In a post called Fearful Symmetry, the pseudonymous Scott Alexander draws parallels between the mentality of the Social Justice Warrior and his or her opponent.
The social justice narrative describes a political-economic elite dominated by white males persecuting anybody who doesn’t fit into their culture, like blacks, women, and gays. The anti-social-justice narrative describes an intellectual-cultural elite dominated by social justice activists persecuting anybody who doesn’t fit into their culture, like men, theists, and conservatives.
My thoughts:
1. He is describing two distinct forms of persecution. Persecuting people for being black, woman (or man), or gay is hating them for who they are, for something that they cannot change. Persecuting people for being a conservative or theist is hating them for what they believe, and by implication you will stop hating them if they change their beliefs.
2. Historically, Jews have experienced both forms of hatred. As I understand it, the Inquisition sought to change their beliefs. The Holocaust was existential hatred.
3. It is not clear to me which form of hatred is “better.” Both forms can lead to violence and extreme forms of inhumanity.
4. Probably both forms can be traced to the xenophobia that is in human nature. Coincidentally, I have just received a review copy of Nature, Human Nature, & Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy, by Justin E. D. Smith. Perhaps this book will shed more light on these topics.
5. Just because you can find one example of somebody on the other side who explicitly argues for persecuting your group does not mean that your group is necessarily persecuted. Before you become paranoid, make sure that everyone really is out to get you.
6. It seems easy to go from “I am a member of a persecuted group” to “I therefore have a license to persecute.” I think that it would be helpful if we could refrain from making that move. If you took away the “license to persecute” aspect, then I think that people would find grievance politics and persecution narratives less attractive.
What’s the best way to shut down the “Xism is prejudice plus power” definition? “That’s not what the dictionary says” seems to have mixed success but is philosophically unappealing. Maybe just paraphrase without the pseudoacademic language? “I’m a bigot, but I’m also a loser so it’s okay!”
Regarding #5 and 6: I agree that people saying dumb and intemperate things on the internet should not be blown out of proportion by either side. That said, I still find myself bothered a bit by the fact that a preoccupation with the slippery, malleable concept of “social justice” is still considered something of a status marker in this country while at the same time, to me it’s clear that some significant fraction of what goes under the label of social justice is simply a combination of race and class resentment dressed up as righting historical wrongs or what have you.
When you factor in the rapidly shifting demographics of this country, I think there’s (some) legitimate concern about the social climate being created, mostly because it seems as though it is not difficult for humans of different social or ethnic tribes to get into long-running, destructive feuds with one another. In fact, many people seem to enjoy this kind of conflict, on some level. With that in mind, I think it’s important to condemn inflammatory rhetoric of the kind Scott Alexander mentions, wherever it happens to appear.
Outside of online debates, it helps to have a larger goal to work towards. The trivial and irrelevant things then just naturally fall away. If you are playing Go with someone, or working on a software project with them, or dancing at a concert with them, then our natural human tendencies do the right thing and will steer us a way from confrontations on race, religion, politics, you name it.
Online forums seem to do the opposite. A forum for (women, Democrats, economists, environment warriors, …) is going to form a group identity around their theme, and thus will encourage people to take that one thing very very seriously. At the same time they’ll smooth over every other difference among the members as mere thematic color. I’m not sure how to really improve this aspect of online forums. Maybe try to limit the time spent in any given one. Or maybe just don’t spend so much time in them altogether.
Amen to #6.
I think the “hatred for what they are” vs. “hatred for what they believe” is a meaningful distinction, but I don’t think it cleaves at all neatly between pro and anti SJW factions.
There are plenty of religious conservatives who seem to legitimately “love the sinner, hate the sin.” As far as they’re concerned, as far as a person doesn’t act out homosexual behaviors, they’re not going to judge.
On the other hand, as a straight white male, I spent years learning that in large sectors of the broad social justice community, I could never really be in-group. No matter that I feel committed to doing what I think is right and, rather than trying to defend what privilege I have, would rather scale let my charitable donations scale with my income to the exclusion of my standard of living, I would always be subject to scrutiny and doubt based on my inborn qualities.
We would be better off losing the whole persecution thought. It is natural for groups to favor their own and that can and often does result in discrimination, but persecution is rarely its concern or goal and talk of persecution merely reinforces the group structure rather than opening up the group and dissolving the barriers and discrimination, and while loss of privilege may feel like discrimination that doesn’t mean it is, just as the gain of privilege may feel like its lessening but that doesn’t mean it is.
Huzzah.
Your encyclopedic knowledge has a hole: the Spanish Inquisition. Its objective was NOT to convert Jews (after 1492 there were supposed to be no Jews in Spain) but to punish the Judaizantes (converted but insincere). Netaniyahu (the father of Israel’s Prime Minister) wrote about the “Limpieza de Sangre” criterion, which preceded the Nurnberg Race Laws.
We have a black president and a white NAACP president. It is interesting times.
#1 sounds like a conformist manifesto. More importantly, how different are beliefs and preferences? What is the twin concordance for gay vs conservative?
It is. And you’ll notice how the “there’s no right to not be offended” attitude and free speech absolutism is quickly becoming identified with the right.
Remember when the idea of a rebel was thought to be somehow inherently leftist? I at least got that impression, growing up as I did in the age of parental advisory warnings on albums. Now warnings are coming back, in the form of “trigger warnings,” and it isn’t coming at the behest of viewers of The 700 Club.
The Inquisition was largely unrelated to Jews. It was focused on heresy, and Judaism is self-evidently not heretical.
The very rare, but rather bizarre, intersection of this is that some overzealous Christian laymen would basically kidnap Jews, baptize them, and then send them on their way. If he repudiated the baptism, then that was all there was to it, since it is not possible to force a sacrament on someone against their will.
However, if he did not repudiate it–and many did not, because they pretty much just put the whole unpleasant thing behind them–then it was taken as a valid baptism, which meant that he was technically and legally no longer a Jew but a Christian, and living under Jewish law would be heretical.
In practice that was rare, but it as an interesting and odd enough happening that it was worth attention.
With that odd footnote aside, the Inquisition had basically nothing to do with Jews or the conversion of any non-Christian peoples. It was much more concerned with maintaining orthodoxy among Catholics and combating Catharism and such like.
Its a classic prisoners dilemma. Which path to choose….
Anyway, it would be nice if everyone agreed to lay down their arms.