A Soviet Society Grows in Cambridge
What would academia be doing differently if they weren't ushering in a communist society?
We often use the word "Orwellian" to describe the ridiculous language and terminology of our times - but another feature of Orwell's society is that people do not advance in accordance with their merit or the value they add to society, they advance based on their loyalty and usefulness to the ruling regime.
Status is the measure of progression in Orwell's society, influence is the currency. Just as it is in every collectivist system, since your talents are owned by the state, you will be rewarded them as long as they are used in service of the regime's agenda. You will be celebrated as a "hero of the state" if you debase or destroy yourself for the good of the movement.
And it takes a special kind of supplicant to see that as a good thing.
Claudine Gay is a prime example.
F.A. Hayek wrote in 1944:
"Advancement within a totalitarian group or party depends largely on a willingness to do immoral things. The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all morals, in collectivist ethics becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves “the good of the whole,” because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done. Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarianism which horrify us follow of necessity.
From the collectivist standpoint intolerance and brutal suppression of dissent, deception and spying, the complete disregard of the life and happiness of the individual are essential and unavoidable. Acts which revolt all our feelings, such as the shooting of hostages or the killing of the old or sick, are treated as mere matters of expediency; the compulsory uprooting and transportation of hundreds of thousands becomes an instrument of policy approved by almost everybody except the victims. To be a useful assistant in the running of a totalitarian state, therefore, a man must be prepared to break every moral rule he has ever known if this seems necessary to achieve the end set for him. In the totalitarian machine there will be special opportunities for the ruthless and unscrupulous.
Neither the Gestapo nor the administration of a concentration camp, neither the Ministry of Propaganda nor the SA or SS (or their Russian counterparts) are suitable places for the exercise of humanitarian feelings. Yet it is through such positions that the road to the highest positions in the totalitarian state leads. A distinguished American economist, Professor Frank H. Knight, correctly notes that the authorities of a collectivist state “would have to do these things whether they wanted to or not: and the probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tenderhearted person would get the job of whipping master in a slave plantation.”
It is interesting to me that this applies to the defenders of former Harvard president Gay. Their basic argument is "Sure, she cheated by representing other scholar's work as her own, but she is a black woman, so the rules don't apply! She was doing the regime's bidding, she should be exempt from the rules other people must follow!"
That argument means that less ethical character should be expected from black people, and even less should be expected from black WOMEN!
Embedded in such a response is the very racism and misogyny of which the left accuses anyone who points out Gay's ethical failures.
But then in an Orwellian world, self-awareness doesn't exist.
"Sure, she cheated by representing other scholar's work as her own, but she is a black woman, so the rules don't apply!
This is an important sentence to remember. Restructure the sentence to: "Sure They cheated by representing what they think the public wants, but they are Democrats - so the rules do not apply".
OR "Sure they lied about Russia, but hey they are Democrats - so the rules do not apply".
OR - on and on it goes!
Now you understand what is and has been happening.
"Sure, she cheated...but how else do you expect a black woman to advance in a racist, sexist society?" The underlying belief here is that "underrepresented minorities" are ALL competent professionals, just "held back" by "the system". So any room-temperature IQ could do the job just as well as an accomplished white male, they just need the chance to prove themselves. Well, Gay got her chance to prove herself - and she failed miserably. Once she fraudulently attained her PhD, she could have gone on to do to "serious work" (though I have to wonder, in her line of "work" what that would even look like). But instead. she continued to plagiarize and publish slipshod derivative material without citation. Her performance before the House wasn't a "well-laid trap" - all she had to do was agree that the antisemitic mobs were outside of Harvard's own published standards, and that she would take immediate steps to hold them accountable. This would have required nothing more substantive than empaneling a committee to "investigate", "review" and "make recommendations"...blah, blah, blah - and the wolves would have gone away. An idiot could have seen that coming. What does this say about Prof Gay's competence?