THE SUICIDE OF LIBERALISM: “If only ‘fascists’ will stand up to the excesses of liberalism, then people will seek out fascists.”
At the Bulwark (I know, but stick with me on this one), Jonathan Last writes:
Washingtonian has an amazing piece from a mother whose teenage son descended into the alt-right.
The story is what you’d expect: Nice, progressive family has a nice progressive boy. But then something goes wrong and he strays from the path and starts hanging out with racists.
But the something in this story is pretty forking important. Here’s the precipitating event:
Sam was 13, barely a month into eighth grade. In the taxonomy of our local public school, his close group of friends was tagged edgy and liberal: One of them came out as gay during a class presentation; another identified as trans for a while. Their group-text chain pulsed 24-7 with observations about alternative music and the robotic conformity of other classmates. Standard stuff for sensitive middle-schoolers.One morning during first period, a male friend of Sam’s mentioned a meme whose suggestive name was an inside joke between the two of them. Sam laughed. A girl at the table overheard their private conversation, misconstrued it as a sexual reference, and reported it as sexual harassment. Sam’s guidance counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of “breaking the law.” Before long, he was in the office of a male administrator who informed him that the exchange was “illegal,” hinted that the police were coming, and delivered him into the custody of the school’s resource officer. At the administrator’s instruction, that man ushered Sam into an empty room, handed him a blank sheet of paper, and instructed him to write a “statement of guilt.”
No one called me as this unfolded, even though Sam cried for about six hours straight as staff members parked him in vacant offices to keep him away from other students. When he stepped off the bus that afternoon and I asked why his eyes were so swollen, he informed me that he would probably be suspended, but possibly also expelled and arrested.
Mom then writes that Sam “found people to talk to on Reddit and 4chan,” and things go downhill from there.
I disagree with the headline of Last’s article — they’re not liberals, they’re leftists, behaving as leftists always do. The scene above, after a 13-year old boy behaves like 13 year old boys always do, sound like the Stasi overhearing a joke scene from The Lives of Others — except that it’s arguably worse; it’s American teachers acting like the Stasi when dealing with teenagers.
It’s the Bulwark, so there’s the expected extreme Trump-bashing at the end of the piece, but read the whole thing.
