Move over, Sokal Hoax–and make way for the Huffpost Hoax.
On April 13 the Huffington Post, bestie with all that is trendily progressive, ran a blog post on its South African site titled "Could It Be Time to Deny White Men the Franchise?" The author was one "Shelley Garland," who described herself as "an activist and a feminist" who was "currently completing an MA in philosophy" and also "working on ways to smash the patriarchy."
Some excerpts from the post:
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. The influence of reckless white males were one of the primary reasons that led to the Great Recession which began in 2008. This would also strike a blow against toxic white masculinity, one that is long needed.
Although this may seem unfair and unjust, allowing white males to continue to call the shots politically and economically, following their actions over the past 500 years, is the greater injustice.
Well! Conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, amongh others, got hold of the post and tweeted on it–which led to a round of e-mails to the HuffPo pointing out, among other things, that there was something kind of racist about it. Meanwhile the post reportedly got 55,000 "shares" on Facebook, plus mentions on Fox News, in the Washington Free Beacon, and elsewhere.
So Verashni Pillay, editor-in-chief of Huffpost South Africa rushed to defend the piece, posting piously:
Garland's underlying analysis about the uneven distribution of wealth and power in the world is pretty standard for feminist theory. It has been espoused in many different ways by feminist writers and theorists for decades now. In that sense, there was nothing in the article that should have shocked or surprised anybody (or so we thought.) It would appear that perhaps much of the outcry derives from a very poor reading of the article — or perhaps none at all. Dismantling the patriarchal systems that have brought us to where we are today, a world where power is wielded to dangerous and destructive ends by men, and in particular white men, necessarily means a loss of power to those who hold it. A loss of oppressive power. Those who have held undue power granted to them by patriarchy must lose it for us to be truly equal. This seems blindingly obvious to us.
That was on April 14. Then, uh-oh!, on April 15 this post appeared on Huffpost South Africa, notable for its absence of a byline by Pillay or anybody else:
Huffington Post SA has removed the blog "Could It Be Time To Deny White Men The Franchise?" published on our Voices section on April 13, 2017.
We have done this because the blog submission from an individual who called herself Shelley Garland, who claimed to be an MA student at UCT, cannot be traced and appears not to exist.
"Not to exist"! In other words, the Huffington Post got royally rolled.
At least there really is an Alan Sokal, physics professor at NYU.
According to Heat Street, a person identifying herself as "Shelley Garland" has emerged to say that she posted "Could It Be Time"–which she calls "total garbage"–just to see whether Pillay and the other gullible editors at the Huffpost would fall for it, which they did.
As Front Page's Jack Kerwick writes:
“Shelley Garland” supplied to the nation an invaluable service. In one little article, she revealed for all with eyes to see the gist to which the agenda of today’s left ultimately boils down:
It is resolutely, vehemently anti-white, specifically anti-white men.
Out of the mouths of trolls…