This image is all over Twitter this morning:

Below a photo of Chapel Hill murderer Craig Hicks, a caption reads “Neighbors: Hicks Known For Rescuing Dogs From Puppy Mills.” Underneath that, smaller text reads “Newest info paints possible hate crime in unlikely light.” There’s a CNN logo to the left of the text, and a crawl and time graphic further down.

The image appears to be, and has been posted as, a CNN television screenshot, but it’s clearly a fake. Here’s why:

First, the font for the caption is wrong, as is the size of the text. Real CNN captions — as can be seen in a Google search for “CNN screenshot” — are shorter, and thus bigger. The second caption in particular is far smaller than seen in actual screenshots, and there’s no reason for it to be — because the text is so much shorter than that of the main caption, it could have been made larger without cutting it off.

Second, I can find no reference to Hicks as a dog rescuer in any media coverage of the case, including CNN’s own. The time graphic reads “2:57 PM PT,” and as I write this it’s eight o’clock in the morning on the West Coast, so the screenshot would have to be at least seventeen hours old. Even if the puppy news was breaking when it was shown on-screen it would have made it into online coverage by now, and even if the story had been withdrawn for some reason a trace of it would remain.

Third — and thanks to Twitterer @superbranch for this one — there’s a spelling error in the second caption. “Unlikely” is spelled “unlikeley.”

There are other problems with the image, too. The blue background for the caption is a shade I don’t see in legit CNN screenshots, and it’s a flat color, not textured as the real ones I’ve seen are. The text of the main caption is longer than CNN’s tend to be, and the second caption doesn’t make much sense — why would Hicks’ supposed history of rescuing animals put the crime itself in a new light?

Nope. It’s a fake.

Happy birthday to Frederick Douglass, who understood that some questions just aren’t worth debating:

“There may be some well-meaning people in this audience who have never attended a woman suffrage convention, never heard a woman suffrage speech, never read a woman suffrage newspaper, and they may be surprised that those who speak here do not argue the question. It may be kind to tell them that our cause has passed beyond the period of arguing. The demand of the hour is not argument, but assertion, firm and inflexible assertion, assertion which has more than the force of an argument. If there is any argument to be made, it must be made by opponents, not by the friends of woman suffrage.”

Earlier this week, down in the depths of an absurdly long thread, a new visitor to this site left a comment that blew me away. So much so, in fact, that I asked the author, Cole, if I could republish it as a post of its own.

Not much background is needed, so I’ll get out of her way.

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I’m a newbie commenter here. I’m white, a gay woman, 25 yrs old, an organizer in my city (Boston) that has been deeply involved in lefty movements locally and nationally and I helped start a left feminist organization. I’m not a Big Name nor do I follow the Big Names (like I only vaguely knew who Freddie deBoer was until all of this). I’m not a student organizer, I got a year of community college under my belt but you know how that shit goes. I am prefacing with all this so people know that where I am coming from. So yea, couple of things:

1. It is completely bizarre to me to see all this concern about people being driven away from the left during a moment where we are seeing one of the largest and most sustained social movements in recent history. How can we have a conversation about the State of the Left without taking into context the Black Lives Matter movement? It is especially bizarre given that queer black women who helped lay the backbone for this movement embody the kind of unapolegtic radicalism that deBoer and friends take issue with. Like you all gotta understand how silly it looks to see a white dude talking about how the left is too mean and driving people away when in the middle of winter in Boston we are still having 1000+ people marches around Black Lives Matter. I frankly don’t even know how to process it.

2. Someone already spoke to this in the thread, but it also is confusing given the scale of the problem. I can’t really say anything publicly, online or in organizing spaces without risking at least threats of violence and attacks. A simple request for men to be please be more aware of talking over women can easily escalate to male leftists screaming in my face and threatening to rape me. Fuck, I have even been shoved in meetings before. And then this has escalated into other forms of violence.

Hell, it was that dynamic that led me to help start the lefty feminist organization. I mean, it was exactly that dynamic in the anti-war movement that lead to the start of the women’s liberation movement and funnily enough, a lot of these critiques of PC/callout culture are incredibly similar to those directed at feminists during that time period. Basically, we have a real serious problem of people (women, black people, trans people but especially trans women) being driven out of moments because of actual violence, but I really have yet to see these Big Names seriously address that dynamic and how it plays into callout culture. I would take a lot of these critiques way more seriously if they actual took in the larger context instead of pretending all this shit came out of nowhere.

3. The idea that PC language is inaccessible to working class people needs to die in a fire. I’m poor, but I ain’t stupid and being poor doesn’t mean I’m more cruel than the cultured academic. If someone tells me that using a certain word hurts them, I stop. I’m perfectly capable of understanding the ideology behind various types of language uses — because in case you didn’t realize this, a lot of this ideology came out of working class movements. Academics chiding each other over inaccessible language has to be one of the most patronizing and belittling things I have experienced in my own organizing.

Beyond the fact that assuming poor people can’t understand this is bullshit, it is also a way for academics to not hold themselves accountable for shitty institutions they are involved in. Like you know what barriers I as a working class organizer actually face? Its not language or callouts — believe me, my family is old school Italian, I can handle people yelling. It’s the fact that for all paid organizer positions, you need a higher degree. It’s that for my org to get money, I need to navigate a grant system that is hostile to young, grassroots organizations and that requires a certain kind of language and presentation. It’s that feeing when you show up to a coalition meeting and you are the only one not dressed in business casual. It’s that private colleges in our city suck up public money, resources, and land to the point where orgs I work with have trouble finding meeting spaces. It’s that student and academic organizers are granted a huge platform and more money and support than I could ever dream of, just by virtue of being part of the academy. So, you know, stop worrying about language so much because that is so not the issue here.

4. I don’t get this conflation of educational and political organizations. A lot of the critiques of PC/callout shit seem to make the assumption that all political organizations should have some sort of education component. I’m gonna use the feminist org I’m a part of again as an example. We are a political organization that works on long term campaigns in order to build a revolutionary women’s liberation movement. There is nothing on our website or in our materials that would suggest that we are a good group to come to learn about the basics of race, class and gender and that was deliberate on our part. If people showed up misgendering Chelsea Manning or lacking in knowledge on basic shit, yea we are going to ask them to leave. Why? Because we all volunteer our time, our budget mostly comes out of our own pockets and we just don’t see how educating random people is a good use of our time and resources. And funnily enough, we have still been able to build a base and do some significant work in our city. We’ve been able to do that by having a clear political platform and being smart with our resources (economic, emotional, etc). We’re not perfect, we’ve had plenty of conflict over tactics and analysis but we have been successful precisely because we have held that basic line.

Also, since when has educating random individuals ever been a successful strategy for the left? Like let’s use one of deBoer’s examples — say this dude shows up to a meeting and claims there are innate gender differences. Okay, so what next? I could spend time, resources and energy educating him but there is no guarantee he’ll listen or how long it will take to get him up to speed and due to past experience, I know this could likely end in violence for me. But let’s say I take this task on. I would first have to figure out the best way to teach him, I would have to research and present materials, maybe I would have to dedicate whole meetings to this project — and if we are being honest, this project could take months to years. And at the end of it, there is still no guarantee he would accept leftist views on gender or that he would then be interested in long term organizing. How exactly is that a good movement-building strategy?

Or let’s say we don’t say anything and just let him organize with us. I’ve been in groups like this and I’ll tell you what happens. Over time, women will leave. Some will leave yelling and screaming and trying to draw attention to the issue while others will leave so quietly that no one notices. And before you know it, your organization has lost membership of people already on board with your message for someone who holds shitty beliefs, all for the sake of movement-building.

And obviously its not always so black and white. But I’m trying to operate on the terms deBoer laid out. Like I can easily see him profiling the groups I’m as part of the problem without ever considering that maybe there is rhyme and reason to what we do.

5. Its pretty ironic that deBoer can act like a jerk and people can give him the benefit of the doubt and still respect his ideas, meanwhile we have a slate of hysterical articles bemoaning the fact that women, trans and queer people are asserting their politics in not-nice tones (because let’s be honest, the vast majority of these examples of angry leftists are almost all feminists and mostly black women, glbq women or trans women).

6. If we are going to talk about the stagnation of the left or start assigning blame to shit, shouldn’t we first look at who controls the resources? The feminist movement is incredibly weak right now. I guess its easy to blame twitter activists (like Michelle Goldberg did) but in reality, it’s organizations like Planned Parenthood and NARAL and NOW who have access to the most resources and who tend to exert the most control over the direction of the movement. And I mean, that dynamic exists across movements (gltbq rights, labor, etc). And if one has been paying attention the past few years, it’s been the work of these newer, more radicalized activists that have reinvigorated the left. Just to go full circle, we would not have the Black Lives Matter movement if it was not for the uncompromising stance black activists have taken these past few months. Hell, some of the women profiled in the Toxic Twitter Wars artcles have had direct roles in building this current movement.

And this comment turned into a fucking beast. I can be wicked wordy sometimes but hopefully all this made sense.

•          •          •

Angus again, with just a couple of quick notes on Cole’s post.

First, I asked her how she would like to be credited here, and she requested the same semi-anonymous handle she used on her original comment. She was recently targeted for doxxing, and is laying low. Second, Cole’s original comment sparked considerable discussion, including two sharp followups from Cole herself. You can find those here and here.

Charles Darwin’s daughter Annie died at the age of ten after an illness of several months.

It’s not known for certain what Annie died of. For a long time it was believed to have been scarlet fever. More recent research has suggested it may have ben tuberculosis. Today, TB is preventable by vaccine; both it and scarlet fever are now treatable by antibiotics.

These twin medical revolutions, vaccination and antibiotics, are both incomprehensibly recent. Americans who are old today grew up in a world without them. The overwhelming majority of people who have ever lived on earth grew up in a world without them. Nearly every parent who ever existed lived without them, which means that nearly every parent who ever existed lived with the ever-present terror that became a reality for Charles and Emma Darwin.

And yet we have as a culture forgotten that world, and that terror. And so vaccination rates are dropping, and children are once more dying. The terror is returning.

We should remember that terror; and Charles Darwin’s memorial to his dear daughter Annie, written just a week after her death, is the most acute expression of it that I have ever read.

•          •          •

Our poor child, Annie, was born in Gower St on March 2nd 1841 & expired at Malvern at Midday on the 23rd of April 1851.

I write these few pages, as I think in after years, if we live, the impressions now put down will recall more vividly her chief characteristics. From whatever point I look back at her, the main feature in her disposition which at once rises before me is her buoyant joyousness tempered by two other characteristics, namely her sensitiveness, which might easily have been overlooked by a stranger & her strong affection. Her joyousness & animal spirits radiated from her whole countenance & rendered every movement elastic and full of life & vigour. It was delightful & cheerful to behold her. Her dear face now rises before me, as she used sometimes to come running down stairs with a stolen pinch of snuff for me, her whole form radiant with the pleasure of giving pleasure. Even when playing with her cousins when her joyousness almost passed into boisterousness, a single glance of my eye, not of displeasure (for I thank God I hardly ever cast one on her,) but of want of sympathy would for some minutes alter her whole countenance. This sensitiveness to the least blame, made her most easy to manage & very good: she hardly ever required to be found fault with, & was never punished in any way whatever. Her sensitiveness appeared extremely early in life, & showed itself in crying bitterly over any story at all melancholy; or on parting with Emma even for the shortest interval. Once when she was very young she exclaimed “Oh Mamma, what should we do, if you were to die.”

The other point in her character, which made her joyousness & spirits so delightful, was her strong affection, which was of a most clinging, fondling nature. When quite a Baby, this showed itself in never being easy without touching Emma, when in bed with her, & quite lately she would when poorly fondle for any length of time one of Emma’s arms. When very unwell, Emma lying down beside her, seemed to soothe her in a manner quite different from what it would have done to any of our other children. So again, she would at almost anytime spend half-an-hour in arranging my hair, “making it” as she called it “beautiful,” or in smoothing, the poor dear darling, my collar or cuffs, in short in fondling me. She liked being kissed; indeed every expression in her countenance beamed with affection & kindness, & all her habits were influenced by her loving disposition.

Besides her joyousness thus tempered, she was in her manners remarkably cordial, frank, open, straightforward natural and without any shade of reserve. Her whole mind was pure & transparent. One felt one knew her thoroughily & could trust her: I always thought, that come what might, we should have had in our old age, at least one loving soul, which nothing could have changed. She was generous, handsome & unsuspicious in all her conduct; free from envy & jealousy; goodtempered & never passionate. Hence she was very popular in the whole household, and strangers liked her & soon appreciated her. The very manner in which she shook hands with acquaintances showed her cordiality.

Her figure & appearance were clearly influenced by her character: her eyes sparkled brightly; she often smiled; her step was elastic & firm; she held herself upright, & often threw her head a little backwards, as if she defied the world in her joyousness. For her age she was very tall, not thin & strong. Her hair was a nice brown & long; her complexion slightly brown; eyes, dark grey; her teeth large & white. The Daguerrotype is very like her, but fails entirely in expression: having been made two years since, her face had become lengthened & better looking. All her movements were vigorous, active & usually graceful: when going round the sand-walk with me, although I walked fast, yet she often used to go before pirouetting in the most elegant way, her dear face bright all the time, with the sweetest smiles.

Occasionally she had a pretty coquettish manner towards me; the memory of which is charming: she often used exaggerated language, & when I quizzed her by exaggerating what she had said, how clearly can I now see the little toss of the head & exclamation of “Oh Papa what a shame of you”.

She had a truly feminine interest in dress, & was always neat: such undisguised satisfaction, escaping somehow all tinge of conceit & vanity, beamed from her face, when she had got hold of some ribbon or gay handkerchief of her Mamma’s.

One day she dressed herself up in a silk gown, cap, shawl & gloves of Emma, appearing in figure like a little old woman, but with her heightened colour, sparkling eyes & bridled smiles, she looked, as I thought, quite charming.

She cordially admired the younger children; how often have I heard her emphatically declare. “what a little duck, Betty is, is not she?”

She was very handy, doing everything neatly with her hands: she learnt music readily, & I am sure from watching her countenance, when listening to others playing, that she had a strong taste for it. She had some turn for drawing, & could copy faces very nicely. She danced well, & was extremely fond of it. She liked reading, but evinced no particular line of taste. She had one singular habit, which, I presume would ultimately have turned into some pursuit; namely a strong pleasure in looking out words or names in dictionaries, directories, gazeteers, & in this latter case finding out the places in the Map: so also she would take a strange interest in comparing word by word two editions of the same book; and again she would spend hours in comparing the colours of any objects with a book of mine, in which all colours are arranged & named.

Her health failed in a slight degree for about nine months before her last illness; but it only occasionally gave her a day of discomfort: at such times, she was never in the least degree cross, peevish or impatient; & it was wonderful to see, as the discomfort passed, how quickly her elastic spirits brought back her joyousness & happiness. In the last short illness, her conduct in simple truth was angelic; she never once complained; never became fretful; was ever considerate of others; & was thankful in the most gentle, pathetic manner for everything done for her. When so exhausted that she could hardly speak, she praised everything that was given her, & said some tea “was beautifully good.” When I gave her some water, she said “I quite thank you”; & these, I believe were the last precious words ever addressed by her dear lips to me.

But looking back, always the spirit of joyousness rises before me as her emblem and characteristic: she seemed formed to live a life of happiness: her spirits were always held in check by her sensitiveness lest she should displease those she loved, & her tender love was never weary of displaying itself by fondling & all the other little acts of affection.

We have lost the joy of the Household, and the solace of our old age: she must have known how we loved her; oh that she could now know how deeply, how tenderly we do still & shall ever love her dear joyous face. Blessings on her.

Freddie deBoer has posted two new essays since the one I replied to the other day. The first was a flawed but interesting discussion of the sometimes destructive role of overzealous allies in discussions of identity.

The second, posted this morning, is a reiteration of, and deeper exploration of, the themes he explored in the first. In it, he expresses frustration about his lack of solutions to the problems he identified earlier, and about his critics’ supposed failure to help him in finding them.

The frustrations he’s expressing are ones I’ve heard before. The questions he’s asking are ones that have answers. So in the service of intra-left dialogue, here are some answers:

“If I’m at an activist meeting of some sort or another, and I believe the kind of unfortunate behavior is taking place that I described, how can I intervene without being guilty of invoking privilege in precisely the way people who defend political correctness have inveighed against?”

My first suggestion would be to not conflate “being guilty of” with “being accused of.” You may be accused of it, or you may not. But being accused of invoking privilege isn’t fatal, and the possibility that you may be accused of it doesn’t preclude you from speaking. If you’re looking for a way to intervene without the possibility that you might be yelled at, I’d encourage you to consider that that’s an unreasonable request.

And yes, I know you said that this isn’t about you. But you wrote this passage in the first person singular. “How can I intervene?” was the question you asked. Not “How can someone with a thinner skin than me intervene?” So my short answer is that you intervene by intervening.

“You can imagine if I said, in the middle of an activist meeting, that a particular charge of racism or ableism or sexism was unwarranted or being expressed too harshly.”

Yes, I can imagine it. I can imagine it because I’ve lived it. I’ve been that guy. I’ve said stuff like, “I think James has heard everyone’s critiques and is taking them to heart. Let’s give him some space to chew on what’s been said.” I’ve said stuff like, “I just want to say that not everyone is coming from the same place in terms of their understanding of language, and I’d like to encourage us to be gentle with people who may step on toes unintentionally.”

I’ve said stuff like that lots of times, and I’ve heard other people do it, and in my experience it generally goes pretty well.

“The whole point is that there is currently no theoretical or practical shared understanding on the left about when and how to intervene in a situation where you believe that the intensity of political criticism is unfair and not constructive.”

Not universally shared, no. But universally shared understandings are rare in any context.

I have, however, been to a lot of left meetings in recent years that began with a collaborative articulation of principles of engagement — with an attempt to establish exactly the consensus you seek around what kinds of speech are welcome in the space, and around how to respond when someone violates those norms. The student activists I know, in particular, spend a lot of time talking and thinking about this stuff, and a lot of what they’ve come up with is really exciting. You may not be aware of these trends, and they may not be visible in the organizing circles you’re engaged with, but it’s happening, and it’s available for you to access as a resource if you like.

“I see a lot of sneering; I see very little in terms of principles and guidelines.”

I did some sneering in my response to your original post, but I also spent a lot of time and energy proposing principles, guidelines, and examples — in the post itself, in a lengthy update, and in a huge, sprawling comments thread which I explicitly invited you to participate in. I’m not saying you needed to accept my invitation, but come on.

And again, I’m not the only one offering this stuff. A Google search on “activist conflict resolution” spews out an ocean of resources. If you don’t like what’s out there, say why. Engage with it. Critique it. Offer suggestions to improve it, even. But don’t act like it doesn’t exist.

“I hate to invoke the classroom again, but I have had students in the past ask me privately: how do I know when I’m mansplaining? How do I know when I’m tone policing? Well, I believe both of those phenomena are real and bad. I think they happen all the time and it sucks. But as far as what to tell these kids in answer to that question? I have no idea. I have no idea what the consistent, mutually-intelligible definition of mansplaining is.”

There is literally an entire Wikipedia article devoted to this topic, one whose second sentence provides a lucid, concise, specific definition of the term: “explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman.”

Is there absolute consensus on the definition? No. But so what? There’s no consensus on how to define racism either, but I bet if one of your students asked you that question, you’d have an answer.

“If you think that the answer is to say that any accusation of this kind is necessarily true simply by virtue of being voiced, then you don’t exist in the real world, and you don’t much care if this stuff actually works.”

I don’t see anyone taking this position. I can see people saying that any accusation of this kind deserves to be taken seriously, but that’s not at all the same thing.

“And so the liberal and left criticisms of my piece just reaffirm the annoyance that led to it in the first place: professional writers lecturing from a stance of political purity they can enjoy because none of this comes home to their real lives. If your work spaces consists of a Macbook and your interlocutors consist of digital avatars, I’m sorry: you are not in a position to lecture me. Sorry. You’re not.”

I’m kind of taking this personally, Freddie, and it kind of strikes me as preposterous. I mean, I know I’m not the only person who wrote in response to your piece, but I was one of the first, and most of the others have linked back to mine approvingly. So it doesn’t seem completely narcissistic of me to say this:

My primary workplace is the New York City community college where I teach history. My secondary workplace is the many college campuses around the country where I’m asked to speak, and the many student conferences where I’m asked to lend a hand. I communicate by phone, email, text, and/or in person with the precise community of young activists you’re referring to on a nearly daily basis. So where in the hell is this coming from?

“So: anybody got any actual, no-bullshit constructive ideas for how to build norms of fairness and empathy without being dismissed as someone invoking privilege?”

Yes. I gave you a bunch in my first piece, and I’ve given you a bunch more here. I’ve got lots more on tap if you’re interested. You interested?

“I’ll answer that question for you all: nope.”

Dang. So much for dialogue, I guess.

Update | deBoer has posted a lengthy addendum to this morning’s post accusing me of all sorts of sins. Along the way, he says that I haven’t “said a single word about how to actually respond to political issues of social, moral, and emotional complexity, which is what I explicitly have been asking for.”

I swear to god I don’t know what to do with this.

Second Update | It’s become clear that Freddie is the kind of person who says “Give me an answer!” when he means “Admit that there are no answers!” But like I said in the post, the questions he’s asking aren’t new or unique to him. So to lend a hand to people who do want answers, I’m collecting links and resources in comments. Feel free to add to the pile.