own potential complicity, the more desire "to punish a third-party through increased moral outrage at that target."

For instance, participants in study one read about sweatshop labor exploitation, rated their own identification with common consumer practices that allegedly contribute, then rated their level of anger at "international corporations" who perpetuate the exploitative system and desire to punish these entities. The results showed that increased guilt "predicted increased punitiveness toward a third-party harm-doer due to increased moral outrage at the target."

Having the opportunity to express outrage at a third-party decreased guilt in people threatened through "ingroup immorality."

Study participants who read that Americans were the biggest drivers of man-made climate change showed significantly higher guilt scores than those who read the blame-China article when they weren't given an opportunity to express anger at or assign blame to a third-party. However, having this opportunity to rage against hypothetical corporations led respondents who read the blame-America story to express significantly lower levels of guilt than the China group. Respondents who read that Chinese consumers were to blame had similar guilt levels regardless of whether they had the opportunity to express moral outrage.

"The opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doers" inflated participants perception of personal morality.

Asked to rate their own moral character after reading the article blaming Americans for climate change, respondents saw themselves as having "significantly lower personal moral character" than those who read the blame-China article--that is, when they weren't given an out in the form of third-party blame. Respondents in the America-shaming group wound up with similar levels of moral pride as the China control group when they were first asked to rate the level of blame deserved by various corporate actors and their personal level of anger at these groups. In both this and a similar study using the labor-exploitation article, "the opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doing (vs. not) led to significantly higher personal moral character ratings," the authors found.

Maybe kind of obvious, but it's Science. Sometimes Science is about proving your intuitions are right.

One more finding: When people were permitted to talk about what Moral People they were before being exposed to the shame-America or shame-China articles, they experienced a reduced need to lash out at others. It seems that if people are given the chance to validate themselves morally, then they feel less need to prove it through attacking third parties.

Below, a short video about the the new Knitcrime outbreak.

posted by Ace of Spades at 07:04 PM

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