Playing the Race Card
Post by chocolate on Mar 28, 2017 21:34:27 GMT -4
This sounds like a weird thread, because most people here don't feel threatened by SJWs individually, but it's not about how threatening they are. I'm doing it because SJWs fuel reactionary movements. The better we understand them, the easier it is to pick down how they are used in propaganda.
From The Rational Wiki
The left-wing generally only dislike group 2, while the right-wing tend to dislike both. It's a big generalization, but holds true. We can easily call them the most hated minority. As individuals, they are actually only a few in number that can be the mass embodiment of everything that's wrong with left-wing politics, so they are not a significant threat that way, they are more a source of ridicule than anything. As a phenomenon, they have proven to be quite significant pawns in pursuing political agendas.
SJWs as a historical and continuous reality
While the term to describe them is new, they have been noted to exist since the earliest social justice movements, often used in political cartoons to paint vast amount of people with various experiences and personalities as, well, cartoons. While some of them were true, most of them were not, however, it's in the nature of propaganda to only use part-truths to make a point, because when the truth cannot be refuted, the false element does not matter anymore.
For example, the second-wave feminists often pointed out that the media selectively picked the people with most extremist ideas to interview to present the movement as hateful, anti-men and exclusionary. However, second wave feminism was a success, and scholarly attention has been paid to the leaders chosen for the movement, who were picked specifically to work against stereotypes and defeat the smearing campaigns. Like Gloria Steinem, who was chosen as a leader to defeat the stereotype that 'feminists are just old women who feel unwanted because they are ugly.' She often called out the extremist elements of the movement too, and this played int eh favor of the whole movement.
SJWs have and always will continue to exist. However, their role has increased over time, because people smarter than them have found ways to use them.
SJWs as easy targets
In previous threads, I asked about opinions here on Otherkins, a community of people who socially identify as partially or entirely non-human who want their rights to be recognized like those of Trans community and as expected, they were easy to ridicule. When it comes to analyzing them, psychiatrists have noted:
That is true for easily targeted Otherkins, and I would say this is true for other types of extremists, left or right, SJWs are just the left kind. Most SJWs are young. Young people are malleable, young people are hormonal, and young people are more likely to not have a stable life, more likely to not be employed, and more likely to not make their own life decisions. Young people do not feel secure. This life insecurity has increased a lot more since the 2008 recession, so it affects a larger number of people for a longer period of time. Millennials notoriously do not feel adult in adult life, something psychiatrists have called delayed adulthood:
From this, we can understand there is always a level of projection in people who act with social justice. Some of them talk for their own experience, often making a disclaim that this doesn't apply to everyone, others will use their own experience to talk about others. The latter is what makes people react to them, and when their experience is really rare, it makes them so easy to ridicule too.
SJWs as an echo chamber
The term SJW itself started being originally used negatively on Tumblr, a microblogging platform, to describe a phenomenon that plagued the community there. SJWs tend to be found easily in Tumblr because:
I do have Tumblr, and I talked about it in a very negative light, though it's more a meh for me. Tumblr has its uses, and I like it for what it can do, it's just that, discussions are not part of its uses. Now, I was not there when this extremism started, so I have to rely on the stories of others of how the community there became so toxic:
I can concede that Tumblr users are generally introverted and socially awkward, something that clearly plays a role on how they perceive the world. However, this is ot the only place where you can find them, just the best known one.
SJWs as an exclusive community
Now, this is a video from the very controversial YouTuber Blaire White, a trans woman who talks about her experiences as both a trans and a conservative woman
It's easy to dismiss her because 'she is right-wing, she is hypocritical' etc. but I'm left-wing myself and yet I find that I agree with quite a few of her points in that video (not so much other her videos). There really is a vilification of dissenting opinions in the LGBT community, there really is an anti-conservative indoctrination. I haven't come out to my anti-LGBT parents, but I cannot find myself agreeing with the ideology of those communities. I don't know where I belong. And this happens with other forms of social justice.
In American society, there is an on-going demonization of people with conservative opinions. It is partially justified, right-wing people have often passed laws to limit the rights of vast groups of people, but there are also a wide spectrum in the right wing. There is also a spectrum in the left-wing too, people are not entirely liberal or entirely conservative, they are a mix of both. It's hypocritical the same type of people who preach to not stereotype do the same thing with those they disagree with.
By being an exclusive community like this, they do not help with the solution of problems they care so much about, they only solve only for a group of people, but alienate many others who need help too. They often engage in censorship platforms, which give the expected result, more people getting angry at them.
SJWs as a source of income
I'd recommend watching this video to understand:
It's not clear when media noticed that outrageous claims attracted more people than sensible and balanced ones, but they did and today's media is filled with clickbait titles and articles that manipulate people into leaving comments to defend their point of view, but also attract dissenting people who aggressively want to defend their too. Buzzfeed has become the post boy for new media yellow journalism, that has been imitated by many other sites. Many Buzzfeed ex-employees have revealed were told to not write about their positive experiences, only negative one, because that generated more clicks, there are a lot of YouTube videos where they discuss this. SJW articles are being shared in higher rates than actual journalists (PBS link)
For example, PewDiePie was unfairly targeted as a 'white supremacist' by the media, leading to millions of people writing comments after comments on how he was taken out of context, that people were out for blood, they were given a free reign to a witchhunt etc., explained here better:
SJWs as a destabilizing force
As mentioned before, SJWs have always existed, they were only named recently. However, it's not recently they were used as a propaganda force. During the 1950s-1960s, The United States entered an era of major social justice movements like the Civil Rights movement or the second-wave Feminism movement. Just like with every social justice movement prior and after them, SJWs were there too. It's then when the Soviet Union's KGB noted it and considered this phenomenon important as a factor to destabilize the West. In Aleksandr Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics, section for the United States, it's noted:
Political polarization is not just the right going more to the right, but also the left going more to the left. Most people have liberal opinions on something, and conservative opinions on something else, it's not hypocritical, it's just how people are. Most people are varied. They are mosaics, their worldview has been shaped from their own experiences and this is neither right nor wrong. But people have gone more to the left and more to the right in recent times.
As extremists, they have often shown to be examples of the Horseshoe Theory in action, which we have discussed previously in this forum:
We took as an example the topic of cultural appropriation, the concept that "cultures must be separate", i.e an authoritarian view that stresses isolationism over diversity, multiculturalism, internationalism which is interesting when considering how much these type of people stress for these factors. Thus, they act as a separatist movement. Other ways they are similar are explained in this video, which is by the highly controversial Sargon of Akkad, so a bit of a warning:
There has been a big deal on alleged Russian intervention in the latest American election cycle and there is also an increasing fear over the relationship of US and other countries, especially EU and NATO members.
SJWs as a radicalizing tool
SJWs are easily the most hated minority right now, by the left, right and center. Left-wing nutjobs, while they exist, are actually not that large in number, they are simply easier to find through the internet, but there are many reactionary movements against them.
There is simple reason why there are more movements against them, than any other group. Many internet private companies, such as Google, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc have headquarters are in the liberal bubble that is California, more specifically in Silicon Valley, tend to side with them often because they are raised more in Californian-only culture, as opposed to wide-American. Calling California a 'liberal bubble' is not a stretch, the average Californian is quite unaware of the socioeconomic struggles that bestow the rest of America, or if they do, they are treated with ridicule (I searched but found nothing, what is the name for anti-rural prejudice?), as if the people are poor because it's their choice. They ignore the role of class and increase that of race, to belittle their issues and insult them, blaming rural people (aka 'white America' or 'Amerikkka') for things like Trump (even though that's not race-based, Trump vote was actually class-based, and it's white America's fault Trump didn't get the popular vote).
California even threatened to secede, not unlike Texas when Obama was elected, using those separatist traits Russia uses as propaganda. Both states have been widely criticized for this, those are some real national embarrassments.
Granted, California is not the only source of SJWs, obviously, they live everywhere in America, and just like everything American, they are imported to other countries too. But enough about California, let's move on to the point.
There have been several groups that have pointed out the hypocrisy of mainstream media (Gawker media is HQ in Silicon Valley...sorry, last time):
Or how censorship affects disproportionately right-wing opinions (which can be held by left-wing people too), even if not hateful, just different:
These things have created a state of distrust and anxiety on whole groups of people, part of whom are the young white men, that is being used by white supremacists to fuel their agendas. Let's be honest, no one likes to be called a racist in America. It's the worst label you can put on someone, and you cannot expect them to just take it and not react. And in fact, a lot of well known white supremacists have reactionary streak in them. Liza pointed out in this comment what YouTube channels white supremacist James Harris Jackson was subscribed to and most of them were understandably alt-right echo chambers. What caught my eye was that he was also subscribed to decent human being PewDiePie, and I think know why. No it's not gaming, PewDiePie's viewership demographics are 12 year old children. He was subscribed as a protest to the SJW witchhunt PewDiePie was unfairly targeted for, something I wrote about before.
PewDiePie was hailed as a martyr in alt-right circles, something the media pointed out to smear him more. People subscribed to him as a protest to show they sided with him. He himself called out the media on that
Conclusions
SJWs are tools, both in the meaning "complete morons" and the meaning "used to carry out a particular function." Their statements are a source of laughter at best and cringe at worst since they clearly have some issues with themselves first, and harms them more than anyone else. However, their existence does present a threat to social order, as they are constantly used to pursue extremist political agendas, some of them of global importance.
From The Rational Wiki
"Social Justice Warrior" (abbreviated "SJW"[1]) is a once positive term for "progressive" that turned into a derogatory term circa 2011. While there are "fundamental disagreements" over the definition of a Social Justice Warrior, they tend to fall into two categories:[2]
1. A reactionary snarl word used to dismiss the concerns of liberals, progressives, feminists, and supporters of political correctness.[3][4][5]
2. A more nebulous term referring to loonier members of the Social Justice camp that are either misguided, only in the movement because it's currently "hip", advocate extremist actions (such as verbal, emotional, and/or physical violence[6]), or use Social Justice to mask ulterior motives that have existed in just about every movement since the dawn of time.[7]
1. A reactionary snarl word used to dismiss the concerns of liberals, progressives, feminists, and supporters of political correctness.[3][4][5]
2. A more nebulous term referring to loonier members of the Social Justice camp that are either misguided, only in the movement because it's currently "hip", advocate extremist actions (such as verbal, emotional, and/or physical violence[6]), or use Social Justice to mask ulterior motives that have existed in just about every movement since the dawn of time.[7]
SJWs as a historical and continuous reality
While the term to describe them is new, they have been noted to exist since the earliest social justice movements, often used in political cartoons to paint vast amount of people with various experiences and personalities as, well, cartoons. While some of them were true, most of them were not, however, it's in the nature of propaganda to only use part-truths to make a point, because when the truth cannot be refuted, the false element does not matter anymore.
For example, the second-wave feminists often pointed out that the media selectively picked the people with most extremist ideas to interview to present the movement as hateful, anti-men and exclusionary. However, second wave feminism was a success, and scholarly attention has been paid to the leaders chosen for the movement, who were picked specifically to work against stereotypes and defeat the smearing campaigns. Like Gloria Steinem, who was chosen as a leader to defeat the stereotype that 'feminists are just old women who feel unwanted because they are ugly.' She often called out the extremist elements of the movement too, and this played int eh favor of the whole movement.
SJWs have and always will continue to exist. However, their role has increased over time, because people smarter than them have found ways to use them.
SJWs as easy targets
In previous threads, I asked about opinions here on Otherkins, a community of people who socially identify as partially or entirely non-human who want their rights to be recognized like those of Trans community and as expected, they were easy to ridicule. When it comes to analyzing them, psychiatrists have noted:
It's a defense mechanism to psychiatric distress of some kind...
...The current popular assessment is that this is related to mental illness, but I think that is cruel. Psychiatric distress and devastated self worth can arise from far more sources than mental illness. Some events that may do serious psychological trauma are only worsened by the stigma of amateur diagnosis.
...The current popular assessment is that this is related to mental illness, but I think that is cruel. Psychiatric distress and devastated self worth can arise from far more sources than mental illness. Some events that may do serious psychological trauma are only worsened by the stigma of amateur diagnosis.
That is true for easily targeted Otherkins, and I would say this is true for other types of extremists, left or right, SJWs are just the left kind. Most SJWs are young. Young people are malleable, young people are hormonal, and young people are more likely to not have a stable life, more likely to not be employed, and more likely to not make their own life decisions. Young people do not feel secure. This life insecurity has increased a lot more since the 2008 recession, so it affects a larger number of people for a longer period of time. Millennials notoriously do not feel adult in adult life, something psychiatrists have called delayed adulthood:
One of the most notable demographic trends of the last two decades has been the delayed entry of young people into adulthood. According to a large-scale national study conducted since the late 1970s, it has taken longer for each successive generation to finish school, establish financial independence, marry and have children. Today’s 25-year-olds, compared with their parents’ generation at the same age, are twice as likely to still be students, only half as likely to be married and 50 percent more likely to be receiving financial assistance from their parents.
People tend to react to this trend in one of two ways, either castigating today’s young people for their idleness or acknowledging delayed adulthood as a rational, if regrettable, response to a variety of social changes, like poor job prospects. Either way, postponing the settled, responsible patterns of adulthood is seen as a bad thing.
People tend to react to this trend in one of two ways, either castigating today’s young people for their idleness or acknowledging delayed adulthood as a rational, if regrettable, response to a variety of social changes, like poor job prospects. Either way, postponing the settled, responsible patterns of adulthood is seen as a bad thing.
SJWs as an echo chamber
The term SJW itself started being originally used negatively on Tumblr, a microblogging platform, to describe a phenomenon that plagued the community there. SJWs tend to be found easily in Tumblr because:
- Tumblr's UI encourages the users to build their own echo chamber. You follow those you like, block those you don't like, pretty simple.
- Tumblr attracts young people, and I explained above why this matters.
- Tumblr's format does not favor long, well-thought post, but short emotional responses. Unfortunately, short emotional responses tend to oversimplify complex situations and act as way to radicalize people.
- Tumblr is anonymous (unless you choose to reveal your identity of course) and as such, there are rarely real life consequences from what you say, which encourage users to continue.
- Tumblr UI is not good for blogging and sharing information, but for sharing pictures or gifs. As such, it attracts the artsy-fartsy types, not the people who study fields that explain how the society actually works.
- Tumblr, from a technical point of view, has a lot of other issues that foster this environment, which instead of repeating, I'll just link to a high effort post I have seen.
I do have Tumblr, and I talked about it in a very negative light, though it's more a meh for me. Tumblr has its uses, and I like it for what it can do, it's just that, discussions are not part of its uses. Now, I was not there when this extremism started, so I have to rely on the stories of others of how the community there became so toxic:
When I was 14, Tumblr was not a hive of SJWs as it is today. The site was mostly populated by the same type of demographic - awkward teenage girls - but it was a lot nicer. Instead of being aggressive and hateful with politics it was basically used to share TV/movie screenshots, fanfiction, and fan art. There was not much politics on Old Tumblr but there was one philosophy I believe was the centre of this community and that was simply not fitting in.
I am sure most people who spend a lot of time online can sympathise with the teenager who is not popular at school but finds solace on the internet. This was me. I spent most of my breaks at school in the computer rooms and didn't really talk to many people. I had a couple of friends but I didn't really like them too much and we never really socialised outside of school hours. This is relevant detail for later on, don't worry...
...But at the basis of it all, the exact same mindset prevailed. I believe Tumblr was a very easy target to convert to SJWs because of what the community already was. It was already full of awkward teen girls looking for somewhere to fit in who had bought into the idea they were better than everyone else and there was already a cult-like mentality in place to support this view and shun those who went outside of it. All the SJWs had to do is turn it political.
I am sure most people who spend a lot of time online can sympathise with the teenager who is not popular at school but finds solace on the internet. This was me. I spent most of my breaks at school in the computer rooms and didn't really talk to many people. I had a couple of friends but I didn't really like them too much and we never really socialised outside of school hours. This is relevant detail for later on, don't worry...
...But at the basis of it all, the exact same mindset prevailed. I believe Tumblr was a very easy target to convert to SJWs because of what the community already was. It was already full of awkward teen girls looking for somewhere to fit in who had bought into the idea they were better than everyone else and there was already a cult-like mentality in place to support this view and shun those who went outside of it. All the SJWs had to do is turn it political.
SJWs as an exclusive community
Now, this is a video from the very controversial YouTuber Blaire White, a trans woman who talks about her experiences as both a trans and a conservative woman
It's easy to dismiss her because 'she is right-wing, she is hypocritical' etc. but I'm left-wing myself and yet I find that I agree with quite a few of her points in that video (not so much other her videos). There really is a vilification of dissenting opinions in the LGBT community, there really is an anti-conservative indoctrination. I haven't come out to my anti-LGBT parents, but I cannot find myself agreeing with the ideology of those communities. I don't know where I belong. And this happens with other forms of social justice.
In American society, there is an on-going demonization of people with conservative opinions. It is partially justified, right-wing people have often passed laws to limit the rights of vast groups of people, but there are also a wide spectrum in the right wing. There is also a spectrum in the left-wing too, people are not entirely liberal or entirely conservative, they are a mix of both. It's hypocritical the same type of people who preach to not stereotype do the same thing with those they disagree with.
By being an exclusive community like this, they do not help with the solution of problems they care so much about, they only solve only for a group of people, but alienate many others who need help too. They often engage in censorship platforms, which give the expected result, more people getting angry at them.
SJWs as a source of income
I'd recommend watching this video to understand:
It's not clear when media noticed that outrageous claims attracted more people than sensible and balanced ones, but they did and today's media is filled with clickbait titles and articles that manipulate people into leaving comments to defend their point of view, but also attract dissenting people who aggressively want to defend their too. Buzzfeed has become the post boy for new media yellow journalism, that has been imitated by many other sites. Many Buzzfeed ex-employees have revealed were told to not write about their positive experiences, only negative one, because that generated more clicks, there are a lot of YouTube videos where they discuss this. SJW articles are being shared in higher rates than actual journalists (PBS link)
This increased competition from media organizations like Buzzfeed, Vice Media and Vox have put renewed pressure on legacy media. Broadcasters especially try to entice their audiences through click-bait. This is defined as “an [eye-catching] link on a website which encourages people to read on. It is often paid for by the advertiser (‘Paid’ click-bait) or generates income based on the number of clicks.”
SJWs as a destabilizing force
As mentioned before, SJWs have always existed, they were only named recently. However, it's not recently they were used as a propaganda force. During the 1950s-1960s, The United States entered an era of major social justice movements like the Civil Rights movement or the second-wave Feminism movement. Just like with every social justice movement prior and after them, SJWs were there too. It's then when the Soviet Union's KGB noted it and considered this phenomenon important as a factor to destabilize the West. In Aleksandr Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics, section for the United States, it's noted:
Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics."
As extremists, they have often shown to be examples of the Horseshoe Theory in action, which we have discussed previously in this forum:
The horseshoe theory in political science stipulates that the far-left and far-right are more similar to each other in essentials than either is to the political center.
It was formulated by the French post-postmodernist philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye, who believed that the extremes of the political spectrum both represented totalitarianism of different kinds; this meant that the political spectrum should not be described as a linear bar with the two ends representing the far-left and right being ideologically the furthest apart from each other, but as a horseshoe in which the two ends are closer to each other than to the center.
The same phenomenon applies in the various competing monotheisms as well, where professed arch-enemies like Christian dominionists and the Muslim Taliban actually share views on most topics, including on consumer culture, abortion, feminism, drug use, homosexuality and so on.
Nationalists from different nations and race supremacists from different ethnic groups (white supremacy, black supremacy) also share the majority of their political outlook with their rival cranks, not with the majority.
It was formulated by the French post-postmodernist philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye, who believed that the extremes of the political spectrum both represented totalitarianism of different kinds; this meant that the political spectrum should not be described as a linear bar with the two ends representing the far-left and right being ideologically the furthest apart from each other, but as a horseshoe in which the two ends are closer to each other than to the center.
The same phenomenon applies in the various competing monotheisms as well, where professed arch-enemies like Christian dominionists and the Muslim Taliban actually share views on most topics, including on consumer culture, abortion, feminism, drug use, homosexuality and so on.
Nationalists from different nations and race supremacists from different ethnic groups (white supremacy, black supremacy) also share the majority of their political outlook with their rival cranks, not with the majority.
There has been a big deal on alleged Russian intervention in the latest American election cycle and there is also an increasing fear over the relationship of US and other countries, especially EU and NATO members.
SJWs as a radicalizing tool
SJWs are easily the most hated minority right now, by the left, right and center. Left-wing nutjobs, while they exist, are actually not that large in number, they are simply easier to find through the internet, but there are many reactionary movements against them.
There is simple reason why there are more movements against them, than any other group. Many internet private companies, such as Google, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc have headquarters are in the liberal bubble that is California, more specifically in Silicon Valley, tend to side with them often because they are raised more in Californian-only culture, as opposed to wide-American. Calling California a 'liberal bubble' is not a stretch, the average Californian is quite unaware of the socioeconomic struggles that bestow the rest of America, or if they do, they are treated with ridicule (I searched but found nothing, what is the name for anti-rural prejudice?), as if the people are poor because it's their choice. They ignore the role of class and increase that of race, to belittle their issues and insult them, blaming rural people (aka 'white America' or 'Amerikkka') for things like Trump (even though that's not race-based, Trump vote was actually class-based, and it's white America's fault Trump didn't get the popular vote).
California even threatened to secede, not unlike Texas when Obama was elected, using those separatist traits Russia uses as propaganda. Both states have been widely criticized for this, those are some real national embarrassments.
Granted, California is not the only source of SJWs, obviously, they live everywhere in America, and just like everything American, they are imported to other countries too. But enough about California, let's move on to the point.
There have been several groups that have pointed out the hypocrisy of mainstream media (Gawker media is HQ in Silicon Valley...sorry, last time):
Or how censorship affects disproportionately right-wing opinions (which can be held by left-wing people too), even if not hateful, just different:
These things have created a state of distrust and anxiety on whole groups of people, part of whom are the young white men, that is being used by white supremacists to fuel their agendas. Let's be honest, no one likes to be called a racist in America. It's the worst label you can put on someone, and you cannot expect them to just take it and not react. And in fact, a lot of well known white supremacists have reactionary streak in them. Liza pointed out in this comment what YouTube channels white supremacist James Harris Jackson was subscribed to and most of them were understandably alt-right echo chambers. What caught my eye was that he was also subscribed to decent human being PewDiePie, and I think know why. No it's not gaming, PewDiePie's viewership demographics are 12 year old children. He was subscribed as a protest to the SJW witchhunt PewDiePie was unfairly targeted for, something I wrote about before.
PewDiePie was hailed as a martyr in alt-right circles, something the media pointed out to smear him more. People subscribed to him as a protest to show they sided with him. He himself called out the media on that
Conclusions
SJWs are tools, both in the meaning "complete morons" and the meaning "used to carry out a particular function." Their statements are a source of laughter at best and cringe at worst since they clearly have some issues with themselves first, and harms them more than anyone else. However, their existence does present a threat to social order, as they are constantly used to pursue extremist political agendas, some of them of global importance.
