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Comment by jstarfish | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, this is one of those situations where the school itself would find itself the next victim of the mob if they didn't side with it. It's just the way cancel culture works.

* Students steal from bakery.

* Students malign bakery through appeal to one-sided sensationalism.

* Students go after everyone who does business with bakery, which implicates...Oberlin.

* Oberlin shits their pants and joins the mob to avoid accusations of "supporting racism."

The ruling is correct-- spinelessness is not a defense. But I don't envy anybody put in this position.

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Actually in this case some of the school administrators themselves are also part of the little red guards. Don't just blame the "students".

The colleges have been in the making of little red guards in decades, it is inevitable that some of the little red guards became school administrators.

what are "little red guards"?

It's a reference to Mao's Cultural Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards

Thank you.

>Students steal from bakery.

That's understating it -- they stole from the bakery, and assaulted the employee that tried to stop them, then ganged up to attack him on the ground[1].

It's a great illustration of Scott Alexander's Toxoplasma of Rage article[2], where you're left thinking, like, even if the store employees were discriminating, and even if you could make the case, why would you cite this incident as an example of it, where it manifestly was not discrimination, and the victim committed serious crimes?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson%27s_Bakery_v._Oberlin_C...

[2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...

You know why...Africans ha e become a religious object for awfls

How long do you believe cancel culture has been going on for?

As long as wowsers have been trying to ban racy movies and comic books.

See it's only called cancel culture when you disagree with the event.

Small problem:

Many true believers on planet Oberlin... (probably majority). Preference falsification is indeed a thing but you will never know if these actors lie predominantly to themselves or others to save their hide.

Practically speaking, it doesn't matter

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