The professor at Drexel University who once tweeted “All I want for Christmas is white genocide” has resigned citing threats by white supremacists.

Article by Rick Moran republished from PJMedia.com

George Ciccariello-Maher, an associate professor of politics at the university, made the announcement on his Facebook page.

CBS Philly:

Ciccariello-Maher says the threats of violence directed towards him and his family has become unsustainable.

In an interview with CNN earlier this month, Ciccariello-Maher said he’s received death threats over the last 12 months.

“I have 800 unread voicemails in my inbox right now that have been building up over the past few weeks. And this … it’s just something that happens all the time,” he said.

“Threats that involve my child are, of course, the ones that are the most frightening to me.”

Ciccariello-Maher says the threats began last December after he posted on Twitter: “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.” He says the tweet was a joke — a “satirical jab at a certain paranoid racist fantasy and that white genocide does not exist.”

Even if the professor is right, imagine a white person tweeting about killing all the blacks as a “joke.”

The professor’s statement is delusional:

In Ciccariello-Maher’s statement posted on Facebook Thursday he shared this message with Drexel faculty:

“To faculty: tenure is a crucial buffer against those who would use money to dictate the content of higher education. But in a neoliberal academy, such protections are far from absolute. We are all a single outrage campaign away from having no rights at all, as my case and many others make clear. The difference between tenure-track faculty and the untenured adjunct majority—which has far more to do with luck than merit—is a difference in degree not in kind.”

Tenured faculty need to defend the rights of all faculty, at all levels, from attacks by the Right and white supremacists. Only then can we build campus solidarities that transcend such artificial boundaries among faculty—and beyond, to campus workers and students as well—solidarities that will be the last line of defense in what is today a losing battle for universities. We need to fight to defend our place in academia against assault from the racist Right, but we urgently need to realize that the struggle for academia is part of a far broader fight.”

Why not defend from attacks by the left on conservative faculty members? I think it significant he failed to include professors he disagrees with politically from protection.

We all know about the stupidity, racism, threats, and ignorance on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. We know it because we’ve experienced it ourselves. It’s a given that if you are going to make idiotic “jokes” about wishing for white genocide, you are going to be attacked. If you make ignorant comments about being sick to your stomach at the sight of a display of patriotism, what do you expect from Twitter and other social media sites? Love, admiration, and hero worship?

I think there’s only one rational conclusion that can be reached to explain Ciccariello-Maher’s rancid tweets: he wanted to be seen as a victim of “racists” and right wingers after the backlash. Nobody who knows anything about how social media operates these days could have been filled with any illusions about how some people would react.

The professor wanted attention. He wanted people to feel sorry for him. He wanted to generate a little outrage against the right himself. He wanted to be seen standing on the leftist ramparts, waving a bloody shirt, calling attention to himself like any two-year-old who throws a screaming tantrum over absolutely nothing.

It’s what makes Ciccariello-Maher a fake victim and deserving of all the disapprobation we can muster.

Read more at: PJMedia.com