Episode 17 of Benjamin Boyce’s “Complete Evergreen Story” was about community policing. Student activists wanted to eliminate the school’s police force and replace it with some form of progressive call-out culture. It only took moments after the students claimed they could police themselves before one of them was denouncing a fellow student for Islamophobia and, without evidence, demanding he leave an open meeting. Community policing, it turns out, is progressive groupthink backed by the solidarity of the mob.
In episode 18, Boyce implies how similar the takeover of Evergreen was to the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. He does this not by talking about it but by showing video of the young communists in China who were eager to denounce their own professors in order to demonstrate their love for Chairman Mao. One student admits that his school’s headmaster wasn’t really a bad guy, but they had to denounce him anyway for the greater good.
That’s apparently the script the student protesters at Evergreen were following too. They made accusations against Bret Weinstein and probably anticipated he would cave under the pressure. When he didn’t do that they became even more infuriated. And that fury became even more intense when he dared to tell his story on Fox News.
But while Bret Weinstein refused to kowtow to student demands, the protesters had more luck with President Bridges who was repeatedly told, among other things, that his body language was too aggressive. Boyce’s editing of this episode highlights how similar some of the body language was between communist China and Evergreen State. One of the protesters acted out the proper body language for President Bridges: Hands at his sides and head down. That’s precisely how the targets of the cultural revolution in China were made to stand.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting (and I don’t think Boyce is either) that the students at Evergreen were self-consciously emulating Mao’s Cultural Revolution. I’m suggesting that both cases were essentially the same battle to upend the existing social hierarchy and certain postures indicating the submission of authority figures seem to recommend themselves as ideal to young revolutionaries.
It’s what I’ve been saying for more than two years now. The social justice warriors at Evergreen don’t want to discuss anything, they wanted submission to the point of self-humiliation. Nothing less will do.
The bulk of this episode is based on an interview Boyce did with Bret Weinstein wherein Weinstein recounts the day he became a “hunted civilian” on campus while the police were ordered to stand down. Fortunately, we’ll never know what would have happened if the students had gotten their hands on Weinstein. He got a warning from the police chief and stayed off campus.
This episode also deals with Weinstein’s decision to go on Tucker Carlson’s show. He admits he had some trepidation about it but says he was put in a position that was really a catch-22. He was only supposed to tell his story to like-minded media outlets, but no like-minded outlets contacted him. Meanwhile, he wasn’t supposed to talk to conservatives even though Carlson had emailed him and offered him a national platform. Weinstein suggests this unwritten rule is the way the local authorities squash dissent within their sphere of influence. What Weinstein did by going on Fox was step outside that progressive bubble, an unforgivable sin to those inside it.
The clip ends with more scenes of communist China. The connection is chilling precisely because this isn’t a path someone needs to plan out in advance. This is simply what happens when a certain strain of far left ideology gains enough power to force its will on others.
