Atheist Civil War: Angry Feminists Get Richard Dawkins Disinvited from Skeptics’ Conference

Richard Dawkins
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Allum Bokhari

As the leading voice of militant atheists, Richard Dawkins has spent much of the last few decades battling Christians, Muslims, and deity-worshippers of every denomination. But now he has a new fanatical opponent: the secular dogmatists of the regressive left.

Yesterday evening, after retweeting a video critical of modern feminism, the renowned professor and critic of religion had his invitation to a skeptic conference revoked. In a statement posted on their website, the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism said:

The Northeast Conference on Science & Skepticism has withdrawn its invitation to Richard Dawkins to participate at NECSS 2016. We have taken this action in response to Dr. Dawkins’ approving re-tweet of a highly offensive video.

We believe strongly in freedom of speech and freedom to express unpopular, and even offensive, views. However, unnecessarily divisive, counterproductive, and even hateful speech runs contrary to our mission and the environment we wish to foster at NECSS. The sentiments expressed in the video do not represent the values of NECSS or its sponsoring organizations.

For the NECSS, it seems that some forms of skepticism are less welcome than others. Dawkins regularly posts tweets about Christianity, Islam, and assorted other faiths that could be perceived as “hateful,” yet it was his mockery of western feminists that led to his excommunication from this particular Atheist church.

What did Dawkins tweet that was so intolerable to the regressive left?

It was a viral video hosted by YouTuber Sargon of Akkad. Akkad, a left-leaning cultural libertarian, is noted for his strident opposition to the regressive left. Like Dawkins, he is a critic of religion, but also frequently skewers the dogmas of secular ideologies.

The video consists of a 2-minute parody song comparing Islamists to Feminists, delivered by fellow YouTuber SyeTenAtheist. It touches on a number of parallels between the two ideologies, including the tendency to blame everything on a vast nebulous conspiracy (for feminists, the patriarchy; for Islamists, the Jews), the dismissal of unwelcome ideas and behaviours with buzzwords (“haram,” “problematic”), and a penchant for victimhood. The full video can be watched below.

Another parallel between Islamists and western feminists, of course, is their inability to tolerate dissent. Soon after Dawkins shared the video, he was set upon by a Twittermob of the regressive left, who (bizarrely) accused him of supporting “death threats and rape threats.”

West and others argued that Chanty Binx, the red-haired feminist featured in SyeTenAtheist’s video, was a helpless victim, and that Dawkins’ mockery was somehow endangering her. They neglected to tell him that Binx is a notoriously foul-mouthed activist who took part in an illegal disruption of a peaceful event on men’s issues, hurled abuse at anyone who tried to reason with her and sang songs mocking the male suicide epidemic in the west.

The man who raised the issue of male suicide to Binx  – and was subsequently met with mockery and abuse – was Dan Perrins, an activist who lost his brother to suicide. 

Dawkins was eventually persuaded to delete his tweet, although it seems that he’s now having second thoughts about the decision.

Once fêted by the left for his biting criticism of creationists and evangelical Christians in the United States, Dawkins has rapidly lost their favour over the past few years as he has turned his attention to Islam. Articles attacking Dawkins and his allies in the atheist movement as “Islamophobic” now regularly appear in left-wing outlets.

If Dawkins were to focus his finely-tuned intellect on the superstitions of feminism and progressivism, as he has done in the past, he may find he has more allies in the cultural libertarian movement than the increasingly dogmatic regressive left.

Follow Allum Bokhari @LibertarianBlue on Twitter, and download Milo Alert! for Android to be kept up to date on his latest articles.

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