When the PC Thought Police attacks, as in this case under the trendy umbrella of the racist Black Lives Matter group, they usually go after their enemies. But in a case of blue on blue violence, they have gone after one of their own: professor Harald Uhlig. Granted, not one of their craziest members, but a loyal Democrat who probably did not expect this kind of treatment at the hands of his erstwhile pals.
Rabid authoritarian anti-free speech advocate and University of Michigan academic Justin Wolfers joined dozens of other ivory tower residents, leading a charge to have Uhlig, a University of Chicago professor, sacked from his position at perhaps the world’s leading economics journal because he criticized Black Lives Matter’s push to defund police departments.
In a petition addressed to the management of the Journal of Political Economy, frothing Bolsheviks led by Wolfers accuse senior editor Uhlig of “trivializing the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement” and “hurting and marginalizing people of color and their allies in the economics profession.” Black Lives Matter openly champions a socialist economic model, long in the tooth reparations, and the “immediate release” of everyone convicted of a drug offense. That is on top of defunding police forces and other far left-wing agenda items. Oh yeah, and they are guttersnipe racist thugs.
The petition goes on to falsely accuse Uhlig, a professor in economics at the University of Chicago, of “drawing parallels between the BLM movement and the Ku Klux Klan.” Uhlig said no such thing. But I will, to wit: The only differences between the Ku Klux Klan and Black Lives Matter are their pigments.
New York Times‘ in-house village idiot and BLM wannabe Paul Krugman, a man who once declared that the Internet would prove less important than fax machines, joined in on the fun, writing: “Editor of the Journal of Political Economy, a powerful gatekeeper in the profession. And yet another privileged white man who evidently can’t control his urge to belittle the concerns of those less fortunate.” Krugman is, of course, white.
But not all public intellectuals went over to the dark side. “So revealing how eagerly these fanatics support purging and firing wrong thinkers,” wrote sometimes brilliant writer Andrew Sullivan, responding to calls for Uhlig to step down. “It’s their first instinct: punish. They disgust me.”
David Paton, an economics professor at Nottingham University Business School, said, “Deeply disappointing to see respected economists joining in the ‘cancel culture’ and trying to get @haralduhlig removed from his editorial position at JPE. Let’s hope they don’t succeed.”
What got Uhlig in so much trouble with Thought Police? He wrote on Twitter Monday night: “Too bad, but #blacklivesmatter per its core organization @Blklivesmatter just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice.”
He had tweeted recently on another topic, “Don’t get me wrong. Of course, these football players have the right to express their views about the treatment of blacks by the police, they have the right to protest President Trump and they have the right to kneel during the national anthem. Club owners have the right to fire them because of it, by the way: so Trump actually did not attack the constitutional rights of football players, but what an annoying and pesky detail, right?” Well done, professor, even if by your party affiliation you really brought this on yourself.
This piece was written by David Kamioner on June 11, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
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