Cathy Young: "The UVA Story Unravels: Feminist Agitprop and Rape-Hoax Denialism"

      This is at RCP, but it's good nevertheless--very good, IMHO.
      Some key graphs:

...in The Guardian, Jessica Valenti goes so far as to declare, “I choose to believe Jackie.” This is feminism as a religious cult, embracing the principle of early Church father Tertullian: “Credo quia absurdum"...

Some other feminists are quite openly suggesting that we shouldn’t let facts get in the way. “So what if this instance was more fictional than fact and didn't actually happen to Jackie? Do we actually want anyone to have gone through this? This story was a shock and awe campaign that forced even the most ardent of rape culture deniers to stand up in horror and demand action,” writes Katie Racine, the founder of the online women’s magazine Literally, Darling, in an essay reprinted in The Huffington Post. (A mostly fictional story is beneficial because it proved to “rape culture deniers” that rape culture exists? Literally, darling, this may be the dumbest thing anyone has said about the UVA story.) And in Politico, UVA student journalist Julia Horowitz opines that “to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake,” since Jackie’s likely fabrication points to a bigger truth. That is not journalism; it’s agitprop.

   It's often been noted that political beliefs are often held in a way that's similar to the way that religious beliefs are held, and I've been reflecting on that a lot recently. The leftosphere is currently full of horrifically awful arguments deployed in a frantic effort to deflect error. It reminds me of nothing so much as fundamentalist discussions of evolution.