Should people who attend Nazi conferences get government funding?

[noblegiraffe]

Ok, provocative title, but it's hard to distil this situation into a few words. Yes it's about Toby Young.

News has come out about a secret conference held for the last few years at UCL. Invite-only, secret and small, it has apparently been attended by a neo-nazi and a paedophilia supporter. The conference is apparently about the inheritability of intelligence but has also looked at race and intelligence and eugenics.
The Telegraph details the conference here: www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/01/10/ucl-launches-eugenics-probe-emerges-academic-held-controversial/

It appears that Toby Young was one of the invitees to this secret invite-only conference. Aside from writing misogynistic tweets, he has also written an article supporting 'progressive eugenics'. The Guardian talks about Toby Young's involvement here:

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/10/ucl-to-investigate-secret-eugenics-conference-held-on-campus

Given that the attendees were aware of the unacceptable nature of their discussions so held them in secret and that the fact that the conferences are now banned and are being investigated, it's clear that something pretty unsavoury has been going on.

Toby Young has resigned from his position on the board of the Office for Students, and it appears his resignation may be linked to these revelations. Toby Young also pulls in a fat salary as Director of the New Schools Network. The New Schools Network is a charity, but it receives the majority of its funding from the DfE. Surely his position there is also untenable?

Why does The Guardian headline on the twitter link read;

"Toby Young gave keynote talk last year to the conference ran by an honorary senior lecturer at the London University"?

I thought he just sat at the back of the room at the conference.

I'm still none the wiser as to who spoke/attended the conference with TY - most of the newspaper reports only give names of people who weren't there.

Look Toby Young is the person who wrote a book on how to get people to like you. Says everything I need to know about him. Normal people are just themselves. No special tricks required.

Eugenics is a very slippery slope. I'm surprised UCL allowed it.

I didn’t think UCL knew about it.

No he didn't ! His book is 'How To Lose Friends and Alienate People' !

Clavinova mine says 'prominent attendee' in the headline. Are you looking at a cached version?

I'm pretty sure that anyone who was at the conference in 2017 is keeping their heads well down and not releasing stuff to the press. I really can't imagine that a conference that was racist and nazi-attended for 3 years was suddenly totally respectable for its 4th. Even Toby Young said that the views expressed there were strange and unpalatable. For that, I think we can safely assume it wasn't fine.

Clavinova mine says 'prominent attendee' in the headline. Are you looking at a cached version?

What do you mean by 'a cached version'? - Something the Guardian made up earlier in the day? Just scroll down a little bit on your twitter link to the Guardian headline.

I scrolled down on my twitter link and here's the Guardian link I see, and what I see when I click on it. Are you looking at something different?

I'm still none the wiser as to who spoke/attended the conference with TY

Well we know he was invited by James Thompson.
"James Thompson, the honorary UCL academic who acts as the host of the conference, is a member of the UISR Academic Advisory Council. His political leanings are betrayed by his public Twitter account, where he follows prominent white supremacists including Richard Spencer (who follows him back), Virginia Dare, American Renaissance, Brett Stevens, the Traditional Britain Group, Charles Murray and Jared Taylor.

Thompson is a frequent contributor to the Unz Review, which has been described as “a mix of far-right and far-left anti-Semitic crackpottery,” and features articles such as ‘America’s Jews are Driving America’s Wars’ and ‘What to do with Latinos?’. His own articles include frequent defences of the idea that women are innately less intelligent than men (1, 2, 3, and 4), and an analysis of the racial wage gap which concludes that “some ethnicities contribute relatively little,” namely “blacks.”"

(From the London Student, I've lost the link trying to do the Guardian screenshots!)

Also that vile Emil Kirkegaard seems to have been there.

I'm still none the wiser as to who spoke/attended the conference with TY

Well we know he was invited by James Thompson.
"James Thompson, the honorary UCL academic who acts as the host of the conference, is a member of the UISR Academic Advisory Council. His political leanings are betrayed by his public Twitter account, where he follows prominent white supremacists including Richard Spencer (who follows him back), Virginia Dare, American Renaissance, Brett Stevens, the Traditional Britain Group, Charles Murray and Jared Taylor.

Thompson is a frequent contributor to the Unz Review, which has been described as “a mix of far-right and far-left anti-Semitic crackpottery,” and features articles such as ‘America’s Jews are Driving America’s Wars’ and ‘What to do with Latinos?’. His own articles include frequent defences of the idea that women are innately less intelligent than men (1, 2, 3, and 4), and an analysis of the racial wage gap which concludes that “some ethnicities contribute relatively little,” namely “blacks.”"

(From the London Student, I've lost the link trying to do the Guardian screenshots!)

Also that vile Emil Kirkegaard seems to have been there.

I'm still none the wiser as to who spoke/attended the conference with TY

Well we know he was invited by James Thompson.
"James Thompson, the honorary UCL academic who acts as the host of the conference, is a member of the UISR Academic Advisory Council. His political leanings are betrayed by his public Twitter account, where he follows prominent white supremacists including Richard Spencer (who follows him back), Virginia Dare, American Renaissance, Brett Stevens, the Traditional Britain Group, Charles Murray and Jared Taylor.

Thompson is a frequent contributor to the Unz Review, which has been described as “a mix of far-right and far-left anti-Semitic crackpottery,” and features articles such as ‘America’s Jews are Driving America’s Wars’ and ‘What to do with Latinos?’. His own articles include frequent defences of the idea that women are innately less intelligent than men (1, 2, 3, and 4), and an analysis of the racial wage gap which concludes that “some ethnicities contribute relatively little,” namely “blacks.”"

(From the London Student, I've lost the link trying to do the Guardian screenshots!)

Also that vile Emil Kirkegaard seems to have been there.

Sorry for double post, MN seemed to crash on me.

I would guess that the student protesters today would want to know how James Thompson gained a post at UCL.

I scrolled down on my twitter link and here's the Guardian link I see, and what I see when I click on it. Are you looking at something different?

Yes, the headline -
"Toby Young gave keynote talk last year to the conference ran by an honorary senior lecturer at the London University"?
They have obviously removed it now.

Just read Toby Young’s article up thread- so disingenuous. At least he should try to defend hinself by making the political arguments for what he would appear to have a serious interest in. It looks so weaselly to say he was only there as a journalist.
(And Ok then, why not link to your big published expose and point to your personal condemnation of these views?) but no that didn’t seem to happen..

It looks to me like Toby Young is trying to have it all ways professionally across a very tricky divide. He essentially wants to act as a politician- to influence policy, to move in the very highest circles of government and the Tory party. But with none of the responsibilities or codes that apply to an MP applicable to him.

OK so he is also a journalist, which gives someone like him- perhaps less of a policy thinker- a regular route in to access these circles. He can build a public-facing voice on Twitter and to build up his punditry credentials and profile on the back of it.

But the problem with all that freedom to express his (often offensive) views is that he is also trying to combine those with being a paid up public servant running schools that actually teach people’s children, plus advising on government education policy- potentially affecting millions of children, all funded by the taxpayer.

So saying he was ‘only following a story’ without defending his interest in that area politically, just makes him look as though he is a very entitled Tory trying to have it all ways.

He has not carefully sought to avoid even the faintest appearance of compromise to his position like most normal public sector leaders do, in fact for years he has been cavalierly tweeting his offensive views.

Then when he gets called out on this he seeks to shrug his shoulders of responsibility and complains about his freedom of speech being attacked. It shows such a lack of judgement.

The irony is that surely if he was an actual politician, he would have seen this self-created situation for what it was (or the whips or leaders would have pointed it out strongly for him) and then this errant politician would have slunk off to the backbench wilderness for at least a few years. Real politicians would accept that they must live by the sword etc, because that’s part of their political job.

Yes!

The LAW should determine it. If any laws are broken, then those breaking them should be processed through the legal system. If no laws are broken, then what right does anyone have to say government funding should be cut.

You can lose your job for damaging the reputation of your company without breaking any laws.

Exactly noble it’s a contractual thing in a lot of jobs.

You can also lose your job for not being very good at it.

If you hold values or beliefs that conflict with the demands of the job, then you're unlikely to make a good fist of the job.

Eg a pharmacist who believed that all herbally derived medicines could never cause harm, would be likely to end up poisoning their customers.

Toby Young has resigned
www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/23/toby-young-quits-new-schools-network-citing-media-pressure

Toby Young’s article on himself being subjected to the ‘Two Minutes’ Hate’ is here. Like Prince Andrew is being now, apparently.

www.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/prince-andrew-should-have-married-someone-like-my-wife/

It seems questionable if Young has changed his views, otherwise why would he worry about what he might say after a glass of wine?

This wasn’t the first time Caroline [Young’s wife] had saved my bacon. When she learned that my career had been derailed because of sophomoric things I’d said on social media, she literally snatched the phone out of my hands and deleted the Twitter app. Admittedly, she did let me reinstall it about a week later, but only after I’d promised never to tweet after I’d had a glass of wine. And if I worry that an article I’ve written is too provocative, I run it past her first. It’s like being married to a focus group. Come to think of it, it was Caroline who advised me not to go on Newsnight last year. She did a great impression of Emily Maitlis reading out some of my old tweets and then scowling at me in disapproval.

Young just can’t help himself can he. Why does he make women responsible for what men say and do? And why such contempt for the public’s feelings?

Young’s not even using the Two Minutes’ analogy correctly. the Two Minutes’ Hate is a propaganda trick, a sleight of hand inventing non existent enemies As a diversion and subversion of an highly oppressed people’s real feelings of animosity against their oppressors:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate

Is Young saying that potentially extremely serious concerns about Andrew’s conduct, is just a convenient political invention? Fake news?

And if Toby Young really thinks that he himself was just arbitrarily picked out for criticism, I wonder why he resigned?

Toby Young doesn’t think he was arbitrarily picked out for criticism, he thinks he was picked out for criticism because:

1. He was a Brexiteer and universities are Remain territory
2. He was appointed to the university job by Theresa May who was unpopular
3. He’s a cis white het male “responsible for all the injustices suffered by the oppressed, including historic injustices dating back hundreds of years—colonialism, slavery, sexual exploitation, you name it.”

He apparently resigned because of the effect the scrutiny was having on his family.

It’s all explained in this excruciatingly self-indulgent article for the Quillette quillette.com/2018/07/23/the-public-humiliation-diet/

We’re going to need a Tinier Violin

Should people who attend Nazi conferences get put in the House of Lords?

FFS.