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Reposted by Rob Scott

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 6h

Our plane to Spain is in the air!

🙌🙌

Thank you so much to the countless people supporting us in every way and in particular all of the Rutgers students and faculty who have supported us every step of the way.

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 12h

This is a fundraiser to aid Prof Bray’s exit to Spain.

www.freefunder.com/campaign/hel...

"Help us leave safely" on FreeFunder

Click here to support "Help us leave safely" by Dara on FreeFunder!

www.freefunder.com

Reposted by Rob Scott

Avery de Lange @averydelange.bsky.social · 17h

Yes! I think that the fact that the rich actors in SAG and their broke peers have aligned interests despite their disparate circumstances is an important and illustrative truth.

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Reposted by Rob Scott

Berny Belvedere @bernybelvedere.bsky.social · 16h

Doing politics the right way is when the far-right regime in power memorializes a fallen influencer by terrorizing an academic that the influencer's McCarthyist organization once baselessly singled out for abuse.

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Reposted by Rob Scott

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 8d

2a) Apart from featuring his definition of fascism (which he offers reluctantly), Paxton observes how the fascist relation to ideas is merely tactical and not grounded in intellectual consistency.

Useful for today's world to remember how fascists dont feel the need to "justify" changes in position.

The fascist leaders themselves, as we observed in chapter 1, called
their movements ideologies, and many interpreters have taken them at
their word. It is commonplace to see fascism defined by extracting common threads from party programs, by analogy with the other “isms.” This works better for the other “isms,” founded in the era of educated elite politics. I tried earlier to suggest that fascism bears a different relation to ideas than the nineteenth-century “isms,” and that intellectual positions (not basic mobilizing passions like racial hatreds, of course) were likely to be dropped or added according to the tactical needs of the moment. All the “isms” did this, but only fascism had such contempt for reason and intellect that it never even bothered to justify its shifts.

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Reposted by Rob Scott

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 1d

“Someone” cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second.

We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.’

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Reposted by Rob Scott

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 1d

Thank you for your solidarity, fellow members of @ruaaup-aft.bsky.social !!

Defending Our Colleagues from Attacks by the Rutgers Chapter of Turning Point USA - Rutgers AAUP-AFT

This week, our colleague Dr. Mark Bray has come under attack by Turning Point USA’s Rutgers chapter for his public scholarship. Their campaign to have Dr. Bray fired has resulted …

rutgersaaup.org

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

This from that radical anarcho-communist rag:

“Focused and persuasive... Bray’s book is many things: the first English-language transnational history of antifa, a how-to for would-be activists, and a record of advice from anti-Fascist organizers past and present.”—THE NEW YORKER

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

But here we are: an absurd incoherent contradictory petition… and now my colleague is fleeing the country because death threats. I hope fellow academics will show Prof Bray solidarity whatever your politics. And I hope the public will see the petition for what it is - confused babbling snowflakery

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

To be charitable, the petition is incoherent and needs an editor, like they could have rendered Bill O’Reilly’s name correctly. (The R was in lowercase.)

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

I am really stuck on 'do they not realize that calling for a professor's removal for allegedly advocating deplatforming is kinda, sorta an extreme type of deplatforming?'.

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

After getting over the inexplicable capitalization of He (Do they mean Prof. Bray is like God?) and mentally rewriting the sentence so it actually makes some kind of sense,

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

Also in the petition:
“In his handbook, He believes deplatforming those with opposing values of antifa and political violence is a necessary and essential part of ANTIFA."

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

Right, remove him, but we only know that because it is in the petition title and literally nowhere else, least of all in the above sentence which somehow got distracted, lost its way, and just decided to quote Tate on X (while also failing to get Tate’s point) instead of completing a thought.

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

So, the petitioners are calling on President Tate.... to do, what?

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

2nd to last sentence:

"Rutgers University students, non-students, parents, and alumni call on the Rutgers president William F. Tate IV, who has publicly denounced political violence in a X (formerly known as Twitter) post: “Ideas are rarely safe, but the people who share them must always be”. "

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

The petition does not make a good case and deserves some mockery. Or perhaps some belittling. I read it. So am going to offer some gentle mockery.

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

The TPUSA petition targeting of Prof Bray is an attack on that freedom.

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

I am pretty sure every professor teaches something that someone else does not like, but that is kind of the point of a university and necessary for free exchange of ideas. Pretty much necessary for, well, freedom in general.

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

Such statements are individual acts that collectively support academic freedom.

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

I would ask that other academics share how they practice their own academic freedom, what is something important you teach that some might find controversial?

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

“I am Rob Scott, a biological anthropologist and a Rutgers colleague of Mark Bray, a focused and persuasive scholar of fascism and anti-fascism. But, I am also Mark Bray because I practice my academic freedom when I teach the settled science that race is not a biological category but a social one.”

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

Professionally I am a biological anthropologist. I also support academic freedom. And I support Mark Bray’s academic freedom. To try to show what academic freedom means, i have changed my Rutgers email signature line, it now reads:

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

Does TPUSA realize that a reasonable observer will conclude that an organization that publishes watchlists is at minimum risking promoting stochastic terrorism?

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Rob Scott @robscottanthro.bsky.social · 1d

Ironically, he has been forced to flee to Spain. This is in response to death threats after he was targeted by TPUSA for “removal”

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