There's a separate but related phenomenon where news stories about people being punished for transgressing these norms absolutely refuse to publish any detail about what the person is accused of, as though merely mentioning them somehow means you approve of them. Everyone was always 'using a slur' or 'engaged in sexual misconduct' or 'spreading misinformation.' With a murder or theft you hear what happened, but here it's impossible to find out what the person actually did.
Conveniently, this means you can't form your own judgement about whether the person deserved it, you're just being informed that someone has been cast out. I'm not sure any of the Joe Rogan stories actually told me what was said on his podcast and who said it – was it an ivermectin thing? It's incredibly frustrating.
This post reminds me of a rhetorical move that I see periodically. People will say something along the lines of, "Politics is debating whether we should raise or lower taxes, not whether this group should or shouldn't have rights." Not only is it an attempt to reduce politics to technocratic management, but it's a weird form of begging the question: you lose because I have defined the whole argument as out of bounds.
I think its practitioners think that actually engaging with the view they find abhorrent would weaken their position by making their foes' views more permissable in society, but in practice dodging the whole argument like this is what makes you look weak and hollow.
I also prefer “social justice” politics, because I see them seeking “justice” in the same way that the criminal justice system does: They want punishment and revenge.
It’s not about making things equal and fair and nice for everyone. That would be “social equality politics” perhaps. Social justice means identifying bad people and making them pay.
This post immediately sparked thoughts about the contention in trans activist and feminist circles regarding the word “woman.” To use the word according to its long-held definition is to be transphobic; to use it as an open-ended category as the trans activist movement does is to erase any meaningful or non-circular definition of it. Radical feminism has been arguing for years that without being able to call females females, or women, their ability to talk about their needs and rights is hampered. And the opposite has been true in trans activism, where removing concrete definitions or constantly shifting the “appropriate” terminology has allowed them to talk about rights and needs under the cover of an amorphous language.
It's part of a larger issue, I think. It often seems to me (old fart that I am) that the cohort driving the political/cultural conversation now is frightened - even terrified - of WORDS, and when the people driving a conversation have that particular handicap (will someone take umbrage at that word, I wonder?) your conversation is in fact going to be an anti-conversation, a negation of the very idea of exchange, understanding, or persuasion.
I have no idea where this comes from, but it does seem to me to be real - and fairly new, at least at this scale.
Agree completely. I can't say exactly when, but eventually there's going to be hell to pay for the excesses of the current round of social justice politics. I think the only thing keeping it afloat is that Trump era conservatives are so awful. I think this is why they are so hot to label everything fascist and love fear porn about the far right. It's like that Lacanian/Zizekian "quilting point" that lets them wallpaper over all there on internal contradictions and incoherence. They don't want to be defined because opposition to Trump and the alt-right is the only thing holding them together.
Someone is going to come in, mobilize the simmering sea of resentment literally anyone else had, and clean house. The woke crowd will find themselves with no friends left, no one with any interest in defending them. It'll probably take 10 years after that at least for the left to come back. I'll be getting old. I can see the chance for any meaningful political change receding past my time on this Earth.
Roxane Gay's article in the times today is just so fricking funny. Like I can't even believe it. It's basically like "there's a difference between censorship and curation", which more or less seems to mean "when you censor people for the right reasons, that's not censorship". It's like this same thing of rhetorical tricks, where they simply redefine words to suit their purposes.
Which is so funny, because on the one hand, these are the same people that seem to "essentialize" identity categories — speaking of intersecting oppressed experiences as the fundamentally defining characteristic element of one's being (although conveniently leaving out economic class, too often) — and yet when critics treat other common terms & concepts in political discourse with the same dignity/respect (such as censorship), suddenly with a stroke of a pen these people evaporate like smoke. It reminds me a lot of that journalist from harry potter, the one whose pen makes up stories and spreads gossip and speaks it as truth.
Other than it’s very much about performative acts that don’t actually do anything.
It reminds me about the NYC debate over Uber. The city wanted to shut it down (or at least substantially restrict it) and the Black community was very much opposed as before Uber it was very difficult for Black people to get a cab.
And some very earnest white woman said something like, “That can’t be true as there are many Black cab drivers.” As if Black cab driver can’t be racist against Black people. And then she went on to say, with all the earnestness in the world, that in any case it wouldn’t be an issue as all cab drivers would have to attend diversity training.
I wonder how much of the problems stems from lack of leadership. It used to be that movements had leaders (MLK, etc), whose job it was to spell out exactly what the demands actually were, and to justify them to the press, etc. Modern activist movements are basically leaderless (imo), and so everyone is at the mercy of the loudest and the cruelest amongst us.
Whatever term we want to use for this school of politics, I just wanna say that I fucking HATE it and would love nothing more than for it to go away. Or at least shrink in its influence. I'm serious. There's nothing more I want right now.
This is very timely. Over here in Evanston, Illinois our schools are closed today while the rest of the districts around us are open. If you oppose this decision by the superintendent, you're immediately branded a racist and doxxed in the facebook groups. It's broken down our discourse so much that we can't even have a reasonable conversation about snow days anymore.
I usually am pretty crotchety about pop culture analogies for discussing politics, especially Harry Potter ones, but I have to begrudgingly admit that this is pretty fuckin apt.
Completely agree. It is SO helpful that you, Wesley Yang, Scott Alexander, and others have theorized and articulated what is going on. I cannot overstate how vital and necessary that was.
“Voldemorting” is a great addition to the lexicon.
I'm not crazy about "social justice politics" simply because there was such a thing long before wokery emerged.
There's a separate but related phenomenon where news stories about people being punished for transgressing these norms absolutely refuse to publish any detail about what the person is accused of, as though merely mentioning them somehow means you approve of them. Everyone was always 'using a slur' or 'engaged in sexual misconduct' or 'spreading misinformation.' With a murder or theft you hear what happened, but here it's impossible to find out what the person actually did.
Conveniently, this means you can't form your own judgement about whether the person deserved it, you're just being informed that someone has been cast out. I'm not sure any of the Joe Rogan stories actually told me what was said on his podcast and who said it – was it an ivermectin thing? It's incredibly frustrating.
Tonight on Twitter - "Eugenics-supporting blogger cites TERF to support racism"
This post reminds me of a rhetorical move that I see periodically. People will say something along the lines of, "Politics is debating whether we should raise or lower taxes, not whether this group should or shouldn't have rights." Not only is it an attempt to reduce politics to technocratic management, but it's a weird form of begging the question: you lose because I have defined the whole argument as out of bounds.
I think its practitioners think that actually engaging with the view they find abhorrent would weaken their position by making their foes' views more permissable in society, but in practice dodging the whole argument like this is what makes you look weak and hollow.
I also prefer “social justice” politics, because I see them seeking “justice” in the same way that the criminal justice system does: They want punishment and revenge.
It’s not about making things equal and fair and nice for everyone. That would be “social equality politics” perhaps. Social justice means identifying bad people and making them pay.
This post immediately sparked thoughts about the contention in trans activist and feminist circles regarding the word “woman.” To use the word according to its long-held definition is to be transphobic; to use it as an open-ended category as the trans activist movement does is to erase any meaningful or non-circular definition of it. Radical feminism has been arguing for years that without being able to call females females, or women, their ability to talk about their needs and rights is hampered. And the opposite has been true in trans activism, where removing concrete definitions or constantly shifting the “appropriate” terminology has allowed them to talk about rights and needs under the cover of an amorphous language.
It's part of a larger issue, I think. It often seems to me (old fart that I am) that the cohort driving the political/cultural conversation now is frightened - even terrified - of WORDS, and when the people driving a conversation have that particular handicap (will someone take umbrage at that word, I wonder?) your conversation is in fact going to be an anti-conversation, a negation of the very idea of exchange, understanding, or persuasion.
I have no idea where this comes from, but it does seem to me to be real - and fairly new, at least at this scale.
Agree completely. I can't say exactly when, but eventually there's going to be hell to pay for the excesses of the current round of social justice politics. I think the only thing keeping it afloat is that Trump era conservatives are so awful. I think this is why they are so hot to label everything fascist and love fear porn about the far right. It's like that Lacanian/Zizekian "quilting point" that lets them wallpaper over all there on internal contradictions and incoherence. They don't want to be defined because opposition to Trump and the alt-right is the only thing holding them together.
Someone is going to come in, mobilize the simmering sea of resentment literally anyone else had, and clean house. The woke crowd will find themselves with no friends left, no one with any interest in defending them. It'll probably take 10 years after that at least for the left to come back. I'll be getting old. I can see the chance for any meaningful political change receding past my time on this Earth.
Roxane Gay's article in the times today is just so fricking funny. Like I can't even believe it. It's basically like "there's a difference between censorship and curation", which more or less seems to mean "when you censor people for the right reasons, that's not censorship". It's like this same thing of rhetorical tricks, where they simply redefine words to suit their purposes.
Which is so funny, because on the one hand, these are the same people that seem to "essentialize" identity categories — speaking of intersecting oppressed experiences as the fundamentally defining characteristic element of one's being (although conveniently leaving out economic class, too often) — and yet when critics treat other common terms & concepts in political discourse with the same dignity/respect (such as censorship), suddenly with a stroke of a pen these people evaporate like smoke. It reminds me a lot of that journalist from harry potter, the one whose pen makes up stories and spreads gossip and speaks it as truth.
I’ve never got a good definition of woke.
Other than it’s very much about performative acts that don’t actually do anything.
It reminds me about the NYC debate over Uber. The city wanted to shut it down (or at least substantially restrict it) and the Black community was very much opposed as before Uber it was very difficult for Black people to get a cab.
And some very earnest white woman said something like, “That can’t be true as there are many Black cab drivers.” As if Black cab driver can’t be racist against Black people. And then she went on to say, with all the earnestness in the world, that in any case it wouldn’t be an issue as all cab drivers would have to attend diversity training.
I wonder how much of the problems stems from lack of leadership. It used to be that movements had leaders (MLK, etc), whose job it was to spell out exactly what the demands actually were, and to justify them to the press, etc. Modern activist movements are basically leaderless (imo), and so everyone is at the mercy of the loudest and the cruelest amongst us.
Whatever term we want to use for this school of politics, I just wanna say that I fucking HATE it and would love nothing more than for it to go away. Or at least shrink in its influence. I'm serious. There's nothing more I want right now.
Love a concise Freddie post! This one cuts.
This is very timely. Over here in Evanston, Illinois our schools are closed today while the rest of the districts around us are open. If you oppose this decision by the superintendent, you're immediately branded a racist and doxxed in the facebook groups. It's broken down our discourse so much that we can't even have a reasonable conversation about snow days anymore.
TAHELLANs
To A Hammer Everything Looks Like A Nail
I know I've committed an acronymic sin, but, still, I'm going to try it out.
I do not like sullying the word "justice" to describe the people you're trying to name.
I usually am pretty crotchety about pop culture analogies for discussing politics, especially Harry Potter ones, but I have to begrudgingly admit that this is pretty fuckin apt.
Completely agree. It is SO helpful that you, Wesley Yang, Scott Alexander, and others have theorized and articulated what is going on. I cannot overstate how vital and necessary that was.
“Voldemorting” is a great addition to the lexicon.
I'm not crazy about "social justice politics" simply because there was such a thing long before wokery emerged.