A left-wing elite who reportedly attended an expensive school has gone viral for arguing it’s “bourgeois” for one to be concerned about their safety aboard a subway train.

Emma Vigeland, formerly of “The Young Turks,” made the controversial remarks during a discussion hosted on leftist Sam Seder’s show, “The Majority Report,” about the unfortunate death earlier in the week of violent homeless man Jordan Neely.

“I was hit at one point sitting on the subway by a man who was having a mental health episode. He sat next to me, and he was elbowing and kind of flailing around. He hit me in the face and in my body. It was jarring, right,” she began.

But even more jarring was her takeaway.

“The idea that I would want him to be hurt in any way … I just didn’t want to be near him in that moment because I understood something was going on here. Everyone of us who’s taken public transit has had this kind of situation, something similar happen — seeing someone struggling,” she said.

“That doesn’t mean that our fear in that instance — and I was a little scared, because I was hit — but my fear is not the primary object of what we should be focusing on right now. It’s the fact that this person is in pain. And so like the politics of dehumanization, privileges, the bourgeois kind of concern of people’s immediate discomfort in this narrow, narrow instance, as opposed to larger humanity and life, it’s really friggen twisted,” she added.

Listen:

Emma Vigeland on the Majority Report today says that the desire to feel safe on public transit is bourgeois and explains how one time she suppressed those bourgeois feelings when she was assaulted on the subway by a mentally ill vagrant, as everyone should pic.twitter.com/YNqg5r7trW

— Ed Gentry ☀️ (@SunnyMarmalaid) May 4, 2023

In other words, it’s contingent on hard-working, law-abiding American citizens to take it on the chin if and when someone else abuses them on a subway train, because to not do so would be “friggen twisted.”

Hell of an argument.

Vigeland later doubled down on it.

“I have been hit by someone who had a mental episode who sat down next to me on the subway. I see that as a consequence of living in an urban environment. I interact with people, and that is a part of what I have bought into when I said I want to live in Brooklyn, I want to live in this area,” she said.

Listen:

No she reiterated that getting hit in the face by mentally ill vagrants is “the consequences of living in an urban environment” pic.twitter.com/SW6udpuvz7

— Ed Gentry ☀️ (@SunnyMarmalaid) May 5, 2023

Critics were quick to accuse Vigeland of being an out-of-touch, privileged, and bourgeois elite.

They were right in more ways than just one.

Look:

She’s bragging about turning off her fight or flight instinct so she can do some mental moral masturbating about how compassionate she is.
Privilege for sure.

— Sagemama (@Sagemama75) May 5, 2023

The privilege oozes so thick and sticky out of her every pore that I had to boil my phone in ethanol after watching that.

— OM (@otmeahij) May 5, 2023

So what is she trying to say? Poor people should accept being assaulted? Because you are privileged and bourgeois if you do something against being assaulted. Is she ok?

— Raj Shah (@RajShah74482745) May 5, 2023

It’s “bourgeois” to want to feel safe? Only a person who grew up in a privileged, safe area would say something so insane. The disconnect between the “holier than thou” privileged types and sane people just trying to survive in unsafe places is vast.

— (@sharminsays) May 5, 2023

The ironic thing is she talks about wanting to defend oneself and others in the moment of the incident as a “bourgeoisie” reflex or one of privilege, when it is precisely this mentality of holier-than-thou finger wagging from afar which reeks of privilege.

— Mark Christopher (@paleocrepidaria) May 5, 2023

She’s not a bourgeois wannabe. She is the bourgeois pic.twitter.com/vXCRKfmDSn

— Ed Gentry ☀️ (@SunnyMarmalaid) May 7, 2023

According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, Vigeland attended Kent Place School, a private girls’ school in New Jersey that charges a tuition of up to nearly $50,000 per academic school year.

Look:

Hard to overstate how many of these DNC left-liberal media types like this grew up very rich. The people from the richest families whom I’ve met were ones I met in left-liberal media outlets. Unlike Taylor Lorenz, Emma didn’t go to Swiss boarding schools. Just this: https://t.co/4mKZ7z3yDc pic.twitter.com/CEjcRZX2L9

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 5, 2023

You grow up going to some private school that costs more than what working-class people make in a year – “we paid $48,000 for our little princess to have a good 9th grade education” — then go around hectoring people with fears of crime as having “bourgeois values.”

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 5, 2023

And according to political commentator Noam Blum, Vigeland’s Twitter feed is full of screeds about subway riders who didn’t mask up.

So evidently, it’s not OK to complain about misbehaving lunatics on the subway, but it is fine to talk trash about non-mask-wearing passengers.

Look:

Searching through her tweets, she has plenty of bile towards subway riders who didn’t wear masks. Maybe they also punched some old ladies she’d see their good side and calm down.

— Noam Blum (@neontaster) May 5, 2023

Vigeland for her part responded to the backlash by accusing her critics of harboring a “white knight fantasy.”

Last thing here: the thing that triggers the right about women like myself speaking out against anti-homeless vigilantism (my male co-hosts say similar things) is that it punctures their white knight fantasy, where they’re all Liam Neesons saving damsels from the undesirables.

— Emma Vigeland (@EmmaVigeland) May 5, 2023

Female critics did not appreciate the dig.

Look:

I’m a woman. I’m a NYer. What you’ve shared publicly about your position on this matter is so unspeakably elitist.

“Often, alas, the most detestable kind of bourgeois is the anti-bourgeois kind of bourgeois.”
Eugene Ionesco

You don’t speak for NYers, women, the oppressed or…

— Ooana Trien ~ Eric Arthur Blair’s mistress (@ooana) May 6, 2023

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Vivek Saxena

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V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.

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