Abstract rights are in the air. They have recently become the subject of endless obsequious commentary around so-called free speech on university campuses. Many conservatives are using it as a convenient foil to promote reactionary, bigoted pseudo-science, which is bought and paid for by the corporate elite. At the same time, countless liberals are indulging in their moral superiority as the unrivaled passive subjects of history, who are content to be tolerant of anything as long as they do not actually have to do something. Even supposed leftists are defending the institutional promotion of white supremacist, anti-poor, misogynist hacks in the name of purportedly avoiding future censorship of the left (which, of course, already exists).
This consensual abstract rights discourse has so-called progressives belittling those who have taken a committed stance and engaged in direct action against institutions of higher learning that willingly function as echo chambers for fascism, racism, misogyny and economic oppression. It is as if activists dedicated to developing concrete political strategies to fight against the institutional propagation of reactionary ideas and practices were supposed to simply stand in silent awe before the moralist intoning of the patronizing, self-appointed judges of action, who themselves passively condone the institutional organization of fascism and top-down class warfare.
Scientific racism and the innate…