War of the World

Every once in a while, there’s a story that needs to be read, and is more important than anything I could write here. This is such a story.

On the morning of October 21, 2017, the budding New York choreographer Jinah Parker was sitting in bed, her husband lying alongside, when she opened her email and found a deeply unsettling, one-paragraph message about her debut dance production.

The show was called SHE, a Choreoplay, an off-off-Broadway interpretative dance in which four women vividly monologize rape and abuse.

While it’s unclear to me how one “monologizes” rape and abuse through intepretative dance, that’s the least of the issues.

“You are being a hypocrite. How can you present a message via dance on sexual violence, but knowingly choose to marry an admitted woman beater?!”

It continued: “Kevin Powell admits that he can relapse into violence. Don’t be deceived and trade your safety for someone who can assault you.”

The sender was a woman named April Sellers.

Battle of the woke joined. There were four things Jinah Parker could have done in response to this email from April Sellers. The first was shrug it off, knowing that any artistic (?) endeavor will have its detractors. The second was respond with reason, whether to disagree or appreciate her concern. The third was find this April Sellers and destroy her life. The fourth was find an April Sellers and destroy her life.

The couple Googled “April Sellers.” There was a law professor in Indiana, an Oklahoma district court judge, a high school softball player. But the top links pointed to the April Sellers Dance Collective in Minneapolis.

That April Sellers is a choreographer of modern dance. She’s 43, an anarchist queer feminist known for avant-garde expressions of body politics. Critics would identify her work with epic emotions, big hair, and nude numbers that made all but the most daring of Minnesota venues flinch.

It certainly could have been this April Sellers, and if you can’t make decisions about whose life to destroy from Google, what can you trust? So earth meet scorched.

The couple called Sellers sexist for thinking she knew another woman’s journey better than herself, and accused her of committing “a form of violence.”

“We are sharing this response widely, across various communities in Minnesota and nationally, because we feel people like you are dangerous.”

It’s like every social justice trope in one. And it was a damn fine scorching, as who wants to be the wet blanket who doesn’t believe the victim? There’s nothing to be gained from channeling a cry of “violence.” So when this April Sellers protested that she wasn’t that April Sellers, nobody cared. Mind you, nobody questions whether any April Sellers deserved to have her life ruined.

Less than two hours after receiving the letter, Sellers replied, pleading her innocence and requesting a phone call.

No response came. Sellers followed up with a Facebook post. Later she sent another email begging to know the names of everyone who’d received the letter so she could reach out and clarify. Her name, after all, was her livelihood.

Would you answer the phone if Hitler called to deny the Holocaust? So Sellers turned to society’s janitor to clean up the mess.

Sellers retained lawyer Aaron Mills Scott, who threatened to sue Powell and Parker if they didn’t retract and apologize. The couple likewise lawyered up. A flurry of legal motions ensued as Sellers attempted to compel them to reveal the letter’s recipients. Powell claimed he could not remember who he’d written or called.

Probably the most effective response in all of law is “I don’t remember.” But Scott did his job well.

Last summer, Scott tracked down the real author of the note that had so enraged Powell and Parker—April Maria Sellers of Cleveland, Ohio.

Oh. April Maria Sellers. How did Google miss her? From here, things get bad. Read the original story for its full flavor and effect. It’s worth the time.

This was not merely an astounding tale of fragility, ignorance and assumptive hypocrisy, but an apocryphal story of human viciousness wrapped in the pretense of social justice, the use of irrational emotionalism to justify any attack on one’s detractors. The clash here wasn’t between some racist or misogynist and a marginalized victim, but Spy vs. Spy.

It may be true that at any point in this pathetic story, the Parkers could have relented, come to their senses, stood down. But instead they wrapped themselves up in the language of social justice, the warmth of never having to admit to yourself or others that you’re completely wrong and filled with unjustified hatred. This is the nature of a factless reality with built-in rationalizations for every wrong you commit and perpetually-available blame for your flagrant mistakes.

Why admit your mistake when there’s always someone else to blame when you’re a victim? Why face the harm you do when the marginalized can do no harm?

There will no doubt be some who read this (Jake) who will see cracks in the story where someone could have backed down, chosen the path of reasonableness over viciousness, and that will allow them to gloss over the message here: that the same irrational excuses available to cover the blame for their destructive course remain core tenets of social justice.

As long as there’s an excuse to justify the harm one does to another, especially the wrong “other” because close enough is close enough, harm will happen. Not in every instance, but enough. And as long as we disinguish responsibility by identity, there is no conceptual ledge to prevent the slide into destruction. This is the path of social justice, all those lofty goals and sweet words notwithstanding. And if this story needed any greater irony, remember that it all began with an attacking, personally critical email from a woke woman in response to an interpretive dance. This story has it all, and it’s our progressive future.

H/T Peter Bonilla

17 thoughts on “War of the World

  1. B. McLeod

    Well, they felt that “people like” the author of the message were “dangerous.” Obviously this included anyone with a similar name, but they were too cowardly to take on ALL the world’s April Sellerses at once, so they started with a strategy of “divide and scorched earth.” At some point (now that they know the specific perp was April Maria Sellers), they will have to double back to wreak their SJW vengeance on her. After all, examples must be made to discourage similar “dangerous” people, so as the Romans were wont to say, “Let the Sellers beware.”

  2. Rojas

    They were called poison squads back in the day.
    These tasks performed in a workman like manner by the WKKK.

  3. paleo

    First they were victimized by somebody named April Sellers (and honestly, it’s hard to tell the April Sellerses of the world apart).

    Then they were victimized by losing a jury verdict in Minnesota, where all the white people live.

    Now you victimize them again by further spreading the story. Will the victimization ever end?

    1. B. McLeod

      I, for one, am just glad these people are (apparently) neutralized (at least for the moment). On Trafalgar Day, when this all got out of the gate, I, oblivious to the peril, undoubtedly visited my cellar, and I may have eaten some celery as well (either of which actions may have been close enough to make me a target, had the word leaked out).

  4. rxc

    “This story has it all, and it’s our progressive future.”

    The craziness that seems to have taken over as the progressive/left resists Trump and has dropped all pretense of trying to install leftism in the US makes me think of Indonesia in 1965. The communists had installed themselves quite deeply into the government, as part of Sukarno’s plans to keep the westerners out. There was an incompetent attempt at a coup by the left wing supporters in the army, but it was easily rebuffed by the right-wing faction in the army (led by Suharto). The coup attempt led to a political genocide against the communists, and enormous numbers were executed over the next year. There is a lot of evidence that various western governments, including the US, Australia, the UK, and even Sweden(!) were “complicit”.

    I wonder whether the progressive left realizes how many people it considers to be deplorable own guns, and are very likely to use them if the craziness really gets out of hand. I suppose that they think that the police and the military will support them, but when the left doesn’t support rule-of-law, but only feelings and emotion, how can they expect all those deplorables with guns to not follow their own emotions and take out their unhappiness on members of the left?

    The progressives cannot win the hearts and minds of the people with reason and logic and rule-of-law, so they have weaponized feelings and emotions and language.

    This is not going to turn out well…

    1. SHG Post author

      Bear in mind, the progressive left is a loud, but small, contingent. The question is whether the large, but quiet, middle will ever rise up to end the craziness.

      1. B. McLeod

        Or perhaps (as in this instance) how many of the loud ones will take each other out in the desperate razor fight to “win” the moronic virtue-signaling competition.

        1. rxc

          Something like this happened back around 1793, in that beautiful country I used to live in.

          It was very ugly, and required outside intervention to restore order. We now have a lot more people running around with much more deadly weapons, and communications technology to whip them all up into a frenzy very quickly. Not a good situation.

  5. RedditLaw

    Mr. Greenfield:

    Sorry that I am late for the party, but thank you for bringing that article to my attention. I really hope that Susan Du manages to maintain her employment through the continuing mediapocalypse. The subtle mockery of Powell could have sprung from the pen of Learned Hand, to wit:

    “My life is modeled after Gandhi, Dr. King, people who gave their lives to our country. That’s what I do,” [Powell would] say later in defense of his and his wife’s inattention to Sellers’ pleas.

    and

    [Powell] exudes an aristocratic defiance, wearing a prim navy suit, pocket square, and cashmere scarf wrapped tight like an ascot.

    and, best of all,

    [The Plaintiff’s attorney’s closing] statement takes about 10 minutes. Powell plugs his ears with his fingers the entire time.

    Really high-toned and ribald stuff. I always recommend that my clients plug their ears with their fingers while the prosecutor is talking. I strongly recommend that everyone read this article.

    Two additional thoughts:

    Will fifty thousand dollars be enough money to retain Michael Avenatti for the appeal? After all, if Powell and Parker want to double down, why not go for broke?

    I am actually rather impressed by the closing argument made by defense counsel. Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot-tall Ewoks, indeed?

  6. Casual Lurker

    This is a repost, as the below comment, when originally posted, somehow migrated to a different thread.

    Great story. Unfortunately, once again, it just demonstrates how any passionate idiot with the megaphone of Internet access can wreck havoc on just about anyone’s life.

  7. RS

    With Freddie deBoer (rightly and understandably!) in self-imposed mental health exile from social media, I’m gonna have to say it for him: planet of bloody cops.
    The April Sellers that sent the e-mail was a cop; I don’t blame Parker for being angry. But the logic of cops is so deeply baked into our society that of course Parker didn’t think, “screw this cop game, I’m better than this”. It was to do exactly what had made her angry right back — and of course, it wouldn’t have been justified even if she’d gotten the right Sellers. I doubt an interpretative dancer, or anyone who follows that area of the arts, thinks of themselves as a cop, but the evidence speaks for itself.
    I also want to point out the a detail worth making explicit: the targeted April Sellers was wealthy enough to afford a retained lawyer to defend herself, and established enough for her story to make a newspaper. Do we have any idea how many times has this story happened to people who aren’t either?
    The logic of social justice is the logic of postmodernism; the cultural logic of late capitalism. The left cannibalizing the left over perceived slights. The only defense is to be bourgeoisie, to have the free time to learn the art of woke-talk every progressive, expensive college carefully teaches its students, the wealth to have lawyers and PR flacks to protect yourself. If you have enough of these, a person can even get away with, just as a wild example, having their offices actively work to prevent the release of non-violent offenders in overcrowded prisons because said prisons are dependent on their slave labor.

    1. SHG Post author

      Stopped reading at Freddie. Take a deep breathe and consider whether your purpose is to mark yourself as a bit overheated or to write something mildly comprehensible for others to consider. Now take another deep breathe.

      Now let it out.

      1. RS

        It was, of course, the latter. Sounds like I failed. Fair enough; it’s my job to communicate clearly to my audience, and the audience on this blog is, obviously, not my usual one. So. Taking that deep breath you suggested, making a mental note to cut back my caffeine intake, and giving it another shot.

        The dancer, April Sellers, was unfairly victimized by a crazy social justice smear campaign. She was also wealthy and established enough to defend herself. If she hadn’t been, she’d have just been screwed, and we probably wouldn’t have heard about it. This is worth thinking about.

        This aggressive, shame-obsessed social justice stuff is deeply hypocritical. It’s supposedly about protecting society’s most vulnerable, but in practice it actually hurts society’s most vulnerable, because they don’t learn how to speak “woke”. And they don’t have the resources to protect their reputations from false or overheated accusations.

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