Antifa-Adjacent Guardian journalist doxes my October 8 appearance in Sarasota, Florida
Thanks for the plug, Jason Wilson!
The Guardian of London has published a lengthy article on what a horrible person I am by their Antifa-adjacent doxxer Jason Wilson. It’s kind of hard to dox me, being an open book (literally, my anthology Noticing), but his big reveal is that I am appearing at New College of Florida on October 8 at 6pm with Dr. Wilfred Reilly and Dr. Mark Bauerlein to discuss crime in the 21st Century.
I promise to display my notorious Hategraphs of CDC homicide and motor vehicle accident fatality trends.
Florida university to host extremist after DeSantis-led lurch to right
Next month, New College of Florida will welcome activist and writer Steve Sailer, a ‘proponent of scientific racism’
Jason Wilson
Sat 28 Sep 2024 08.00 EDT
New College of Florida (NCF) will host the extremist writer Steve Sailer, who has been described as a “white supremacist” and a “proponent of scientific racism”, at a college-branded public event next month.
New College has made headlines since January 2023, when the rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, vowed to transform it from a university known for liberal values into a conservative institution, and installed a new board of trustees including the rightwing culture warrior Christopher Rufo. That board in turn appointed DeSantis’s “close ally” Richard Corcoran as the new college president, in which role he makes a $699,000 salary.
DeSantis’s lieutenants’ actions at New College – like abolishing disciplines, removing bathroom signage and denying professors tenure – have seen the departure of more than a third of the faculty, and given rise to myriad legal actions.
But the moves have been lauded by the so-called “new right”, many of whom see US higher education as a bastion of liberalism that needs to be subject to a rightwing “reconquista”. JD Vance, for his part, has pledged to “aggressively attack the universities in this country”.
Even so, Sailer’s invitation to speak is likely to stir controversy for his extremist views, especially on race.
In Sailer’s newly published anthology, Noticing, one essay claims that an “African population explosion” is related to a “primal African cult of fertility”. Another associates “young woman-of-color journalists” with “Haitian voodoo and Southern hoodoo magic”. Many offer variations on the claim that “Blacks have higher average levels of violent crime and lower average levels of intelligence”.
The NCF event has been promoted by Sailer’s rightwing publisher, Passage Press, as being “presented by” the press. But in an email, NCF spokesperson Nathan March said it was the college’s show: “Let me be clear: this is a New College event. We booked Mr Sailer and [Wilfred] Reilly.”
March added: “Passage Press represents Mr Sailer and we’re grateful they are promoting the event. We’re looking forward to having a great audience in Sainer Auditorium on October 8 for the event.”
And on and on in that vein.
Thanks for the promo, Jason. Tickets to see Wilfred Reilly, Mark Bauerlein and myself to discuss “Crime in the 21st Century” (lots of graphs, I promise) are free but limited, so sign up here. The event starts at 6 pm on Tuesday, October 8 in Sarasota, Florida.
Wilson might be dog-whistling to his Antifa friends: hey, there are people discussing at a college crime rates using graphs.
Quillette wrote in 2019:
It’s Not Your Imagination: The Journalists Writing About Antifa Are Often Their Cheerleaders
The intellectual dishonesty and disreputable methods used by these journalists are as bad as the behavior they aim to cure.
Eoin Lenihan
29 May 2019
… A more prominent example is Jason Wilson, a Portland-based writer for The Guardian. One of his recent articles focused on a U.S. regional intelligence report whose authors concluded that Antifa and the far right share responsibility for street violence. “Experts say the report mischaracterizes the dynamics of the street violence,” Wilson complained.
One of Wilson’s main “experts” in the piece, it turned out, was none other than Antifa handbook author Mark Bray, who, predictably, denounced the report’s contents as “ludicrous.” In fact, Bray makes regular appearances in Wilson’s articles. So does fellow Portland resident and eco-extremist Alexander Reid Ross, who regularly writes for Antifa publications such as the It’s Going Down anarchist news site. (Ross also contributed to a 30-year-anniversary edition publication for Earth First!, an extremist environmentalist collective that advocates what activists euphemistically call “direct action.”)
In another column for The Guardian, this one about the 2018 “Occupy ICE” protest in Portland, Wilson quoted “local activist” Luis Marquez to the effect that “I think this occupation is a beautiful thing, a wonderful thing. Every single person here is a hero.” Marquez is in fact a prominent Antifa leader in Portland, and has been arrested on numerous occasions due to his militant behavior—including alleged theft and assault.
Writer Jason Wilson (left) photographs next to Portland Antifa leader Luis Enrique Marquez. Photo: Andy Ngo
Interestingly, while other Portland journalists such as Genevieve Reaume of KATU News, Maggie Vespa of KGW News and Quillette’s own Andy Ngo (who has voiced concerns about Antifa’s actions) have been harassed and assaulted by Antifa activists, Wilson seems welcome to mingle freely among Antifa, and has even been photographed standing close to Marquez. In one piece, titled “How the world has fought back against the violent far-right and started winning,” Wilson effectively drops the pretense that he is a neutral reporter, and approvingly outlines the Antifa tactics set out in Bray’s book. He also defends such tactics as doxing, stalking, deplatforming and shaming as valuable means to attack individuals whose views he dislikes. In doing so, he cites both Bray and Emily Gorcenski, who runs a doxing site called First Vigil, and an associated Twitter account, which shame individuals she deems to be fascists before they have received due process.
Make no mistake: The original professed goal of Antifa—to oppose fascism—is laudable. And there are no doubt many Antifa activists who still reject violent methods. Moreover, there is nothing inherently wrong with being a journalist who has strong personal views about Antifa (or about any other radical group). But Wilson is not simply a pro-Antifa activist who also happens to write for the Guardian: He actively leverages his role as a regular Guardian writer to promote Antifa, whitewash its violence, and signal-boost its leaders (whom he presents as “experts”)—often under the guise of neutral news reporting.
One of my favorite tactics people like Wilson use is the claim that a given person - like Steve - is not a credible commentator on a given issue because they lack some kind of degree. Obviously that isn't a tactic ever used on people on the left who quite often have the same perceived deficiency but are promoting the accepted gospel. Taking Wilson's logic further he is totally unqualified to judge the veracity of anything he reports on in which he doesn't have nice university issued certificate because obviously without it, full comprehension is impossible.
Per " The original professed goal of Antifa—to oppose fascism—is laudable" -- George Orwell's assessment of the usage of "fascism" in "Politics and the English Language" was "“The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable' ... In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.”