Talk:Bret Weinstein

Evergreen University
I think we owe it to readers to be a lot more skeptical of Bret Weinstein and to not take his words about Evergreen University at face-value. He created a narrative around himself which went largely unchallenged, but there is a lot of criticism out there.

Please read this article for a narrative that contradicts what he said. The students did not target him, and he got wrapped up in a protest about police removing two black people from their dorms and then went to Fox News and said the protest was just about him and they were trying to get him fired.

https://psmag.com/education/the-real-free-speech-story-at-evergreen-college 47.145.125.78 (talk) 07:02, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Explaining the Civil War reference
An editor asked what was the point of mentioning the US civil war? The editor then removed, "This would be like pardoning all Confederate soldiers of any wrongdoing days after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated." I see I have to explain why holding fascists/neo-confederates accountable still matters.

The people behind the insurrection on January 6th raised Confederate flags and were chanting "Hang Mike Pence," and would have used violence to keep Trump in office and to escalate the fascism if they had won. Bret wanted Trump to assume the presidency and to just pardon everyone involved before they could be sent to prison in the name of national healing. The trouble is that forgiveness without restitution or consequences on the perpetuators only leads to more conflict and violence from the people who brought violence in the first place, and it only allows them to become stronger. We should have learned that from history, and the US civil war is a good example.

Back then the Republicans and Democrats ran a unity party which would be unthinkable today because of events I'm about to loosely recap, (though Bret Weinstein has proposed bringing it back.) When President Abraham Lincoln (a Republican fighting on the side of the Union) was assassinated, vice president Andrew Johnson immediately became the president even though he was a Democrat and he was more sympathetic to the Confederacy than a Republican would be. His first acts as president were to pardon the entire Confederate army and its leaders of treason and then to obstruct the Radical Republican agenda and render a lot of the civil war pointless by preventing the then progressive Republicans from reforming the political system. It so infuriated Congress that they tried to have him impeached (in the closest impeachment in history which only failed by one vote.)

The lesson is that unwillingness to effectively deal with the Confederate leaders in the name of political expediency and "national healing," left a festering wound and continued racist injustices. This led directly to Jim Crow, segregation, the mythology of Lost Cause, and the dumb racist divisions and economical disparities that still plague modern America today. QuestionAffairs (talk) 08:07, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that's reasonable. I'll put it back. Bongolian (talk) 15:52, 4 October 2021 (UTC)