This is all very reminiscent of what happened to off-topic for a couple months post-election. Of course, that madness turned out to be directly induced through sabotage by a now-former admin secretly banning *hundreds* of members totally outside of any justifiable grounds (not that any attempt at justification was made to begin with, being undisclosed and undocumented bans) in some 85-90% of each of those bans that were subsequently investigated after we became aware of the incident.
NeoGAF is a discussion forum; the whole point is to disseminate information and debate it, on civil terms, in an atmosphere that encourages healthy skepticism, fact-checking and credible sourcing, challenging preexisting worldviews and talking points and biases by providing a platform for a diverse audience to contribute, etc. And yes, the site does lean progressive, because it is inclusive and evidence-based and intolerant of hate speech. But while there are core values associated with this place, there's no point in discussion without providing a framework that allows for multiple perspectives to engage with each other.
I mention all this because, particularly for those couple months I mentioned when anyone trying to operate in good faith within the aforementioned parameters I've set up for this place ended up sniped en masse, Off-Topic suddenly became unrecognizable to me some 15 or 16 years after we set this side of the forum up. The place kinda turned into what this Evergreen outcome sounds like: with everyone who tried to contribute to civil discourse systematically thrown down the well, the remaining members either stayed silent or radicalized up, and we were left with a squad of polarized "progressives" unwilling to have a conversation with anyone about issues, repeating the same talking points in every thread to each other in a self-righteous echo chamber, newly confident that any non-conformity would be driven out or otherwise made to disappear. This was not just ostracizing people attempting to challenge reductive, exclusionary "with us or against us" polarized rhetoric, either (and that should absolutely be challenged), but also anyone even trying to have a conversation within that radicalized bubble. People were driven out, character assassinated, labeled traitor for "not sounding angry enough," or for not being entirely on board with ostracizing someone else for the same reasons.
There's nothing righteous, informed, or progressive about that. It's just a sanctimonious, vitriolic, self-destructive circle jerk that drives out the kind of people most valuable to discussion: not the "retweet my Side and quote it in yells or else you're The Enemy" people, but the people engaging on each individual issue with critical thought and an open mind, willingness and capacity to perform independent investigation into the materials initially presented, come to an independent conclusion and present it, and to allow the same from folks who have made similar effort but with different credible sources or different justifiable conclusions than your own.
That's the sort of thing I'm seeing here. Professor's conclusions about the event that prompted the protests should certainly be challenged, but he did justify his positions reasonably and stay civil throughout the argument he presented. Yeah, that annual event change-up is a complicated issue, as we can see by all the folks here struggling with the right and wrong of it, so it's absolutely a legitimate topic for an academic debate. And that's all he did: debate the merits of it and the campus ethics of an exclusionary event with what he felt were undercurrents of pressure to comply or end up branded a racist/traitor/whatever.
...and now we're seeing exactly that, with an aggressive push for his removal, threats against him, and even an order issued that the chief of campus police not take measures to ensure the professor's safety on campus.
Smear campaign articles posted earlier here that attribute *swastikas* being spraypainted by some apparent alt-right dickwads who have involved themselves here, and doxxing alleged to have occurred at some point along the way by third parties unrelated to the professor (alt-right again apparently latching onto this), all somehow ultimately being the the fault of this *progressive activist Jewish professor* (who as far as I can tell has sound credentials, and who one of his long-time students personally vouched for in this thread as someone who wouldn't have a disingenuous, racially motivated angle with this thing) for daring to break formation and have an academic conversation that scrutinized something on "the progressive side" that day.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
World isn't binary, folks. Hyper-partisan, radical, binary, "us or them" environments with constant purity tests demanding adherence to the pre-established talking point of the hour breeds ignorance, intolerance, hate, and self-destruction.
This is why we talk about things. This is why diversity of background/ethnicity/orientation/culture is important within an environment like a campus or a message board: not just as an outcome better representing the diversity of the population it's pulling its membership body from, but critically for the diversity of perspective that results from that intense microcosm you've built, and the insight and nuance of thought it can bring to each participant when they share an appropriately moderated space and each have a fair voice.
That's why we talk about things.
