Reporter Michael Tracy launched an intelligent and semi-public discussion around race issues and created a room on Clubhouse, under the name “Is Clubhouse obsessed with ‘Woke-ism?’”
A group on Clubhouse became a struggle session against former Evergreen College evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein on Friday. The grilling came about on a popular Clubhouse room, founded for discussion of woke issues rationally.
However, in just a short amount of time, that room subsequently got taken over by a collective of self-described, woke anti-racists. During the almost 10-minute conversation, Weinstein got labeled a racist, transphobic bigot pushing for scientific racism. After it became clear a continued conversation would only benefit Weinstein, the group fumed and demanded reparations if Weinstein were to continue speaking.
The conversation was uploaded and went viral. Viewers commented on how depraved and racist a portion of young progressive America has become. This is a young cohort of progressives who appear to want to use oppression as an excuse for petty tyranny.
This woke cacophony all started when Reporter Michael Tracy launched an intelligent and semi-public discussion around race issues and created a room on the exclusive and trendy IOS social media app Clubhouse, under the name "Is Clubhouse obsessed with 'Woke-ism?'" Previously, a similar room featured diverse and smart adult debate, with significant speakers like Joe Rogan and Professor Bret Weinstein. Tracy then was hopeful.
As described to The Post Millennial by Tracy, on February 26, Tracy experienced what he describes as a "coup." Tracy got repeated claims from those participating in the room discussing racial issues that should include a black moderator. So, he acquiesced and added a woman he did not know named Brooklyn. Brooklyn then instigated a purge by adding several black, self-described, woke members to the group, forcing Tracey out of the moderator slot, and finally ejecting Tracy and every white person from the Clubhouse room. Brooklyn was not looking for inclusion, but to attain power in the room and remove the room's founder, which she did.
Brooklyn flexed her anti-racist muscles. As she described her motivations, "I like to f*ck people up, but in a smart way," and so held an almost 5-hour-session on the bigotry of white America and daring white Clubhouse users to debate them and admit their privilege. In particular, the group vented their anger at Weinstein. Brooklyn described him with the N-word and invited the evolutionary biologist to speak to the group. Weinstein was also in the audience. Unexpectedly, he agreed.
For those who are curious, here are links to the audio session recordings.
What followed in that Clubhouse room is described by observers as akin to those struggle sessions held by Mao Ze Dong and the communist Chinese of the 1950s, when Chinese youth-led show-trials and witch hunts against citizens, including their own family.
Weinstein attempted to create an adult and reasonable dialogue with the coup takers, but it did not go that way. For his fairness, the group excoriated Weinstein as being a eugenicist, hateful towards trans people, and using scientific racism
An excerpt:
Degerald: Okay. Can we speak to the fact, if you are inside wokeness and the progression of black people, do you believe in white supremacy, do you believe in white privilege, are those sentiments that you stand by? People, you are saying that you have spewed racism across this app. So can you speak to that?
Bret Weinstein: Can I, can I ask something of you before I answer your questions?
Brooklyn: Did you answer those questions? Do support white supremacy. Are you anti-racist and transphobia?
Bret Weinstein: Okay. I'm happy to do all these things, but I would ask you to try to listen—
Brooklyn: Listen, listen, white man we're in charge here. Okay. We asked you some questions. You can answer them, or you can go.
Scientific racism
There were several attacks meant to prove that Weinstein is a white supremacist. Weinstein tried to explain how being called white would be a category error as he is Jewish; Brooklyn disagreed. Weinstein said he likes trans people and is 100% supportive of them. The group claimed it was a lie, based on esoteric interpretations of previous statements, Weinstein must secretly be a transphobe. To his credit, Weinstein never rose to the bait, and all the while, and calmly tried to reach his inquisitors by meeting their hate with logic and common humanity, to little avail.
An excerpt:
Bret Weinstein: Well, let me just say I'm an evolutionary biologist. I'm very interested in how language actually—
Unknown Female: Are you a genesis [eugenicist]? That's what you mean about evolution?
Bret Weinstein: No, no, no, no.
Unknown Female: Those are the same thing.
Bret Weinstein: No, it's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. In fact, in fact,
Unknown Female: They are the same thing, hear that hear, you're not about to try to wiggle out of that.
Bret Weinstein: I'm not trying to wiggle out of anything. Look, racism and genocide are products of evolution. I don't favor them. I recognize that they emerge out of evolution. And part of what I want to do is help people to understand why that is and what we can do about it. Okay.
Jio: Okay. So I want to, I want you to like, be able to explain that, but I just want to be clear last night, when you were like, when you were naming things that I clearly identified as transphobic and that other folks did too, you push back to say that biology was something that was important, right?
Jio con'td: But now this sentiment around pronouns actually reaffirms the narrative, that there is a particular investment in how you want to move culturally transphobically, where you actually literally want to actually remove people's agency and what feels affirming to them in their gender identity, but just even in their own affirmation at all. So, so Bret, you agree you're transphobic. "
Emotions grew heated, and accusations became increasingly stranger. After 5 minutes, a male member of the group made a bizarre hotdog and hamburger analogy to prescribe argumentative certainty to their charges, and it went on in that vein.
Attacks of scientific transphobia persisted as Brooklyn claimed Weinstein's expertise as an evolutionary biologist “does little to clean you.” The professor nevertheless refused to be an easy target or to grow frustrated. Exasperated, Brooklyn declared Weinstein hopelessly bigoted. If he wanted to talk again, he owed every black person in the room a thousand dollars in compensation as for his racism.
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An excerpt:
Brooklyn: And we all know science as a part of transphobias is the eugenic envelopment. Evolutionary biology is a means to spread scientific transphobia. Those two things are linked science, as an institution, was built in transphobia anti-blackness. So you saying that you are an evolutionary biologist, does little to clean you. Eugenics was also a field in science. So your claims do not push the fact that you are not transphobic. It's still a transphobic position to take.
Bret Weinstein: It's not transphobic. I am interested in seeing trans people
Jio: How can you say that something is not transphobic when people are telling you that it's transphobic Like privilege.
Bret Weinstein: So I don't understand how you think this works. Okay.
Michael: Oh My God.
Bret Weinstein: We can have a disagreement. We can have a disagreement about whether or not.
Jio: Oh my, you sound like my dad.
Brooklyn: You're going to have to go to the audience, and you need to cash up everybody up here, a thousand dollars. Before you coming back up. Next!
Once Weinstein was gone, the group would continue with racial diatribes for an additional three hours.
Almost immediately, segments of the Woke Clubhouse Coup of 2021 were uploaded to YouTube and went viral across social media. Many viewers, like Journalist Katie Herzog, described the event as a struggle session. In addition, Herzog noted that Clubhouse seems to have a design problem and difficulty with a host of users pushing discrimination. "Whether or not this is racism depends on your definition, but it’s definitely prejudice and it’s rampant on Clubhouse.” Wrote Herzog.
I don’t know how many rooms I’ve been in where white people are either asked to leave or kicked off the stage for their skin color. Whether or not this is racism depends on your definition but it’s definitely prejudice and it’s rampant on CH.
— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog)
What transpired seemed plucked from a Tom Wolfe novel. The founder of the room, Michael Tracy, awkwardly made it clear he had lost power and had nothing to do with what transpired.
Recurring issue with Clubhouse chats is that they almost inevitably evolve into a discussion of "woke-ism" (understandably so given the ideology's cultural/political ascendance) but there's seldom anyone in the room who identifies enough with the ideology to give a defense of it
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey)
Peter Boghossian expressed disgust at the group's woke racism and their attitude reflected in their refrain of "Burn it All Down."
Moderators kept accusing @BretWeinstein of being a eugenicist *because* he was a biologist. Yes, you read that correctly.
“Burn it all down,” was a refrain.
— Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian)
Yet what emerged last Friday surprises many uninitiated onlookers. The audio-only medium of Clubhouse allows for some clarity into how damaged civil discourse in the West has become because through listening only you hear what you cannot get with observing Twitter mobs or Facebook blasts. To the onlookers from the political and cultural left, the incident makes clear how illiberal and cruel are the anti-racism adherents that the left has created and allied themselves with.