This past Saturday, there was a horrific shooting at a San Diego synagogue that resulted in one woman dying and multiple other people being injured.
University of New Brunswick professor Matthew Sears said that white supremacists, as well as people who inspire them should be named, have their faces put up in public, get fired from their jobs and chased out of restaurants, reported Campus Reform. Now, no one wants to defend white supremacists, but 1) I don’t think it’s wise to say anyone, regardless of their beliefs should be harassed or lose their job if that belief doesn’t affect their performance and 2) who exactly is a white supremacist or someone who inspires them?
This might be the bigger question when you look at Sears’ next tweet, where he says “and that includes every vile little shitlord in a campus ‘free speech’ club who spends his time platforming white supremacist trolls under the banner of ‘free speech,’ and every grifting liar that goes on about campus ‘censorship’ and the ‘marketplace of ideas.’”
Now, I actually talked to Matthew and he at first tried to make it seem that people should only harass students who invite Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, and speakers he claimed only provoke.
But Matthew has previously compared a MAGA hat and Rebel swag to a Nazi banner and KKK hood so something tells me he’s not the most objective arbiter of these things. I pointed out to him a little statement he made when U.S. Press Secretary Sarah Sanders got kicked out of a restaurant last year. After that, the professor said “Forget ‘respectability politics,’ forget the ‘politics of division,’ forget ‘civility.’ Let’s denormalize these folks and their ideas every single chance we get, including throwing them the hell out of restaurants.”
So I asked the professor, if the spokeswoman for the leader of the free world isn’t off-limits for these kinds of tactics, who is? And more importantly, who gets to decide? Matthew said “I suppose I reject the notion that civility is the ultimate goal, especially in the face of what are some pretty outrageous human rights abuses.” He then tried to frame border control as a human rights abuse — yeah, see some people would beg to differ, big guy. And that’s why we don’t make eating in public hell for people or threaten them with their jobs for holding different opinions. I know you’re a humanities professor, but this isn’t rocket science.
University of New Brunswick classics professor Matthew Sears tweeted “I feel bad for Patreon, honestly. Providing a platform to allow artists, writers, etc., to crowdfund projects that are otherwise not commercially viable is a great idea. Shame it got taken over by the dregs of the right and now serves as a vehicle for grifters.”
Matthew’s comment comes after Patreon banned YouTuber Carl Benjamin, or Sargon of Akkad from its platform last week. Sargon, who is not far-right like the media reported, was making more than $12,000 per month on Patreon. The company banned him for violating its hate speech policy when he said the n-word a few times and used a slur for gay people. Now, Patreon says it considers context, but it apparently didn’t matter that Sargon was using those words to bash the alt-right by saying that the alt-right was acting like people they hate.
It also didn’t seem to matter that Sargon had not monetized the stream on which he said those words or that he wasn’t imperilling anyone’s lives with his rhetoric, which was the takeaway for why Patreon bans users when CEO Jack Conte sat down with Dave Rubin just last year. Patreon might’ve banned only Sargon and a few other guys, but those weren’t the only patrons the company lost. Podcast host Sam Harris — who had the 13th largest account on the service — announced that he was shutting down operations there, as did evolutionary psychology professor Geoffrey Miller.
Back to Professor Matthew Sears, just a word to the wise: you might not be on the right side of the debate if you’re backing up someone who compares Rebel Media merch and a Make America Great Again hat to a KKK hood and Nazi banner and who, after U.S. Press Secretary Sarah Sanders got kicked out of a restaurant, said “Forget “respectability politics,” forget the “politics of division,” forget “civility.” Let’s denormalize these folks and their ideas every single chance we get, including throwing them the hell out of restaurants. Like we should have done *from the very beginning*.”
Chipman, New Brunswick apparently flew a gay pride flag with no controversy for a week during June this year, but when the STRAIGHT pride flag went up, well, that was a different story, according to Global News. Chipman’s mayor, Carson Atkinson, gave a pretty boilerplate reason as to why he approved the flag, stating that it “recognizes, accepts and respects the rights of individuals under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” But University of New Brunswick professor Matthew Sears sent a letter to the village council, saying:
“This flag is not simply an ‘alternative’ to the Pride flag, nor is it merely ‘another point of view.’ Rather, it is a deliberate move to mock and marginalize a community that has been mocked and marginalized for far too long.”
Wow, so I knew Matthew taught classics and ancient history at UNB, but little did I know he’s also adept at mind-reading. No but really: how does he know the motive of whomever wanted to fly this flag? If you think it’s a troll, the best thing you can do is ignore it because trolls thrive off of this kind of attention. I would know. But this isn’t the first silly remark Matthew has made.
He has also compared Rebel swag and a Make America Great Again Hat to a Ku Klux Klan hood or Nazi banner, tweeted approvingly after U.S. Press Secretary Sarah Sanders got kicked out of a restaurant, and pushed the “listen and believe” mindset during the Brett Kavanaugh sexual assault scandal.
University of New Brunswick professor Matthew Sears commented on Sarah Sanders getting kicked out of Red Hen by saying “forget “respectability politics,” forget the “politics of division,” forget “civility.” Let’s denormalize these folks and their ideas every single chance we get, including throwing them the hell out of restaurants. Like we should have done *from the very beginning*.”
Right because you know that the best way to prove that your ideas are superior to someone else’s isn’t smashing them in debate, no no, it’s denying them food. The esteemed professor says that kicking the Press Secretary out of a restaurant isn’t what made Trump win and then posted this pretty cryptic message:
“For my fellow Christians who ask, “What would Jesus do?”: He would *make a whip* with materials lying around, and *violently* drive them from the Temple while denouncing them in no uncertain terms.”
But Matthew, who’s also previously compared Rebel Media shirts and MAGA hats to Ku Klux Klan hoods and Nazi banners, wasn’t the only Canadian professor with a woke take on Sanders. Responding to another academic who thought that kicking Sanders out of a restaurant pointed towards segregation, University of Waterloo professor Emmett Macfarlane said “-1000. Screw the fascists. It’s 1934 and pundits are complaining that a restaurant refused to serve Goebbels,” comparing the Press Secretary to the Nazi propaganda minister, reported The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Now what does the erudite Emmett teach? Well, in an ironic twist that shouldn’t come as a shock if you’re a regular Campus Unmasked viewer, it turns out he’s a political science professor. I’m guessing his classes have two units: progressive goodthink and then conservatism, libertarianism, and classical liberalism in the unit titled “Nazi.”
