Lawrence KilliumIf you thought The Huffington Post in America was bad, wait until you read what The Huffington Post in South Africa published…
HuffPo South Africa recently ran a very controversial piece that gave the argument that white men should completely lose their right to vote, written by a self-identifying feminist by the name of “Shelley Garland.”
Thing is, that’s not really who the writer was, the actual writer of this piece was a brilliant troll.
The piece (which has been deleted from their site) said:
“Some of the biggest blows to the progressive cause in the past year have often been due to the votes of white men,” the piece stated. “If white men were not allowed to vote, it is unlikely that the United Kingdom would be leaving the European Union, it is unlikely that Donald Trump would now be the President of the United States, and it is unlikely that the Democratic Alliance would now be governing four of South Africa’s biggest cities.”
“If white men no longer had the vote, the progressive cause would be strengthened. It would not be necessary to deny white men indefinitely — the denial of the vote to white men for 20 years (just less than a generation) would go some way to seeing a decline in the influence of reactionary and neo-liberal ideology in the world,” it went on to say, adding that even though “it may be unfair . . . a moratorium on the franchise for white males for a period of between 20 and 30 years is a small price to pay for the pain inflicted by white males on others.”
The piece, of course, caused quite a bit of outcry from numerous media outlets. One local Cape Town outlet, The Citizen, started doing some digging, and the story started unraveling. The Citizen started poking around in the records of University of Johannesburg and discovered that there was no record of a “Shelley Garland” ever attending.
Realizing that they had been played, HuffPo SA editor-in-chief Verashni Pillay put out a piece that stated that they had withdrawn Garland’s post from the site, since Garland “appears not to exist” and promised to verify the sources that they pull from in the future.
According to National Review:
Now, presumably, Twigg had decided to look into the piece because she had found the content to be particularly shocking. But HuffPo South Africa didn’t find it shocking. In fact, before it was revealed to be a hoax, Pillay had published a piece (archive) defending the publication of Garland’s work. In the piece, Pillay explained that although HuffPo SA “doesn’t necessarily . . . agree or endorse everything in Garland’s blog” — adding that the purpose of the publication’s “Voices section is to invite a wide array of voices and views” — she was very surprised to see that it had sparked such an outrage.
Pillay claimed that “Garland’s underlying analysis about the uneven distribution of wealth and power in the world is pretty standard for feminist theory,”
You’re right, Pillay, ridiculousness like taking away certain group’s right to vote does fit in today’s feminist theory, and that’s a problem.
If we ever find out who the brilliant bastard was that wrote that article, lemme know, I owe them a beer.
H/T: National Review
