If democracy is about individual rights (justice for individuals), then social justice is about group rights (justice for groups). –Lynn Lemisko (in Educator to Educator, p. 193)
Over the last few years, it has become apparent that, for whatever nobility and moral worth lies in the project called “social justice,” something has gone badly wrong with the ideological movement on the far left that repeatedly calls for—or, more accurately, demands—it. For anyone who has tried to stand up to this movement, however, it rapidly becomes extremely clear just how difficult it can be to take it on. Even questioning whether this particular movement using this particular approach is the best way to achieve social justice has become verboten to an observably extreme degree. After all, it has named itself after something that is (and largely should be) seen as an almost unqualified good for society.
The strength of the social justice brand is, in fact, entirely reasonable. It fights for social justice, which not only sounds good but is something most of us generally support. It is, in fact not just the project at the heart of progressive politics but also one integral to liberalism as a political philosophy, which has always sought to protect even the least of us from tyranny. This makes social justice a well-justified concern of every fair-minded person—left, right, or center—on this side of the Civil Rights Movement, Gay Pride, liberal feminism, and collapse of European colonialism, people who realize that the content of one’s character and due application of one’s talents should be the primary deciding factors where one’s social standing is concerned. The overwhelming majority view and broad liberal consensus is that we should have societies that are as fair and kind as it is possible to be, even if we don’t all agree on what fairness and kindness look like or what the limits of possibility are.
Still, the ideological movement that’s visibly more likely to carry pitchforks than water for the cause of social justice has become a menace and threatens to become a tyrant, and this is a shame. We risk losing a lot of progress at the hands of this abominable fumble. Something claiming to speak for social justice is rotten, and I am declaring that something the enemy of free, civil, and liberal societies. This may be seen as controversial, but the dispute is borne in ignorance. It, itself, openly and admittedly begins and ends with a ruthless criticism of liberalism and free societies, which it deems as inherently and systemically oppressive.
Attempts to name this ideological enemy—for enemy it is—are therefore necessary so that we might frame our arguments against it with the requisite precision and clarity needed to challenge it, but they are also fraught. One might be tempted to call it the Social Justice Movement or Social Justice ideology or just Social Justice made into a proper noun, as many have, including myself and my colleagues. This clearly has its problems. It feeds into exactly the nearly perfect branding that the movement wants, it risks the genuinely positive valence of that which genuinely deserves the name “social justice,” and it places people who understand, thus resist, this parasitic ideology on a back foot of having to explain why on Earth they’d be against social justice in the first place.
It’s quite the pickle. Call it something it doesn’t recognize in itself and miss the mark, as we’ll see, or call it what it claims to be and make it virtually invincible. Clever phrasing to manage this problem, as my colleagues and I have become fond of, like “I’m against Social Justice because I’m for social justice,” only work in print (and kind of fail at the beginnings of sentences), and they still require a great deal of explanation. Though the cliche doesn’t always hold, in this case it does: when you’re explaining, you’re losing.
Other attempts to name the enemy are similarly frustrating. Some, with more historical roots, might be tempted to wrap it up in the mostly defunct New Left that proceeded from the Neo-Marxist Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, especially following Herbert Marcuse’s post-war critique and radical outline for social activism. While a repressive approach to tolerance is certainly very much still in vogue in the movement of today, the New Left is more or less defunct as an identifiable entity now, perhaps except under the unwanted and mostly marginal agitations of the hooligan group styling itself as Antifa, for “anti-fascist.” Moreover, we really ought to admit that no one really knows what any word that starts with the prefix “neo” means and give up on accusations of Neo-Marxism entirely.
From similar quarters, then, we might hear the movement called “Cultural Marxism,” probably more than half rightly, but for all the truth this carries, it’s a difficult—and icky—position to defend. For one thing, “Cultural Marxism” means at least three things, one of which is legitimately an antisemitic conspiracy theory (and thus not what is meant by the appellation). This makes it difficult for such a branding to keep. It really can take some doing to convince everyday people that the Marxian ideas of critique and conflict theory (that they aren’t familiar with anyway) are being retooled in terms of “cultural” factors that are theoretically tied to facts of identity instead of economic class. By the time you do, someone will show up and accuse you of claiming we live in a culture that supports Marxist thought or of peddling an antisemitic conspiracy theory, and you’re hardly any better than when you started.
Complicating the problem of naming the enemy in the “woke” ideology of Social Justice further is that what’s going on with this movement today is undeniably postmodernist (and poststructuralist)—despite protestations from overly narrow philosophers who contend that postmodernism proper died out thirty years ago. This makes it even more difficult to get anything Marxist, Marxian, or even Marxish to stick to the effort to create social justice, no matter how accurately the terms at hand might apply.
The unavoidable issue is that the postmodernists were, themselves, not Marxists or even Neo-Marxists like in the Frankfurt School, and everyone who knows anything about postmodernism knows this well. They were Post-Marxists who had realized, almost as if betrayed, that even the Marxist metanarrative had failed us all. (You can almost hear them saying, somewhere between the lines, et tu, communism?)
This means that the postmodernists, socialistic or even communist in orientation as they might have been (and they were), were far too pessimistic, cynical, and nihilistic to be real Marxists, structuralists, or anything–stable-ist of any kind. That would have required precisely the kind of commitment they studiously avoided by writing thousands of pages to declare it naive, foolish, idealistic, out-of-touch, and in immediate need of deconstruction. So much for Jordan Peterson’s highly accurate “Postmodern Neo-Marxism,” then, which, besides, is far too specialized for successful widespread application. Of course, for all its accuracy, that highly technical sobriquet misses the fact that all of the ideology’s proponents talk endlessly about a relatively small number of things, key among them being social justice.
We’ve had a hell of a time with this problem, I can tell you—with “we” meaning mostly Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose, Mike Nayna, and myself—since we realized the immensity of communicating our reasoning for having taken up the work of the Grievance Studies Affair, sometimes referred to as “Sokal Squared.” “Grievance Studies” was a neologism (or so we thought—it had been used before with very nearly the same meaning by the ever-insightful Stefan Collini some time earlier, though we didn’t know it) we concocted to try to remedy this problem, which Mike alluded to the You-Know-Who/Voldemort motif from the Harry Potter series: “no one will just name the thing!” Indeed, much of the existing literature around this problem studiously avoided naming it, lending strength to the postmodernism at its heart, which made it very frustrating and difficult from a communications point of view.
You-Know-What Studies wasn’t going to cut it, and our initial waffling “fields like gender studies” wouldn’t either. The question we had to answer was what’s the essence that makes a field be like gender studies. We ground on this problem for a while, and the closest thing we came across before settling on “Grievance Studies” was the impossibly unwieldy and bewildering “critical constructivist epistemology,” courtesy of the enormously influential late critical pedagogy professor and activist Joe Kincheloe (who we can also thank for the “decolonize everything” push happening right now). Trouble was, we barely even understood that term at the time.
Still, it’s nearly always best to name your enemy something that they would or do call themselves, when you can, because then they can’t deny that the name fits. You can make them wear it, and that’s a lot easier if they’re happily putting it on every morning anyway. Capital-S-Capital-J Social Justice was a decent stopgap for this purpose for this reason, but it generates a lot of unnecessary confusion and problems. Argumentative albatrosses tend to build up around it everywhere, and not just philosophical ones.
Fortunately, two critical educators, Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo, the latter of which is quite well-known and can thus be treated as representatively authoritative, provided me with a solution to this naming problem in their 2012 education manual Is Everyone Really Equal? They, themselves, call what they’re presenting critical social justice. This fits. I’ve just added capitals to make sure we understand the proper noun for what it is—the enemy, which we can now name: Critical Social Justice. This is how they introduced this concept to the world:
To clarify our definition, let’s start with the concept “social justice.” While some scholars and activists prefer to use the term social justice in order to reclaim its true commitments, in this book we use the term critical social justice. We do so in order to distinguish our standpoint on social justice from mainstream standpoints. A critical approach to social justice refers to specific theoretical perspectives that recognize that society is stratified (i.e., divided and unequal) in significant and far-reaching ways along social group lines that include race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. Critical social justice recognizes inequality as deeply embedded in the fabric of society (i.e., as structural), and actively seeks to change this.
The definition we apply is rooted in a critical theoretical approach. While this approach refers to a broad range of fields, there are some important shared principles:
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- All people are individuals, but they are also members of social groups.
- These social groups are valued unequally in society.
- Social groups that are valued more highly have greater access to the resources of a society.
- Social injustice is real, exists today, and results in unequal access to resources between groups of people.
- Those who claim to be for social justice must be engaged in self-reflection about their own socialization into these groups (their “positionality”) and must strategically act from that awareness in ways that challenge social injustice.
- This action requires a commitment to an ongoing and lifelong process. (p. xviii)
Even though it’s not 250 words long, there’s so much in that introductory passage about Critical Social Justice that we could spend pages and pages discussing it, but let me draw your attention to a few key points that characterize Critical Social Justice and identify it—not social justice—as the right target, thus the right name for this enemy of free societies.
First, note that the authors take pains to explain not only that Critical Social Justice isn’t what most people mean by “social justice,” it’s also something so distinct from social justice that “some scholars and activists prefer to use the term social justice in order to reclaim its true commitments.” That is, Critical Social Justice does not have the same “true commitments” to social justice as most people. They tell us explicitly that people with ”mainstream standpoints” about social justice mean something entirely different than what they will describe. This leads us to a staggering conclusion: Critical Social Justice doesn’t represent social justice. It represents a particular approach to that idea that must be distinguished from social justice lest people confuse the two.
Second, observe that the authors indicate explicitly that what sets Critical Social Justice apart is that it relies upon a critical theoretical approach. This is, in fact, the belly of the beast. It also makes clear why there’s so much weight to the wide-ranging attempts to brand this enemy with terms like Neo-Marxism, New Left (liberationism), and Cultural Marxism. Put simply, they’re not wrong. Critical Social Justice is critical theory. Moreover, this status is precisely what sets it apart from “mainstream standpoints” on social justice—the ones that represent its “true commitments.”
Third, pause to appreciate the fourth bullet point given above telling us what Critical Social Justice stands for: “Social injustice is real, exists today, and results in unequal access to resources between groups of people.” Volumes could be written on this point alone—and perhaps they should be. “Social injustice is real.” That is, Critical Social Justice begins with a reification of social injustice. This seems like a small point, perhaps even an obvious one, but it’s a very big one that takes a little explaining.
Of course, before proceeding, it is quite clear to virtually everyone that social injustices do occur and have occurred in far greater levels in the past; I will not and would not deny that. It’s also quite clear to the majority of us that these social injustices legitimately represent a problem that deserves our attention; this I fully agree with. This, however, is where the postmodern context of Critical Social Justice has to be brought into scrutiny. (The above discussion of this point on my part aside, Sensoy and DiAngelo mention these roots, along with those in the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, a few pages after the above passage.)
Because Critical Social Justice is postmodernist in orientation as well, for it nothing is objectively real. Everything, and very much not least knowledge, is under postmodernist thought merely a contrivance of social constructions, which are in turn reflections of social power and its concentrations (“positionality” “must be engaged”). Race is a social construct; okay, fine, probably so. Gender is a social construct; erm, maybe, but we’ll let you (mostly) have it. Biological sex is a social construct; wait, what? Various theorists take their social constructivism more or less neat as compared with others, but the general attitude of antirealism at the heart of postmodern thought and the Critical Social Justice movement is hardly a matter of legitimate controversy. The postmodern view is that, short of our own unnarrated subjective experience, everything in human life is a socially contingent construct. Reality may be out there, but we can’t know it.
Under Critical Social Justice, however, social injustice is real, like really real. (It is, after all, a matter of unnarrated subjective experience.) That is, Critical Social Justice roots itself in a worldview that denies that anything is real (as opposed to being socially constructed), that objective truth isn’t possible (in the general sense, not the philosophically technical one), but that the subjective experience of injustice or oppression isn’t just valid or important but objectively real in how our societies are structured. Note well: “Critical social justice recognizes inequality as deeply embedded in the fabric of society (i.e., as structural), and actively seeks to change this.” This, by the way, reminds us that the postmodern (i.e., poststructuralist) roots of Critical Social Justice are utterly central to its worldview.
Though it goes too far afield for this essay, the subject of how postmodernism mutated, not died, to admit the Critical Theory of the Neo-Marxists in limited, class-disinterested fashion is developed at length in my forthcoming book with Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories. Interested readers are strongly encouraged to have a look.
Fourth, notice the focus upon social activism. The passage just quoted indicates that Critical Social Justice “actively seeks to change” the “fabric of society,” which it deems as being “structurally” unjust. That means that signing up for Critical Social Justice carries with it signing on to a badly designed bid for social revolution that seeks to dismantle the current fabric of society. Dismantle it, though, and replace it with… what? Replace it with Critical Social Justice, of course, which is to say critical theory that operates in service to Cultural Marxism (the conflict theory, not the conspiracy theory) using postmodern social theory as its primary apparatus. The kids, quite rightly, call this “clown world,” but it isn’t funny. Humor isn’t really allowed. In the Critical Social Justice revolution, we’ll have to prefer “post-comedy” or “post-humor,” which is meant to teach lessons, not evoke laughter.
Unsurprisingly, then, this commitment is to be serious, as indicated in the next-to-last bullet point in their list: “Those who claim to be for social justice must be engaged in self-reflection about their own socialization into these groups (their ‘positionality’) and must strategically act from that awareness in ways that challenge social injustice.” Must. Must. Twice this sentence explains that it isn’t sufficient to be for social justice, to care about fairness, or to work for equality. You have to sign up for the revolution, and the revolution starts with you.
It’s right there in black and white: to claim to be for Critical Social Justice, one must interrogate themselves and society, and one must “act strategically” from that awareness—a critical consciousness—“in ways that challenge social injustice.” This is consistent with the demand, reaching all the way back to Max Horkheimer’s description in 1937 that a Critical Theory must be applicable by social activism, and it is a core demand of Critical Social Justice today. It also extends that demand to a program Spanish Catholics in the fifteenth century would have been proud of.
Hence, fifth, and last (so as not to belabor the point), the last bullet point on their list admonishes that to sign up for Critical Social Justice requires a commitment; a lifelong commitment to an ongoing process that results from a personal awakening to a critical consciousness. That is, it’s a faith. It’s a faith that requires not only penitence but evangelism, since it can’t yet apply torquemada (except metaphorically and applied in a social fashion).
Critical Social Justice is a kind of religious worldview that seeks to enforce Critical Social Justice and produce more activists for Critical Social Justice. These will be critical theorists and activists who claim to be about social justice when they are, in fact, about critical theories. Rather than a God to worship and serve, the upside-down postmodern faith of Critical Social Justice offers an Enemy—systemic injustice—to destroy, and whatever remains or gets erected in place of what it deconstructs will then be subject to the same fate.
This probably isn’t what you think you’re defending when you, as a good and decent person who cares about people and the problems of society, defend social justice. Most of the people who support it have no idea because they, like most normal people, have never read the primary literature. The fact is, Critical Social Justice is not about social justice at all; it has stolen social justice from the people who care about it and need it most.
I therefore propose that the enemy we face is not social justice, though it will tend to wear this name as a suit of armor. We should clearly and consistently name this thing Critical Social Justice, and it will be up to us to learn to tell the difference. Again, enemy it is—of all free societies and the overwhelming majority of those who would live within them. I therefore further propose that we should use this name, learn to differentiate the two, and hold the Critical Social Justice ideology to its commitments: an anti-liberal fusion of postmodern theory and Neo-Marxist Critical Theory. Then we can be clear that Critical Social Justice has co-opted the very idea of social justice from those who wish to promote its true commitments, as they, themselves, openly recognize, and we can do something about it.
73 comments
I don’t believe in groups. Only individuals can be proven to exist. Therefore, Social Justice or Critical Social Justice cannot exist, only justice. That’s when all individuals are treated the same under the law.
Wow, quite a read.
At my age of 60, all I can think about after reading the essay and all comments, is that I’d much rather think about my next hike or fishing expedition in the wilderness. Perhaps, sipping an adult beverage on a sunny beach as fresh fish chars in the fire. There is really no hope, when something like 60% of the population believes Jesus listens and cares about their prayers. I would venture to guess that maybe 10% of the population could or would read and understand this type of essay. Good luck folks, I’m going sailing, I’ll do a bit of fishing, and try not to engage with morons and dipshits, it just causes consternation.
Getting hung up on the terminology is the whole point – linguistic deflection- to neutralise opposition. The intention – of this ‘movement’ – is the imposition of an “alternate reality” on western societies by the “New Puritans of the ‘political’ Church of Woke” . Call it totalitarian or secular religious even. As Lenin and others have said: Raise kids to ‘think what they are told to think’ , and not to ‘think for themselves’ and you have a ready made “collective” eager to chant your tenets and parables at the unconverted. It matters not what their buzz words actually mean, and whether they can or can not be traced back to Marx’s ‘politico-religious’ fantasies – which they can.
Free yuri bezmenov
I found on Encyclopedia.com that a “name” already exists: Critical Social Theory. It seems to fit nicely. It doesn’t contain the term “Justice”, which gives a positive connotation, and it adds the qualification “Theory”, which seems apt. It also sounds less of a mouthful than “Critical Social Justice”.
Anyway, very sound analysis regardless of the name you choose, keep on with the good work!
Lindsey’s neologism, “Critical Social Justice,” aims nicely at part of the issue—differentiating the virtuous and less so aims of the Social Justice movement. I wholeheartedly support that effort, but much (most) of the discourse online isn’t so nuanced, particularly on Twitter and where social media squabbles can end reputations and occupations.
“Neoracist” was coined before Lindsey argued for its use —here at https://newdiscourses.com/2021/01/onlysubs-call-them-neoracists/— and it could rebut the intent and ends Critical Social Justice claims for social justice, all wrapped in a nice pejorative for easy deployment.
Naming the hydra is important—however it’s done. Any term well-suited to the task will include branding and meaning easily transmitted and understood by lay audiences.
IMO the obvious problem is the lack of awareness that there are only individual rights, and no group rights at all. Even our US Constitution seems to imply that, regardless of bad rulings by SCOTUS. There’s no end to evil mischief when groups rights are allowed.
Social Justice is not justice at all. That’s just either group punishment or reward. Equality Before the Law is not SJ, Freedom of association is not SJ. The welfare system is not “SJ”, it is just humanitarian aid and solidarity. The ramifications of Social “Justice”, such as Critical Social Justice, end up being just bad most of the time.
Fighting for justice is a noble goal as long as it is limited to individuals. That is equality of opportunity, and is a right.
When you seek systemic change – when you oppose unjust results that affect members of certain colors, ethnicities, genders, AND YES, ECONIOMIC CLASSES – you are seeking equality of outcome. That is no one’s right.
Even if certain groups are routinely denied opportunity, doing anything to change that is demanding equality of outcome.
The individual must be ALL. Groups fighting the system only weakens both the individual and the system – a system we need to support and defend substantially as it is.
Critical Social Justice should be called Collective solipsism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy
Thank you for this writing piece! Data does not support the claims that current Critical Social Justice movements and protests are “marching for.” It’s all a distraction. People are simply following the blood thirsty mob thinking they are doing good and right by themselves. Peoples’ identities are wrapped up in it. And, if you dare raise a question about the “movement” Or dispute it with raw data, you are shot down, called names, targeted, labeled as a “racist” and silenced. This in return leaves no space for diverse conversation or a sharing of facts and REAL data. As the false narrative is regurgitated over and over, real progress on equality is hindered. Media is destroying our society.
Read articles and listen to podcasts put out by strong voices such as Wilfred Reilly, Glenn Loury, Coleman Hughes, Sam Harris.. these people are the real heroes.
800,000 children go missing every year in the United States alone and hustled into Human Trafficking Rings. Human Trafficking is the #1 money maker. Modern day slavery is alive and well!
“Slavery is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world.
There are more people enslaved right now than there were during the transatlantic slave trade period between the 15th and 19th centuries.
Slavery generates three times the revenue of the NFL. With the money from all the trafficking in the world, you could buy every Starbucks outlet in the world. Every NBA team in the nation. Every Target store.
There are 30 million slaves in the world; 10 million of them are children.
17,500 children are trafficked into the US every year.
And much more…”
Nobody is marching for this. People need to wake up! It’s not a choice it’s a necessity.
Your wrote 4 months ago, so maybe you’ve already learned this on your own, but the 800.000 missing children per year number is way, way off. It’s true ABC news published a piece in 2013 using that number, but as you also wrote, “Media is destroying our society”. That particular piece isn’t doing anybody any favors. There are a number of reasons the number is beyond bogus. The best thing would be to check into it yourself. Truth or Fiction dot com has a page dealing with it. But if you just do the arithmetic: that number translates to 16 thousand children disappearing from each and every US state each year. It would be like every ten years the entire population of Virginia just vanished.
Not to minimize this problem, because it’s real and an ongoing mission for charities and law enforcement, but 99 percent of missing children return home alive. But 1 percent of hundreds of thousands is still thousands.
Although I agree that that framing the argument was the main tool for gaining power in academia, and subsequently the political arena by the SJWarriors, they have now reached critical mass and it has devolved into a straight out power move.
This in a sense reveals the con for what it is. The best strategy at this point is to call out their actions and ask in every forum- Is this really what you want?
Today, the 1rst of July ,the “outrage du jour” is the couple in St. Louis defending their own property being charged with intimidation with threats of violence for defending their private property. The “peaceful protesters” who destroyed property and invaded property were not charged with anything as they were expressing their right of free speech. In their case, “speech” was indeed violence (destruction of a gate) and criminal trespassing, But as Marcuse noted, Repressive tolerance means accepting the speech (literally and figuratively gate crashing) of the oppressed, and suppressing that of the dominant class.
Ask your friends, is this really what they want?
We know they don’t is illustrated by Seattle’s mayor whose motto seems to be “Demonstrate to he and thee, but not to me”
Violence against property is violence against the IDEA of property – man’s only meaningful right, and in itself, the right to all good things.
Granting anyone a right to the needs of existence simply because they are human is destructive of both the individual (who is a higher thing than merely human) and society (which is fundamentally propertarian).
I would suggest the term Intersectional Justice Movement.
And intersections justice warriors!
An excellent, and thought provoking essay. The key thought that burbled up from the cauldron of provocation is this:
I think the author is wrong. The enemy is “Social Justice.” Renaming it serves no purpose save causing confusion. Think back. Did the opponents of Communism rename it? No. Nor did the opponents of Fascism or Nazism. The only renaming that happens is when the PROPONENTS of these assorted toxic ideologies, including Progressivism, have so polluted the name they’ve been using that they rebrand. Stick with Social Justice, Social Justice Warrior, maybe use Intersectional Insanity or WokeWankery on occasion. Don’t fret too much about hair splitting with academics, if they can’t figure out what you’re talking about from an essay like this, then they’re unlikely to be either on your side or useful.
Well over half of the SJW’s “adherents” are “useful idiots.” As noted, THEY don’t really have a grasp of the underlying ideology, just the surface feel good/promises/virtue boosts, etc. So Critical Social Justice isn’t going to mean squat to them. What will matter is to constantly point out the disparity between the Worker’s Paradise they were promised and the reality of the DPRK. The crushing, indifferent inhumanity of their ideology IN ACTION. The sheer capriciousness of those charged with implementing it. The cold inability to forgive.
It’s useful, critical even, to do the analytic work of breaking down the ideology, identifying where it comes from, what it’s characteristics are, how it’s plays out. Renaming it doesn’t do anything for this.
I, for one, don’t want social justice, whether the lower case fuzzy-feel good type, or the Capitalized Ideology type. It’s as toxic as “white justice” or “black justice” or “feminist justice.” Stick a modifier on it like that, and the modifier EXCLUDES. What does “Social Justice” exclude?
Exactly what Lemisko identifies.
The individual.
If we wish to build better individuals, what we need is more social Darwinism, not social justice.
Individuals ought to be free to oppress and be oppressed, to have “power over” as well as “power to” (as Foucault’s useless distinction-without-difference would have it).
It’s not possible to convert everyone into conservatives, libertarians, etc. We need people who are temperamentally liberal and even ‘progressive’ to wake up to the difference between this Beast and their own values. We need them to fight this. So I think it’s important to make this distinction for them. I’ve been reminding them of John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine. But if all they do is point out that “those were white men” I might not have the energy to waste on them.
The pursuit of critical theory — aka “grievance studies” — creates and nourishes an us vs. them mentality. Naturally “them” are evil and “us” are virtuous.
It is difficult to comprehend how so much scholarly effort has been expended over the ~90 year history of Marxism and NOT come to the conclusion that the oppressed always becomes the oppressor. It’s only matter of who is on top in the game of ideological musical chairs over the long arc of history!
Of course they would argue that the minority and the marginalized do not hold any real power and therefore can’t be accused of oppression, hate or any of the “isms”. But the “struggle” breeds the very mindset it seeks to destroy, regardless.
It should not require a great deal of religious or psychological studies to understand a few basic themes in human history. There is a paradox to be observed: If we work too hard to implement the “ideals” of a more equitable world, the pursuit of that outcome will invariably involve denying some — often many! — people of their illegitimate values and oppressive pursuits — i.e. private property, freedom of speech, the practice of religion or anything else on which the patriarchy rests.
At the core of it, Marxism is self cannibalization, not just economically but ethically, morally and individually. We can’t be cut from the same cloth as our oppressor — that is to share the same proclivity for power, greed and avarice — and yet somehow entrust the prolatariat to be others’ superior if only we can first “dismantle” the oppressor.
There is something to be said for human nature and the way the pursuit of power plays out in history. It is the pursuit of power — not the mere having of power — that justifies all manner of evil. Put another way, very few oppressors are consciously aware of being a part of the problem. Indeed, the struggle of which Marxists speak encourages them to be part of that problem because one must “oppress” the bad in order to realize the good.
In a very real sense it is the refusal to live with an imperfect world — to “settle” for small victories and to move the needle of change slowly and thanklessly that makes Marxism so dangerous. The pursuit of Utopia inevitably demands a hellscape, and yet True Believers rarely pause to ask themselves how this idealism (struggle) contributes to oppression.
This is not rocket science: If you have a superior idea, why constrain it to any real degree? It is virtuous enough to impose on others who are not smart enough to understand what is best for them! (This is how they can traffic in oxymorons such as “You will own nothing and be happy”.)
It is mind blowing to think that so much academic energy has been expended on critical studies without acknowledging the “intersectionality” of the abused and the abuser!
Like, “Socialist Justice” was right there.
In 1949 The God That Failed was published. Essays by about six prominent intellectuals, head and shoulders above the SJW’s, explaining how they were deluded by the religion of communism. Same old.
As defined in the first line of this article, social justice is about justice for groups. That is what is wrong with it. The concept cannot be applied without adopting the attitude that people are to be viewed through the filter of group membership. This point of view is exactly the rationale of the KKK, the Khmer Rouge, the Nazi party, etc. It is the mindset that leads cops to interrogate people who seem to be the wrong color for the neighborhood. There can be no justice for groups, only for individuals regardless of any groups they may belong to.
Human dignity.
My first thought for opponents of Critical Social Justice.
You need to present a different frame. It is frames, not words, that prevail in ideological struggles. If you reinforce your opponent’s frame, you will lose.
For example: Pro-life vs pro-choice. These are not placing different values or spins on the same thing; they are centred on different things. If you think that the question is life, choice is irrelevant. If you think that it is choice, life is not at issue. Frames are like world views: they cannot be reduced to one other. You don’t win by providing an excellent answer to your opponent’s question. You win by determining the question. The answer then follows naturally, even unconsciously.
Human dignity emphasizes our shared humanity, the importance of every individual, the need to respect ourselves and others.
Social justice emphasizes the group (social) over the individual. It calls for justice – which implies fairness, but it also implies redress of wrongs. It is punitive. An eye for an eye is just, but it is not good. We are all guilty of wrongs. The word justice points toward original sin intractable and tribal conflict.
Critical Social Justice does not respect human dignity. On the contrary, it attempts to destroy individuals in the collective (social) pursuit of revenge (justice) for past wrongs. When social justice crusaders disregard the humanity of their targets and abandon the dignity of themselves and others, it is because they think they have found something more important. Or because they have forgotten dignity. Remind them.
When they cry out, “don’t you believe in justice?”, the answer is not, “yes, but not like that.” It is rather, “don’t you think that all human beings deserve dignity?” The instant they answer that question, (“yes, but dignity demands justice”), they have accepted your frame, and you have won.
It’s so rare to find someone who really gets this.
Marxists and lawyers internalize early that language is the most important aspect of an argument and as such the argument doesn’t begin with premises, but framing.
So while “Critical Social Justice” might be accurate, it still chooses to do battle on your opponent’s turf.
“We are anti-fascists. Fascists are the bad guys, ergo, we are the good guys. How can you be against the good guys?”
So let’s describe them as “anti-humanists.” It encapsulates the liberal critique, alludes to their lack of regard for the moral worth or agency of the individual, and is historically grounded (the postmodernists were anti-humanists). The use can start as an adjective (“the anti-humanist SJWs/wokerati/identitarian left”) and transition to a name in its own right.
This draws a natural opposition to “human dignity” (which is a great term).
Never seek the dignity of all. It is playing God to do so.
All men may be created equal, but after creation they are not. Inequality – yes, vast and even oppressive inequality – is what built civilization and law and ease and culture.
Ultimately, justice itself is the enemy.
Injustice done right is freedom.
Perhaps this is why “All Lives Matter” inspires such rage, and then puts them into explanation (rationalization) mode, trying to say “no no it’s detracting from the point of social injustice to black people…”
A major point about a *minor* aspect of this article:
I despair at this phenomenon and appreciate y’all’s discipline in narrowing it down to “Critical Social Justice” (no matter how awkward/arcane the name). That being said, I won’t be calling it or its adherents “the enemy.” No matter how tribe-eschewing this grey-tribe/IDW/whateverthefuck group may be, we’re still inevitably drawn to tribalist behaviors. This is a positive when we need collective action, but we have to take care to avoid following in the footsteps of those we criticize.
At first the enemy is the ideology, not the people (love the sinner, hate the sin!). But as our frustrations build (and lordy, can CSJWs be frustrating) and rationally constructed ideas become well-worn neural pathways, it’s hard or even impossible to prevent our brains from mapping the term “enemy” to the people. Once that happens, we’re just another tribe saying unbelievably nasty shit to our so-called enemy: aka morally important conscious creatures with whom we have so much in common and whose initial conditions just happened to spin off in a different direction than our own. IMO Quillette is dangerously close to this. To not merely cast aspersions on others, I have personally come close (perhaps even crossing the line) to being just another flinger o’ poo. It is a real risk when engaging with this game.
The insufficiently asked eternal question: how to fight the enemy without becoming the enemy? If there is an answer at all, I suspect it is this: we refuse to have enemies. We eschew dichotomous language. We master kindness in the face of incredible frustration. We avoid speaking unless we can do so from a place of compassion rather than anger or intellectual self-indulgence.
Btw Helen does this better than anybody. Perhaps we all just need to drink more tea and channel our inner no-nonsense, direct but unassuming inner Helen 🙂
While I agree with the sentiment here, reality is that the adherents of this cult view you (us) as an enemy already and are acting accordingly. The hour is late.
The cultists have set up occupied zones in major American cities with the express permission of their democratically elected leaders, and their promoters in the mainstream media. Jews are being physically barred from outdoor communal spaces, while destructive rioters in multiple major American cities are being set free with no consequences. Democratically elected leaders are actively undermining local, state, and federal law, while vocally espousing the rhetoric and ideology Lindsay describes here.
That ideology explicitly calls for the destruction of the United States as it is currently constituted. They accept no compromise because they feel as though they are morally justified. They do not wish to engage in debate or discussion and have long, convoluted reasons for not doing so. As such, they are indeed “the enemy” of the free exchange of ideas and of a liberal democratic society.
It is best to be accurate.
All these terms a good IMO, in that they convey some negative aspect of the ideology.
For me though, the purpose of a term for this ideology needs to be at once recognisable to the educated layman, on the one hand, whilst also conveying its pathological nature on the other.
When commenting in the public domain I have been using Critical Pseudo-Justice although I think Antirealism Pseudo-justice might work as well.
The movement which you call “Critical Social Justice”,
I call “the anti-Enlightenment pseudo-left”.
So, would that mean Constructive Social Justice is pro-transgenderism, since it seeks the elimination of gender barriers?
Being pro-transgenderism doesn’t make any sense. Transgenderism is just something that exists, whether you are pro or anti it.
It’s like being pro-gravity or anti-tides. It’s silly.
I’m doubling down on going with James’ suggestion of using the term “Critical Social Justice”, and still nominating “Constructive Social Justice” for our alternative. The name for what we’re talking about needs to be:
1) positive sounding (and “Constructive” is),
2) simple,
3) related to what we’re actually talking about. (so best not to make up a new term entirely)
If you can have a sentence that allows you to affirm your commitment to social justice (of the non-critical variety), and criticize “Critical Social Justice”, you achieve several things:
1) you don’t sound like a jerk who’s opposed to social justice,
2) you express your opposition to “Critical Social Justice”,
3) you make your listener aware that there’s a controversy going on related to social justice, allowing you to start a conversation that explains that.
A good example sentence is, “I support Constructive Social Justice, but I think that Critical Social Justice is counter-productive to achieving our goals of making people’s lives better.” Then when your listener says, “Huh – what’s the difference between Constructive and Critical Social Justice?”, follow by pointing out that Constructive Social Justice is about eliminating barriers between groups with different characteristics (e.g. race, gender), while Critical Social Justice is about emphasizing those differences.
Maybe. I might suggest “Wokeness” as a better alternative.
No. That trivializes it and makes it sound like a silly but harmless fad.
What about “Oppression Olympics”?
I can get behind Critical Social Justice when talking to academics who understand the meaning behind “critical.” For others, I’m going to splice from the comments here and call it “Critical Social pseudo-Justice Fundamentalism” (CSpJF). A bit long but annihilatingly descriptive.
Your contact button for sending it’s not sending. So I’m putting it here.
Thank you for digesting all this information on critical theories and explaining what it means. As I do not have the time or the patience to read the original material.
Your encyclopedic explanations and linkage to other terms is wonderful. However I think you need to have a dictionary type or readers digest version for the masses.
I would think one of your goals would be to educate the masses and provoke a grassroots groundswell that inundates social media platforms to help stamp out the virus of “Critical Social Justice” Use the example of politics and the last election and this election with the information that caused the most change was not from the media or the pundits it was from the every day person posting on social media.
So giving small condensed bits of information ( sure put a hyperlink to the extended article) that can be understood by the masses and shared with their friends could make a big difference. Sharing will get the word out and will also show the person that shared with one of their friends that is a drone to CSJ and get attacked back how your points are even more valid.
My reasonings are quite simple and have been experienced by me. Not everyone has the brainpan to understand your explanations and sadly even more will not take the time to read something that’s more than a couple paragraphs. If they just look at the bullet points from your “name the enemy” article most people on first blush will look at it and say well that makes sense.
I deal with explaining to the masses on a daily basis. I am a doctor and I am thanked every day when I explain certain conditions to my patients in common terms. An example would be cataracts. I explain to them that cataracts are like the double pane window in your house that clouds up over time. Maybe it gets really cloudy and you have to replace the window, maybe it doesn’t but either way it’s going to affect how you see through the window. It’s not affecting the structure of your house so you can decide when you want to change the window.
An example with critical social justice would be saying your tagline of “I am against critical social justice because I am for social justice.” Followed by one sentence citing the book where they define critical social justice as not the same as social justice. And then I personally would pick the one point of equality vs equity. Because I think that point will resonate across the entire political and social spectrum. Simply social justice works for equality so that everybody gets a fair chance but CSJ pushes equity meaning they take something from you to give to somebody else to make it balanced. I’m sure you can say That last part better. But it has to be simple. Average Joe will have no problem understanding that under critical social justice their partner child etc. might not get into an educational institute or a job position that they want even though they are better qualified and have the same equality of opportunity to study and present themselves simply because critical social justice says it needs to be equity and we’re going to give that position to somebody else. That simple tenant of equity that in my opinion equals communism will resonate.
Sorry, I bloviate on at times but I hope this made sense and I hope you find it useful but as Helen said I have the freedom to say it and you have the freedom to ignore it.
Alan
What if you just called it “Hate-Butt” in order to convey how much you don’t like it?
Troll.
Yeah, comments like that are really a great example of constructive dissent. Several other people in this thread have provided examples and you’ve dismissed them out of hand just for the sake of disagreeing. In my opinion, you don’t want to have a serious debate, you just want to sneer.
And by the way, my problem with SJWs is not that they’re in an echo chamber and don’t want to have debates. That’s entirely their right. My problem is they want to impose their views on everyone else. If you want to go to echo chamber full of people who agree with you I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with you coming here just to engage in pointless trolling.
I’m also fond of “Social Justice Fundamentalism”, since Christian Fundamentalism also arose out of a opposition to both liberalism and modernism.
for us how about “Constructive Social Justice”?
I like the intent behind the use of “Constructive Social Justice” for actual social justice, but I imagine it could be confused with the Critical Social Justice notion that all human behavior is simply socially “constructed.”
James ,
You are absolutely right to identify the need for our own name for this thing, because the name they appropriated – social justice – is one which is part of “it”s strategy/transmission mechanism. It’s imperative that we can educate regular, well-meaning but busy people about what “it” (Critical Social Justice) actually is, and in order to do that we need a name we can all use consistently in order to get that message across.
Ideally, the name chosen for “it” would:
– have negative connotations (it certainly deserves them since its fundamentally racist, sexist, and anti-progressive),
– be simple,
– be related enough to what they themselves call “it” so that it’s clear that we’re talking about “it”.
Your name for “it” – “Critical Social Justice” may be the best we can do. I’m in if you are.
I would suggest, however, that we also reclaim a name for actual social justice in this process, possibly by adding our own word in front of it when necessary (e.g. Equality Social Justice.) (“Equality’s not great here, but our word needs to be positive – not just accurate. Please think on it.)
If we have these labels, we then enable people to identify their positions. I, for instance, would then be able to say, “I’m in favor of ___ Social Justice, but I’m absolutely opposed to Critical Social Justice, which is inherently racist and sexist!”,
What a great suggestion, to have a fixed term that allows a person to verbalize actual social justice in contrast to Critical Social Justice.
“Impartial” by the Oxford Dictionary definition means, “ treating all rivals or disputants equally; fair and just.”
So perhaps, “Impartial Social Justice.”
My only problem with this phrasing is that it’s not necessarily a catchy or gravitas-filled term. But to me it captures the qualities of how I want social justice to be applied, and further, it implies that the opposite of it is “partial,” thus biased and not actually social justice.
If, as I am, you’re in agreement with the author about the Marxian roots of this movement, allowing them the unchallenged use of “social justice” in any way still cedes ground, even with the qualifier “Critical”.
The inherent disadvantage we face is psychological. The sad fact of “explaining = losing” is the key. To the short attention-spanned, even the term “Critical Social Justice” requires an eye-glazing explanation to dislodge its undeserved moral superiority.
On further reflection, it is not justice. it is ‘critical theory pseudo-justice’.
The weakness in my view is in the term ‘social justice’ for the reasons outlined in this article.
However, the anti-realism nature of the underlying ethos is its weakness IMO.
‘Anti-realist pseudo-theory’ might work.
I’m aware of what happened at Evergreen, but admittedly I don’t understand how it could be described as a “Lord of the Flies witch hunt”, based on what I know about it (which is actually a lot more now than before, since I decided to look into it further). What causes you to describe it as such?
If you’d like to see real life consequences of this ideology taken to its prescribed destination, I suggest you watch Benjamin Boyce’s series about events at Evergreen State College, where the situation devolved into a completely uncontrollable Lord of the Flies witch hunt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Wny9TstEM
It’s pretty frightening.
Agreed!
So important to nail down a name for the Critical Social Justice movement. I can see the care James (and Helen, Peter and Mike) have given to come up with an accurate and distinguishing moniker. There are plusses and minuses to any label. To me, “Critical” is potentially problematic (!) in that most people are not familiar with the intricacies of Critical Theory, so when they first come across the term, they will not have an immediate intuitive sense of what it means, especially since “critical” can also be understood in a constructive and thus positive light. (As James has pointed out elsewhere, “Critical” in Theory-context means in essence that something is bad or wrong and doesn’t mean “constructive criticism.”) I personally prefer to name the movement “Social Justice Fundamentalism” (SJF), since even the uninitiated will have an immediate sense of what is being talked about, and since “fundamentalism” has an unquestionably negative connotation. This phrasing also highlights the quasi-religious aspects of the movement James and many others have cited.
I’ll be honest I don’t understand the fear around the supposed excesses of Social Justice. From my observations it seems like the worst thing that happens is people get called racist on the Internet. Doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.
A few things spring to my mind, namely:
– Tens of thousands of children who are “affirmed” in their “self-identified gender” are encouraged to take puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and perhaps even further undergo irreversible surgeries: double mastectomy (breast removal), hysterectomy and oophorectomy (womb and ovary removal), orchiectomy (castration), penectomy (the inversion of the penis. Why? To shatter the sex binary?
– Critical Social Justice creates a breeding ground for reactionary politics. From Gamergate, to 4Chan, to Reddit, online movements that position themselves against CSJ congregate and eventually emerge in the flesh, sometimes to explosive effect. I’d cite the Christchurch killer. There will be more of this over the coming years.
– Mainstream politicians absorb CSJ doctrines by osmosis and regurgitate them, without often comprehending what they’re saying. General public is alienated. Gambles on populists. Trump, Brexit, European National Populism – from the rust belt to Blyth valley to Bavaria, these events are, in a large part, a reaction to the CSJ narrative.
What? Do you have any evidence of those things? Sounds like something you are imagining. Sure even kids are allowed write a lot of freedom and they might later regret something. But there are crazier things going on such as school shootings, violence, crime that are much bigger problems, right?
So far, the worst thing that happens is people gather outside of the target’s home
to protest ((intimidate), academics have been fired or forced to resign, and many show up to shout down any person making a counterargument to the orthodoxy.
Protest seems perfectly fine to me as long as it doesn’t involve violence or threats of violence.
People get fired for all sorts of reasons all the time. I’ve yet to see any indication that Social Justice is a uniquely oppressive force in that regard. Same for the shouting down thing. It just doesn’t seem like *that* big of a deal, in the grand scheme of things.
I only graduated from college a little while ago and during my time there the most vocal group of activists were part of an anti-pornography movement.
If you don’t think it’s any big deal you don’t have to read this website. If you want to read articles defending and/or apologizing for it, you can find them on just about any mainstream website. Your opinion is highly represented in the mainstream press. The point of websites like this one is to provide a much-needed voice for people who do think it’s a problem.
Also, I wonder if you’d be so glib about it if you were the one being fired/shouted down.
Is this website being named “New Discourses” a lie? Am I not supposed to comment unless I’m in 100% agreement with the consensus opinion on here? I thought creating an echo chamber where criticism is rejected out of hand (you know, what SJWs are always accused of) was supposed to be a bad thing.
Frankly, I’m not super worried about getting fired/shouted down because I have the wherewithal to not shout inflammatory opinions in public forums.
Though the surface was already ably scratched for you by Francis Aaron and you declined to respond, allow me expound and add to it.
First, no one was criticizing protest. This is a tactic so common in response to the legitimate criticisms raised here that it was likely learned in your recent stint in college. This gets to the heart of the author’s post and the linguistic games employed by adherents of Critical Social Justice. However, it is difficult to defend protesting at private residences as anything other than “threats of violence”; even more so when they frequently involve trespassing (illegal) and actual threats of violence. These are the concrete things under discussion (and all easily sourced), not abstract strawmen attacks on the right to protest.
You’re conflating getting fired for legitimate reasons (not oppression) with getting fired for expressing opinions contrary to Critical Social Justice (oppression). The growing trend of suppressing thought and speech through destruction of people’s livelihoods and careers through social media Struggle Sessions is a destructive problem, not something to be glibly reduced to “being called racist on the internet”.
I have a minor quibble with Francis’s comment above, but I think the essence is correct. By suppressing contrary opinion, you breed extreme opinion. By labeling perfectly rational opinion and disagreement as extreme, you encourage violent extremism on the other end, as seen by the riots and killings in the name of “justice”, or even just the rioting and violence of the past four years.
There is a strong taboo against harming those who aren’t like us whereas it is more difficult to make a case for a nebulous concept like “nation”. A nation exists in people’s collective imagination as an extension of family and tribe. People want to be anchored in a nation (hard to explain those exceptions though – upper whites and high achievers)?
It’s June 2020.
Do you understand now?
People lose their jobs for questioning Big Brother which Social Justice (Collective solipsism) has become.
I find your quote from Sensoy and d’Angelo unexceptional from the point of view of a social liberal, and the general points you make about “critical social justice” – anti-rationalism, valorisation of subjective experience, oppressive intolerance – although an accurate description of the movement, do not flow logically from it.
I agree with you George Sandford, but I would go much further than your mild and restrained cautionary point, to say that the section following, on postmodernism,which includes the following sentences, “The postmodern view is that, short of our own unnarrated subjective experience, everything in human life is a socially contingent construct. Reality may be out there, but we can’t know it,” this is not only an erroneous one-eyed take on postmodernism but in addition, it follows a distinct gap in the argument as to why Sensoy and DiAngelo’s work is rooted in such an idea. Why do Sensoy and DiAngelo become the embidiment of “the enemy”? This completely escapes me. “[T]he postmodern context of Critical Social Justice has to be brought into scrutiny,” yet this article does not succeeed in doing any such thing, it is really a piece of name calling.
It is such a convolution don’t think they are the enemy at all, which begs the question of who is the enemy? It seems to me that if the enemy is so very hard to find, so very hard to name, and requiring such a torturous argument to identify—so unconvincingly, that this enemy is a phantom menace; that is to say pure projection.
Rarely have I read so much pseudo-intellectual nonsense in one place.
1) He doesn’t give any examples of what he thinks ‘CSJ’ is beyond implying that gender studies is “like” it. It seems to be anyone or anything that acknowledges systemic injustices in society. But systemic injustices have been proven, so he’s attacking an objective fact and claiming that anyone who pays attention to this objective fact is following a “parasitic ideology”.
2) He names Sensoy and DiAngelo (S/A) as co-writers on a 2012 piece, but S/A aren’t the arbiters of what other people believe or what views they follow. Lindsay writes as if by criticising this one publication he can somehow build an argument against anyone and everyone who acknowledge the existence of systemic injustices. That’s ludicrous.
3) He acknowledges that ‘cultural marxism’ is an anti-semitic conspiracy theory, but then proceeds to claim it’s also a real thing without actually specifying the difference between the real thing and the conspiracy.
4) He claims that ‘CSJ’ proponents believe biological sex is a social construct. No evidence for that. No sources. Just “trust me bro” levels of argument.
5) He claims that ‘CSJ’ proponents think there’s no such thing as objective truth, but that’s obviously absurd in the context of his own definition of CSJ. The people who acknowledge the existence of e.g. systemic sexism mostly aren’t postmodernists. In fact the evidence for systemic injustices is rooted in the notion that there is such a thing as objective truth, and it’s proving the injustices exist. These people would be blowing apart their own arguments if they actually believed this.
6) It repeatedly claims that ‘CSJ’ is Marxist but fails to draw any link between what Marxism actually is (i.e. a materialist form of historiography with an obsession for ascribing the trends in human history to a narrow set of economic parameters) and what they claim ‘CSJ’ to be (a postmodernist analysis of contemporary society with an obsession on social factors, no objective truths, and identity.) In short, it’s mutually contradictory garbage.
7) Lindsay then lies and misquotes the very S/A passage he cherry-picked, claiming that “change the fabric of society” equals “dismantling the fabric of society”. Change isn’t dismantlement. But Lindsay goes further, criticising the people who want to “dismantle” the fabric of society as having no replacement for it. But they don’t want to dismantle the fabric of society. They didn’t say that; Lindsay did.
8) He claims humour will be banned in what he calls “the social justice revolution”. Jesus Christ.
9) He attacks S/A for advocating social activism, as though that’s somehow bad? Lindsay spins the word “must” in the most absurd manner. If I said “to be liberal, a person must care about equal rights”, that’s a reasonable and defensible statement. It’s not some authoritarian persecution. It’s a figure of speech, not the Stasi.
10) He claims ‘CSJ’ is a faith. Which even in the context of his own definition is an obvious lie. By his own argument, anyone that commits themselves to a lifelong political effort is religious. So… pretty much all politicians and political supporters of all stripes then?
”10) He claims ‘CSJ’ is a faith ”
Mention the words ‘Lindsay’ ‘Faith’ and critical social justice together & the closest ancestor to those 3 is New Atheism. Woke is an obsession equal in nature to the disease that causes people to be obsessed with hating religion people i.e new atheism is not only itself ‘WOKE’ , its first wave woke that birthed all the others.
So you are up against the delusions generated by that tragic set of dichotomies when addressing James Lindsay.
James is not very able to decode the complex entanglements that the cabalists place in the way of CSJ meta-analysis, thats why every video is an anti religious rant in drag. When one opponent is far less less skilled in Boxing, they might well turn to hugging /closing down the better athlete to prevent thier boxing superiority. The globalist social engineers have always set up this ‘Hug Effect’. In other words where psychosocial architecture is always a deliberate mess – Lindsay seems to spend every waking hour trying to ‘explain’ things that that are there only to impede people like Lindsay who will insist they are relevant.
At present White Fragility is THE mother of all red herring hug effects. It is causing anger among black people and white people for a simple reason – White Fragility is Misanthropy ? :
The social engineering lab that made it intends WF to hate all people.
WF hates all people since it works because white fragility hates white people by default & causing black people to take advantages of a free license to hate white people. Thus its design hates everyone ultimately considering that the reason rascism is considered taboo is that its a all destructive HATE considering it includes both the individual self & society
WF has enraged white people more than black people, though its the latter who’ve weaponised WF.. White people can themselves resort to nihilistic anti white racism and some do. Although eminent nihilists likely to be faked professional nihilists similar to BLM activists! Surprising ? – no ofc not this WF stuff is meant to screw the entire ordinary people population over. Does James Lindsay carefully disentangle these webs of lies the cabalist set up in order to firewall off their central thesis – NO!!!! James is busy swinging a hang bag at every piece of red herring they’ve put out and he totally smells of fish.
The clue is in the way James knows how to say Neo Marxist. But hasn’t a clue that new marxism ( and new everything ) is the way the cabalists neutralise every bone fide form of peoples social justice. Now i stay away almost entirely from the controversial commie writers because the governments have MADE SURE they are nothing but trouble. Marx when alive was against the corrupt people. If he was here now he’d be discussing commie ideals ( yes ). However he would be disparaging the current globalist crooks. James just cannot understand a major historical process I.E the way feudalist systems ( that includes the non monarchal oligarchs of america ) appropriate the work of their opponents and postructuralise it.
WHILE JL IS GOING : BLAH BLAH THIS THAT THEY’VE GOT POSTMODERNISM WOKE /// QUEER // PINK // BUM // BLAH BLAH BLAH – right ?
He cannot grasp that every so often the powers that be in the world appropriate the ideas of their intellectual enemies & have the re-written so that its all blended in to their misanthropic agenda.
= Post Structuralism
Doing this is what can be considered a ‘post truth interlude’ where the enemy is neutralised & therefore becomes a weapon thats now on the cabalist side.James doesn’t know how to deal with these abstractions // talks a load of sht as a result.
Analogous to driving up the wrong side of the motorway // autobahn // freeway // = traffic thats being directed to drive in an opposite direction & the drivers do not know how to avoid this deliberate carnage.
Thats James – he simply MUST play with the smoke & mirrors traffic the globalists put out. But the again New atheist HQ make sure the followers do ..What is anti religion to a new atheist anyway ? Its a thought crime design = I.E you Mr believer are not allowed to THINK THAT. Well christianity is virtually against the law in the UK now because its ‘thought crime’. However these thought crime dilemmas are by no means restricted to accusing religious people of them anymore – they’ve been inflicted on all society now.Coincidence ? – NO New Atheism design them. What is James Lindsay ( a new atheist ) doing ?
Fighting the infinite shoals of RED HERRING.
The question is then WHO taught James to encourage people to do THAT?
My best guess is New Atheism again.
“In the Critical Social Justice revolution, we’ll have to prefer “post-comedy” or “post-humor,” which is meant to teach lessons, not evoke laughter.”
Hannah “Didactic” Gadsby, anyone?