The Center for New Liberalism and that One Child Predator

Blow, wind! Come, wrack!

Pre-Disclaimer

It would be hypocritical if I wasn’t transparent and upfront about my own sins, on an essay where i'm critiquing people for the same thing, especially since my sins are worse:

From ages 16 to 19, I was a sexual and emotional abuser in a relationship with someone two years younger than me. I groomed them, I pressured them into sex, I raped them, and I manipulated them into staying in a relationship with me. I used cult tactics like telling them they were better than everyone else. I unequivocally and undeniably committed felonies. The only reason why I am not in prison is because my former partner does not wish to press charges, and the only reason why I am not naming my victim is because they do not wish to be named.

I actively committed harm and abuse. The leadership of the New Liberals didn't. They just discovered a separate abuser within their community and didn't say anything.

Disclaimer

To be clear, I like Colin Mortimer and Jeremiah Johnson.

I think they're good people, and in fact I think they are better people than the median USian. Their podcast has been a net good for society. Even after accounting for their platforming of Austen Allred (explanation here), Jesse Singal (explanation here), Katie Herzog (explanation here), and Matt Parlmer (he bullied my friend off twitter), the harm has been outweighed by platforming people like Brad Delong, James Palmer, Matt Darling, and Joey Politano.

I like
the organization run by the head moderators of /r/neoliberal
The Neoliberal Project
The Center for New Liberalism, even after accounting for that child molester problem they had a while back.

The Story

Back when Jeremiah Johnson and Colin Mortimer were just known as the head moderators of /r/neoliberal, there was a popular discord that turned out to be run by a sexual predator of children. That discord was mentioned frequently on the subreddit and many users assumed that the server was official in some capacity, referring to it as “the neoliberal discord.”

It was 2019, I was 19, it was my second year of enjoying the ego boost from being the fifth moderator ever added to the forum. So I asked Jeremiah if I could make a statement on the subreddit acknowledging our proximity to the guy (or lack thereof) and explaining what we could do in the future to prevent this sort of thing. The statement would have just amounted to “This user got arrested. He was never a moderator, but he did run a discord that was popular among our users. He has been banned, and to our knowledge he has not committed any harm unto any users of this community. Please reach out to the authorities if you have been harmed by this user.”

Jeremiah said no, explaining that it would just make us look bad. After all, we didn’t do anything wrong - why should we be upfront about something that happened within our community? It would just give more ammunition to our enemies over at the leftist subreddits.

Today

I’m no longer affiliated with them in any major capacity. My admin privileges on their slack have long been revoked, and I check the Denver slack once a month. I still recommend that my friends go to events hosted by Jeremiah’s and Colin’s organization. But if they aren’t familiar with what the CNL is, I give them a heads-up:

“I’m not saying that they’re sexual predators - they haven’t given me any reason to think that they are. But if there is a history of misconduct within the organization, you’re not going to learn about it from them.”

They go “Why?” and I explain the whole thing all over again.

“I don’t know what this says about them, because the guy wasn’t even a moderator for the subreddit, he just ran a well-known server that was mentioned a lot there.”

I don’t know if this makes them any less likely to attend, but I owe them the information regardless. I would want to know, so I could adjust my guard accordingly.

Wrap

In elementary school, I was sexually molested by my kindergarten teacher, Kevin Kirby, who was later arrested for making death threats to other kindergarten teachers. He had taught at my elementary school for years before I showed up, so it’s hard to believe that no other teacher had heard stories about him screaming, yelling, and physically flicking the ears of his students. Combine this with the fact that the school district leadership actively punished a principal for calling the police on Kevin Kirby, I figured that the unspoken rule was for teachers to keep to themselves. Maybe the culture was so extreme that the rules were enforced by other teachers through the threat of ostracization, and not just by Gary Smuts.

This bothered me, because the costs of speaking up would have been massively outweighed by the benefits of preventing trauma to minors. The worst case for the adult would have been termination, but there’s more than one career in the world.

I don’t want to let down my child self more than I already have, so I’d rather err on the side of oversharing information.