On Christmas Eve Professor George Ciccariello-Maher, of Drexel University, took to Twitter to mock white supremacists and internet trolls--a perfectly respectable and increasingly necessary endeavor. "All I want for Christmas is White Genocide," he tweeted. Now, for anyone aware of what "white genocide" means in that context, this was a funny, but harmless tweet.
For the manufacturers of Outrage on the Right, it was an opportunity to set off a firestorm.
Once Breitbart picked up and wrote about Ciccariello-Maher's tweet that was all the accelerant needed. Before long Ciccariello-Maher was besieged with harassment, threats, and the general annoyance that comes with a coordinated trolling campaign like the one orchestrated against him. As was his employer.
Typically such an incident fizzles out when employers decide to stand with their employees, not white supremacist internet trolls, but that wasn't the case here. Instead Drexel put out a statement condemning Ciccariello-Maher's tweet, calling it "reprehensible." And here is the scariest part of all. By taking the unserious invention that is "white genocide" seriously, by responding to the manufactured Outrage designed purely to silence intellectuals like Ciccariello-Maher, Drexel is complicit.
At this moment it's critical we make it clear who is on the right side of history, and make sure Drexel's administrators know they'll be held to account depending on which side they choose to stand. Sign this petition showing your support for Ciccariello-Maher. And email or call President John A. Fry, Provost M. Brian Blake, and Dean Donna Murasko. My email is below.
Dear Dr. Murasko, Dr. Blake, and President Fry,I hope this finds you well, and inundated with similar emails.
I'm writing first and foremost to voice support and solidarity with Professor George Ciccariello-Maher as he faces an onslaught of threats, harassment, and general unease following a campaign of manufactured Outrage. I've faced similar firestorms and I can tell you that while much of it is an annoyance, other aspects can be downright repulsive and occasionally frightening. There is no way to explain the way it feels to read or hear a death threat directed at your child until you have. I stand with George as he faces this repugnant underbelly of society - Drexel should be ashamed it didn't do so as well.
"White genocide" is a figment of the white supremacist imaginary, that when scrutinized boils down to the same anti-miscegenation that's always been at the heart of white supremacist thought. Today white supremacy isn't just a system of oppression tacitly engrained in institutions like our courts, schools, universities, journalism, jails, hospitals, wars, and politics. It's also buffered by overt support from media organizations like Breitbart - the manufacturers of the Outrage at hand.
By responding as you have, with seriousness, with your own feigned or ignorant outrage directed publicly at George, you breathe life into an ideological fiction crafted by white supremacists and provide it clout its creators never could. You give white genocide power. You make it real.
There is a great danger to such behavior from a university. On one end you risk silencing those few academics like Professor Ciccariello-Maher willing to boldly speak out against and actively work to tear down systems of power and oppression. And on the other you embolden white supremacists and the broader Outrage Industry on the Right.
This is the wrong response to the moment in history that presents itself before us today.
As an academic I hope this is a moment in which universities stand with those of us like George who challenge the oppressive power structures analyzed so thoroughly within the halls we walk each day.
As a Jew I need them to.
So I'm writing not just in solidarity with George, but to implore you. Don't fail the test of history presented. Don't shrug this moment off or let your efforts to appear even-handed as fascism is politicized make you complicit in its rise. Stand up. Stand with Professor Ciccariello-Maher and those he stands with.
Yours in the struggle - whichever side of it I find you on.
Jesse Benn