Wednesday, February 03, 2016

The Totalitarian Doctrine of "Social Justice Warriors"

The Totalitarian Doctrine of "Social Justice Warriors"
"Consider last year’s protest against a Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibit that allowed visitors to try on a kimono: activists assailed this as “cultural appropriation” and racist imperialism, much to the bafflement of local Japanese-Americans and Japanese consulate staffers. Or consider the outcry over a T-Shirt worn in promotional photos by stars of the film Suffragette, using a slogan from suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst, “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave.” This was blasted for “co-opting” the black experience of slavery and racism and ignoring the Civil War connotations of “rebel”—even though the quote had nothing to do with American slavery or Confederate rebellion and used both words in the universal sense. Behind these outbreaks of self-righteous wrath is a distinct if somewhat amorphous ideology we could dub “SocJus.” (The callback to “IngSoc” from George Orwell’s 1984 is not quite coincidental.) At the center of this world-view is the evil of oppression, the virtue of “marginalized” identities—based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, or disability—and the perfectionist quest to eliminate anything the marginalized may perceive as oppressive or “invalidating.” Such perceptions are given a near-absolute presumption of validity, even if shared by a fraction of the “oppressed group.” Meanwhile, the viewpoints of the “privileged”—a category that includes economically disadvantaged whites, especially men—are radically devalued."

No comments:

Post a Comment