This is wild. A data scientist, after tweeting about my husband @owasow 's work, was accused of

[Celerity]

anti-blackness and fired from his job. Not for nothing, but Omar majored in Race & Ethnic Relations, co-founded BlackPlanet, got a Ph.D in African-American studies, and is black.


(The Red Rose bomb brigade radical left strikes again and takes out a liberal, an actual Democratic Party member, who worked on the Obama campaign, SMDH)

Link to tweet

The topline of this @jonathanchait piece is stunning: a progressive data scientist at a research firm accurately tweeted an African American Princeton scholar's work showing the electoral effectiveness of peaceful protest over violence—and was fired for it

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

The Still-Vital Case for Liberalism in a Radical Age

By Jonathan Chait

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/case-for-liberalism-tom-cotton-new-york-times-james-bennet.html



David Shor is a 28-year-old political data analyst and social democrat who worked for President Obama’s reelection campaign. On May 28, Shor tweeted out a short summary of a paper by Princeton professor Omar Wasow. The research compiled by Wasow analyzed public opinion in the 1960s, and found violent and nonviolent protest tactics had contradictory effects. Shor’s synopsis was straightforward:

Link to tweet

It is easy to see why a specialist in public opinion whose professional mission is to help elect Democrats while moving the party leftward would take an interest in this research. But in certain quarters of the left — though not among Democratic elected officials — criticizing violent protest tactics is considered improper on the grounds that it distracts from deeper underlying injustice, and shifts the blame from police and other malefactors onto their victims. One universal fact of political life is that people tend not to enjoy highlighting faults committed by their own side, and often respond to others bringing up behavior they don’t want to defend outright by deflecting blame. Conservatives are united less by a zeal to affirm every one of Donald Trump’s actions than a reluctance to denounce them. Likewise, while few leftists go so far as to explicitly advocate violent or destructive acts, refraining from criticism of violent protests is, among parts of the far left, almost a social norm. And so, despite its superficially innocuous content, Shor’s tweet generated a sharp response. To take one public example, Ari Trujillo Wesler, the founder of OpenField, a Democratic canvassing app, replied, “This take is tone deaf, removes responsibility for depressed turnout from the 68 Party, and reeks of anti-blackness.” Shor replied politely:

Link to tweet

Trujillo Wesler repeated the accusation of racism (“YOU need to stop using your anxiety and ‘intellect’ as a vehicle for anti-blackness”), and then tagged Dan Wager, the CEO of Civis Analytics, the firm employing Shor, “Come get your boy.”

Link to tweet

At least some employees and clients on Civis Analytics complained that Shor’s tweet threatened their safety. The next day, Shor apologized for tweeting Omar’s paper:

Link to tweet

Civis Analytics undertook a review of the episode. A few days later, Shor was fired. Shor told me he has a nondisclosure agreement preventing him from discussing the episode. A spokesperson for Civis Analytics told me over email, “Out of respect for our employees and alumni, Civis does not publicly discuss personnel matters, and we don’t plan to comment further.”

++

The preconditions that permitted these events to go forward are the spread of distinct, illiberal norms throughout some progressive institutions over the last half-dozen years. When I wrote about the phenomenon in 2015, a common response was to dismiss it as the trivial hijinks of some college students, a distraction from the true threats to democratic values. It certainly was (and remains) true that the right poses a vastly greater danger to liberalism than does the far left. My own writing output reflects this enormous disproportionality. It is also true that the intended (if not always actual) target of the left’s illiberal impulses — entrenched systems of inequality — remain an oppressive force in American life, and that the cause to dismantle them is just.

snip



Omar Wascow and his wife, Jennifer Brea

[marybourg]

1. I would need someone to succinctly summarize this.

[Celerity]

2. A progressive data scientist at a research firm accurately tweeted an African American Princeton

scholar's work showing the electoral effectiveness of peaceful protest over violence—and was fired for it.

A radial left Bernie bro type democratic socialist rando on Twitter got him sacked via Tweet over ridiculous and false racism charges.

[marybourg]

3. Thank you.

[Celerity]

4. yw

[mcar]

6. Thanks. I was having trouble making sense of all that

[Budi]

5. "Libs are identical to conservatives in most issues of substance"

Libs? Showing what side they're really on.
You know who else refers to Democrats as 'Libs"?

My god.

[Grokenstein]

7. Can't wait to see Matt Lubchansky's defensive stance on this.

...Oh, wait, yes I can. I stopped dropping by TheNib long ago.

[BGBD]

8. Let's be clear...

Rose Twitter is essentially an arm of the Trump Campaign. They are not friends of the Democratic Party or liberalism. Treat them as such.

[BGBD]

12. by being a mob.

.

[JonLP24]

11. Let's be clear they are not a monolith

I favor Democratic Socialists like Bernie Sanders & AOC and follow people with rose accounts including UK accounts which are very anti-Trump and anti-Boris. I don't agree with every single rose account like I don't agree with every single Democrat.

[BGBD]

13. You are who you associate with.

Every time I see something like "Democrats and Republicans are all the same." It's from a rose, and it's just a way to drain votes from Biden and help Trump. Follow whoever you want, but just because they say they don't like Trump doesn't mean what they are doing isn't going to help him become a king.

[JonLP24]

15. Opinions vary

This one account the OP mentions I never followed or even heard of never saw his tweets on my timeline. That would like me using an asshole anti-Bernie or doughnut account and say they are representative of everyone when they are not.

I don't see much of they are literally the same but I do see a lot of bad policies in Washington DC are bipartisan like war & military budgets. As far as the UK accounts they really do hate Trump & Boris and they were pro Corbyn before he resigned. They also rooted for Bernie Sanders in the US primary but they don't have a vote so they don't have the option of sitting out the election or voting.

[smirkymonkey]

14. What is Rose Twitter?

I've never heard of it.

[JonLP24]

16. The rose is the logo for Democratic Socialists

In the UK & US whenever someone puts a rose in their account they're identifying as Democratic Socialist.

[smirkymonkey]

17. Oh, ok. Thank you!

So they don't vote for moderate Dems, I take it? These people need to let it go. At least this time around.

Nothing is more important than getting rid of Trump right now. Their stubborn idealism is childish and selfish considering what crisis this country is facing right now.

[BGBD]

19. It's deeper than just dem socs.

It's really the embodiment of folks like David Sirota and that crew. This is the same bunch that like to post that Joe Biden is a racist-rapist or that Hillary Clinton is a neocon would would have been just as bad (or worse) than Trump.

[Celerity]

18. partly right, in the UK Labour's symbol is a Red Rose, but not all Labour are dem socs

I am a UK Labour Party member and I am most definitely not a democratic socialist.