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gnidrologs (
gnidrologs) rakstīja,
@ 2022-10-09 14:31:00
putinista dienasgrāmata
Some of you might know I'm a philosophy teacher in Canada at the college level (young adults).

I had a meeting with my colleagues yesterday (philosophy department), and what I heard there about their anti-radicalisation efforts and how they'll apply it in their teaching has left me speechless. Thought you guys might want to know, at the risk of doxxing myself.


A bit of background first
"Anti-radicalisation" research is getting big, and has been getting into academia and teaching for a couple of years. Where I work this semester, all government research grants, all paid time off work for research, all approved projects by the administration, have had this agenda in mind for about 2 years. Canada doesn't have a January 6th manufactured excuse, though they tried to portray the truckers' protest as this Nazi racist thing, but we're still going all in on this. This is where the money is.

So how do they define radicalisation and extremism? Well, anything right-wing, any criticism of the government or of institutions, which they call "anti-autoritarianism" and "anti-government sentiment", anyone critical of covid measures and lockdowns, nationalists, survivalists, anti-vaxxers, Christians (catholics and protestants), adepts of alternative spirituality... Part of the definition of radicalisation is the assumption that all those thoughtcrimes lead to violence. That's right.

Here are the only projects in the philosophy department, all tied to this:

One teacher got paid time off and grants to build a course named "conspiracy theories", which is now deployed for the first time and taken by the "best, most intellectual" students (said teacher's assessment). The good students getting corrupted young.
Another teacher has been "pioneering" a "journalistic" approach to teaching philosophy for a year now, with government grants and paid time off for research. Guess what it is? Subverting philosophy teaching and making it about debunking disinformation, using government-approved sources to fact-check. In other words, transforming critical thinking into conformist thinking. The fucker's not even 40 and got multiple mini-strokes this semester, possibly from the jabs, and I'm his replacement. In class, they have been targeting individuals with opinions that differ from what's government-approved, and debunking them. That's a pilot experiment, and the goal is to make it standard, to change mandatory philosophy courses into this. Four teachers are already applying his method now.
Another teacher is getting paid for theoretical research on radicalisation.

Mind you, there are only 6 tenured teachers there, so that's half, and the others are also all in, including the temps.

This is not an isolated effort. They're building a network, with pretty much all colleges and universities participating in one way or another. This is nationwide. Many research groups have formed to work on this, and they've been publishing papers, having conferences, symposiums, and all the shit you can imagine while drinking wine and champagne. They brag about it in the news, plaster the articles on the walls in school. Non-governmental organisations are also participating and giving grants, notably UNESCO-PREV and a bunch of others, but it's a circlejerk since those organisations are also getting government grants. Taxpayer money galore.


Here comes the police state
What I learned yesterday at the meeting, is that the academia anti-radicalisation network has now expanded to include the police and secret service. You read that right. Bragging about heavy police presence at their anti-radicalisation conferences and fostering collaborative relations. What the teacher delegated to such networking said, is that the police and secret service have a different term for said radicalisation: domestic terrorism. Criticising the government is now considered a gateway to terrorism, friend. Better keep that thoughtcrime to yourself, lest we haul you to prison. We're not there yet, but the theoretical justification for this is being built, and it's coming at breakneck pace.

The reactions to this was what killed me. I sat there appalled, while all my collegues applauded the news. In a 2h+ meeting, that involvement of the police and secret service was the only thing applauded. Praise be the police state!

Moreover, a secret service guy is coming to talk to the kids in that teacher's philosophy courses. I can't fucking believe it. The lead academic researchers are also coming to give a conference to all our students, and the department highly suggests we cancel courses to make it mandatory, and change our final dissertations to be about extremism and radicalisation. It's optional, up to each teacher, for now. But the push is there.


Comments
Man, did that escalate quickly.

I'm already a disliked member of the department, as they know I wasn't vaxxed. They want me out, and have made moves in that direction, which is why I'm only there this semester as a last minute replacement rather than full-time. I intend to talk about this anti-radicalisation insanity with the one colleague I think might hear me, and see how it goes, but it's probably futile. How do you come back from willingly applauding the coming of the thoughtpolice? Not sure there's a future in my profession, I don't intend on becoming an ideological tool of the State, a propagandist corrupting the minds of the new generations.

Whole thing is fucked.

And if anything is radicalizing, it's this.
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