There is something of the cargo cult about modern progressive discourse.
It started reasonably enough with the recognition that some people’s voices were rarely heard in the western public sphere. And that these “marginalised voices” were predominantly female or black or gay people who had important things to say about their experience. Over time “marginalised voices have something important to say” has somewhat flipped within progressive discourse to become “something said by a marginalised voice is important”.
And you don’t even have to be really very marginalised. Hasan Minhaj is successful entertainer with a huge platform, from a family of medical professionals, who was educated at a highly regarded public university. As a brown-skinned man from a family of Muslim immigrants, I’m sure he has from time to time experienced prejudice. But in many ways his family encapsulates the American Dream.
But of course he looks to progressives like their idea of a marginalised voice, so what he says must be important, even if its not actually true.
Oh so pretending to be a victim to get attention is a thing then?
Cho Jinn
7 months ago
“His audience isn’t there to laugh so much as enjoy the sensation of moral authority with a wink and a titter.”
Spot-on Daily Show evaluation. As reasonably well-produced as it was sophistic.
Richard M
7 months ago
“There are so many other kids who have had a similar sort of doorstep experience.”
. . .
when I was 17, a more popular boy took me out on a date, then dropped me back at my house several hours later with the dire warning that I couldn’t tell anyone that we were seeing each other.
This isn’t really equivalent to the fabricated Minhaj story is it.
Popular teenage boys are often unthinkingly callous because they are high on teenage hormones and solipsism. I was that boy once and guarantee that if asked he would have been amazed that anyone could think he was doing you anything other than a favour. After all wasn’t he, a popular boy, doing you such an incredible honour by dating you at all, that its only reasonable it should be entirely on his terms?
This sort of thing probably does happen a lot and speaks of unthinking teenage entitlement with a dose of misogyny. (Though it would be interesting to compare and contrast with how popular teenage girls treat boys they think unworthy of them.)
Minhaj’s fabrication relies explicitly on allowing the audience to believe that a teenaged girl intentionally catfished him into going to her house, even greeting him at the doorstep, so that she and another white teenager could coordinate his humiliation for racist purposes.
Does that sort of thing really happen a lot? Maybe someone knows better than I do, but I’m sceptical.
…it has quite possibly never happened at all…but tens of millions of people now not only believe it has, but may well believe it has happened a lot. It has probably made a genuine problem around race in the USA much worse…
It’s a little like the “razor blade in the apple” Halloween story. Never happened. But now the story is meth laced candy. Never happened either.
But the horror underlying it strikes deep in our hearts. Some S.O.B. Is out there trying to make addicts out of our kids.
It really is hard to get past, isn’t it?
Jeremy Bray
7 months ago
No one believes the humours stories related by comedians are literally true and that the comedian’s actual mother-in-law behaved in the manner described. But the author is right to point out that this fabulist is not actually a comedian so his lies do matter because he is in fact a woke propagandist.
Jim Veenbaas
7 months ago
I don’t think lies are necessarily repulsive. It’s the faux victimhood. Comedians almost have to exaggerate, but pretending to be a victim is gross and icky, maybe because it diminishes the suffering of real victims.
If we are going to insist on having such a thing as a “hate crime,” then it follows that a hate crime is committed when, as with the fake prom story here, you identify a young woman by her race and then falsely accuse her of having committed a truly cruel and racist act. She and her family have suffered real consequences for his lies, and another bit of racial tension, ugliness, and misunderstanding has been seeded into society.
Yeah, but accusations, no matter how toxic or dishonest, can only go one way in the Victim Olympics. You must surely know the rules?
Elizabeth Higgins
7 months ago
Oppression appropriation, otherwise known as the Jussie Smolett syndrome. Not enough bigotry going on, so make it up, get innocent people in trouble (or endanger them) with your lies, and claim your prize of victimhood.
Right-Wing Hippie
7 months ago
I’ve long suffered from the trauma of not having any trauma to suffer from.
Comedians used to fill arenas because they made people roar with laughter. Now they fill revival tents like the phony preachers they imitate, and the credulous hoard shout their version of amen.
Samir Iker
7 months ago
“only because of the kind of comedian Minhaj is, which is to say, the kind who is not particularly funny. ”
Pretty much all left wing comedy really.
Not necessarily so. For me it’s hard to find comics who are naturally funny and don’t rely on jokes. I really belly laughed at Howie Mandell’s most recent stand -up because he engaged with the audience and played off them. It was all impro and off the cuff. He does that so well. James Cordon is another one who’s naturally funny and does great skits. It’s satire that I don’t find funny. I think “Oh that was funny and clever” but it doesn’t make me laugh. I tried Minhaj but gave up after five minutes.
R S Foster
7 months ago
…the problem with “claiming to be a victim of something that didn’t happen” in this context…is that every “BIPOC” who does it, and in consequence gets rich and famous…encourages another ten, or twenty or thirty others to do the same in the hope of the same outcome…
…or even, in the High School example, just to dump some perfectly innocent girl in the “mean girl” mire amongst her more “woke” peers…for the rest of her time in that school, that town…or maybe in college, or right through her life…
…essentially people who do this are massively amplifying the problems of racism that do certainly exist…and actually making them worse, quite possibly exponentially…to the cost of us all, and of any hope of decent society…
That’s the whole point of this crap, to keep us divided and at each other’s throats while the bastards who are exploiting all of us get ever richer and more powerful. While our enemies in the Chinese/Russian axis are gleefully rubbing their hands.
Doug Mccaully
7 months ago
Not just liberals being won over by playing the victim. If you end up in court because you arguably broke the law, you’re a victim of a witch hunt.
Fafa Fafa
7 months ago
Early manifestations of this type of behavior were statements made by people suffering from [Republican President’s name here] Derangement Symptom. Some may recall Stephen Glass who fabricated stories about G.W. Bush that were “even if not true, they could have been true.” Ditto for Dan Rather. It has reached its apotheosis in stories fabricated about Trump.
The inverse of this is the “even if it is true we will never report it”, perhaps to be named “Marginalized People Adulation Syndrome”, practiced by the same outfits.
Rick Lawrence
7 months ago
Excellent piece, Kat. I have a few people in my circle who, as you put it, seek to feel good about feeling bad. For me, I now notice how I seek to feel good about having these people identified and called out. I guess we all are prey to different versions of the same thing.
For Christ’s sake, can the guilt already. Nothing wrong with enjoying vile cretins getting their just due.
Filipa Antonia Barata de Araujo
7 months ago
In an ultra individualistic, only individual truths matter. That’s why, relating to a recent argument I had on twitter, there are people pretending the reporting system worked perfectly in the previous regime.
starkbreath
7 months ago
Severing comedy from jokes. Like hip hop severing music from melody and harmony.
starkbreath
7 months ago
Ruthlessly, fearlessly incisive, not one punch pulled. We need more like you to put the mealy mouthed, shitweasel professional victim class and their toadying apologists in their place. Kat baby, you’re the greatest.
starkbreath
7 months ago
BTW what the hell is ‘Awaitng for approval’? For a supposedly intellectual forum, that’s some crappy use of the English language. FFS.
Steve Hay
7 months ago
The reality of the situation is we always have had and always will have. Precious people who badly need to have the piss taken out of them.
The difference is these days they get all shitty and round up an internet Lynch mob. To threaten the personal safety of the comedian, his family and even his dog.
The answer is to say f••k it and go back on stage and thank them in the nastiest way for the free publicity. You know where this is heading. Have them looking for a rock to hide under.
UnHerd Reader
7 months ago
We need to beware equally the victim-blamers and the victim-claimers. We need to educate ourselves to scrutinize and critique ‘research’, often specially commissioned and/or biassed, that underlies such claims.
Roddy Campbell
7 months ago
Yeah, but it’s HIS truth. Insisting on historical accuracy is just another form of patriarchal oppression, violating this person’s Way of Knowing by forcing an oppressive, colonialist
paradigm of linear time and past events on their Story.
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
I find it fascinating that white GenZ’iers here in the UK, who have turned the movie “Saltburn” into generational canon, fail so bad at understanding the true allegory of that movie and the role that they actually play in it (*hint: they’re not Oliver….). They’ve been played so bad, and have yet to discover it.
Jane Davis
7 months ago
Nanette is more subtle than that. It is partly about Gadsby confronting her own autistic masking and ‘making light of things stoicism’ as a comedic genre. So she goes and does precisely the opposite. Bits of it are funny, imo.
Call out a faker by all means but a lot of high value comedians like Richard Pryor and Billy Connolly have always mined pain and trauma for material . If you can’t handle that, you go watch someone who does light entertainment jokes.
British Jews urgently need to start talking more about their experiences of antisemitism – see Jews In Their Own Words, which had its funny moments.
I think the audience for misery memoir can be suspect at times but, let’s face it, speaking out openly about real incidents of racism isn’t easy
This chancer has done his own community a disservice and they won’t thank him for it.
Champagne Socialist
7 months ago
I’d suggest that the folks who credulously swallow every fantasy of the likes of Donald Trump may not wish to get so upset about some jokes a comedian once told.
There is something of the cargo cult about modern progressive discourse.
It started reasonably enough with the recognition that some people’s voices were rarely heard in the western public sphere. And that these “marginalised voices” were predominantly female or black or gay people who had important things to say about their experience. Over time “marginalised voices have something important to say” has somewhat flipped within progressive discourse to become “something said by a marginalised voice is important”.
And you don’t even have to be really very marginalised. Hasan Minhaj is successful entertainer with a huge platform, from a family of medical professionals, who was educated at a highly regarded public university. As a brown-skinned man from a family of Muslim immigrants, I’m sure he has from time to time experienced prejudice. But in many ways his family encapsulates the American Dream.
But of course he looks to progressives like their idea of a marginalised voice, so what he says must be important, even if its not actually true.
It’s all starting to remind me why we kept them marginalized in the first place.
The bigotry is strong in this one!
Yeah, don’t need anyone confirming wokies’ stereotypes about their opponents.
For once I agree with you, though you’re still 99% shithead.
Oh so pretending to be a victim to get attention is a thing then?
“His audience isn’t there to laugh so much as enjoy the sensation of moral authority with a wink and a titter.”
Spot-on Daily Show evaluation. As reasonably well-produced as it was sophistic.
This isn’t really equivalent to the fabricated Minhaj story is it.
Popular teenage boys are often unthinkingly callous because they are high on teenage hormones and solipsism. I was that boy once and guarantee that if asked he would have been amazed that anyone could think he was doing you anything other than a favour. After all wasn’t he, a popular boy, doing you such an incredible honour by dating you at all, that its only reasonable it should be entirely on his terms?
This sort of thing probably does happen a lot and speaks of unthinking teenage entitlement with a dose of misogyny. (Though it would be interesting to compare and contrast with how popular teenage girls treat boys they think unworthy of them.)
Minhaj’s fabrication relies explicitly on allowing the audience to believe that a teenaged girl intentionally catfished him into going to her house, even greeting him at the doorstep, so that she and another white teenager could coordinate his humiliation for racist purposes.
Does that sort of thing really happen a lot? Maybe someone knows better than I do, but I’m sceptical.
…it has quite possibly never happened at all…but tens of millions of people now not only believe it has, but may well believe it has happened a lot. It has probably made a genuine problem around race in the USA much worse…
It’s a little like the “razor blade in the apple” Halloween story. Never happened. But now the story is meth laced candy. Never happened either.
But the horror underlying it strikes deep in our hearts. Some S.O.B. Is out there trying to make addicts out of our kids.
It really is hard to get past, isn’t it?
No one believes the humours stories related by comedians are literally true and that the comedian’s actual mother-in-law behaved in the manner described. But the author is right to point out that this fabulist is not actually a comedian so his lies do matter because he is in fact a woke propagandist.
I don’t think lies are necessarily repulsive. It’s the faux victimhood. Comedians almost have to exaggerate, but pretending to be a victim is gross and icky, maybe because it diminishes the suffering of real victims.
He was also victimising the girl he lied about
If we are going to insist on having such a thing as a “hate crime,” then it follows that a hate crime is committed when, as with the fake prom story here, you identify a young woman by her race and then falsely accuse her of having committed a truly cruel and racist act. She and her family have suffered real consequences for his lies, and another bit of racial tension, ugliness, and misunderstanding has been seeded into society.
Yeah, but accusations, no matter how toxic or dishonest, can only go one way in the Victim Olympics. You must surely know the rules?
Oppression appropriation, otherwise known as the Jussie Smolett syndrome. Not enough bigotry going on, so make it up, get innocent people in trouble (or endanger them) with your lies, and claim your prize of victimhood.
I’ve long suffered from the trauma of not having any trauma to suffer from.
That probably means you can’t empathize.
Comedians used to fill arenas because they made people roar with laughter. Now they fill revival tents like the phony preachers they imitate, and the credulous hoard shout their version of amen.
“only because of the kind of comedian Minhaj is, which is to say, the kind who is not particularly funny. ”
Pretty much all left wing comedy really.
Not necessarily so. For me it’s hard to find comics who are naturally funny and don’t rely on jokes. I really belly laughed at Howie Mandell’s most recent stand -up because he engaged with the audience and played off them. It was all impro and off the cuff. He does that so well. James Cordon is another one who’s naturally funny and does great skits. It’s satire that I don’t find funny. I think “Oh that was funny and clever” but it doesn’t make me laugh. I tried Minhaj but gave up after five minutes.
…the problem with “claiming to be a victim of something that didn’t happen” in this context…is that every “BIPOC” who does it, and in consequence gets rich and famous…encourages another ten, or twenty or thirty others to do the same in the hope of the same outcome…
…or even, in the High School example, just to dump some perfectly innocent girl in the “mean girl” mire amongst her more “woke” peers…for the rest of her time in that school, that town…or maybe in college, or right through her life…
…essentially people who do this are massively amplifying the problems of racism that do certainly exist…and actually making them worse, quite possibly exponentially…to the cost of us all, and of any hope of decent society…
Indeed, it is a gravy train, particularly in the US.
That’s the whole point of this crap, to keep us divided and at each other’s throats while the bastards who are exploiting all of us get ever richer and more powerful. While our enemies in the Chinese/Russian axis are gleefully rubbing their hands.
Not just liberals being won over by playing the victim. If you end up in court because you arguably broke the law, you’re a victim of a witch hunt.
Early manifestations of this type of behavior were statements made by people suffering from [Republican President’s name here] Derangement Symptom. Some may recall Stephen Glass who fabricated stories about G.W. Bush that were “even if not true, they could have been true.” Ditto for Dan Rather. It has reached its apotheosis in stories fabricated about Trump.
The inverse of this is the “even if it is true we will never report it”, perhaps to be named “Marginalized People Adulation Syndrome”, practiced by the same outfits.
Excellent piece, Kat. I have a few people in my circle who, as you put it, seek to feel good about feeling bad. For me, I now notice how I seek to feel good about having these people identified and called out. I guess we all are prey to different versions of the same thing.
For Christ’s sake, can the guilt already. Nothing wrong with enjoying vile cretins getting their just due.
In an ultra individualistic, only individual truths matter. That’s why, relating to a recent argument I had on twitter, there are people pretending the reporting system worked perfectly in the previous regime.
Severing comedy from jokes. Like hip hop severing music from melody and harmony.
Ruthlessly, fearlessly incisive, not one punch pulled. We need more like you to put the mealy mouthed, shitweasel professional victim class and their toadying apologists in their place. Kat baby, you’re the greatest.
BTW what the hell is ‘Awaitng for approval’? For a supposedly intellectual forum, that’s some crappy use of the English language. FFS.
The reality of the situation is we always have had and always will have. Precious people who badly need to have the piss taken out of them.
The difference is these days they get all shitty and round up an internet Lynch mob. To threaten the personal safety of the comedian, his family and even his dog.
The answer is to say f••k it and go back on stage and thank them in the nastiest way for the free publicity. You know where this is heading. Have them looking for a rock to hide under.
We need to beware equally the victim-blamers and the victim-claimers. We need to educate ourselves to scrutinize and critique ‘research’, often specially commissioned and/or biassed, that underlies such claims.
Yeah, but it’s HIS truth. Insisting on historical accuracy is just another form of patriarchal oppression, violating this person’s Way of Knowing by forcing an oppressive, colonialist
paradigm of linear time and past events on their Story.
I find it fascinating that white GenZ’iers here in the UK, who have turned the movie “Saltburn” into generational canon, fail so bad at understanding the true allegory of that movie and the role that they actually play in it (*hint: they’re not Oliver….). They’ve been played so bad, and have yet to discover it.
Nanette is more subtle than that. It is partly about Gadsby confronting her own autistic masking and ‘making light of things stoicism’ as a comedic genre. So she goes and does precisely the opposite. Bits of it are funny, imo.
Call out a faker by all means but a lot of high value comedians like Richard Pryor and Billy Connolly have always mined pain and trauma for material . If you can’t handle that, you go watch someone who does light entertainment jokes.
British Jews urgently need to start talking more about their experiences of antisemitism – see Jews In Their Own Words, which had its funny moments.
I think the audience for misery memoir can be suspect at times but, let’s face it, speaking out openly about real incidents of racism isn’t easy
This chancer has done his own community a disservice and they won’t thank him for it.
I’d suggest that the folks who credulously swallow every fantasy of the likes of Donald Trump may not wish to get so upset about some jokes a comedian once told.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Do you only dislike lies from the side you don’t support?
It’s only wrong when ‘they’ do it. Typical hypocritical far-left garbage, wrapped in melodramatic outrage, note the condescending tone.
Can’t beat Whataboutery, eh!