I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked why it is that the Woke won’t seem to have a debate or discussion about their views, and I’ve been meaning to write something about it for ages, probably a year at this point. Surely you’ll have noticed that they don’t tend to engage in debates or conversation?
It is not, as many think, a fear of being exposed as fraudulent or illegitimate—or otherwise of losing the debate or looking bad in the challenging conversation—that prevents those who have internalized a significant amount of the Critical Social Justice Theory mindset that prevents these sorts of things from happening. There’s a mountain of Theoretical reasons that they would avoid all such activities, and even if those are mere rationalizations of a more straightforward fear of being exposed as fraudulent or losing, they are shockingly well-developed and consistent rationalizations that deserve proper consideration and full explanation.
I often get asked specifically if there’s some paper or book out there in the Critical Social Justice literature that prohibits or discourages debate and conversation with people who don’t already agree with them. I honestly don’t know. I’ve looked in a cursory fashion and haven’t found one, but, then, Critical Social Justice scholars are also rather incredibly prolific (an undeniable benefit of having no rigorous standards to meet and a surplus of ideological zeal, as it happens). That is to say, there’s a lot of Woke literature out there, and maybe someone has explained it very clearly and at length with a lot of specificity, but if so, I haven’t seen it. So far as I know, there’s not some specific piece of scholarship that closes the Woke off to debate, like a single paper or book explaining why they don’t do it. It’s just part of the Woke mindset not to do it, and the view of the world that informs that mindset can be read throughout their scholarship.
There are a number of points within Critical Social Justice Theory that would see having a debate or conversation with people of opposing views as unacceptable, and they all combine to create a mindset where that wouldn’t be something that adherents to the Theory are likely or even willing to do in general. This reticence, if not unwillingness, to converse with anyone who disagrees actually has a few pretty deep reasons behind it, and they’re interrelated but not quite the same. They combine, however, to produce the first thing everyone needs to understand about this ideology: it is a complete worldview with its own ethics, epistemology, and morality, and theirs is not the same worldview the rest of us use. Theirs is, very much in particular, not liberal. In fact, theirs advances itself rather parasitically or virally by depending upon us to play the liberal game while taking advantage of its openings. That’s not the same thing as being willing to play the liberal game themselves, however, including to have thoughtful dialogue with people who oppose them and their view of the world. Conversation and debate are part of our game, and they are not part of their game.
1. They Think the System Is Rigged Against Them
The first thing to understand about the way adherents to Critical Social Justice view the world is just how deeply they have accepted the belief that we operate within a wholly systemically oppressive system. That system extends to literally everything, not just material structures, institutions, law, policies, and so on, but also into cultures, mindsets, ways of thinking, and how we determine what is and isn’t true about the world. In their view, the broadly liberal approach to knowledge and society is, in fact, rotted through with “white, Western, male (and so on) biases,” and this is such a profound departure from how the rest of us—broadly, liberals—think about the world that it is almost impossible to understand just how deeply and profoundly they mean this.
In a 2014 paper by the black feminist epistemology heavyweight Kristie Dotson, she explains that our entire epistemic landscape is itself profoundly unequal. Indeed, she argues that it is intrinsically and “irreducibly” so, meaning that it is not possible from within the prevailing system of knowledge and understanding to understand or know that the system itself is unfairly biased toward certain ways of knowing (white, Western, Eurocentric, male, etc.) and thus exclusionary of other ways of knowing (be those what they may). That is, Dotson explains that when we look across identity groups, not only do we find a profound lack of “shared epistemic resources” by which people can come to understand things in the same way as one another, but also that the lack extends to the ability to know that that dismal state of affairs is the case at all. This, she refers to as “irreducible” epistemic oppression, which she assigns to the third and most severe order of forms of epistemic oppression, and says that it requires a “third-order change” to the “organizational schemata” of society (i.e., a complete epistemic revolution that removes the old epistemologies and replaces them with new ones) in order to find repair.
This view is then echoed and amplified, for example, in a lesser-read 2017 paper by the Theorist Alison Bailey. Therein she invokes explicitly that in the neo-Marxist “critical” tradition, which is not to be mistaken for the “critical thinking” tradition of the Western canon, critical thinking itself and that which is seen to produce and legitimize it are part of the “master’s tools” that black feminist Audre Lorde wrote “will never dismantle the master’s house.” Since nobody ever believes me that she really writes this, here’s the quote:
The critical-thinking tradition is concerned primarily with epistemic adequacy. To be critical is to show good judgment in recognizing when arguments are faulty, assertions lack evidence, truth claims appeal to unreliable sources, or concepts are sloppily crafted and applied. For critical thinkers, the problem is that people fail to “examine the assumptions, commitments, and logic of daily life… the basic problem is irrational, illogical, and unexamined living.” In this tradition sloppy claims can be identified and fixed by learning to apply the tools of formal and informal logic correctly.
Critical pedagogy begins from a different set of assumptions rooted in the neo-Marxian literature on critical theory commonly associated with the Frankfurt School. Here, the critical learner is someone who is empowered and motivated to seek justice and emancipation. Critical pedagogy regards the claims that students make in response to social-justice issues not as propositions to be assessed for their truth value, but as expressions of power that function to re-inscribe and perpetuate social inequalities. Its mission is to teach students ways of identifying and mapping how power shapes our understandings of the world. This is the first step toward resisting and transforming social injustices. By interrogating the politics of knowledge-production, this tradition also calls into question the uses of the accepted critical-thinking toolkit to determine epistemic adequacy. To extend Audre Lorde’s classic metaphor, the tools of the critical-thinking tradition (for example, validity, soundness, conceptual clarity) cannot dismantle the master’s house: they can temporarily beat the master at his own game, but they can never bring about any enduring structural change. They fail because the critical thinker’s toolkit is commonly invoked in particular settings, at particular times to reassert power: those adept with the tools often use them to restore an order that assures their comfort. They can be habitually invoked to defend our epistemic home terrains. (pp. 881–882)
Here, the “master’s tools” are explicitly named by Bailey as including soundness and validity of argument, conceptual clarity, and epistemic adequacy (i.e., knowing what you’re talking about) and can easily be extended to science, reason, and rationality, and thus also to conversation and debate. The “master’s house” is the “organizational schemata” laid out by Kristie Dotson as the prevailing knowing system. Her claim is that these tools—essentially all of the liberal ones—cannot dismantle liberal societies from within, which is their goal, because they are the very tools that build and keep building it.
Bailey’s point is clear: the usual tools by which we identify provisional truths and settle scholarly disagreements are part of the hegemonically dominant system that, by definition, cannot be sufficiently radical to create real revolutionary change (a “third-order” change, as Dotson has it). That is, they can’t reorder society in the radical way they deem necessary. The belief, as both scholars explain in different ways, is that to play by the existing rules (like conversation and debate as a means to better understand society and advance truth) is to automatically be co-opted by those rules and to support their legitimacy, beside one deeper problem that’s even more significant.
The deeper, more significant aspect of this problem is that by participating in something like conversation or debate about scholarly, ethical, or other disagreements, not only do the radical Critical Social Justice scholars have to tacitly endorse the existing system, they also have to be willing to agree to participate in a system in which they truly believe they cannot win. This isn’t the same as saying they know they’d lose the debate because they know their methods are weak. It’s saying that they believe their tools are extremely good but not welcome in the currently dominant system, which is a different belief based on different assumptions. Again, their game is not our game, and they don’t want to play our game at all; they want to disrupt and dismantle it.
Their analysis would insist that their methods aren’t weak; it’s that the dominant system treats them unfairly. By being forced to participate in the dominant system, they therefore believe, they’re being cheated of the full force of their cause. To them, if we set the legitimization of the system part aside, to engage in scholarly conversation or debate is like a boxer stepping into an MMA match in which kicks, punches, throwing, and grappling are all on the table for the MMA fighter whereas gloved punches are the only thing the boxer is allowed to use, only far worse.
Debate and conversation, especially when they rely upon reason, rationality, science, evidence, epistemic adequacy, and other Enlightenment-based tools of persuasion are the very thing they think produced injustice in the world in the first place. Those are not their methods and they reject them. Their methods are, instead, storytelling and counter-storytelling, appealing to emotions and subjectively interpreted lived experience, and problematizing arguments morally, on their moral terms. Because they know the dominant liberal order values those things sense far less than rigor, evidence, and reasoned argument, they believe the whole conversation and debate game is intrinsically rigged against them in a way that not only leads to their certain loss but also that props up the existing system and then further delegitimizes the approaches they advance in their place. Critical Social Justice Theorists genuinely believe getting away from the “master’s tools” is necessary to break the hegemony of the dominant modes of thought. Debate is a no-win for them.
Therefore, you’ll find them resistant to engaging in debate because they fully believe that engaging in debate or other kinds of conversation forces them to do their work in a system that has been rigged so that they cannot possibly win, no matter how well they do. They literally believe, in some sense, that the system itself hates people like them and has always been rigged to keep them and their views out. Even the concepts of civil debate (instead of screaming, reeeee!) and methodological rigor (instead of appealing to subjective claims and emotions) are considered this way, as approaches that only have superiority within the dominant paradigm, which was in turn illegitimately installed through political processes designed to advance the interests of powerful white, Western men (especially rich ones) through the exclusion of all others. And, yes, they really think this way.
For adherents to Critical Social Justice Theory, then, there’s just no point to engaging in conversation or debate with people with whom they disagree. They reject the premise that such a thing is possible at all, because what is discussed or debated are, if changeable, in some sense matters of opinion. They don’t see the world this way at all, though. “Racism is not a matter of opinion” is, after all, one of their thought-stopping mantras. For them, disagreements across a stratifying axis of social power are a matter of being, experience, reality, and even life and death. These are not matters to be debated; they’re far too important for that.
2. A Metaphysics of Discourses
Secondly, the organizing principle of their worldview is that two things structure society: discourses and systems of power maintained by discourses. Regarding the systems of power, their underlying belief is genuinely that of the Critical Theorists: society is divided into oppressors versus oppressed, and the oppressors condition the beliefs and culture of society such that neither they nor the oppressed are aware of the realities of their oppression. That is, everyone who isn’t “Woke” to the realities of systemic oppression lives in a form of false consciousness. Members of dominant groups have internalized their dominance by accepting it as normal, natural, earned, and justified and therefore are unaware of the oppression they create. Members of “minoritized” groups have often internalized their oppression by accepting it as normal, natural, and just the way things are and are therefore unaware of the extent of the oppression they suffer or its true sources. In both cases, though in different ways and to different ends, the falsely conscious need to be awakened to a critical consciousness, i.e., become Critical Theorists.
Adherents to this worldview will not want to have conversations or debate with people who do not possess a critical consciousness because there’s basically no point to doing such a thing. Unless they can wake their debate or conversation partner up to Wokeness on the spot, they’d see it as though they’re talking to zombies who can’t even think for themselves. Unwoke people are stuck thinking in the ways dominant and elite powers in society have socialized them into thinking (you could consider this a kind of conditioning or brainwashing by the very machinations of society and how it thinks). We will return to this aspect of the problem further down in the essay.
For now, we’ll turn our attention to how that socialization (into accepting the dominant views) is alleged to happen, which is through dominant discourses. The Critical Social Justice worldview holds that systemic power structures society, and systemic power is a function of which “discourses” are viewed as legitimate and which aren’t. That discourse-legitimation process, which is roughly what is described in the section above, is viewed from within Theory as a set of wholly political decisions, mostly because of the Theorizing of the French postmodernist Michel Foucault.
Foucault held, among his many ideas, that whether or not a truth claim is actually true or not is mostly irrelevant because the interesting thing to focus upon is the political process that allows certain people (say, scientists) to be regarded as recognized authenticators of truths. This process is what shapes the prevailing discourses and thus defines, as Foucault had it, a “regime of truth” or “episteme” that dictates what is and isn’t considered true (whether it is true or not) and thus how society will be organized politically, socially, and practically. In particular, it explains what ideas will be considered accepted and acceptable and which will be considered unacceptable, unthinkable, or crazy. In this way, power, as “power/knowledge” works through everyone at all times, and this is the backbone of how Foucault framed the world.
Again, it is difficult to express from within the liberal paradigm (to their point, I guess) just how fully and profoundly they believe this. Their view constructs, in fact, a metaphysics of discourses that, in some sense, becomes the operative mythology underlying all of society and its operation. Because of the already critical orientation of the postmodernists and then the further amplification of taking on Critical Theory much more fully later, Critical Social Justice views this metaphysics of discourses in a very particular way with regard to the moral valence of how discourses are constructed.
This, by the way, outlines what Helen Pluckrose and I called “the postmodern knowledge principle” and “the postmodern political principle” in our forthcoming book, Cynical Theories. The knowledge principle is that knowledge is socially constructed and the result of political processes, and therefore objective truth is unattainable and irrelevant except in that some people make unjustified claims upon having access to it. The political principle is that these unjustified claims create a form of hegemonic dominance that needs to be deconstructed and dismantled through manipulations within the discourses at the level of the meanings of ideas.
You really do have to understand this like a religious view, very much like a Holy Spirit that is the Word, where the “Word” is the prevailing discourses, and the “Spirit” isn’t really holy: it’s systems of power and attempts at their disruption. Power is viewed to work through all people at all times as a result of the discourses that they accept and participate in, and so participating in conversation or debate with people who uphold the dominant discourses causes that power to work through you as well. That makes you complicit in the dominant discourses, even if you think you reject them, which makes having a conversation with the wrong person tantamount to a sin. This attitude is overwhelmingly present in the critical whiteness literature, which devotes a considerable portion of all of its proliferation to pointing out that white progressives who try to help out are the worst kind of racists because they no longer think that they’re equally significant conduits of the problematic dominant discourses and systems of society.
That’s a bit complicated, I admit, and so a simplification of this idea is that adherents to Critical Social Justice see discourses—ways we think it is legitimate to talk about things—as the true fabric of reality and thus the core site of ethical consideration. This is their mythology, in a nutshell. As such, they will not be willing to participate in any process that reinforces, maintains, upholds, reproduces, or legitimizes the unjustly dominant discourses, as they see them. Supporting those is, in fact, just about the highest sin one can commit in the Woke faith. The discourses must instead be engineered into a state of perfection—God’s Kingdom through Perfect Language—and it would not be permissible to engage in any behavior or process that allows oppression to be spoken from or into our discourses. Conversation and debate with people who speak from and in support of the dominant discourses would certainly therefore be considered highly problematic, and anyone who participates in it intentionally or even neglectfully would similarly be problematic.
So, their view of conversation and debate in this regard is one that considers it with extreme reticence and caution. Foucault said that it’s not that everything is bad but that everything is dangerous, and under the “metaphysics of discourses” that they’ve adopted and adapted from him, they would see conversation with people who uphold the dominant discourses as profoundly dangerous, not just for themselves, lest they be tempted and lose purity, but for others who will hear it and thus maintain the very power structures they think must be fundamentally dismantled. This fear that people will speak the wrong way and uphold “hate speech” or some such is so profound that they will be very wary of engaging in conversation or debate with people who disagree with them on principle, even with all other concerns set aside.
3. No True Disagreement
Thirdly, adding to this is a theme we draw out significantly in the eighth chapter of Cynical Theories: they believe all disagreement with them to be illegitimate. If we followed from Dotson in the paper named above and another slightly earlier one (2011) about “epistemic violence,” it could be pinned on what she calls “pernicious ignorance.” Robin DiAngelo would call it “white fragility” to disagree. Alison Bailey refers to it as an attempt to preserve one’s privilege under the kind of term George Carlin lived to make fun of: “privilege-preserving epistemic pushback” (four words, twelve syllables, one hyphen). Further, Bailey said all attempts to criticize Critical Social Justice thought, because they come from that “critical thinking” and not the “critical theory” tradition (within which they’d obviously agree), generate “shadow texts” that follow along but don’t truly engage (in the correctly “critical” way; i.e., agreement with her). Barbara Applebaum said similar in her 2010 book, Being White, Being Good, wherein she explains that the only legitimate way to disagree with Critical Social Justice education in the classroom is to ask questions for clarification until one agrees (which, you might notice, isn’t disagreeing at all).
In general, as mentioned a bit earlier in the essay, if you disagree, you either have false consciousness or the willful intention to oppress, and so your disagreement isn’t genuine. Only disagreement that comes from a Critical Theory perspective would be genuine, but this isn’t actually disagreement with the Woke worldview, only with superficial aspects of how it is playing out. The Woke view genuinely is that unless you agree with the Woke worldview, you haven’t disagreed with the Woke worldview in an authentic way, and therefore your disagreement cannot be legitimate. Read it again: unless you actually agree, you didn’t disagree correctly (cue Jim Carrey as the karate teacher defending against the knife attacker).
Now put yourself in the mind of someone who really thinks this way. The Critical Social Justice view of their conversation or debate partner is literally someone who is willfully, actively, or perniciously misunderstanding and misrepresenting all of their arguments in order to preserve their own dominant status and the system in which they are unjustly granted that dominance. Would you debate with someone you know would only be a bad-faith actor who is operating not in the interest of the truth but instead in their own selfish political interests? Not unless cornered. But this is how the Critical Social Justice advocate thinks about anyone who disagrees with them, in addition to seeing them as utterly morally degenerate.
4. Guilt by Association with Racists
Fourthly, the Critical Social Justice view sees people who occupy positions of systemic power and privilege and yet who refuse to acknowledge and work to dismantle them, to the full satisfaction of the Critical Social Justice Theorists, to be utterly morally reprehensible. They are racists. They are misogynists. They hate trans people and want to deny their very existence. They are bigots. They are fascists. They are “literal” Nazis. Not only that, they are willfully so, and their main objective is to defend and spread their hateful ideology in the world. If you truly believe this about the people you’ve been asked to have a conversation with, would you be about to help them do that by giving them a platform and lending your own imprimatur to them? Of course not. Such views are not even to be tolerated, much less entertained, engaged with, platformed, or amplified.
Furthermore, because of the theories of complicity in systemic evils that live at the heart of Theory, such a stain is automatically contagious, in addition to whatever real damage it does to further its advancement into the world. As they tweet, so they are: “ten people at a table with one Nazi is eleven Nazis at a table.” And not only are they supposed to endorse the platforming of that by sharing a stage with people they see this way, but they’re supposed to do it in ways that the dominant system, which is all of those things as well and their guarantor, approves of and advances its own interests through. These horrible ways include civil conversation and debate, which aren’t happening.
To give you some idea of just how extreme they are in their fear of being associated with people “on the wrong side of history,” there is a (somewhat fringe) concept within the Critical Social Justice worldview called “non-consensual co-platforming” (two words, nine syllables, one hyphen). What this concept describes is the following situation. Imagine that a Critical Social Justice Theorist were to publish an essay in the New York Times Opinion column this month, and a couple of months from now, I were invited to do so and did. Now we’re both people who have essays published in the New York Times Opinion column. The logic of “non-consensual co-platforming” would be that the editors of that column did a bad by putting me, a known undesirable, in the Opinion pages where there is also a Woke purist, obviously without having first got her consent to have been “co-platformed” with me in the same publication. (This example is rare, but more common is the same claim made about being platformed to speak at the same conference.) Now, the Woke purist is in the unpleasant situation of having been published in a place that is willing to sully its own reputation later by the publication of some deviant rascal. This is how seriously they take the stain of guilt by association.
The Woke ideology is so sensitive to the moral taint of being associated with moral undesirables that—again, especially in the context of a conference lineup—they believe that stain of co-platforming is contagious even in this extraordinarily distant way. If you think that people who think this way about moral contagion are going to get on stage and have a conversation with you, you’re positively out of your mind.
5. They’re Too Tired
As a fifth and final point, since this is getting pretty long already, remember that Critical Social Justice activists tell us more or less constantly how exhausting it is to fight this constant uphill battle in which no one takes them seriously (read: fight shadows of their own nightmarish projection). They tell us constantly about the high emotional labor costs of doing the “work” they do (and never being taken seriously for it). To invite them to a public conversation or debate is to ask them to get exploited in this way for other people’s benefit by getting up on stage in a dominance-approved paradigm with a bad-faith moral monster who just wants his opportunity to reinforce the very dominance that exhausts them in front of an audience who not only doesn’t but can’t actually get it, unless they already do. Again, that’s not happening. Even if very handsomely (read: ridiculously and exorbitantly) paid for their “emotional labor” to subject themselves to this situation, the other four points make it a nonstarter (and would drive up the price to basically literally infinity).
In Sum
One of the biggest mistakes we keep making as liberals who do value debate, dialogue, conversation, reason, evidence, epistemic adequacy, fairness, civility, charity of argument, and all these other “master’s tools” is that we can expect that advocates of Critical Social Justice also value them. They don’t. Or, we make the mistake that we can possibly pin Critical Social Justice advocates into having to defend their views in debate or conversation. We can’t.
These principles and values are rejected to their very roots within the Critical Social Justice worldview, and so the request for an advocate to have a debate or conversation with someone who disagrees will, to the degree they have adopted the Critical Social Justice Theoretical ideology/faith, be a complete nonstarter. It’s literally a request to do the exact opposite of everything their ideology instructs with regard to how the world and “systemic oppression” within it operates—to participate in their own oppression and maintain oppression of the people they claim to speak for.
These facts about the Critical Social Justice ideology extend from the microcosm of engaging in debate and conversation to each of those specific “master’s tools” a—science, reason, epistemic adequacy, civility, etc.—every bit as much as they do to the whole system that these tools combine to form: liberalism in the Modern era. This is a system that advocates of Critical Social Justice repeatedly tell us must be dismantled in the sparking of a “critical” revolution that replaces the whole of it, including its basic epistemology and ethics, with Critical Theory.
The hard truth is this: if you don’t yet understand this, you don’t know the fight we’re in or have the slightest idea what to do about it.
127 comments
Good article, but I remain unconvinced that points 1 through 5 aren’t mostly a rationalization for exactly this:
“a fear of being exposed as fraudulent or illegitimate—or otherwise of losing the debate or looking bad in the challenging conversation”
This stuff doesn’t survive the sunlight. It doesn’t survive in one on one encounters. It doesn’t survive real human relationships. It doesn’t being pressed *at all* from *any* angle. Even when they’re allowed to arbitrarily define all these rhetorical terms and gotchas, they’re arguments still crumble.
The only way it survives is hidden behind emotion. It only survives riding the mob or tribalism. It only survives by parasitizing noble causes or strategically hiding behind societal taboos. It only survives where the power structures are carefully arranged ahead of time to protect it, like someone read Foucault as a how-to guide.
I’m sure there are some kooks, but there’s no way most of the big names in this stuff are not, at least on some level, self-aware to the fact that if they ever found themselves on a fair debate stage in a public forum with a large enough audience watching, the entire critical social justice project would be set back decades.
If they were not self-aware there’s no way they’d have crafted this elaborate web so intricately, sticking to the shadows, remaining unknown or partially known, slowly revealing a bit here or a piece there, but only when then power structure is tilted significantly enough in their favor, only when they have the rhetorical kill move and don’t need to fall back on logic or knowledge or truthfulness, do they expose themselves and inch forward their influence.
There’s no way they’d focus so much on branding, marketing, rhetorical traps, and emotional manipulation over traditional scholarship. They know what they’re doing.
It is EXACTLY “a fear of being exposed as fraudulent or illegitimate—or otherwise of losing the debate or looking bad in the challenging conversation”. and the people who constructed all of the system of Critical Social Justice Theory knew it. They hate the very idea of truth more than anything because they cannot stand the idea of being wrong. It is an affront to their very existence. It is why their entire system starts with the assertion that “truth” is bullshit and that anyone who thinks there’s truth, and thus supports all of its associated “systems” for discovering it, are evil. All of this is quite literally an assault on western civilization, which catapulted itself forward in search of truths of many sorts, by a nihilistic, narcissistic religion of anti-truth.
They don’t debate, because they reject the very notion of objective reality, and debate is pointless if it doesn’t lead to truth about the objective reality. Everything else was built upon that. The relation of debating to more elaborate constructs like critical race theory as explained in the article are pure retconning.
This article never claims that they are not self-aware. They are, and they willingly reject the very basis of what you call ‘fair debate’ or ‘arguments’ for the reasons explained; in that light, dismantling the “master’s house” using its own tools only when they see a possibility to win is perfectly understandable.
I really don’t see the fear to be exposed as being the impetus for their movement, but rather they have constructed an honest worldview where they are not part of the same epistemic paradigm as us, and theirs is the good one.
Please explain why you think their worldview is the good one.
Oh, I forgot–you don’t debate or explain. So let’s meet and literally physically fight it out, with the one who’s left standing being considered “right.”
I’m betting you’re young and inexperienced in the world.
I believe Flo is not saying she thinks their world view is the good one–but rather, reporting on what she believes THEIR narrative is.
Well said, male. My thoughts are simple. IF their “truth” is so good and a society should be built on this no-oppressive ideology, why can they only destroy everything in front of them. If I handed one of them a shovel and a trowel and some mortar, could they build a building, or a home, or anything of value to someone else’s life? Would that be considered being oppressive? After every building is destroyed, every memory or monument is erased, who will build this great society of freedom that they dream about? Oh, and of course, they will want to rule it. Will they then become the oppressors? Very simple truth, Jesus said. “I am the way, the Truth and the Life.”
Flo – I believe you’ve summarized it well.
Excellent points. While many Leftists are arrogant elitists this is a facade to hide their 5th grade approach to problem-solving . They are also ignorant of their own ignorance. Like bullying children live solely by hope and emotion eschewing unhappy facts and utterly dismissing any consideration of cause and effect. They won’t debate because they don’t have any answers to the hard questions that reality or Conservatives pose.
‘It’s not that Leftists don’t know anything that makes them so dangerous… It’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so…’
~R. Reagan
I appreciate your point and wonder about it, too.
Meanwhile, let me pose this reduced form rationalization: The social justice people don’t debate, because they’re committed to preserving two axioms: (1) All institutions are Designed by the Elite, for the Elite, and of the Elite. (2) All exchange is zero-sum. That is, if I win, then you lose. There are no gains from trade.
One can find expressions of the first idea in Engel’s writings. The combination of both ideas really hit me when I was writing a review about a book on medieval Genoese commercial contracting practices. The author observed a discrete change in contracting practices, but rather than suggest that the change may have reflected an adaptation to new circumstances, the author merely brushed the observation aside by asserting that the change must have suited the elites’ interests and — this is the second part — to the detriment of all non-elites. So, the story was: institutions had served the elites’ interests; something changed (pray tell, what changed?); contracting practices must have been maladapted to the purpose of serving the elites’ interests; the elites changed the way they did business so that they might again get back to the business of serving their own interests; the non-elites remained shut out of the business of making good money; the system was not “inclusive” to begin with; it remained non-inclusive going forward.
“Gains from trade” is a pretty sophisticated idea, and it is the one best idea to come out of neo-classical economics. Zero-sum economics, by contrast, has more intuitive appeal to the random Jacobin on the street.
“Good article, but I remain unconvinced that points 1 through 5 aren’t mostly a rationalization for exactly this:
“a fear of being exposed as fraudulent or illegitimate—or otherwise of losing the debate or looking bad in the challenging conversation””
Exactly correct, Chris.
I don’t even think that it is that complex. There is no debate within the system they are educated, reside, work and live (the echo chamber). So if they have never faced the debate, they inherently believe that their thoughts and worldview are “the” correct and only world view. Why debate? We as a society as a whole have been proverbial frog in the boiling pot. The slow degradation of traditional western enlightened reasoning has taken place in higher academics and has trickled down to our K-12 education system. In simplistic terms is has been clothed as tolerance, political correctness, character education and revisionist history. Questioning any of these ideas has been discouraged and silenced at the youngest of ages. So in the circles of academia that make the rules for educating the masses, they have literally changed the rules of the game and we are now seeing the the extreme results (the water is starting to boil) . There is no reason to debate, the system is rigged, burn it down, destroy and replace it, etc.
Wow, Chris, what a direct and accurate representation. Gave me chills. These groups are extremely strategic and committed.
“In fact, theirs advances itself rather parasitically or virally by depending upon us to play the liberal game while taking advantage of its openings.”
Such an excellent point! I still don’t see why you wouldn’t make an open challenge and force a response.
One can try to force a response. Whether that has the potential to be productive will depend on the audience. There are people who support leftists with their vote, but are not true believers. Some people simply haven’t heard any other narrative beside the leftist Current Truth. Some of these people can be convinced.
Force a response? From whom, via what means?
This crowd is one PoTUS election away, from getting total power “forever”.
Were I them, I’d sit pat, until something turned hugely against current trends.
So, scientific thinking/hypothesis testing are merely elements of a hegemonic white male paradigm, devoted to maintaining existing oppressive power relations, eh?
In that case, how do Social Justice theorists account for scientific revolutions in the Thomas Kuhn sense of that phrase? For example, what hegemonic episteme, solely devoted to maintaining pre-existing power relationships and an oppressive status quo, would permit the collapse of classical phyics and the rise of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century?
Cults emerge and thrive in times of crisis. The failure of Communist states in the 20th century, and the failure of the proletariat to carry out its supposed historic mission to overthrow the non-Communist ones, created a crisis among authoritarian Leftists. The rise of Social Justice obscurantism looks a lot like a cultic defense mechanism within the minds of people whose entire worldview and sense of identity and purpose were under threat.
And yet they are at institutions that were built by, and continue to manage their affairs by, the very same system that they say treats them unfairly. They got tenure, fercrissakes. They get paychecks. They teach classes and publish in journals in order to earn those paychecks and maintain their positions. How exactly is it that the system that created this very lucrative scam for them is somehow oppressing them?
There you go again using your straight white male logic. When you will every learn that your role is to shut up and obey? Thinking is straight white male poison and they will have none of that!
Of course your argument is perfectly logical but they are committed enemies of logic. Real arguments might have an impact on those not yet infected, but they will never sink an inch into the brains of those who are already transformed into zombies, I’m afraid.
academic freedom is the freedom to challenge established ideas and debate them. There has to be the right conditions for this to happen, but it is a vital feature of these institutions.
Our knowledge changes and adapts , sometimes in big leaps or ‘paradigm shifts’.
Emotionally most people prefer the comfort of a fixed truth, usually the one they learnt early in life. There is often merit in tried and tested ideas but conservation for the sake of it leads to fossilised thinking.
As a note, during the early days of the Soviet Union, the new Soviet government often went after individuals and groups by claiming that those groups were oppressing them. Of course, those groups, like Ukrainian farmers, had no power – but facts never get in the way of a good story.
This is something I have talked with my friends about. My analysis is that the critical theory worldview developed defensive mechanisms through a process similar to evolution to avoid having rational discussions. Because rational discussions would naturally undermine belief in critical theory, it would require defense mechanisms to rational discussion for the ideology to sustain itself. The defense mechanisms I see most often are as follows:
“Lived experiences of racism” were the defense mechanism that developed to counter evidence that racism was not actually as prevalent as was argued. For example presenting evidence that unarmed African Americans are shot at a relatively low rate, the response is “lived experience” to avoid having to discuss the actual low risk of being shot unarmed by the police.
“Emotional labor” or “it’s your job to do your own learning” developed as a ways to avoid the socratic method. Telling people to go do their own learning, is an easy shutdown to someone who is using the socratic method to try to get critical theorists to question their own beliefs. The socratic method requires asking questions where the asker already knows the answer and is trying to get the listener to walk down the path of getting to that answer. Usually it is used when the listener has an idea that doesn’t make sense, the listener is asked questions that will force the listener to examine parts of their belief system that are faulty that they haven’t thought about before. I’ve noticed that whenever I engage a critical theorist with the socratic method to get them to think critically about their own beliefs they either say I should do my own research or say it’s emotional labor. (When talking to critical theorists, I flip this back on them and point out I’m also doing emotional labor. And then I point out I’ve read their sources and that I’m specifically asking them about their personal beliefs).
“Using buzzwords” (e.g. disrupt and dismantle systemic racism). Critical theorists often keep their discussions at the super general (and ambiguous) level of buzzwording. For example, if they say they are fighting “systemic racism.” It allows them a huge amount of wiggle room if you start pointing out the lack of specific examples of racism. “Disrupt and dismantle” don’t really mean anything. They are too general. But, this gives them a feel good way to say they are morally correct and that they are actually arguing to do something. However, if you try to get them into specifics and ask “where is the racism” and “what specific policies are you advocating to reduce said specific racism” then they will hit you back with more buzzwords. E.g. “Systemic racism is obvious, clearly the system is racist because of the disparities faced by black people. We need to fight it.” But, try to get them into the specifics again and they’ll jump back to different buzzwords or go to the emotional labor argument. And then finally they will end on othering you to not have to listen to your ideas.
“teacher mindset” Critical theorists are taught that they have special knowledge about race or gender that other people do not. So they learn to think of themselves as teachers who are helping others learn how they are problematic. For example: a critical theorist will something racist (dictionary definition) about white people. They get called out for the racist comment. Then the critical theorist has been trained to put on their teaching hat, and they say: “you can’t be racist against white people, racism = prejudice + power.” By switching to the teaching mode they adopt a position of authority that often does not get challenged. People assume they must have misunderstood what racism was and they feel like they are learning. This technique typically only works against someone not familiar with critical theory and it’s flaws. However, it also protects the critical theorists as they believe they are more informed than people who don’t know critical theory and thus they try to teach instead of listen when having discussions.
“othering” (e.g. calling you a conservative, racist, nazi etc) as a way to discredit people developed as a final backstop when all other avoidance techniques fail. This is the equivalent to when talking to a religious person and you back them into a corner on their belief and they say finally that they “just have faith.” This technique involves finding some way to label as outside of their tribe so that they don’t have to listen to you. When debating critical theorists I nearly always get called a republican, alt-right, racist, or a nazi when the other person starts hitting the cognitive dissonance point and recognizes that their worldview doesn’t make sense. It’s the easiest and safest way for them to fall back into their worldview despite its inconsistencies.
I highly doubt these sort of techniques arose out of intent to avoid rational discussion. Instead I suspect these techniques evolved over time as critical theorists had discussions with people who pointed out flaws in their arguments. Since they were determined to continue believing in their belief system, they needed to come up with defenses to those arguments. Thus, these defensive mechanisms developed over time and then they started teaching these same mechanisms. Women’s studies 101 teaches all about emotional labor and telling people to do their own research as a quick inoculation to critical thinking. It also start teaching the basics of thinking of themselves as teachers by teaching people to say: “racism = prejudice + power” and that they should always correct people who misunderstand this. Anyway, just my thoughts on why they don’t want to have rational discussions, I think it was an evolutionary process where they learned techniques to deal with the cognitive dissonance they faced.
Yeah good post. Relatedly Twitter is a perfect tool for iterating ideas and speeding up the evolutionary process. It has real time feedback in the like/retweet system and a large test pool of users.
Anytime an event happens the various ideological groups rapidly generate takes within their echo chamber until a satisfying idea rises to the top. The idea doesn’t have to be true it just has to preserve the individual’s ideological comfort.
Excellent and helpful comments and of course essay. Do you have more ideas? Once James said to marginalize them and keep labeling them as “extremists”. And like a religion … I think this is important
Excellent comment.
Particularly valuable was your use of labels. It reminded me of personal humiliation.
Years ago I was a student in a class that would eventually teach negotiation. Prior to the main course we had our appetites whetted. Negotiate a deal with classmate. Being a good student, I had read ahead. Thus, I entered the negotiating room with confidence. It was misplaced.
My opponent was a better student. He labeled each of my gambits seconds after I made them.
“Oh, so you are trying the…”
“Why are you using the…”
“Come now, wait until after I reject the first offer before you decide to…”
It was embarrassing. He knew the game better than I did.
Labeling the kinds of arguments/attacks and offering a corresponding counterattack has the benefit of making it all seem less sincere. It makes it seem more like a game. The labels signal to your opponent that you know the rules and moves, that you know how, um, artificial the game is.
I tend to believe that the Critical Theory academic might have a well-thought out reason for not engaging in debate. But the Woke Coworker doesn’t. He’s too unsure, too ill-informed. Quick use of labels — in some respects making the conversation meta — might be enough to unmoor him, to get him to stop thinking about the substance of the matter and more about the process of arguing.
One thing; if Racism /= prejudice + Power, then it is irrelevant. If you have no Power to put me in a negative position, your prejudice against me does nothing. THAT is why Racism = prejudice + Power. Now, if you can explain why Power is irrelevant to the definition, please share.
Because it’s irrelevant to the definition. Racism is a mindset, not an action. Theyre not defining RACISM, they’re defining OPPRESSION.
OPPRESSION = Prejudice + Power
RACISM = Prejudice + Race
SEXISM = Prejudice + Sex
MATRIARCHY/PATRIARCHY = Sexism + Power
Now do you understand?
So can black people be racist if they have power? I think you can easily make the case that black people have lots of power these days. There is a black vice principal at my kids’ school. There are lots of black cops, black politicians, black employees at the DMV, black IRS agents, black doctors, black clients who have hired/can fire me, black school board members. We’ve even had a black president! All of these people exercise some form of power over me. If they don’t like white people and have the power to put me in negative positions, could they be racist?
And are you ALSO saying that someone’s racist tendencies don’t matter if they are powerless to do anything negative about them?
Delwyn, sure. But who has the power?
People who can get everybody else fired for thought crimes?
People who can riot when they they please?
People who own almost all the media?
People who own academia and the hollywood useful idiots to sell it?
Those who get hiring and university preferences (systemic racism FOR them) to the detriment of others?
Those who make up Smollett lies and hoaxes endlessly, and never get shamed for them?
By your own definition – Blacks are the hands-down biggest racists in society today.
Are you sure you want to stick with your definition?
Or do you want to call me names and not engage in civil debate?
If you think “black lives matter” isnt racist, check out thier newest publication on amazon, Black Jokes About White Folks: The Black Lives Matter Joke Book. It was published 6 days after the JRE podcast with James Lindsay. Down with the racist scumbag blm adjenda
Excellent write up Anton, summarises most of my own thoughts perfectly. I was about to write a similar post but having read yours, you’ve saved me the “emotional labor” of having to do so, thanks for that 😉
What we are seeing is simply the modern version of a prototype movement initiated at the start of the Long March. Im of the belief it has simply been 50+ years of trial-and-error , as the beast iterated its way towards a viable solution. By solution, I mean to the initial problem that Marxists had, namely a cultural revolution to overthrow capitalism/scientific method/Western progress.
Im not sure whether this is the monster’s final form, or whether come the US elections in November, we’ll cut off the head of the Hydra and 2 more will grow back.
Nonetheless its impressive how, in the age of the internet, modern medicine and creature comforts, that a cult such as this can operate in broad daylight. To the point where it has infiltrated institutions, sucking in the rich, the famous and “educated” academic elites. It is well on its way to dismantling many of the values we hold dear, such as logic, reason, forgiveness.
The question is, what is the most effective intellectual response to this? Or have we been beaten by a superior (collective) foe, the ideological kryptonite to the superman we called Civil Society.
All that circular and self justifying reasoning of theirs was beginning to make me dizzy.
Oops, “non-consensual co-platforming” is two words, nine syllables, and two hyphens—not one hyphen.
It is very instructive to go through this essay replacing a number of terms with the words “sin”, “sinners” “the devil”, and “the elect”. This is a new form of extreme dogmatic religious impulse: a combination of 17th century iconoclastic puritanism and the 19th century emotion-based revivalist movement. The underlying psychology is the same.
As Graham Starkey pointed out.
Error has no rights in Critical Social Justice. Only the truth has rights–and exclusive rights.
Proponents of Critical Social Justice start with values that are so obviously, uncontroversially moral, (i.e. ‘racism is bad’). This is the cultural motte of a motte and bailey trick, used to enable the following fallacy:
“We are doing X because Y.”
“If you object to X, you object to Y.”
Since theirs is the one true religion, there is no room for anything else. The “correct” positions have already been decided; anyone acting in any way, shape, or form against them does know because they have knowingly and willingly decided to abandon the Good People virtues. Such heretical views are dangerous, and should be suppressed. Dissenting ideas are patently wrong and a sign of inferior, malignant character. The wicked have effectively forfeited their rights, dissent cannot be tolerated.
If one’s sense of identity, status and virtue is at stake in this way, dissent is not mere difference of opinion, it is an evil to be driven out of the public arena. Furthermore, it is an outlook that generates some tendency to depart from reality, since a large barrier is created to any inconvenient truths that undermine the status-marker ideas. When ideas matter more than people and error has no rights, you wind up with burning people at the stake for heresy.
Without freedom of conscience, there can be no diversity or tolerance.
It’s because actively opposing them in any way outs you as an irredeemable villain in their eyes.
Everything is gut level first and foremost, the ideology comes after. First is the visceral reaction, then the rationalisation explains it.
The “non-consensual co-platforming” part further illustrates why there was a hysterical reaction to the Tom Cotton piece.
Thought the exact same thing.
You as an intellectual continue to try to parse and explain in academic terms what is happening around you and your system. I just think really dont understand because you are too close to the fire. This is a revolution that is occuring. The revolutionaries in academia are clothing themselves within words and arguments which are smokescreens for the revolution. After all is said and done, they are seeking to dismantle and destroy ideas and lives, just like all the other marxist revolutions that have occured in the last hundred years. The ringleader of this is the devil.
“non-consensual co-platforming” (two words, nine syllables, one hyphen).
– That would be 2 hyphens
This begs the question:
Without “debate, dialogue, conversation, reason, evidence, epistemic adequacy, fairness, civility, charity of argument” (which are conveniently written off as “tools of the master”) what remains?
We make a critical mistake when we look at the degreed and assume that because they possess a degree they are “smart” and know what they are talking about. If debate and reason and evidence is discounted as racist, how can they actually be informed about anything? If a plumber arrived at your house and said he had no respect for blueprints, fluid dynamics, or traditional methods, what sort of job would you expect him to do? Degrees mean nothing today. One is capable of thinking and expressing herself, or she is not.
Yet, these are exactly the people civilization is up against. They are incapable of experiencing cognitive dissonance because there is never a conflict—reality is invented moment to moment. Down can be up, freedom can be slavery, and suffering can be joy because disagreement is, ipso facto, tyranny. It is normalized mental illness.
In my opinion, this is a spiritual and intellectual house of cards that can not stand. It will not weather well or survive the test of time. Within this paradigm the most outraged wins the day, and because of this the proponents will always turn on one another. Every room is too small when a universe revolves around each person in the group, and their universes will collide.
Your starting question is the scariest aspect of all of this. If there is no possibility of reasoned debate to get to the truth of all of this and decide as a society if there is merit and what, if anything, needs to change, then what is left is the primary force that has been solving human disputes since our inception as a species. Violence. We turned to reason and debate to specifically to turn away from using violence as a dispute resolver. If the Woke have completely abandoned that as a “master’s tool” and have decided to completely dehumanize and demonize those who disagree, violence will be the natural result. After all, why shouldn’t they assault, brutalize, and murder demons who deny the obvious truth and commit “atrocities” as a result? We’re seeing it play out now in many of our major cities right now. And eventually everyone else is going to get sick of being assaulted and abused and meet them on their terms. This is not going to end well for anybody.
The proponents of Critical Theory are dependent upon everyone adhering to the rules of logic and decency that they eschew. They win every debate so long as they make the rules, define all of the terms, and set the point at which something is indecent and beyond the pale. Any departure from the dogma then becomes an exercise in outrage and feigned offense. My instinct when faced with this is to push back.
When I first crossed paths with critical theory in a masters level class on literary criticism in ‘94 or ‘95, I was horrified. What in the world, I wondered, does a feminist Marxist reading of Huckleberry Finn have to do with anything, and who but a Marxist feminist would care? In my assessment of the reading, I assumed my understanding–my “critical vocabulary”–was as valid as anyone’s (which is the point of Critical Theory, after all) so I referred to the reading, the entire enterprise, as an “academic circle jerk”. The prof was not pleased, but I defended my position using the terms he had set. Why was my understanding less valid than a Marxist feminist? He was unprepared to defend intersectionality. That might not be the case today.
The point being, it’s bullshit, and there is no reason to be polite about it. Intersectionality? Bullshit. Critical vocabulary? Bullshit. If the Critical Theorists do not care to debate? So be it. Flat Earthers are not keen on debate either. I’m happy to call it what it is and if that makes some proponent of Critical Social Justice ideology sad? Well, stupidity should hurt. I feel no compunction to entertain silly fantasies, no matter how seriously others choose to treat them, and I don’t feel the slightest need to be polite about it.
You are correct. This doesn’t end well, for anyone, but we didn’t bring the turd to the party and insist everyone pretend it is foie gras.
“They win every debate, so long as they *make* the rules, *define* all of the terms, and *set* the point at which something is indecent….”
The above is crucial, it’s all about them finding suckers, who lack the street smarts to see thru their sales techniques.
It’s Mad Ave.’s conquest of, first academia, then the MSM, then….?
I can’t really explain it but this article brought up such a feeling of sadness. Reading it was like watching someone drowning and offering them assistance, but they could only refuse the help. They couldn’t even believe in the help. It reminded me of the things a former friend/lost addict used to say to me about his addiction.
Fantastic article, thanks for writing and publishing it. I wonder, do the Woke ever ask themselves whether they are just trying to become new oppressors with their own inauthentic dialogue? Do they have an answer that isn’t just sadism, greed, or hypocritical pretense to have found (at last) the objective truth?
Rather than thinking of it as ‘becoming new oppressors’, they might phrase it as ‘it is their turn to be ascendant’, or that ‘it’s time to re-balance the imbalance’, or ‘to be heard, for a change’, or ‘to bring their voices to the fore’. Etc. Etc. Language can be made to do all sorts of amazing things.
Mimi,
Thanks. Wow. So they really are that mindless?
Yes, of course they’re that mindless.
So were Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, ….
It’s all about power/ revenge, in “compassionate” gloss, plus the ego boost for excelling at deceit.
“I often get asked specifically if there’s some paper or book out there in the Critical Social Justice literature that prohibits or discourages debate and conversation with people who don’t already agree with them. ”
Here’s something – there’s a very popular book called “Antifa: The anti-fascist handbook”. If you listen to the author, he’s strongly opposed to letting “fascists” voice their views- no debating, no engaging, no allowing them a platform. He’s touted his anti free-speech views on several major outlets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AbbTdrrzKM
https://www.wnycstudios.org/…/segments/antifa-speech-free
The scary thing is that these people seem to be increasingly influential within the “educated” classes.
The idea that they “know” something that cannot be understood or explained is ridiculous on it’s face. That we don’t simply laugh at them allows them to pretend they have some secret knowledge the rest of us lack. This has gone on long enough. As a minimum this nonsense needs to be driven from academia.
To be frank;
This article disturbed me. I’m finding it very hard to comprehend this worldview.
Where does one even begin to create a foundation when truth, logic and reason are deigned immoral “tools of the master”?
Moreover, how can one even engage with such ethereal characters?
Much to think about. Thank you for all the work.
“how can one even engage with such ethereal characters?”
You can’t, except from the kneeling position.
For details, see my response to Ed, posted below, on August 2, 2020 at 4:02 pm.
To say the very least, most of those who push Critical Theory, or who whine about “fascism”, have *not earned* minimal trust, that they will refrain from pulling Social Rank, on those they see as Deplorables.
Far from them being *entitled* to a seat at the table, they’ve done *nothing*, to build confidence that they won’t trash the table.
It is they, who richly deserve to be “cancelled” from a place at the table, until such time as *they* come clean, about the spectacular damage their allies have been doing to the table.
Truth, then Reconciliation.
A post I tried to publish at Aero Mag, has so far not appeared, but I’ll past it here:
“People *should* be held responsible for the speech or actions of others, insofar as the people here explicitly (or implicitly but obviously) identify with those others, esp. insofar as those others are *renowned* for explicitly or emphatically inflicting such speech or actions upon others,
The article I’m replying to here appeared, precisely in reaction to a (Harper’s) letter, which objected to conduct by a large, powerful group, because that group’s tyrannical conduct has become so renowned.
It is indeed argued, that the very essence of Critical Theory is, its (sometimes stealthy) insistence on demanding the very Cancellation Culture, to which the Harper’s signatories object.
They demand the power to Cancel, precisely because they require, that those who are allowed at the Table, to be only those who will tolerate their systematic rigging of terms of debate (usually by rigging of the Agenda etc., into Heads we win, Tails you lose).
Anyone who imagines that the Cancellers will debate Possible Conversations, under any remotely honest/ fair conditions, for any substantial time-span, is refusing to face the essence of Critical Theory doctrine.
Such people should be dealt with, as if they were pals with those (CSJs) who carry on as if they’re urging, that football should be played, not with a pigskin, but with a *hand grenade*.”
James,
I have a question regarding the last line of your post, “The hard truth is this: if you don’t yet understand this, you don’t know the fight we’re in or have the slightest idea what to do about it.” I know the fight we’re in, but I still don’t have the slightest idea what to do about it. Seriously, what can we do with these mostly college-age religious zealots? I need some guidance.
What can we do? The wise approach is to *ignore* them, and to make *clear to others* why you’re doing that.
One way to make that clear, is to start with a vivid quote from later in this thread, from stpaulchuck:
“ ‘Arguing with leftists is like playing *chess with a pigeon*. No matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon is going to knock over the pieces, crap on the board, and *strut around* like it is victorious.” – from RealScience.’ ”
These brats are actually little better than pigeons, demanding that their views be treated as if coming from Grand Masters.
They get this treatment via (among other means) moving to *set the agenda*, gambling that others lack the street smarts, to know how much agenda-setting affects subsequent outcomes.
These quasi-sociopaths will respect only strength, incl. the strength to *always* tell them “NO”, regardless of what they whine about.
This esp. includes, when they *ask* any questions, about things which are NOYDB.
Most of these folks are, as Chris Wetherell put it (after he watched the first Twitter mobs use his new Retweet tool): “We might have just handed a *4-year-old* a loaded *weapon*.”
Most of them, when alone, will back off when stood up to.
When they outnumber you, it’s harder.
Then, if they threaten you, you may have to replace “NO” with “Whatever”, implying that you’ll not be rolled.
Of course, in that case, you may weigh your practical options if they “call your bluff”, as you would when encountering any sociopath.
Where I above write “make *clear to others* why you’re doing that”, the others are normal people.
Those of us who know The Score have some responsibility, to coach normal folk on how to scope, and navigate vs., these sociopaths.
They won’t back off in the slightest.
The woke administrators rule my major State University.
Endless woke virtue signalling emails from them.
Endless political posturing (which is flat out illegal – except for Democrats).
And they have already tried to have me fired, just on the suspicion I am not playing along.
I am fairly obviously blacklisted from hiring and most other committees.
And I am in Engineering.
And I never once even pushed back. I got that for keeping my head down.
Retiring in 2 years, despite the possibility of endless cushy tenure…
I loath these politically religious bigots.
This historical situation is such, that so much could change before you retire in 2 years, that you may be able to then tolerate the situation at schools such as yours, if Barr/ Durham make big busts.
The next 4-6 weeks will say much, about which way the wind is blowing on such matters.
And, the election figures to tell how long such probes will last.
If some big Obama Admin. fish start singing, the ensuing chain reaction could rope in big fish from various walks of life, incl. Higher Ed.
I agree, excluding them from serious consideration is the answer, and making that clear to everyone else why as well is key since they will look for other avenues if you close off their initial ones.
I also recommend identifying the true nature of their terminologies by providing helpful alternative definitions of their terms:
White/Male Privilege/Fragility: A racial/sexual slur, of exactly the same kind as “Jewish greed”, “Mexican sloth”, or “black stupidity”, and just as unacceptable in polite company.
Anti-Racism: An entitlement to commit racist acts as though they were not racism. Again, this is not acceptable in polite company.
Social Justice and Inclusion: The idea that it is commendable to commit acts of individual injustice as long as you are flying this banner. That racist and sexist banner is unacceptable in polite company as are acts of individual injustice as is required by this ideology.
Equity: The new name for “communism”. New branding doesn’t make the old idea any more morally or politically acceptable than it was before they rebranded it.
Some people may take this as some kind overreaction, and it might seem so if people have not been paying attention, but some good examples of this are good to have at the ready in case such questions arise…Maoist China, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, the rioters currently burning our cities and attempting to shut down intellectual inquiry at our universities with such catch phrases as “shut down STEM” and as exemplified by the banishment of university professors and administrators like Brett Weinstein, Nicholas Christakis, and Lawrence Summers. No, I’m not just making this up.
Good stuff, Brian.
A key aspect is that of “unacceptable in polite company.”
That the CSJ gets away with systematic ad hominems in polite company is outright brutal, showing an “elite” political culture in its death rattle.
The best prospects for swiftly turning this around seems to me to be
1) a housecleaning in the MSM, starting with Conspiracy busts by Barr/ Durham (?), and
2) a housecleaning at the colleges, starting with huge cuts in federal funding to them.
Maybe the seeds of the rot, of what became to be seen as (un)acceptable in polite company, began with Barnum (and Hollywood) and Bernays (and Mad Ave.).
In any case, Americans became ever more renowned for social pushiness, such that ambushing with nosy questions has become more and more accepted.
To streetwise folk, the US is largely seen as having become a Sales Society.
This CJS stuff may well be, just the (hyper-) politicization of prior baleful trends.
In my view, when any casual “friend”, let alone stranger, asks anything of you, beyond boilerplate requests (e.g. “please let me pass thru your blocking of the grocery store aisle”), you’ve the right to expect a reason.
And, when any stranger etc. asks for *info* from you, beyond boilerplate requests (e.g. “do you know where XXX Blvd. is?”, let alone tries to steer the interaction toward emotive subjects, esp. politics, you’ve the right to evade the maneuver.
Some viable ways to deploy such evasion may include:
“Whatever”,
“I’m otherwise preoccupied”, or
‘”Can you give me basis, to believe that you’re pursuing a legit probe for a LE Agency?”
Much of the game of the CJS crowd is to feign friendliness, and then to whine about your MicroAgressions, if you evade their probes.
Such whining would never have been nearly acceptable, in an authentically mature culture.
I would agree that ignoring some is the answer, but we cannot ignore the people in power who are setting the chess board with these ideas. When we talk about the man on the street are simply seeing the “useful idiot”, who you can ignore, running around throwing a tantrum. I am not sure we can think that way about the people who are pulling the strings in politics and media. Ignoring for too long has lead us to this point. It is a dangerous game that they are playing.
“Ignoring for too long has lead us to this point.”
Indeed.
I’m just suggesting, that before you fight them, line up ducks.
This coming election will say much, about who will be able to line up how many ducks.
Very good comments you post here. However, I disagree about the idea that ignoring the CSJs is a viable approach or response.
Part of the reason why we are where we are today is because those who disagreed with the increasingly-liberal take-over of social commentary simply did that — they ignored it. Or, more precisely, they insisted they needed to “take the higher road”. They insisted their response had to be “better than that”. I reality, they (1) did not know how to stand up to the CSJs, (2) were too afraid to say anything because they did not want to be targeted themselves. No, ignoring the CSJs will simply play into their hands and will embolden them. They will see that as more opportunity to continue to peddle their class-baiting rhetoric.
In the book “The Games People Play” by Eric Berne, the argument is made that social interaction is a type of “game” with unwritten rules we are taught to follow. As long as we play by the rules, those who wrote the rules tend to win. The best way to get the upper hand with someone who is abusing the game is to “break the rules”. Play by a different set of rules and that tends to disrupt the opposing person’s process, enabling you to gain an upper hand.
So, in this situation today, we must think about the rules that have been placed onto today’s social discourse. We are told we must use only certain terms and avoid certain other terms. We are told that some terms apply only to certain groups and don’t at all apply to other groups. For example, the left has for decades used the term “Nazi” to refer to the right. However, the left has actually been the ones that are following the same kind of thinking that the Nazis applied in the 1930s.
So the way to respond is to NOT ignore the left and the CSJs. However, don’t try to engage them thinking that you will have any sort of intelligent discourse. Instead, respond to their invective with arguments structured in ways that they are not accustomed to, and using terms that they don’t expect.
I mostly concur, except for the drift that we are urging *only* ignoring these CSJs.
Recall above, I wrote “make *clear to others* why you’re doing that.”
But, yeah, you may respond to their invective with arguments structured, in ways that they are not accustomed to.
Recall, above I wrote:
“When they outnumber you, it’s harder.
Then, if they threaten you, you may have to replace “NO” with “Whatever”, implying that you’ll not be rolled.”
And, implying that you don’t see their pitches as worthy of serious consideration.
And, *explaining to bystanders*, that you don’t see CSJ pitches as more worthy of serious consideration, than is due Creationists or Holocaust Deniers.
*Put the burden* on CSJs or their defenders, to show why CSJs are more worthy of serious consideration, than is due Creationists or Holocaust Deniers.
If you do this, it may well make quite a dent, as an argument structured in ways that they are not accustomed to.
This won’t likely dent the CSJs themselves, as they’re far too invested in their *hate* of the White Patriarchy.
Your more promising audience is uncommitted bystanders, who, I’ll grant, have been heretofore left adrift, to fend off (?) the CSJ onslaught.
Our job is to help fortify their resolve, and give them tools to use for defense against such onslaughts
So, you may give the CSJ the chance to inflict one of their standard ad hominem onslaughts, after which you reply with “spoken like a true ‘(Twitter) *Mobster*’ “, this a reference to Greenwald’s label, for the CSJs who teed off on N. Sandman in Jan. 2019.
Those who won’t kowtow to CSJs are actually “better than that”, but can do a better job of showing this, mostly by rubbing into peoples’ noses, just *how degenerate* CSJs are.
Get bystanders to stew, on why CSJs don’t deserve to be dismissed, as is done with Creationists or Holocaust Deniers.
“In my lived experience, these CSJs have shown themselves to be (stealthy) sociopaths.
Associate with them at your major peril.”
And, time permitting, you may add
“For more fair warning, on how they treat their liberal allies, see the recent Harper’s open letter, signed by 150 respected thinkers, e.g. Chomsky, Steinem, ….”
And, you can add:
“When they whine about how the System Is Rigged Against Them, or How Tired They Are, they deserve laughter *into their faces*.
The are the most Coddled crowd (of its cohort size) in human history, but utterly lack interest in anything other than to **ride** others, for the cheapest of ‘reasons’ .”
Then, refer to Haidt’s “Coddling” book .
Also, you could add:
“In my lived experience, these CSJs have shown themselves to be quasi-*Maoists*, esp. with their slobbering all over the WHO’s pitches about HCQ etc.”
And, crucially, don’t interact *verbally* with them, *unless* you have a body cam, a friendly witness, or some other way, to refute the systematic deceit which these CSJs will be delighted to deploy, to spin your words, tone, etc., in the most vicious possible way.
The famous quote from V. Lombardi (of course, in a quite different context) goes
“Winning isn’t every thing, it’s the only thing!”
One of the more repulsive aspects of this is, that most of this crowd is spectacularly unqualified to pontificate about *anything* of real importance, save for (in some cases) entering Code, or Cooking books.
By far, most of the really important work is done by Deplorables.
The only times these CSJs go thru the motions of walking Walk (e.g. on their “caring for the oppressed” ), is when the field is rigged in their (e.g. antiFa’s) favor.
This, while they whine about how the System Is Rigged Against Them!
If the current US is mostly a Salescraft Society, these folks are its apotheosis.
A disproportionate number of them are in the “education” or media rackets, or gorge themselves (some indirectly) on gov’t Cheese.
Anyone who puts weight, on what such scammers say about life issues, e.g. about diet, finance, family/ gender dynamics, personal safety/ medicine (incl. HCQ),
do so at their peril.
(And, talking to them about Whiteness is like talking to a Nazi about Jewry.)
Moreover, so many of these CSJs are as stupendously dishonest with themselves, as they are with others.
Anything that goes wrong is *always* someone else’s fault, while they are *always* the victim.
To paraphrase Churchill, never have so many, had things so very good, but nonetheless reacted with such self-delusory venom (to their pompous asses not being *totally* rimmed).
They can’t help but caricaturize their prior self-images.
I *don’t* think some of the woke are very self-aware, because they focus on group issues and cliched generalities instead of introspection, personal ethics, and analysing unique situations on their own merits. Can each of us say we haven’t sometimes done/said racially or homophobically insensitive things, which are at bottom being unkind to someone who is different than you? I think there’s still things we can do individually about such things. The current climate of oversensitivity (including the fact that an “oppressed” person can’t simply be wrong about perceiving a “microaggression” in a given situation) gets in the way of honest dialogue. Feel-good wokeness substitutes for making systemic changes that may be genuinely warranted.
As someone who lived thru the 60s-70s, I sometimes feel like “this isn’t my first rodeo.” I wonder how this “revolution” will devolve, like the ones before it – splinter into factions that differ re tactics and ideological purity, succeed and fail at changing institutions and intractable problems. What will happen as some of the young proponents age into family life and responsibilities? Will they “get” that others have tried some of the same things and learn from their mistakes? There will surely be backlash, as there was to affirmative action and the equal rights amendment for women. We could end up with a patchwork application of this stuff, just as we have red/blue states and red/blue areas within states. Could we anti-woke liberals ally with religious conservatives in court cases? Surely a clever attorney could argue something about freedom of religion, quoting some of the many people who have noted the religious character of wokeness. Surely religious conservatives would object to the transgender ideas now being wrapped into critical race theory.
One thing rarely addressed is how woke ideas can seem like East/West Coast and big city ideas that are out of touch with some people’s “lived experience”(!). I live in a small midwestern city with few POC (I moved here for reasons other than race), where woke issues, like big-city coronavirus ones, can seem to have little relevance. Even if woke/CT ideas weren’t wrong in many ways, winning over small-town and rural folks requires not dismissing them as “deplorables” and “flyover country.” I’ve read NYTimes articles about the race issues in NY school systems, but I doubt if such writers understand or care about how things are elsewhere in the country. Wokeness can’t succeed if people lack such basic understandings of each other.
“Wokeness *can’t* succeed, if people lack such basic understandings of each other.”
Oh yes it can, if it gets all gov’t agencies on its side, which it has a chance to do, as early as next Jan.
This memory is at least 20 yrs old, I was watching a news interview with a conservative and an leftist. As I watched it seemed this leftist’s only defense was to roll her eyes and click her mouth, She did this over and over again. I thought her whole effort was to do these things to make it look like her opponent just could not see the obvious. Yet she was completely unable to articulate anything! I think the left still does that, and when that doesn’t work the yell and scream and threaten! To see this progress is quite interesting, but more frightening to me now!
good article
Clear they want to tear down the master’s house. I just can’t imagine what the want to build in its place.
Satan’s Throne
It’s fascinating to see what happens when something goes wrong and a critical theorist does somehow end up in a debate with someone who knows what they’re talking about.
Probably the most famous example in recent times is the viral interview of Jordan Peterson on Channel 4 News, which despite lasting 30 minutes and roaming over many obscure topics is the second most popular video on their channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/Channel4News/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid
The debate happened only because the critical theorist was meant to be interviewing someone as part of her job, but of course, couldn’t resist trying to skewer Peterson and make him look bad. The complete intellectual destruction that follows is more popular than “CCTV video of an ISIS attack” and “virgins for sale in Columbia”. Beaten only by a weather forecaster successfully pronouncing an unpronounceable town in Wales (and all credit to him for doing so!).
I find myself torn between the view posited in the article (that refusal to debate is a matter of deep quasi-religious belief) and the alternative given in the comments (that these supposedly coherent views on epistemology are in reality just parrot-style reflexes created through a kind of Twitter-fuelled evolutionary debate-avoidance fire).
Unless I’m missing something, do the Woke ever address the fact that they are using argumentation in order to formulate their ideas? How could they, in good faith, use argumentation to prove argumentation is not legitimate? It’s a self refuting statement. By the use of argumentation, you imply it’s legitimate. You can’t have both. To go one step further, regarding the use of language, one cannot argue that “language is meaningless” because you have to first recognize that language is meaningful in order to make that argument. How do they square that circle?
One other thing – I couldn’t help but notice that every single critical theorist in this analysis seems to be a woman. To what extent is that true?
It’s a thought provoking piece, obviously rather biased, but god, the comments. It seems to be a necessity that any good argument drags a zombie army along for the ride.
This is clearly the case with critical theory, being hijacked by identity politists, and also the right.
The take-away is that the current rational world-view is incomplete.
Take for example economics, based on rational self-interested economic agents in a free market, which completely dominates the way the world truly operates at the moment.
It is not difficult to immediately ‘deconstruct’ nearly all of the base assumptions of economics; that people are rational, that they care about absolute wealth (as opposed to relative wealth/status), that markets participants are treated fairly, and so on.
And so, the rational world, having dug in to it’s limited orthodoxy is now facing a backlash, not just to it’s truth, but to it’s very rationale for existing.
We do need to find a way to reign in the current madness, which is simply regressive – taking us back to a pre-technology era of respected elders and so on. That seems great on the level of a cozy tribe, but not on a planet scale, with climate threats and all kinds of other problems of complexity.
But we also need to embrace the not-knowledge that very many people everyone can feel is missing from modern society.
If that effort is refused with an argument that ‘I can’t debate with ancestors of slavers’, then my answer would be ‘where would you be now if the cross-atlantic slave-trade didn’t exist?’. But I like to be controversial.
“… economics, based on rational self-interested economic agents in a free market, which completely *dominates*….”
In today’s colleges, that may be true, but elsewhere, you’re giving a quite suspicious generalization.
“… that they care about absolute wealth (as opposed to relative wealth/status), that markets participants are treated fairly….”
Flatly false. Colleges, and other places, are all-but dominated by economists etc. who routinely raise hell vs. the extent to which current markets don’t treat participants fairly.
While those who try defend PostMods are entitled to their opinions, they’re not entitled to their own facts.
my favorite quote about this:
———–
“Arguing with leftists is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon is going to knock over the pieces, crap on the board, and strut around like it is victorious.” – from RealScience
Here’s the thing about playing chess with a pigeon though: it makes people stop and say “why are you playing chess with a pigeon? Pigeons are stupid!”
Arguing with these Neo-Marxists forces normal people to acknowledge how stupid they are, and that they have NO PLACE in intellectual human society, instead of simply ignoring them until they shit all over you, like you usually do with pigeons.
Indeed, they have NO PLACE in intellectual human society, and thus it behooves us to give to their allies an ultimatum: the more you hang with these pigeons, the more we’ll boycott you!
Did you notice that the Critical Theorist Alison Bailey, to argue against logic and reason, uses logic and reason?
What do two Critical Social Justice scholars do when they disagree with each other on an important issue (and they will disagree, sooner or later)?
Physically attack each other–no debates allowed!–with the one who’s left standing being seen as the one with the “right” views?
Isn’t that how hominids, with no language, “debated” hundreds of thousands of years ago–by slaughtering dissidents?
Refusing to debate is a major ingredient in the recipe for war. Critical Social Justice will soon collapse in on itself, or be physically driven into exile, if not killed off.
A truly sad state we seem to be entering.
They hold paint swatches up to each other’s arms and the one with the highest albedo concedes defeat to their Melanated Queen 😂
A fantastic (if necessarily brain-challenging) overview. Most illuminating. Thank you so much for this.
One small issue: I tried hard to make sense of this sentence from the second paragraph of item 4, but could not.
“And not only are they supposed to endorse the platforming of that by sharing a stage with people they see this way, but they’re supposed to do it in ways that the dominant system, which is all of those things as well and their guarantor, approves of and advances its own interests through.”
I’d revisit that bit if you edit or copy or re-use this in future.
SJWs do have one rule in their “debates”:
You shut up and listen.
(Your) words are violence.
But wait, there’s more:
Silence is violence.
I have seen these SJW declarations often. To tell them they contradict themselves is to invite a fist to the face.
“You are a soldier in a war being waged right now,” says Julian Christopher at https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/hurtling-toward-totalitarianism-call-action-defense-all-we-hold-dear/#comment-1827
James is a smart guy. I agree with him in general. And the interview he did with Joe Rogan about this and other topics is one of Joe’s best shows ever.
However, I find myself agreeing more with the commenters here than with James. First, as one of the above people wrote, I see a lot of analysis here but I don’t see a lot of answers. If I were to compare it to an asteroid that is supposed hit the earth–nobody cares about its composition, its speed, its rotation or where it came from. Sure, the analysis is interesting and a bit of it may even be relevant to stopping it. But the average person will only want to know two items: 1. When it is supposed to hit. 2. Is there a plan to stop it. So, if CSJ crap is an asteroid heading toward our free speech planet, forget the analysis. As an expert on it, just tell us laypeople what the plan is and what we can do to help. And if there is no plan, maybe we can all brainstorm to figure something out.
Second, I also reject the idea that the “argument avoidance” is something that was cooked in from the beginning. Why? Because it flies in the face of human nature. People LOVE to tell everybody else how smart they are, and beautiful they are. They love to brag about their kids, their income, their car, their house, their big IQ. Really, that’s what social media is. That’s what the Internet has become.
So, to believe someone at some time came up with all these crazy ideas, thinking they were spectacular, and their next instinct was, “Hey, I can’t show the other side how brilliant I am”, flies in the face of 6000 years of homo sapien existence. Because although these people allegedly reject science and facts and truth, they can’t resist their own nature–at their core their wiring is the same as ours.
Instead, I think these creators ran to the very first person they encountered and said, “Look at this! Look at this!”. And that person responded, “You know that’s crap, right?” But then the ego kicks in, not to mention that suckers are born every minute. Eventually, NOT talking to people about their “great” ideas was inserted as a way to keep the charade going, to keep their wallets full with the suckers’ money, and to protect their own egos–maybe the biggest reason of all. It’s just a gig. It would be funny if it wasn’t all so dangerous.
Third, my opinion as a layman is the best way to combat them and their ideas is to not tangle with them on the theoretical level. The free speech level. The public discourse level. Because really, there are all sorts of groups all over the political spectrum who would love to silence the opposition through all sorts of means.
A different tactic should be used. The “in practice” level is where their thinking breaks down. How exactly do computers and jets and Green Energy equipment and microphones and bull horns and leaf blowers and molotov cocktails get made without science, logic, and critical thinking. Hmmmm, I wonder . . .
How can these CSJ warriors–who claim no compromises can ever be made–show up to events and seminars when reason and facts were used to build the buildings they give these speeches in, ride in that subway that brought them to that seminar even though logical engineering is the antithesis of CSJ thinking, wear clothes made from fabric that has been scientifcally-engineered when it should, according to their thinking, cause them to be sent to a re-education camp? Hmmm, I wonder . . . how DO you build a straw hut with just emotions and stories?
See, I think they know all this. They aren’t THAT stupid. My guess? IF they get power, they’ll suddenly become as logical as Spock. And that’s when the real problems will start. But their thinking has many flaws . . . maybe it’s time to start devising a plan to blow up the asteroid instead of just explaining it.
Ed, you’re on the right track, when you urge “to not tangle with them on the theoretical level”.
But, when starting to assess their motives, you present “People LOVE to tell everybody else how smart they are, and beautiful they are”, and then neglect the “beautiful” part, which likely dominates over the “smart” part.
Their hidden game is, to leverage the “Beautiful People” part (of their “educated” background), into your submission to them as also being smart.
“although these people allegedly reject science and facts and truth, they *can’t* resist their own nature”.
Oh yes they can, for long enough to matter hugely.
Instead of trying to coddle them into facing “their own nature”, the wise approach is to ignore them, and to make clear to others why you’re doing that.
One way to make that clear, is to start with a vivid quote from earlier in this thread, from stpaulchuck:
“ ‘Arguing with leftists is like playing *chess with a pigeon*. No matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon is going to knock over the pieces, crap on the board, and *strut around* like it is victorious.” – from RealScience.’ ”
These brats are actually little better than pigeons, demanding that their views be treated as if coming from Grand Masters.
They get this treatment via (among other means) moving to *set the agenda*, gambling that others lack the street smarts, to know how much agenda-setting affects subsequent outcomes.
A page, where I posted extensive comments about this CSJ gamble, is
https://areoMagazine.com/2020/07/30/possible-Conversations/ , where I critique a quixotic proposal from Iona Italia, for “Possible Conversations” with CSJ brats.
Quixotic, insofar as she assumes that these brats will be (for any length if time) as fair to, say, Deplorables (let alone Creationists or Holocaust Deniers), as the brats expect others to be fair to them.
Only one of the “debates” she featured included a Righty (this about guns), in which the parties “display an unusual level of mutual trust: they clearly believe that they share the same values and simply need to discover how best to promote those values.”
I again call this quixotic, in that it should be brutally obvious, that very few CSJs can, for any decent span, express “mutual trust” toward Righties, without being quickly under hyper-suspicion from their fellow CSJs.
So they still are phony people then? Not woke but pretend sleeping stuff?
The Communist won’t debate you because they don’t have two brain cells to rub together.
Democrats bad. Republicans good. That’s it. End of argument.
Godwin’s Law applies to the “Woke” crowd too.
I find woke theory particularly nauseating since it’s supposed to be in support of People of Color, and yet the dense, incomprehensible academic language makes it impossible for a typical Person of Color to understand.
How can you claim to support people of color by writing books nobody but your fellow specialists can understand?
I had been thinking about this, too. They create a catch-22, I think.
Because, what if you ask, “are blacks racists, too?”.
If they answer “yes”, then why is white racism relevant?
If they answer “no”, then you can follow up with “doesn’t that make blacks superior?”.
If they answer “no”, you can ask how it’s not superior to be not racist
If they answer “yes”, you can point out that’s an argument for why they should be racist, which is a contradiction of the answer to the first question
And, then, you’ve reached an interesting point because the only way out, that I see, is for the academic to assert that blacks are superior, but maintain that blacks cannot be made aware of this fact, which is condescending to say the least.
It has been logically established here, and in the personal experiences of many, that The Woke will not be swayed by reason, logic, evidence, presumption of innocence or any of the other “Master’s Tools”. Those tools have been slowly and skillfully discredited, with purpose, by the shamans of the woke – Tema Okun, Robin DiAngelo, and those who came before.
Where does that leave the rational “silent” majority? Those of us who correctly believe that we are doomed once society has relinquished its grasp on reason must have some means of fighting back. The “debunking” and rejection of Enlightenment reasoning though appears to leave us naked in a knife fight. What do we have left to work with?
I’ve begun to wonder if dealing with these zealots can only be done through an offensive stance using their “reasoning” against them while trapping them in their rejection of Enlightenment “tools”. The Woke operate right now with a fearless bravado knowing that they can bring down anyone of their choosing with only a simple accusation for which there is almost no acceptable defense. This imbalance must change in order for us to see the light at the end of this tunnel.
It’s not going to be nice. You aren’t going to make more friends this way, but society may well swing in the balance. Silently hoping this will just simmer down is not a workable solution. George Carlin sounded the alarm on this long ago and it’s now in full bloom.
When the next logical conversation on social issues breaks down entirely or you’re being accused of racism and berated for your low melanin levels or lack of advocacy maybe it’s time to go on the offensive.
How about offering this response to your Woke attacker?
“In my lived experience, you are a pedophile.”
Very few will simply shrug that off. It will almost always illicit a visceral response. You might even get hit but more likely you will be met with immediate, slack-jawed shock and indignation. “How dare you!” they might say along with a host of colorful epithets.
The thing is, if they don’t simply run away or immediately disengage (a sure sign of guilt using White Fragility type logic), they are stuck. You have just accused them of one of the most universally hated crimes. Jeffrey Epstein is a reviled figure for good reason. They virtually have to respond but their only way out of this is to appeal to reason, logic, evidence and due process, all among the tools they have so effortlessly discarded up to that point.
Where the conversation goes from there probably won’t be pretty. If you just said that to a “White Fragility” consultant at your company you probably won’t have a job, but of course you can still sue for discrimination just for being accused of white fragility in the first place. They haven’t yet changed those laws but the clock is ticking. California is already hard at work trying to remove your legal protection against race-based discrimination.
Is the point of this to weaponize yet another term in the juvenile pursuit of escalation? No, though it surely will escalate things. The point is to shock the Woke anti-racist with an accusation of similar gravity. Many will not respond to to this tactic but the similarity of the accusation and corresponding lack of any requirement for evidence and due process will stick in the minds of some leaving a mental splinter they will have to wrestle with. In the very least it will illustrate to the most rabid wokist that there remains a weapon that can be used against them as well.
I can’t take credit for this analogy. As others have pointed out on this site, the target of your accusation is an adult which means they have no way to escape their “adult privilege” or the fact they live in a society controlled by those who also have “adult privilege” and regularly benefit from that status. After all, adults can no longer by subject to the crimes of a pedophile and adults control society. Thus all adults are complicit with a systemic “adult privilege” rendering them most certainly, a pedophile. Mountains of disingenuous DiAngelo-esque logic are obviously in use here but that’s the whole point.
This is NOT the easy way to deal with the Woke, but I don’t know that there remains an easy way to deal with these cultists. We are going to have to make things tense. Unless the rational start forcefully pushing back, the war is likely lost.
I don’t know. Should I start printing T-shirts and mugs with the slogan “You say I’m a racist. I say you’re a pedophile.” ?
Better still, is
“In my lived experience, you are a (McCarthyite) Class Bigot.”
For an intro into the class part, see
https://worldnewstrust.com/the-Hate-that-dare-not-Speak-its-name-john-michael-greer .
Or, you could say
“In my lived experience, you are a 30-something, going on 13″ (or “a 30-something, going on 14”, “a 50-something, going on 15”, etc.)
Overall, I avoid any such confrontations, unless they are in the presence of others, whose minds are rather *more open* than the particular CSJ.
The chances of changing the CSJs themselves are too remote to be worth the troubles.
See my various comments about such encounters, above.
The TL;DR is that they don’t debate because they’d lose.
These people are a product of the prosperity that only their object of hatred (liberalism, of the classical sort) could produce and the fact, because of liberalism, modern humans have few real problems.
I mean, if there are actual problems (invading hordes, famine, disease, etc), what philosophy are you going to go with? The one that believes in linear thinking, cause and effect, logic, reason, etc, or the one that tells emo stories?
The reality is the hucksters selling critical race theory, etc, are the ones terrorizing blacks. We had a struggle session at work where black colleagues expressed how sometimes they’re scared to go for a walks because of police violence. That’s borderline agoraphobia caused by whites — not the police, the woke progressives. It’s actual abuse. And, these are economically successful people, at least. How many more blacks will be locked out of prosperous employ because they’ve internalized ideas from white abusers like Robin Di Angelo?
The article discusses five points, all of which are true. However, the entire article and all five points basically derive from one thing — the one thing that is central but is missed: The current mindset of those on the left is that they are superior to those who disagree with them.
They believe they are the ones who are absolutely right. This is not the kind of thinking where a stubborn person refuses to concede in the face of facts and logic. This is the kind of thinking that the Nazis had in the 1930s. THEY are right. And not only that, but THEY are the pure ones, and those who disagree are tainted and worse. And because THEY are so right about such important things, then THEY are also right in using whatever means it takes to ensure that THEIR moral view is imposed on the world in order to achieve moral purity. This is their religion.
That includes violence, as has been prolifically demonstrated over the last few years and with heightened evidence over the last few months. The Nazis were more than happy to use peaceful means to subjugate society, as long as people went along with it and were silently led to the slaughter. But when a Resistance started to rise up, then the Nazi tactics got more and more violent. This has been exactly paralleled by the left. For decades they have been happy to peacefully shove their ideology down everyone’s throats through the crafting of more and more leftist political policies, the molding of culture through the educational system and the entertainment industry, and the retooling of American thought through the media and legal professions. But then something happened. Trump came along. Now there are plenty of things wrong with Trump that I cannot defend. But those are not the things that got the left so riled up. They use those things as excuses, but the real thing that causes them to react as they do is because they cannot control him. They cannot use the typical pressures they put on other Conservative politicians to shut them up. Those things don’t work with Trump — they cannot control him with the traditional leftist tools, so they resort to their next tool: violence.
Leftists on campus have similarly been electing to use the violence tools when they see that this “free speech” thing is actually starting to be used against them. Now leftists are saying that they oppose free speech because it allows some to engage in “hate speech” — i.e., any speech they want suppressed. We see this in examples of college campuses having had violent protests when Conservative speakers are scheduled. We even see them turn on “their own” when they attack other Leftists and Democrats who are not left enough. This is the same reaction that the ultra-leftists had during the French Revolution.
Leftists can’t publicly say that they are superior to others — i.e., Conservatives. They know that would quickly be rejected by the American public, at least at this time. Instead, they use the logic put forth by George Orwell in Animal Farm: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. And because they see themselves as being superior to those who disagree with them, it is pointless and useless to debate them.
Perhaps not the majority at this time, but a significant portion of the leaders of this “movement” have a definite goal: incite a race war in this country so that it brings the kind of chaos that they hope can propel them into having absolute control. Remember: Hitler did not get in power through a violent revolution. He was overwhelmingly elected by a population that was seduced by the lies he spread. But he could not STAY in power unless he used violence. This is the mindset of the left.
There are those who “identify” with the left and read this and scoff at it, thinking that they themselves have none of those tendencies. Well, those individuals would be the “useful idiots” that Lenin and Marx said they would use to achieve their overthrow of civil society in order to impose Marxism. And they, too, won’t get into a debate because they think anyone who makes arguments like this are inferior. But see? The same superior attitude.
Good stuff, esp. about how, like the Nazis, the mindset of those on the left is that they are superior to those who disagree with them.
These folks are (led by) Upper Class Snobs.
But, a claim that Hitler was overwhelmingly elected, is false.
He never got an outright majority in a really contested election.
You might be referring to the 1933 election where Hitler’s National Socialist party garnered 44% of the vote but acquired the largest number of seats, and thus a controlling power, of Parliament. In referring to that, you are correct; however, I was referring to the 1934 vote for Hitler’s proposal to merge the offices of President and Chancellor, which would make him the sole undisputed supreme leader of Germany. In that election, Hitler won 88% of the vote. Quite overwhelming.
“I was referring to the 1934 vote”.
Fair enough, tho that vote had no foes on the ballot.
It was the first of his Plebiscites.
That’s why I referred to “a really *contested* election”.
Mr. Lindsay, another superb essay.
Most commenters, compliments for well thought thru & expressed comments.
To all, the solution to critical theory is to REQUIRE adherents to experience life solely on the basis of critical theory (CT). They MUST:
* Fly in planes designed solely with CT
* Use vehicles designed solely with CT over bridges & thru tunnels (especially underwater tunnels) designed solely with CT
* Receive healthcare that relies solely on CT
* Eat food grown, harvested, preserved, transported, distributed … by CT approved methods
* Rely on CT approved energy sources and systems
The resulting lived experience will smarten them up, shorten the time they plague society, or both.
Exactly, they should stop culturally appropriating our values and methods…
This essay is brilliant yet sad for the necessity of having to write it. What it comes down to is that these folks haven’t grown up. To the extent that some may indeed have grown up, I believe they’re cynics as reflected in the title “Cynical Theorists.” This belief may come from my own cynicism in that I believe (living among them) that if their paychecks, livelihoods, reputations, ambitions, relationships and love affairs depended on it, they’d sell their supposed principles for a penny. In any event, their position, summed up in meme, is that Might Makes Right. Deconstruction begins with a chambered round and ends with the squeeze of the trigger.
Should we be thinking of Critical Social Justice Theory advocates as being religious? James’ essay hints at this view but doesn’t investigate it very deeply.
The vision of CSJ being a 21st century equivalent of 16/17th century Puritanism I think fits quite well, particularly when, for instance, TRA’s (Trans-Rights Activists) determine recalcitrant women (or ‘TERF’s) to be literal witches.
That ‘literal’ term is often employed by CSJ advocates/allies as a means of demonising an opponent. A ‘literal Nazi’ would of course be a member of The National Socialist German Workers Party (the NSDAP) which hasn’t existed since 1945. People of course can be neo-Nazis. That’s not the point though. The ‘literal Nazi’ term is simply because I reckon CSJ bods/The Woke aren’t quite yet comfortable with calling their victims ‘literal demons’. Nazi’s are I guess the next nearest thing we have to demons, and so that will have-to-suffice.
The problem is, such terms get over-used. The ‘#nodebate’ term, the very basis of Wokeness, ended-up being over-employed, and then derided, is rarely-seen now. Current terms are generally ‘literal Nazi’, ‘witch’, or to use ‘dog-whistle’ in an effort to shut-down discussion or thinking.
Yet even these terms will and are being over-employed. So I reckon The Woke will have to resort to calling people ‘demons’, not least because that probably expresses their true emotions about how they regard their victims, but also because the general populace will just become immune to accusations of racism, bigotry, transphobia…
If we frame this war as one against a militant religious theocracy, then battling Wokeness becomes a little easier-to-contemplate. Fortunately liberals have a huge, as-yet-underused weapon to-hand; unlike the Woke who treat history as something which requires erasure, liberalism is able to learn from history how best to fight this New Bigotry. And for that 16th & 17th century North American and European will fit-the-Bill perfectly.
This reminds me, as a Christian, of Romans 1. God gave the rebellious humanity over to a “debased” mind. They had rejected reality to such a degree God left them to live in their incoherency. It saddens me, but when you reject reality itself, you have embraced what is ultimately self-defeating.
I wonder what standards of debate Woke Folk would advocate for if they were ever put on trial for a crime they didn’t commit. Logic, reason, cause-and-effect, etc? Or, emo story telling?
They’d probably say they’re against trials and crime is a social construct or some such. At least until they’re a victim. Or, to paraphrase William Barr, at least until the flames are put out.
They’re perpetual teenagers — rebelling against systems upon which they are entirely dependent.
For that, perhaps the first part of Fitroy Maclean’s Eastern Approaches might help, with his observations as a diplomat attending Stalin’s show trials of some of the leading lights of the Russian Revolution. Essentially, his view wass that those on trial had so crafted Party doctrine that, even though they were objectively not guilty of the farago of allegations against them, they were axiomatically guilty because the charges had been brought against them by the Party.
“Woke” is simply another religion. Religious people tend to reject reason. Some religions or religoous people use force or the threat of force to compel conformity. This is why most religions hold the threat of some angry deity who will roast your “immortal soul” in unspeakable torment for all eternity if you don’t tow the party line.
“Social Justice” is anything but “Critical.” It is a religious sham foisted on weak minds unable to operate within the confines of reality. Their mutual fellowship within the echoing halls of their confirmation bias is filled with the same virulent hatred, venom, and vitriol that Southern Baptist preachers and radical Islamic Imams hurl at the infidels mulling around without their gates. Their mantra? The non-Woke deserve destruction and eternal damnation — reason and facts be damned!
Indeed, I haven’t the slightest idea what to do about — or to — the “wokes.” What do you advise doing about them, and to them?
There is, indeed, no talking to them or debating them, or compromise possible with them.
Whenever they start their ad hominem etc. routine, you’ve all the right to hurl such back at them, to boycott them, or to warn others of their toxic conduct.
“If Hillary/ Oprah insinuates me as having a “problematic” agenda, her having done so *thereby* reveals her to be running a “problematic” agenda, such as to *disqualify her* from being treated, as an authentic adult worthy of interaction with.”
A fairly “deniable” way to imply the above is, to simply answer them with “Whatever!”
And, no matter how they respond, simply answer them with “Whatever!”
The very vagueness of that one word will likely set them on their heels.
It may imply, that they utterly lack stature/ qualifications (to pontificate about anyone, besides themselves?), or that you lack the time now to stoop into their gutter.
They ‘ll likely be enraged, but will lack any solid grounds for whining, to anyone but those already in their pockets.
On a site that does such a wonderful job of dissecting and exposing the origins of this Woke mind virus I’m surprised I have never seen anyone else mention Tema Okun.
Okun and Kenneth Jones wrote an anti-racist tract all the way back in 2001:
White Supremacy Culture
From Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and
Tema Okun, ChangeWork, 2001
This chunk of postmodern slime mold has in subsequent years seeped into schools, business organizations and government.
Here it is straight from her organization.
https://www.dismantlingracism.org/uploads/4/3/5/7/43579015/okun_-_white_sup_culture.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjL8vq93oXrAhWDmOAKHQvZATMQFjAJegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw3i_TFfpNuLzCv19_N6zkAG&cshid=1596688756490
It practically served as the template for the Smithsonian’s recent racist infographic on all that bad stuff that defines Whiteness.
It would seem Okun deserves far more of the blame for this virulent idiocy than posers like Robin DiAngelo.
Just search for “White Supremacy Culture” Okun. You’ll find it all over the place – sadly.
I cannot overstate the value of what James, Peter and others here have done. But be clear – they are an asset to the Right for us to learn from. Read this piece but don’t get lost in the byzantine reasoning – the point is that they won’t participate in frikkin’ “MODERNITY” and the classical liberal order with us. They won’t agree to be governed by reason and to compromise with us.
What does this really mean? Simple – it’s a revolutionary ideology. “3rd order” means revolution and that starts with destroying our social order, which means destroying our society.
Revolutionaries need to be stripped of power and either banned from the nation or locked up. There is a crime called “sedition” on the books these “intellects” are breaking it. I’m happy to settle it out in the streets too – I don’t need the govt to handle this. I just need to be able to deal with them as active combatants in a revolution against my country.
If we don’t deal with them as such, they will keep winning. They are just about beyond the point of no return by my recknoning. We’ve already lost at least one generation of kids that we need to reclaim. We’ve already seen them destroy so many institutions. When will you fight back? Articles aren’t fighting back as they are not open to new information.
Most of you aren’t ready for this conversation. Most of you still think there is hope that somehow we’ll just “turn it around” by electing some new politician. Trump was elected. The Republicans held POTUS, senate and the House – and we didn’t push the left back much. It’s up to the people to take on these revolutionaries in your communities directly with a counter-revolution.
Hard for right wingers to conceive of but there no other response that is sufficient to stop them. Be clear of the implications of this article. They want a revolution. And there is no talking to them or debating them or compromise possible. So you either fight them on their terms or surrender. And no matter how many articles one writes, in the face of this force, one is just surrendering and pretending to fight. We can’t win a war of ideas with them, if the past 40 years haven’t proved that to you, nothing will.
One thing that can be done, and must be done immediately, is push back. NYU-Buffalo’s recent Woke brigade’s attack on Millard Fillmore (“we DEMAND that his name be removed from a campus building, even though he founded the university”) could be met with an equally forceful DEMAND that his name be kept in place — or, if removed, a relentless, never-ending public campaign to have it restored. Non-woke (i.e., rationalist) people need to be forming student groups and non-profit organizations to stand up to these bullies and hypocrites. If they don’t, their erasure is assured, and the USA will be a hopelessly tyrannical, bleak place to live.
History of warfare would suggest that a basic reason that the Woke don’t engage in reasoned discourse is that reasoned discourse is “letting your enemy choose the battlefield and the mode of fighting on that field.” Why fight by your enemy’s rules? Why fight where your enemy wants you to fight?
That the non-Woke don’t recognize that warfare is happening is because they cannot believe that warfare is happening. So much vested interest in not waking up to the unhappy reality that the opponent is actually an enemy. Thus, for instance, the omnipresence of the principle “if we give them what today they say that they want, then they will quiet down and everything will be okay.”
All of this can be summed up very simply: Critical Theory is deeply inconsistent (both formally and informally) and therefore anyone who actually thinks this way, or at least pretends to when it suits their political agenda, is fundamentally and self-consciously irrational. A self-consciously irrational person will of course perceive himself at a “structural” disadvantage in a rational discussion.
All of the Woke’s attempts at “critical epistemology” and meta-reasoning — attacks on logical reasoning, evidentiary justification, and the notion of an objective truth that is at least partly accessible with these tools — are built on the same juvenile paradox that every high school student crashes into the first time they learn about philosophical skepticism: We can’t know anything for sure… but wait, if we can’t know anything for sure, then that means we can’t know for sure that we can’t know anything for sure…*head explodes*. Self-description and recursion are necessary and extremely tricky parts of any meta-theory, as anyone who has spent more than five minutes working on such a theory, from philosophical epistemology to axiomatic set theory, will attest. In Woke epistemology, logic, evidence, and objective truth are part of oppressive false consciousness, and true knowledge is formed through narratives, lived experience and power dynamics. But by definition, that means their knowledge is no better than my knowledge, since we both have lived experiences and narratives and perceptions of power structures, yet somehow I’m arriving at the “wrong” meta-theory of knowledge. Why is my mirror broken and theirs isn’t, and why can their mirror detect whether it is broken while mine can’t? Clearly, there has to be some kind of ordering defined on the set of possible experiences and narratives, some way to decide which yield “more” truth and “less” truth, but how do we define such a function if objective truth doesn’t exist and the only source of knowledge is the set itself?
Deep down, all the Woke realize this problem, even if some aren’t intelligent or educated enough to articulate it clearly. That’s why they are pathologically obsessed with the notion of identity groups. It’s their escape valve, their way of breaking out of the clumsy endless epistemological loop they have built for themselves. If we take their definitions of identity groups and the various oppression dynamics between them as our axiomatic starting point, then suddenly the rest of the theory can be made to (sort-of) work. They have made race and gender identity transcendental: not only are they elements of the set of lived experiences, but they also form a separate binary relation defined *on* the set. This is a “God is omnipotent and we also have total free will”-level hole they’ve dug for themselves. It’s the most base and crude and illogical way imaginable to glue an irredeemably broken theory together into a grotesque semblance of a whole. Deep down, most of them *know* this. No matter how outrageously elaborate their coping mechanisms, they know it. Who would want to try and sell that kind of lemon to a customer that hadn’t already bought it?