Do Some Social Justice Advocates Go Too Far?

[rhett o rick]

This is from an article from medium.com posted by Aristotelis Orginos. More at the link:
https://medium.com/@aristoNYC/social-justice-bullies-the-authoritarianism-of-millennial-social-justice-6bdb5ad3c9d3

Let me finally be abundantly, abundantly clear. Social justice and social justice advocacy is a good thing. To utilize one’s education to solve social ills is an admirable goal.

However,

 in attempting to solve pressing and important social issues, millennial social justice advocates are violently sabotaging genuine opportunities for progress by infecting a liberal political narrative with, ironically, hate.

The version of millennial social justice advocacy  one that uses Identity Politics to balkanize groups of people, engenders hatred between groups, willingly lies to push agendas, manipulates language to provide immunity from criticism, and that publicly shames anyone who remotely speaks some sort of dissent from the overarching narrative of the orthodoxy — is not admirable. It is deplorable. It appeals to the basest of human instincts: fear and hatred. It is not an enlightened or educated position to take. History will not look kindly on this Orwellian, authoritarian pervision of social justice that has taken social media and millennials by storm over the past few years.

But the fact of the matter is — anyone unwilling to engage in productive, open, mutually critical conversations with people they disagree with under the moral protection of liberalism and social justice are not liberals, are not social justice advocates, and are not social justice warriors; they are social justice bullies.

Emphasis in bold added

This is an interesting article and not directed at anyone in DU.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Some people go too far.

That sort of behaviour isn't anything unique to advocates for social justice or any other agenda.

[Warpy]

2. I'm heartily sick of the Social Justice Warriors on DU, that's for sure

Look, people, I'm old, really old, old enough to remember when "retarded" was the polite word that took the place of the pejorative "stupid," applied to children who were having a lot of trouble with school work. It was the first step on the way to differentiating things like dyslexia, autism, and other barriers to learning. It's only a pejorative to people who feel guilty for using it as such in middle school. Grow up.

I'm old enough to remember a lot of other words in colloquial English that were shorthand for groups of people that the SJWs on DU consider horrible, life threatening pejoratives.

I also notice these great warriors against colloquial English are always offended on the behalf of someone else who hasn't said s/he is offended, the SJWs apparently considering themselves the untiring champions of people out there who are just too stupid to know they've been mocked. I can tell them as a native born Florida Cracker, I am more offended by that than I am the word "cracker."

Now there are a few words that truly do offend people and I do avoid using them, calling people what they prefer to be called, which is usually their names.

Now I've used enough words in this post to give most of them serious cases of the Victorian Bowdlerist swoons and I am sure this post will be hidden. Go ahead, do your worst, some hides are definitely worth it, especially when they tend to increase readership.

Just realize that some day, when you are an elder, your language will be criticized by the young who think that the easy job of making war on words is vastly preferable to getting down in the mud to make war on real injustice.

That is all.

[rhett o rick]

6. Thanks for the post. I am probably near your age because I have seen

the same changes. I see that there are two problems. One is that some liberals go too far to accommodate under represented groups to a fault. In fact to the point of condescension . The other problem is that some self-righteous persons see the opportunity to wield power under the banner of social justice, as the article discusses.

By the way, this OP is not intended to complain about the recent banning.

[2banon]

15. Hey Warpy..

we know each other in the craft forum I think.

Yes, I too am of that certain age.

From my observations in various activism capacities, Identity Politics is ultimately inserted, disrupting process, ability to go forward on decision making, and too frequently stifling efforts to ultimately achieve the desired goal..

In a word, they're Social Justice movement busters. -(destroyers).

[Maedhros]

3. The Two Minute Hate is popular with a certain crowd.

We see it every day here on DU.

[MannyGoldstein]

7. +1 nt

[rhett o rick]

9. I think it's more than that. I think it's used to promote an agenda. The liberal agenda is

to let people talk and discuss, while the conservative agenda is to try to stifle all speech that doesn't conform to their world view.

[Maedhros]

10. So many posters have nothing to contribute other than vitriol and mockery,

and there are definitely coordinated groups of such individuals who descend on posts that display Wrong Thinking. However, I have to believe that a reasonable chunk of those people are simply engaging in a tribal impulse to join "Us" in seething against "Them."

[rhett o rick]

19. I think it's a self-righteous mob mentality. nm

[Maedhros]

20. Middle School Playground mentality. [n/t]

[rhett o rick]

21. yep!

[passiveporcupine]

23. I think I agree with this

[kentuck]

4. How do we define "social justice"?

If poverty is ignored or permitted to grow, is that a "social justice"?

To me, "social justice" has a very broad meaning.

[rhett o rick]

5. Some people try to separate social justice from economic justice. This is wrong.

You cant have social justice without economic justice.

[sabrina 1]

8. The reason for that is obvious. It is in the interests of those in power to keep the people divided

To talk about the reality of class warfare could cause the unthinkable, people uniting AGAINST those who are responsible for the economic inequality that exists in this country today.

It would mean not having those 'weapons' to use in elections eg.

People with an agenda, they will always exist, too much attention is paid to them. Here, all we have to do is ignore them.

And btw, Bernie is right! Why anyone would want to deny AAs the same economic opportunities as white people is beyond me, or deny that poverty isn't a factor in how people are treated in society. But as I said, that would remove the divisiveness, cause people to unite, and we can't have that.

[L0oniX]

11. Social justice is directly connected to economic justice IMO.

[rhett o rick]

12. I think that's obvious. But the Third Way wants to seperate them because

they are willing to concede some social justice changes to placate the naive.

[L0oniX]

13. The Third way may have some racist tendencies as well.

Saw this PBS report about the new or more well known now white crack and meth dealers. It was made clear that given the same social economic environment there would be no differences because of race. When people are desperately poor with no hope of climbing the economic latter that not all but many will divert to drugs ...both selling and using.

[rhett o rick]

14. I don't know specifically about racism in the Third Way, but I believe the Plutocratic-Oligarchs

are not racist but use racism to further their goals of gaining wealth.

[2banon]

17. Right, lip service to social justice and ignoring economic justice.

[2banon]

18. that's my view too.

[2banon]

16. Yes, Socio-Economic Justice

hardly ever said, but for reasons I cannot understand, class analysis is too often omitted in the equation/formula of social justice.

[Warpy]

22. Yeah, I tried to point that out and got slammed

by a couple of bizarros who didn't have a clue what they were talking about.

[merrily]

24. But: It is harder to have social injustice in the face of economic justice, but it's NOT impossible.

As a woman, I've been a victim of economic injustice of various kinds. However, no one crossed the street or moved out of a neighborhood when he or she saw me (or me and my kid) coming. I've never worried about having a cross burned on my lawn or a swastika painted on my kid's school locker or my grandparents' grave stone. I've never worried about a cop shooting my child for brandishing a toy gun or manhandling my daughter for swimming at the wrong pool.

So, while there is a large correlation between social justice and economic justice, those two circles are not concentric.

I understand the tension, given the Sanders campaign. But we cannot focus solely on the place where the two circles intersect and overlook the places whether the two circles do not overlap much, if at all. At the same time, I don't think Sanders does that.

[merrily]

25. This article complains about identity politics and balkanization of certain groups, then

proceeds to balkanize Millennials.

I read quite several paragraphs before I got to any specific complaitn, namely:

Because, at the behest of millennial social justice advocates, we are told not to question rape victims. To do so is “victim blaming” and can potentially “re-traumatize” the victim.

This is totally false. Victim shaming is blaming the victim for the rape, not merely questioning the victim about what happened. The publication in question engaged in bad journalism and has admitted that. Good journalism would not have required victim shaming, but journalistic investigation. The publication did not even do the very minimum, namely seeking a comment from the accused. Being respectful to someone who claims to have been raped is not an excuse for bad journalism and good journalism does not require asking a rape victim how much cleavage she was displaying to the rapist before the rape.

Much of this rhetoric comes from the idea that there is a pervasive rape culture on campuses nationwide that must be stamped out;

Um, like the Senior Salute that's been in media recently? What's your point, again?

more systemically, there are socially-endorsed and institutionally-endorsed modes of patriarchy that continually oppress women.

And there aren't? Are you kidding me?

Trans vaginal probes, denial of insurance coverage, denial of control over one's body, absence of female priests in the Catholic Church and very few in any church, "women, be obedient to your husbands," etc. Denying the existence of socially endorsed and institutionally endorsed modes of patriarchy intended to oppress women seems borderline insane to me.

The ideas purported in the quote above seek to remedy that under the name of social justice. But in what world are these statements liberal, let alone in accordance with social justice?

How is it NOT social justice or NOT liberal to seek to remedy socially endorsed and institutionally endorsed modes of patriarchy?

The mantra of the movement is thus: It is impossible to be racist against white people because racism is the equivalent of prejudice and power. Since white people have social and economic institutional power and privilege (in America), those who are racially oppressed cannot be racist toward whites since those who are racially oppressed do not have power.

Here, I agree somewhat with the author. IMO, when you say white people are racist shits, that is a broad brush statement condemning a large group of people based on nothing but skin color and that is a racist statement. However, I am often, but not always, willing to suck it up because I've never had to put up with what people who don't look white have had to put up with. A broad brush statement is not the equivalent of worrying myself into an early grave because my kid might not make it home from school.

Besides, it is not only Millennial women or Millennial people of color who hold the views to which he objects, another example of broad brushing almost always being false.

It may be that some things go too far, but I don't think this article makes the case well, if at all. On the other hand, I "hear" in this article a white male wanting to seem like a victim of society and also "hear" him painting Millennials with the same broad brush he is objecting to. For me, that's a no sale as to this article and author.

[Smarmie Doofus]

26. Yes. Real change is made by forging coalitions among demographics.

And ... yes....sorry: that includes with men, whites and heterosexuals.

The rest is just narcissistic, crybaby nonsense.

If we wanna keep *losing* ( for example, the House.... the Senate.... the state legislatures and , next year, probably, the presidency)

we will keep working to make the Democratic Party the exclusive preserve of politically correct, perpetually aggrieved, relentlessly angry,
insular gaggles of self-appointed elite reps of historically marginalized minority groups.

Let's keep it up! It's really working well!

That's *IF* we want to keep losing.