Stumpside Chats #7
The Liberal Ouroboros: A Case Study [Apr 19, 2024]
I think we have all internalized the idea of the “Liberal Ouroboros” pretty well. Usually it goes something like this: a somewhat more moderate liberal is chastised by a more radical liberal for not being progressive enough. Usually, the more moderate liberal is browbeat/gaslit by the more radical one. This most often occurs when Muslims are involved, since they are brown immigrants but they are also notoriously violent and extremely religious (as opposed to the generally secular liberal).
But I don’t really think very many of us have seen this happen in person. We’ve never actually watched one lib be berated by another for not being “progressive” enough. I hadn’t really ever seen it in person until last semester of college I’d say. If you don’t interact with liberals in an academic setting you probably never really see it at all.
I want to share my experience with this phenomenon with you all, as just yesterday I had two particularly good examples of this sort of thing (we will talk about this later).
Dis is probably going to be on the longer side of my Stumpside Chats.
The Illustrious Dr. Sayers
So, before we get started, I want to provide some context. The star professor of this post is one I have talked about often. I have either directly mentioned her in posts, or written posts in response to something she said in class. For convenience we will call this professor Dr. Sayers. Obviously this is not her real name, cuz some of you also know what college I go to and I don’t need you inundating her mailbox with hate mail. Not until I graduate (17 days btw) anyways.
Dr. Sayers was previously a high school teacher (I think English maybe) and she is in her 50s at least. She is a very liberal, and at least sympathetic to Marxism. She also has no children so make of that what you will. I am pretty sure she is OCD to some degree. Last semester was the first class I actually had with her, although I had met her before that at department functions and the like. That class that I took was the infamous “slavery class” that many of you have heard about.
I want to talk for a second about the fact that she was a primary school educator. First of all, I believe she was a primary school teacher for most of her adult career. Almost certainly more than she has been a college professor. This is important, because the dynamics between student and instructor are VERY different (inverted, really) between grade school and college. I think I will write a dedicated post about this at some point, but the gist of it is simple. High school teacher can more or less do whatever they want in their class rooms. You don’t get to just leave/not attend class, if you try to go over their head the school admin won’t care unless its serious, and high school classes are usually rowdy which necessitates a degree of authoritarianism if you want to maintain control of the class. College classes are basically the opposite in every way.
In the case of Dr. Sayers, the last point is particularly important. She has a habit of talking over students when she doesn’t like what they are saying or decides that it isn’t on-topic enough. She is also condescending in that particular liberal sort of way, which is very grating. And of course, as we will talk about later, she is very stuck in her (liberal) ways.
This is the sort of attitude that you see in primary education. It’s almost necessary given (((a certain demographic))). But it is not what you see in most colleges. College professors really are quite laid back and down to earth most of the time. Most professors will, if nothing else, respect you enough to say that you are getting off topic and that they are going to bring the conversation back around. Dr. Sayers just talks over you like you were a child. But most professors will generally just let the conversation go where the students take it, unless its a dedicated lecture day (in which case students aren’t really conversing anyways). This method is organic and what digressions there are never really get too far off topic.
Essentially: she is used to having complete and total control of the classroom due to her background as a primary school teacher. In fact, I went to a meeting with her after one of the events I will mention later to poke around and told her that the student (who we will refer to affectionately as “Sheboon”) that took issue with her was more used to classes where the professor turned most of the time over to students and did not lecture much (I had been in a class with Sheboon before and she confided in me about her feelings on Dr. Sayers, which was also why I went to Dr. Sayer’s office to poke around more [I am manipulative teehee]). I didn’t recognize the significance at the time, but Dr. Sayers response to this was something to the effect of “I don’t believe in that, students come here to be instructed.”
As I mentioned earlier, she is a frequent character in my posts, even if you the reader don’t realize it. If we chat, either here or on Discord or iFunny, I have also probably alluded to her at some point.
If you recall my A Historian’s Grievances post, in the conclusion I talk about the Sally Hemings business. This was largely in response to something Dr. Sayers said in class not long before. Everything, from the book I quoted, to my response to the ludicrous idea that Jefferson had an affair with Sally Hemings, was sourced from that day in class. As you might expect from an ivory tower liberal academic like Dr. Sayers, she insists that Jefferson raped Sally Hemings.
This is very stupid and the idea has been refuted by mainstream academics already (See: Report of the Scholars Commission on the Jefferson-Hemings Controversy). For context, this narrative dates back to Jefferson’s own time when it was political slander, but it only gained notoriety following a Nature article in 1998 (which has since been largely recanted). Now, I really wanted to refute this in class but I decided against rocking the boat (it was also almost the end of class time anyways). Point being: Dr. Sayers doesn’t do as much research as she thinks.
I have mentioned before that one of my professors said that when she reads new papers/studies, she finds that her opinion is often changing on whatever topic she reads. She went on to say that there was one thing her opinion never changed on and that is the fact that she believes the Civil War was fought over slavery. Now, as you all know, this really grinds my gears. I wanted to refute this in class, but I am not stupid. I will have to settle for the Corwin Amendment post that is currently sitting (partially completed) in my drafts.
Point being: Dr. Sayers is a very stuck in her ways liberal who uses teaching techniques meant for high schoolers on her college classes. You can probably see how this lends itself to the The Liberal Ouroboros phenomenon.
The Liberal Ouroboros In Slavery Class
As I mentioned before, Sheboon was in this class (we were also in the equally infamous “Philosophy of Race” class the semester before). This conflict primarily involves Sheboon and Dr. Sayers.
For added context: Sheboon is an obese Afro-Marxist. She is also very stupid and frequently says things she shouldn’t say. In Philosophy of Race she once said that slavery was worse than the Holocaust and boy was that a day.
Sheboon, as mentioned previously, was used to professors letting the students talk. This was particularly true when it was “students of color” and we were discussing “racially charged scenarios” (as in Philosophy of Race), which slavery obviously is in America.
The primary issue here is that Dr. Sayers does not like to let the students lead discussion and Sheboon is a very volatile blaque kween. Tension had been building for most of the semester (at least when Sheboon attended; she frequently skipped class), but it reached a tipping point on this day. Specifically, we were discussing the issues of slave rape and agency therein. Dr. Sayers was arguing that some female slaves were using sex to get in good with their masters (which is probably true). Obviously not for things like freedom or whatever, but for a larger portion at meal time or what have you. Or even just to avoid extra beatings that might come if she tried to refuse the sexual advances. Dr. Sayers was trying to make a point about agency in extreme situations (something she is big on) and Sheboon found this horrific.
Sheboon actually went wide eyed and ended up getting shakey and even a little teary eyed because of how angry she felt or whatever. I guess she thought that Dr. Sayers was saying these women weren’t raped (this is not what Dr. Sayers was saying) or something. Anyways, she got so mad that she started yelling at Dr. Sayers and eventually stormed out of class. She never came back (she was probably going to have a low grade due to Dr. Sayer’s strict attendance policy anyway) and I assume she dropped the class.
Now I don’t know who was the more radical liberal here, or if there even was one. But this is a very interesting case of The Liberal Ouroboros and one that I found particularly hilarious. I discussed it at length with a classmate (who also reads my Substack) after the fact.
Just Yesterday
I have Dr. Sayers again this semester, but this time she is the professor for my undergraduate history research project. Basically a capstone project, and I have to write a ~20 page paper for this class as part of the requirements for my major (part of why I haven’t been able to write any ‘Stacks lately).
Anyways, yesterday was our last day of class. We didn’t meet much to begin with (the idea is to let students mostly just do their own thing with the paper), but this week we were presenting our research to our classmates (and Dr. Sayers). I went Tuesday, and there were three people that went yesterday.
The first essay was about the Irish in the American Civil War. At the end, the girl who was presenting said she wanted to learn about the experiences of other immigrants during the war. My mind immediately jumped to the following quote from one of Sectionalism Archive’s articles:
“The Irish were always considered white, but on top of this there isn’t that much evidence of the Irish being especially socially segregated on account of their ethnicity. The Irish assimilated maritally and economically at a similar rate as German-Americans. Much of the anti-Irish discrimination came not from native-born Whites, but from recent English, Scottish, and Scotch-Irish immigrants who also made up a large swathe of America’s early immigrants.”1
And so I shared this with the girl who was presenting and said that if she wanted to research the topic more, then it would be interesting to see how immigrants related to one another. Stuff like how the Irish and English carried over their own already existing feuds and the general tension of Ellis Island.
I wasn’t critiquing or commenting on her research itself (I had already done that), just pointing her in a direction I think would be interesting for her. I prefaced this when I made my comment btw, but Dr. Sayers and another dude in the class said something about how this was out of the girls timeframe. Was annoying because I obviously acknowledged that but I don’t think anyone in that class is very smart (Dr. Sayers included) so they probably have goldfish memories. Anyways that was a digression, it just bugged me.
Anyways, Dr. Sayers did NOT like that comment. Specifically that I said that most of the anti-immigrant sentiment was from European immigrants who just hated each other for historical/cultural reasons that date back forever. We had a back and forth over this for a minute or two and she basically kept trying to invoke the student-instructor relationship to browbeat me into conceding or something (like you would expect of a grade school teacher). This isn’t the first time I’ve argued with a professor (not by a long shot) so I just stood my ground and said that I’ve read articles and seen the statistics (essentially just saying that I’m not just making this up). Her response was to say this: “Well I’ve read articles too” while making this face:
I mean wow. What the deuce. I don’t think a woman has ever done that to me in a non-playful/flirty way before now. Much less a tenured professor at an accredited university, during class time. It was very surreal and I just kind of stared at her like this: 😐. Honestly, I did not really know what to think. Women, I guess.
It was even weirder because she kind of looked around the class as she did it, sort of like she was looking for approval.
This moment was when I made the “holy crap she was a high school teacher” connection. This is something you might see a high school teacher do to try and humiliate some smart mouth kid. I can’t imagine any of my other professors ever actually doing this to me, and frankly it never occurred to me that she would do this to me. But, in retrospect, I believe I have seen her do this sort of thing to other students.
I should also preface this by saying that I liblarp heavily at school. In fact, Dr. Sayers was one of the chairpersons during my capstone for my minor, which is Justice and Equity Studies (as you can imagine, it is very libby). So she was not thinking about pwning the conservatards or whatever, she was trying to browbeat me into toeing the party line so to speak.
Anyways, I wanted to make a rebuttal after I processed what had happened, but she decided to just change the subject and talk over me so I just said whatever it doesn’t matter anyways. But I will outline the basic argument I would have made right here:
The Ku Klux Klan was not a widely popular movement at this time (we were discussing pile pre-1920s), especially in the North where most immigrants arrived and where most anti-immigrant sentiments originated.
The Second Klan was not even founded until 1915.
Peak membership was around 1924-1925, with the absolute highest estimates being around 6 million members.
As a general trend, women tended to join the Women’s KKK at 1/3 the rate men did. It’s hard to find concrete numbers on WKKK membership, but looking and local membership records this seems to be generally true. If we assume 2 million women joined the WKK (I think this is very generous), you get around 8 million people in the Klan(s) at its peak at the absolute most.
For reference: the 1920 US census reports 106,012,537 and the 1930 US census reports 122,775,046 people living in the US.
Of particular note is that New York accounted for about 1/10th of the entire population of the US at this time (and in 1910). Gee wonder why.
For reference: there were about 10 million black people in the US in 1920.
Essentially it just boils down to the fact that there were more people living in New York than there were people in the Klan, and by quite a lot unless you go to the upper extremes of Klan membership estimates. Now obviously not all of these people were adults who could be taking part in anti-immigrant protests or whatever, while the Klan members are only adults who could participate in these movements. But it’s also important to note where Klansmen usually were. Almost all of them were either in the West (especially the midwest) or the South. What Klan offices where in the North were generally not very well received. Essentially: the Klan really was not the driving force behind the anti-Irish political cartoons you see, because they had no audience in the places the cartoons were generally made. Obviously I am not saying that the Klan was not a loud voice in the anti-immigrant camp, but I AM saying that when you look at these political cartoons depicting Irish people as apes, the author is usually going to be an English immigrant and not a native-born American.
If you have anything to add to dis Sectionalism Archive drop it in da comments below and I will add it to da post. If there was some specific source you were thinking of in your post I mentioned I would like to put dat here.
But honestly that didn’t bother me too much. I already don’t think particularly highly of Dr. Sayers, as you might have guessed. She was already probably my least favorite professor in the department so not much changed. I also already knew she was just full of BS on most stuff so I didn’t take it too seriously. It was just sort of surreal that she did the mocking head wobble thing.
Anyways, what really bothered me was what happened during the next presentation. This girl was doing a presentation on the Denazification process (she got most of her ideas for this from the OTHER infamous class that I (we) had last semester: Nazi Germany and the Holocaust). Essentially she was arguing that the Denazification process was not very good. Mostly that it was highly disorganized and just sort of cobbled together in a very ramshackle sort of way. Eventually she mentioned how the NSDAPs were kept in concentration camps in many places and where treated quite poorly including extrajudicial killings and torture. And then she made a comment about the parallels between what the Jews went through and what the Allies subjected the NSDAP to.
Oh man.
Dr. Sayers was NOT happen about this one. She literally just yelled out “NO!” after the girl made that comment. She said that it was not even remotely comparable.
Now I should say that this girl is not some sort of “Aryan Kween” or anything. She is actually not attractive at all (fat) and also not blonde. So she can’t be Aryan. So pipe down.
This girl was also already having a great deal of trouble giving her presentation (she very clearly has some sort of anxiety problem) and Dr. Sayers yelling “NO!” sent her over the age. She was literally in tears up there while trying to finish her presentation. These were supposed to be around 13 minutes long, at most, and this girl’s presentation was probably 20-25 minutes just because of how hard it was for her to finish. It was grossly unprofessional to say the least.
I spent a few minutes after class (along with another guy) sort of consoling her and telling her I thought Dr. Sayers was very unprofessional and that I did not think she was trying to defend the NSDAP. Obviously she was not trying to defend the NSDAP (le sigh) or anything. And before I started writing this post (which was a few hours ago at this point), I had just sent a message on Canvas telling her the same while also pointing her towards some sources she could use to help her research. She didn’t ask any questions about why I had so many sources about this topic so I think I’m in the clear.
Anyways this was very FREAKED UP man. Basically publicly humiliated for saying that “Ehhhh perhaps we should not extrajudicially lynch people simply because they were associated with an enemy state” which isn’t even a radical idea. If you look at contemporary reactions to Nuremburg, they were overwhelmingly negative. Even many of the Allied prosecutors and judges said that they felt like the whole thing was just a kangaroo court followed (or sometimes preceded) by a “high-grade lynching party” because of how inconsistent the courts were and their general lack of legal basis. Many American attorneys had scathing criticism of the usage of Jewish judges, the treatment of Nazis before trial, and (like I said) the general lack of a cohesive legal code surrounding the process. Wow a lot of people on iFunny say the same thing… crazy…
But yeah I am preaching to the choir on this one. I just really messed me up for the rest of the day because of how unprofessional Dr. Sayers was and how much it impacted the poor girl. Unfortunately I don’t think much will come of it, since Dr. Sayers is not only tenured but also the chair of the department (OK if you know what Uni I go to now you know who this is but IDC I trust you to act properly). Such is life in liberal academia…
Probably the most volatile example of the Liberal Ouroboros I have ever seen. I thought about it pretty much all day yesterday. Even when I was playing Rimworld. Couldn’t get it off my mind. So freaked up…
Addendum: this was feedback I received from Dr. Sayers (chair of the department):
