Nothing in the post you replied to was directed at anything other than an analysis of the article you provided. What do you think I was insinuating about you? And what in the post gave you that idea?

(I was using the word "you" in the general sense btw if that's what it was.)

How wrong people are for thinking what isn't the subject. What they may think, regardless of wrong or right is. The implication is not that I am suggesting this for some wish fulfilling reason or some such, and endorse it? I do endorse moderation, but not even on account of personal centrality but because it would be counter productive in any case, I believe.

I'm perfectly willing to entertain that I'm mistaken, but not because an article is misleading, or I secretly want it to be true...

I wasn't trying to imply that you were a bad person or anything like that. I just think that discussing whether 'social justice has gone to far' is a very loaded place to start a discussion on civil rights, equality and prosperity.

I'm sure we'd both agree that equality of opportunity is good, that people should not be discriminated against for their sex, gender or race by any institution, and that being politically active and active in your community to try and make things better is always commendable.

To be sure, there are some people who think vandalising a wall in a suburb to say 'Don't forget Yemen' or retweeting something progressive is a powerful political act; people like that white idiot in the Youtube meme of 'You're a fucking white male!'. Though, who could blame them for acting this way? How else are we to engage politically with our fellow people apart from social media or the protest? It isn't like those opinions are guaranteed representation in our political systems...

Anyway, despite the possibility of idiots, those people who are passionate about social justice historically are the suffragettes, the followers of Luther and Malcolm, the Haitian rebels etc. and we commend trying to act for the good of us all. Right? That's what motivates a social justice warrior, a desire for things to be better. Who could think that is a bad thing?

Nowhere in my list did I suggest you secretly wanted anything in the article to be true. It's perfectly legitimate to post an article like that in support of a point and also perfectly legitimate to critically analyse it and ask for more evidence. I don't know where you stand politically on it because you haven't made that clear.

(It should also be clear that my criticisms in other posts are made primarily of the right in general and some positions taken by @gurugeorge. I don't think our disagreements are as serious.)

I didn't start a discussion on civil rights equality or prosperity, but how conservative teens seem to be, and my suggestion about moderation was indicative of my feeling that it needs to be countered. Don't worry, I've been accused of white knighting enough times to count for something. The memes, and what I see being made fun of (which I've also said has upset me, and made me argumentative, and said that I wasn't laughing at any of it in any case) is mostly any social justice stuff, and do you figure that teens are watching the daily show, and kimmel or something? No... it's all memes and internet stuff from what I see.

None of this is the subject though... instead things feel like an inquisition, and a demand for auto de fe to prove allegiances...

Anyway, despite the possibility of idiots, those people who are passionate about social justice historically are the suffragettes, the followers of Luther and Malcolm, the Haitian rebels etc. and we commend trying to act for the good of us all. Right? That's what motivates a social justice warrior, a desire for things to be better. Who could think that is a bad thing? — fdrake

Exactly. It takes a massive and dedicated effort at perverting the social sphere to get to where you can make people (other than manipulative elites) believe social justice and those fighting for it are the enemy.

Perhaps I'm being defensive, but I don't understand what has promoted all of these attacks on conservatism... the people I'm speaking of are not here to hear it... so I don't know how to react other than think that they're speaking to me, and trying to dissuade me.

I just said that this was something I figured based on my own personal encounters. I have zero evidence, could be wrong.

I'm mostly responding to this:

Now, all that said, I think that social justice has gotten to the point of ridiculousness, so that, one can see the increasing mockery, and scorn of it. Emotions are complex things, and we indulge ourselves in them. They remind us of good experiences, ties, places we've been, people we've known, good times in our lives, or whatever. We relive those things by attempting to reproduce analogous emotional ranges. Meaning that not only are the teens going to be laughing at and mocking particular groups, and pitying others, but they will be experiencing high intense emotional experiences, that they will spend the rest of their lives attempting to reproduce, with the fetishes of the markers of those experiences. Even when the zietgeist shifts, they will continue to make the same jokes, and signal the same virtues. The memes just get danker. — All sight

Indicating that social justice warriors in the aggregate are ridiculous is a stance on civil rights, gender equality, political solidarity and so on. It indicates a desire, though maybe not in you, to curtail the pursuit of social justice. Which always struck me as strange, considering social justice as a nebulous concept is something that everyone can agree with; it isn't articulated specifically, there are no issues associated with the stereotypical social justice warrior.

Logically this doesn't make much sense, if everyone would agree with an idea regardless of its content that idea is contentless. But politically, how expressing disapproval of social justice warriors works is that it expresses disapproval over people motivated to address injustice. All this shows is that memes about social justice warriors, especially ones expressing general disapproval of them, should not be considered logically; as a set of arguments and ideas linked with reasoning; but considered as expressing a political stance. A political stance which dislikes people who want social justice is a stance which either seeks to stymie efforts for social improvements; like greater prosperity and equality; or is incoherent.

The term social justice warrior actually was brought into internet political discourse by a concerted effort of unapologetic antifeminist trolls on the 4chan board /b/ during the harassment of Anita Sarkeesian and those perceived aligned with her. Which was then branded as 'Gamergate' by those same unapologetic antifeminist trolls. It had been used before, but this is when everyone learned it, and this is the context that imbues it with its meaning.

It used to refer precisely to those people like 'You're a fucking white male!' guy in the Youtube meme, now it refers to anyone who expresses feminist, antiracist or other social justice aligned opinions on the internet. This was done intentionally by racists and misogynists to shift the Overton window right and legitimate their bigoted opinions. Though, even the original article for it uses it disparagingly. I would like to see people using it more restrictively for the Tumblr Activism stereotype, rather than people who care about how society functions. You can read this history on 'knowyourmeme'.

Y'know, every sincere politician is a social justice warrior. Malcom X was a social justice warrior, MLK was a social justice warrior, Rosa Parks was a social justice warrior, the people who criticised the banker bailouts in 2008 were social justice warriors. Do you see a pattern? Anyone who says anything critical of the establishment can be called a social justice warrior so long as they aren't prejudiced.

Finding out all this shit made me stop using the term.

Oh, it resonates with some broader issues, so the criticisms are not aimed at you personally. Also, there are different strands of conservatism not all of which are anti-intellectual. The anti-intellectual strand just seems to be dominant at the moment (there are far more Trump/Alex Jones conservatives than George Will ones around as things stand). And as I said, I don't know where you stand politically. I'm just dealing with the issue you raised.

Okay, I'll just assume that it isn't about me, and not respond to remarks addressed at how wrong they are. Because, such comments, as a matter of fact, happen to not be addressing me.

I didn't know all that, but it fits. :up: :up: It seems to be a fairly exclusively American trope as is thankfully. I can't imagine it gaining much currency across the pond due to the incoherence and ethical perversity you pointed out along with the less influential media presence of the right here.

The anti-intellectual strand just seems to be dominant at the moment — Baden

I agree.

I think the damage that the inept moron Trump is doing will have severe effects not only to the GOP and the politics of the US, but in other places too.

But anyway, both the left and the right are allways under attack from extremist elements and fringe groups who want to take control of the movement and push out those in the political middle.

I don't think it makes sense to consider nations as hosts of specified ideological constructs any more. The contours of our shared social reality are determined by how shared media and institutions propagate rather than primarily the nationstate, at least for those people who are above the lowest classes in industrialised nations. I don't have a citation to prove it though, only anecdotes of the people I've spoken to from different industrialised nations have essentially the same conceptual scheme for politics, but with historical constraints on the content. This comes along with a shared culture which is the underbelly of norms expressed in widely broadcast media, which is typically American and British. Capital continues what conquest prefigured. In Lacanian/Zizekian terms the symbolic imaginary of politics is transnational.

The political realities of organising a nationstate are also to a large extent transnational too, due to global differentials in production and production specialisation. EG, Yemen has as much right to rail on the Saudi government as the British government's compliance with BAE. Again, in Lacanian/Zizekian terms, the symbolic real of politics is also transnational.

The ideology of weakening every state imposing on trade - neoliberalism - makes sense upon the backdrop of globalised production.

But, yeah, this is way too left to be seen as relevant to the SJW debate.

Rather than that cathartic rant, better response from me, would have been to highlight that the SJW meme, as a talking point, provides a criteria of exclusion for anyone who cares about women's rights or racial injustice.

Anyone who says anything critical of the establishment can be called a social justice warrior so long as they aren't prejudiced.

and

The real 'alt-right' has always done this, and uses free speech and our consumer ideology of the marketplace of ideas to spread. The difference between this alt-right and our popular right friends is that the alt-right knows it speaks in code. — fdrake

go hand in hand. The alt right, the bigots in their 'culture war', approach public discourse in this way. They make framing devices which, ideally, become viral content. This defines opposition out of existence - it really isn't a coincidence that any person who is antiracist or pro women's rights is a social justice warrior, it was put into the term 'SJW' for the purposes of social engineering. The criticisms of systemic injustices that are excluded through the term become 'combatants in the marketplace of ideas', which serves only to legitimate bigotry as the inversion of social justice.

That feminism, antifascism and antiracism have become disparaging slurs is a testament to the effectiveness of these framing devices. Your usual somewhat left of centre Christopher Hitchens loving internet rationalist accepts these ideas as reasonable subjects of debate, which shifts the Overton window right by the presupposition that equality for women and mitigating systemic injustices need to be defended in principle. Doing what you can to make the world a better place has almost become toxic because some shitlords living in their mothers' basements Hitler saluting each other over webcam who decry their involuntary celibacy while wearing only a cum-stained fedora have a better practical understanding of political discourse than our impassioned champions of civil rights.

the self-flagellation that occurred immediately after Trump's election — Maw

Thanks for providing an example of what I was talking about :)

what are you talking about? You said the Left lacks critical self-defense, despite the introspection and self-critique the Left went through after Trump' s election

despite the introspection and self-critique the Left went through after Trump' s election — Maw

If there had been any genuine, heartfelt self-critique, the Left would not have continued to do for the past 18 months exactly what it did to lose the election.

Self-critique involves considering the possibility that you might be entirely wrong in your asssumptions, not merely mulling over possible tactical tweaks.

But thanks for the amusing Freudian slip: "critical self-defense." :D

Ultimately it seems like you will never agree with any tactic or idea the Left has, unless it moves to the Right. So it's just circular nonsense.

I'm also on my phone, so it was simply an autocorrect mistake, but whatever helps you feel better about yourself

I dislike a lot of what I hear from over-the-air media, on-line media, blogs, etc. I've never read a 4chan page, and I haven't come out for confederate statue fan meets. On the other hand, I haven't come out for antifascist demonstrations, feminist demonstrations, and so forth. My demo days have been over for quite some time. Most of what I hear/see is a somewhat incoherent cacophony from all sides.

Take the current problem of Venezuelans fleeing to Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Columbia. On the one hand, of course they are fleeing -- life in Venezuela has become economically untenable for millions. On the other hand, the neighboring states are not rolling in gold. Let an aid agency exec. who spoke this morning stand in for the SJW viewpoint. "People have a right to go wherever they want to live!" he said. "The response in neighboring states is xenophobia."

No, it isn't "xenophobia". It's competition for scare resources. The theory that people should be able to move to and live wherever they wish sounds good in theory, but it entirely dismisses the people in the destination cities. Their right to live where they wish also requires a stable economy and decent pay, and it isn't xenophobia for them to fear the consequences of 500,000 or a million economic refugees suddenly taking up residence.

The argument for refugee rights is incoherent when it is one sided -- and quite often SJW talk is very one-sided. Pay equity for women isn't a simple issue. Claiming that all women are victimized by wage discrimination is sometimes true, but is often not. Men who do not adhere to the desired corporate commitment of time and talent (long and late hours, extremely competitive environments, continuous employment over decades, etc.) are also penalized, just as women are who do not conform to the desired pattern.

I'm well informed about how black people have been and are now discriminated against in a multitude of ways. Still, I don't buy everything that black activists are doing. some of the most critical black problems can only be addressed by the black community. Gun violence, for instance. It's a lifestyle issue that the black community has to resolve. Nobody can do it for them. Stopping traffic on freeways accomplishes nothing useful beyond publicity (and as every school girl knows, there's no such thing as bad publicity). Likewise, the failure of blacks to buy into property isn't entirely the fault of banks. Even illegal immigrants manage to buy houses on their low wages. How do they do it? They scrimp and save, live at the lowest standard of living tolerable for a time, and work hard at whatever work they can get. This method works -- it just means that everyone has to forego most spending until the family has enough saved to make a down payment. Poor Americans, white or black, generally don't see their way clear to making these kind of temporary sacrifices.

I expect the shock jocks on the radio to be one-sided and unsubtle. People working for social justice know more, can be, and should be more nuanced in their thinking and strategy.

I dislike a lot of what I hear from over-the-air media, on-line media, blogs, etc. I've never read a 4chan page, and I haven't come out for confederate statue fan meets. On the other hand, I haven't come out for antifascist demonstrations, feminist demonstrations, and so forth. My demo days have been over for quite some time. Most of what I hear/see is a somewhat incoherent cacophony from all sides. — Bitter Crank

Yes. We are the chattering classes after all.

Take the current problem of Venezuelans fleeing to Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Columbia. On the one hand, of course they are fleeing -- life in Venezuela has become economically untenable for millions. On the other hand, the neighboring states are not rolling in gold. Let an aid agency exec. who spoke this morning stand in for the SJW viewpoint. "People have a right to go wherever they want to live!" he said. "The response in neighboring states is xenophobia." — Bitter Crank

Of course it's understandable to be anxious about the effects of mass immigration on your community. Even though there's not a consensus of evidence that mass immigration effects a nation's economy as badly as people fear it does, it still makes sense that people get uncomfortable. In most of the industrialised countries I'm aware of, the only formal exceptions being Norway and Sweden, people with very little money end up sharing space with refugees and poor immigrants as a byproduct of housing policy. So I certainly can see why people end up worrying about having 'their' space coopted by people of different races. What it actually reveals is that the spaces they love were never theirs to begin with, they have very little power on who comes and goes, over whether houses in the area meet basic standards of living and so forth.

No, it isn't "xenophobia". It's competition for scare resources. The theory that people should be able to move to and live wherever they wish sounds good in theory, but it entirely dismisses the people in the destination cities. Their right to live where they wish also requires a stable economy and decent pay, and it isn't xenophobia for them to fear the consequences of 500,000 or a million economic refugees suddenly taking up residence. — Bitter Crank

Framing anxiety about immigrants in terms of competition for scarce resources, jobs, food etc only makes sense to the extent that a government fails to extend and enforce basic employment rights to those immigrants. There's no evidence that mass immigration is bad for an economy, and no evidence that it causes food or job shortages; the former because of massive overproduction and the availability of cheap food through globalised food production, the latter because population increases create jobs about as much as they demand them. Unemployment needs more than immigration to increase, it needs a state to fail its population.

Dealing with the facts, or at least the academic consensus, is a lot different from dealing with the optics of the situation. With this in mind, I believe it's important to affirm the difficulties people feel over immigration, like concerns about cultural change and job market saturation. Saying yes to treating people decently doesn't always make decency easy. Especially in the context of systemic injustice.

The argument for refugee rights is incoherent when it is one sided -- and quite often SJW talk is very one-sided. Pay equity for women isn't a simple issue. Claiming that all women are victimized by wage discrimination is sometimes true, but is often not. Men who do not adhere to the desired corporate commitment of time and talent (long and late hours, extremely competitive environments, continuous employment over decades, etc.) are also penalized, just as women are who do not conform to the desired pattern. — Bitter Crank

Yes, it's not a simple issue and overt sexism and racism should not be given the sole blame for the economic and social disparities women and non-whites are subject to. All well and good, it's important to study these things to see where they're coming from and how to alleviate them.

But, despite that your analysis is very considered and sympathetic to those who like social justice, this level of consideration is not part of the discourse surrounding the disparagement of SJWs. Most of the time the term is used to browbeat on anyone who highlights or acts against injustices, or promotes prosperity through community food initiatives and the like.

A reasoned more central viewpoint becoming a shield for bigoted opinions is similar to UKIP in the UK being a socially acceptable face for racism, they co-opted the debate about the tension between EU membership and national sovereignty. Being pro-EU membership was equated with being OK with immigrants, being anti-EU was equated with being not-OK with immigrants, and the discussion followed the cultural tropes Baden highlighted earlier in the thread. Similar to the Gamergate thing I brought up earlier with regard to the SJW term, these equivocations in the debate have been advanced by white nationalists for as long as there have been white nationalists.

So, people end up speaking in code even when they don't realise it. The code is mostly a bundle of framing devices, and the spread of those framing devices is what's shifted the Overton window right in a lot of ways in the last couple of years.

What @fdrake said, and to reiterate that by using the term "SJW" disparaging, you're buying into a phrasing invented and pushed by people who don't share your sense of nuance, who consider any moves towards social justice anathema, and who consider this kind of language a weapon to be used broadly against anyone who doesn't share their right-wing viewpoint. Their goal, and it's succeeding to an extent, is to turn us all into "useful idiots" unwittingly arguing on their loaded terms.

Ultimately it seems like you will never agree with any tactic or idea the Left has, unless it moves to the Right. — Maw

No, that's not the case at all. I expect that there will be some core principles on which we'll never agree (unless obviously one of us does shift our core beliefs); but I also expect some measure of civil discourse and occasional compromise, and I don't appreciate being demonized by people who are so all-fired sure of their position that they prejudicially view anyone who disagrees with them as evil, stupid, deplorable, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic - you name it

Sure, but it's fine for you to demonise and mock young people interested in a fairer society as "SJWs" and teachers at universities as despised elites etc. What civil discourse is possible with the targets of your scorn? Again, your hypocrisy makes your position incoherent.

What civil discourse is possible with the targets of your scorn? — Baden

I don't know, it depends on whether I'm deplatformed by them or not.

Which sarcastic one-liner just underlines my point. I hardly know any poster here who's been less civil and thoughtful in his attitude towards the targets of his political criticisms than you. You set up a bunch of right-wing stereotypes of hated lefties, proceed to tell us how much they're hated, and then complain about you being the victim of demonization. And for some odd reason you can't see the problem with that. Why don't you set an example by offering some nuanced criticisms rather than these paper-thin caricatures of the left you present? Then you might have a right to expect some reciprocation. As it is, you're not giving your opponents a reason to take you seriously.

I don't appreciate being demonized by people who are so all-fired sure of their position that they prejudicially view anyone who disagrees with them as evil, stupid, deplorable, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic - you name it — gurugeorge

......

Human beings are (rational) animals, and like other species, we are divisible into sub-species by means of both plain observation and more recondite scientific investigations (into relative genetic closeness or distance). For humans, there are 3 broad and about 7 or 9 more refined sub-species, or "races," — gurugeorge

It turns out that of the three main races, Asians tend to be the least promiscuous, Blacks the most, with Whites inbetween — gurugeorge

The breakdown of the Black family and the atomization of the Black middle class in the 1960s, and the connection of that breakdown to crime is well documented — gurugeorge

The sexual behaviour of both males and females is "enforced" extra-legally in traditional societies, but in different ways (and in different ways in different cultures - again, this is the result of both biological and memetic evolution). The focus on females is just an artifact of the difference in the relative abundance of the two sexes' gametes, and the balance, or division of reproductive labour between the sexes in our markedly sexually dimorphic species. Females have to be much more careful about reproduction because they have less potential shots at it, so they bear more risk than males, and there's more pressure on them to get it right, e.g. to take care to choose a good mate, who'll both provide good genetic material and stick around to help them raise the child (especially during the period of greater vulnerability during pregnancy and their children's early development). — gurugeorge

The whole foofaraw about trans stuff is beneath contempt, it's just another attempt by the PC cult to silence ideas it doesn't like and gain institutional power. It's a mind-virus. — gurugeorge

Yeah dude, totally not racist, sexist, transphobic...

Discourse started getting more difficult, let's see... was it after the Hitler-Stalin Pact when the Communist Party USA identified the sin of "premature anti-fascism"? Or was it in the late 40s and 50s when Joseph McCarthy, Republican Senator from Wisconsin, began a witch hunt for "are you now or have you ever been" communists and homosexuals in the U.S. Government? Or was it during the war on Vietnamese communists that "we had to destroy a village in order to save it"? Or was it when "socialist" became a term of opprobrium equivalent to 'pedophile'. 'subversive' and 'communist'? In the 1980s some socialists were wondering whether they should just stop using the term. Alas... there wasn't any other term as serviceable as "socialist".

And so on and so forth down to the present. The "Overton Window" - the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse - changes over time, certainly.

Race and/or ethnicity, sex and/or gender, any number of identities, and feminism don't seem to have been shut out of the Overton Window. (Like, "Would the love that dare not speak its name please shut up for a while!") Some operatives in the swamp of the right wing may ridicule social justice warrior operatives in the left wing swamp on the other side of the road. If "SJW" is the worst epithet right wingers can come up with... stop worrying.

I don't find SJW as dismissive a handle as you two seem to find it. It seems like a good fit, to me. SJW is no more offensive than "weekend warrior". I've been a "social justice warrior" a number of times. Also a "do gooder". SJW is less derisive than "do gooder". It's better than "guilty white liberal"; it beats "dead white males" -- a category to which I'm close enough to be touchy about.

The efforts of the majority of people committed to the fight for social justice strike me as very similar to the the efforts of anti-war peace activists during Vietnam--efforts that I thought very highly of at the time. We marched to Boston Commons (or wherever the location was) and chanted slogans and sang "we shall over come" and listened to impassioned speeches. Then we went home.

There was an enormous amount of talk among small groups, tons of planning, lots of leaflets and buttons were printed, arguments had with family and friends, and so on. A million people showed up one fall day in Washington, D.C. -- 1 out of every 200 Americans overflowed the mall for that biggest peace demonstration.

And you know what the concrete outcome of all this was? PFFT. Zilch. Zero. Nada. The war lasted another 5 years, unabated. It is as safe to criticize SJWs now as it was to criticize hippie faggot peaceniks in 1970, because there was very little of importance that hinged on their efforts.

I disparage social justice advocates now no more than I disparage peace efforts 50 years ago. But let's be clear: Neither peace advocates nor social justice advocates ever got anywhere close to getting their hands on the levers of social and economic policy. Those levers are never left unattended or unguarded and they are well protected behind locked thick-steel doors.

The benefits of social justice advocacy and peace activism flow primarily to the activists, to the benefactors--not to the beneficiaries. Why? Because the act of protesting is good for the protestor. Literally. It's a healthy exercise in every sense of the word. It just happens to be totally ineffective as a method of getting at those policy levers.

It's fascinating to me that people use the term 'Social Justice Warrior' as a derogatory appellation, because it assumes that caring about social justice, whether through talking about it and the ways in which to secure it, and/or securing it through direct action, is somehow meaningless, or misplaced, as if obtaining social justice was impossible or futile or unnecessary etc., when, historically (and presently), that stance is wrong and misguided.