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Intersectionalism Is Nonsense. But the Backlash Against It Is Very Real - Quillette quillette.com/2019/07/30/int…
The campaign to silence those who question progressive ideas about race and privilege requires frequent rebranding.
Labels such as “far-right” and “alt-right,” which once might have served to strip a person of his or her livelihood and personal reputation, have become such common terms of abuse that they’ve effectively become meaningless.
The words “white nationalist” once were used to describe someone who actually supported the creation of a white ethnostate.
But now, activists are claiming that the mere act of making an “okay” hand gesture could mark you as a “white power” extremist—or at least someone who is “alt-right-adjacent.”
The goal of this perversion of language is to drive up the number of people who may be classified out of hand as extremists, and thereby disqualify even the mildest forms of dissent as de facto hate speech.
I don’t deny that racism exists and it is repugnant. But the solution is not to divide society into ideological factions, with one side being publicly shamed and banished, while the other is given carte blanche to promote its own increasingly fanatical, intersectional doctrines
The theory of intersectionality, now widely embraced by self-described feminist activists, maintains that non-whites, women, and LGBT individuals face systemic oppression whose scope increases according to the number of minority statuses a person holds.
The fewer boxes you check (straight white men don’t check any) the more “privilege” you are deemed to possess.
This privilege is invoked to justify reverse racism (though a true intersectionalist would argue that this is a misuse of the word “racism,” since the term only may be applied in regard to the mistreatment of a so-called “person of color”).
“Everyone I don’t like is Hitler” used to be a funny internet meme. But it’s become a fairly accurate description of intersectionalist rhetoric—a phenomenon that isn’t funny at all. This kind of rhetoric doesn’t mend divisiveness within society.
And doubling down whenever anyone questions it only serves to alienate potential allies who oppose racism and reverse racism alike—myself included.
