Thread by @M_Methuselah

The reason why identity politics is so powerful is because we naturally ascribe great power and exception to the state of being a victim. Behavior which would otherwise be inexcusable is excused, such as violence, if it is understood to be enacted in the service of self defense.

This is why "speech is violence" is such a pernicious idea. Why the victimology of identity politics is such a pernicious idea. It reframes every scenario such that you are a perpetual victim, and therefore otherwise inexcusable behavior on your part is perpetually justified.

This is the logic behind the hatred of white people we recently saw from Sarah Jeong, and why it is accepted in elite circles and outlets like the NYT.

This is the logic behind the platform purge of Alex Jones, and why it is excused so long as his speech is framed as violence.

The part that baffles me, though, is that no one understands that the open hatred of people based on their race at outlets like the NYT, and the blatant, arbitrary, and biased purge of certain voices off of YouTube etc, is giving these "oppressors" legitimate claim to victimhood.

The entire persuasive structure of your rhetoric, and the system that you have established, is based on the legitimacy of certain actions from the standpoint of victim. This is why the oppression olympics happened, because victimization is now a powerful and valuable commodity.

So knowing all of this, why would you continue to use that power to LEGITIMATELY begin to VICTIMIZE the very people you want to take power away from? From within your own epistemology, you are deliberately handing people like Alex Jones the very power you seek to strip from him.

When I look at the prestigious "Gray Lady" tacitly endorsing the open hatred of white people based on their race, I see a legitimate grievance.

When multiple private platforms simultaneously purge Alex Jones from their service because of his speech, I see a legitimate grievance.

The supposedly legitimate claim to such behavior rests upon the assumption of victimhood and being institutionally oppressed, yet all I see are supposed "victims" controlling the institutions, and the supposed "oppressors" subject to such institutional power with no recourse.

The entire situation is a paradox, an oxymoron. Assumptions of victimhood are not questioned, and used to justify actions that would otherwise be considered oppression. Legitimate grievances are dismissed and otherwise rationalized by framing victims as oppressors and aggressors.

Identity politics, intersectionality, postmodern power politics, whatever you want to call it. It isn't even consistent within its own framework, and it knows it. It is nothing more than a mechanism designed to accrue power and maintain it through enforcing ideological orthodoxy.

It's a trick, an illusion. It's trapped so many of you into defending the actions of institutional behemoths no matter what they do, whether they're openly peddling bigotry, or colluding together to victimize the individuals who dare to step out of line.

Gad Saad calls it a parasite, and the analogy couldn't be better. It's the toxoplasmosis, leading the mouse into a cat's jaws. It's the massospora, eating cicadas from the inside. It's the helminth, turning the snail into lunch. It's the cordyceps, decimating entire ant colonies.

Do I like Alex Jones, Infowars, and all of his conspiracy theory nonsense? Fuck no. Do I feel personally offended by Sarah Jeong's increasingly creative expressions of prejudice against me because of the color of my skin? My white skin is a little bit too thick for that.

But it is PRECISELY because I can see how deeply this parasite has infected the zeitgeist that the LAST THING I want is to give Alex Jones and his supporters a slice of victimhood, to give "white people" as a self interested and self aware racial group any legitimate grievance.

It is PRECISELY because I don't want wild pendulum swings, and I don't want to have to consistently argue against the same postmodern rationalizations for power politics from EVERY SIDE, considering we have enough trouble simply fighting against the one that opened this door.

I'm worried that the "door" was actually Pandora's box, and we can't do anything now that the genie's out of the bottle. I fear that we'll end up with some form of ochlocracy, a de facto technocracy by fiat, or perhaps a cultural landscape so polarized that it becomes balkanized.

We'll keep fighting a culture war that escalates until it becomes so grand that any possible victory will be Pyrrhic. At the altar, we will sacrifice our rights, our principles, our empathy, until nothing is left but the cacophony of our own rhetoric reverberating in our ears.

I was conscripted and I didn't even realize it. Now I'm doing all that I can to hold onto my principles, to extend my empathy, and to protect my rights by defending yours. The longer that this stupid war goes on, the more difficult that task seems to become.

I no longer question why otherwise intelligent people are suckered in, why they lose themselves to the war.

They were conscripted too. We all were. And they either couldn't think over the cacophony and drowned in the din, or they jumped at the chance to exploit the war economy.

Now we're stuck in an endless loop of reactionary justifications, post hoc hypocrisy, and naked will to power.

I can barely hear myself think. I want to scream, but I'm scared to death that I won't be able to hear even that.