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Notes -
Nathan Cofnas, first to successfully expose the plagiarism and lies of Jason Arday, has been suspended from the university of Ghent in Belgium and will soon likely be fired, according to an update on his Substack.
I thought I was wholly desensitized to the gross injustice of modern European freedom-of-speech culture and major institutional decline, but this is a new low. It has even a jaded and resigned man such as me fuming for revolution. The worst part is that the university is barely even bothering to obfuscate by throwing in Cofnas views on race; they really are mostly just straight-up, no attempt at justification beyond "think about poor Arday!", punishing Cofnas for having exposed Arday's blatant lies. The intellectuals of Europe have now reached levels of moral decline which I hoped impossible. A truth-teller exposes a fraud for frauding his way into a fancy university, and the truth-teller is then punished! Judging by the media reaction, it almost appears as if Arday has been able to get away with one last deceitful sleight-of-hand – being remembered as a tragic victim of racist hounding rather than as a lowly con-artist. I'd be impressed with his ingenuity if it wasn't all so terribly stupid and sad, and so indicative of everything that has gone wrong not only with academia but with Europe in general.
What does this add to the story of Arday which we didn't already know? Well, when this story broke I for one was astounded that no one had dared to pull one of the many threads dangling from Arday's vast spider-on-amphetamine-ish web of lies. With this latest development things are starting to make more sense and the picture that emerges is dystopically bleak. Seems like no one reacted because reacting really would get you sacked on the fucking spot. And the institutional take-away doesn't seem to be that DEI might be bad when taken to extremes, but rather that DEI need to be protected especially when it has been taken to extremes. The implication of firing Cofnas for his actions, the astonishing yet unavoidable conclusion, is that it would be better if the fraud had been allowed to continue indefinitely. I mean, look what happens when truth wills out, right? People die!
Regardless of his other opinions, Cofnas is now a hero in my book – he has suffered for the vindication of truth and the destruction of falsehood, and for that if nothing else he deserves recognition and support. The minute he opens up a way to donate to him, which I suspect will happen soon, I'm opening my wallet.
Technical point of order: didn’t others do so first, but it didn't gain traction because they were muzzled? First to successfully expose him, yes.
Fair point, and I concede. I'll edit to correct myself.
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