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Welcome to new followers who saw my climate & Social Justice thread. Here is another thread: this on the subject of “canceling” and mobbing versus intense criticism from many people. You will see examples of this from the predictable types
First, it is important to know that playing dumb is a widely used strategy when it comes to this “PC is just civility, canceling is just criticism” stuff. It is widely employed, and it works among themselves for two reasons, and is potentially compelling to observers for one more
First, double standards are at the heart and soul of Social Justice. This is because they see power/privilege asymmetries everywhere and “equity” is the name of the double standards that, theoretically, level the playing field.
You see this everywhere- criticism of them is frequently violence, or unjust due to some arbitrary metric- certainly genitalia or skin color, but maybe Twitter follower count or whatever
The second reason they can internally play dumb is because the actual context does not matter for Social Justice, since the only goal for SJ is to maintain the SJ vision and the utopian society that is meant to exist once speech, art, comedy, movies, education, etc pass ...
...pass certain tests, with an ever elevated bar for “correct” behavior. Since anti-SJ speech is in conflict with this utopia, there will always be an out to justify why their group is fine doing X but not another group.
Of course, double standards & inconsistent ethics are not unique to SJ, but like any ideological cause seeking to institutionalize, it is important to unite under a moral vision that makes this justifiable.
The reason why this rhetoric is potentially compelling to people outside the ideology, is because, all of the operational terms- identity politics or PC or cancel culture- are objectively hard to define rigorously and fit behaviors we know to be associated with it a priori.
There are certain elements separating cancelling from criticism aside from the shear number of criticisms- content, self high fiving, and going after jobs or other aspects of personal life count, but again this is hard to objectively measure.
A related theme we have all seen (also playing dumb) is that no one has the *right* to that particular job or platform. This has always been strange, since usually 1) we are talking about platforms removed, not never granted 2) the reasons for the lack of access or removal.
It is also an odd thing to say from a group that often has sensible things to say about job access, employment injustices, etc. Although not rigorously in conflict, this isn’t generally a group that would otherwise advocate for more difficulty in people enjoying employment.
But remember, SJ only sees power and wants to reshape vaguely defined power dynamics in strategic ways- the actual welfare of real people is less of a concern than the maintaining of the SJ vision. People in conflict with utopia could just go rot.
“But they aren’t rotting! Look at their job/number of Twitter followers!” they say triumphantly. Again, this is rather beside the point. Your intent matters. What you want for that person matters. Social Justice is, however, a consequentialist ideological system.
That is, SJ measures the success or failure of an item based on outcome, or “impact” in their lexicon, not on intent or any underlying ethical principle. This is somewhat complicated in that it also includes perceived impact or “lived” impact, etc.
This is also why behaviors can be called racist or sexist based on an individual’s declaration (the power of that declaration growing monotonocially further down gradient of power attached to the identity of that individual), not on any objective consideration of what was done.
This is all internally coherent within a SJ worldview because things like truth, criticism, double standards, etc don’t matter except to the extent they can be wielded to maintain the equitable vision of society in which their vague idea of oppression cannot exist.
So the irony of their concerns about whataboutism, tone policing, while not lost to the casual observer, is in fact perfectly rational to the SJ types. You need to suspend your beliefs in individuals, objectivity, and ethical truths for it to make any sense though.
You have frequently heard, “actions have consequences,” that while true, is more of an SJ slogan since there is never (and cannot be) an articulation of proportionality, what consequences make sense, when it goes too far, etc. This notion of (ironically) justice makes no sense.
Remember that the ultimate goal is the preservation of SJ Theory, and people are just members of groups that are vessels for their support or opposition to Theory. This takes precedent over their life, or even their identity itself! This is called “empathy” in Social Justice.
