The pop-culture version of apocalypse is a cataclysmic event that destroys the world as we know it in some morbidly entertaining way—but where this brand departs from classic millenarianism is in what happens afterwards. “Post-apocalyptic” has come to describe something like a Mad Max wasteland where the shattered remnants of humanity duke it out under the hegemony of psychopathic warlords; or the Walking Dead version of the same, where random survivors scuttle like cockroaches around the ruins of suburbia. In the popular conception, an apocalypse leads to dystopia.
Under the classic definition, however, the destruction has a purpose, and often a cosmic one. The world/society is irredeemably flawed, corrupt, wicked. It cannot be fixed; it can only be swept away by heroic measures and bloody upheavals, so that a pure and just system can replace it and everybody can live happily ever after—“everybody” being defined as the right-thinking survivors. In the classic millenarian scenario, an apocalypse leads to utopia.
Many millenarian agendas are instantly recognizable as such, because they involve some deity’s grand plan for purging and renewing Creation. Jonestown, ISIL, the Crusades, the Taiping rebellion, the Rapture-Readies, Aum Shinrikyo, long lists of big and little cults and sects and doomsday communes, all have based their appeal on the devoutly desired purge of a wicked world, including all the mofo unbelievers who ever made fun of the faithful.
But this yearning is not limited to religious nutters—there are secular eschatologies that are arguably identical to the mystical variety in structure and aspirations. Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, for example. Free-market fundamentalism. The radical activism of the Earth First movement. Marxist and Fascist revolutions. And now, I would argue, the phenomenon known as the Social Justice Warriors fits the pattern very well. This becomes clear when you consider some classic features of millenarian movements, both religious and secular.
- Exclusive Ideology
A good millenarian marker is an uncompromising belief system (philosophy, creed, manifesto, scripture, ideology) that stakes out a claim to ownership of all truth and especially all righteousness, and unifies the Elect under an attractive banner. This banner, in secular millenarianism, generally has to do with sweeping away injustice and wickedness and making the world a better place. The ideology also specifies how “better” should be defined, which is not always how the rest of us would imagine it. The premises and logic of the ideology do not bear close examination, but are sealed against criticism or rational testing.
So how does this relate to the SJWs? Apparently, western society is a complex web of oppressions and injustices, constructed in such a way as to entrench the power of men, particularly white men, over the rest. Women are trained from birth to cling to their chains; men are trained to be entitled. Most men actually hate women, except as sex toys. This is the essence of Patriarchy, the unfixable system that must be dismantled before a Just Society can be built on its ruins. Crosscutting this is the concept of systemic racism, where all white people (and only white people) are racist, oppressing the rest from the peak of a mountain of privilege. This is the Holy Ideology of the social justice movement, an amalgam of critical theory and radical feminism, treated as unassailable truth rather than iffy postmodern truthiness.
- Demonization of Dissent
Since the Elect are uniquely righteous, it follows that the unconverted are not righteous. In fact, it is not 
The demonization of dissenters is precisely the SJW pattern. Questioning the hard gender-feminist line is “misogyny,” regardless of how the questioner feels about and behaves towards women, and regardless of the questioner’s gender. (Yes, women and other genders also get called misogynists.) Reserving judgment on sexual assault accusations is “rape apology.” Speaking out is “violence.” Expressing a dissident opinion in some venues will earn the label of troll, liar, or hater, and bring down torrents of online vitriol. Opponents—gamergaters, slymepitters, men’s rights activists, equity feminists—are dismissed outright as hate groups, which allows the valid points they make to be ignored. Online rape and death threats are trumpeted as evidence of persecution, though they are more likely to be demonstrations of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. The fact that the SJWs’ opponents get similarly trolled is ignored. After all, since all such opponents are defined as lying, hate-filled, homophobic racist misogynists, they deserve to suffer.
- Ideology Trumps All
Millenarian ideologies are typically draconian, uncompromising, and demanding, requiring their adherents to see everything through ideology-coloured glasses. Words and actions are scrutinized for correctness, on a pass/fail basis and with no allowance for charity, compassion, or nuance. This makes it easy for outsiders (heretics, infidels, newbies) to offend unintentionally, but it also turns discourse inside the movement into a minefield. The effect is that the movement frequently eats its own. Both insiders and outsiders who do not fall in line with the interests of the ideology are disposable.
Secular ideologies can just as harsh on outsiders as religious ones. The Other is literally a necessary evil, a convenient stable of foes and scapegoats, and the focus of moral panics. Think of Ayn Rand’s looters and moochers, and Hubbard’s SPs; the kulaks, intellectuals, and reactionaries on the wrong side of Marxist or similar revolutions; the Jewish conspiracy envisioned by Hitler; the poor and unemployed as viewed by free-market fundamentalists. In SJW terms, the prime enemy is white males, plus anybody who does not engage in knee-jerk demonization of whites and males.
- Denial of Progress
Because the world is hopelessly corrupt/in thrall to Satan, any apparent progress it makes towards virtue is a snare and a delusion. Furthermore, anyone attempting to fix the world is only perpetuating the evil, thus maliciously delaying the advent of utopia. Compromise or cooperation with the existing world/system and its proponents is similarly wicked, equal to making deals with the devil. The only solution envisaged is destruction and renewal along the correct ideological lines.
I hardly need to comment on something so obvious, but I will. The enormous changes in Western society over the last fifty years, the great strides toward equality of opportunity, mean nothing in SJW terms. So long as the dreaded Patriarchy is in place, progress is both illusory and irrelevant. Only the destruction of (white) Patriarchy will serve—“Patriarchy” being, I suppose, the gendered term for what we used to call “The Establishment.” I have no idea what this particular apocalypse would entail in the real world, and I don’t think the SJWs do, either. Since “Patriarchy” is not a thing, but an unfalsifiable ideological construct, it can never actually be destroyed. Whatever progress is made, the SJW faithful will simply continue to move the goalposts.
The joke is, the advent of an actual SJW Utopia would put all those gender-studies and critical-race-theory mavens out of a job. On the whole, though, I think I’d prefer a zombie apocalypse.
16 comments
You might add to this list reasonable people abandoning the crazy ship:
Woman who helped launch the current uproar over sexism in tech is sorry http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/woman-who-helped-launch-the-current-uproar-over-sexism-in-tech-is-sorry/article/2564916
Joss Whedon bails http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/5/8549525/joss-whedon-quits-twitter-after-avengers-age-of-ultron
Ed
Joss Whedon is bailing from twitter, not the movement per se, it seems. In fact, I read that as a reaction to his critics.
Furthermore, Shevinsky argues now for a free market approach to tech gender equality.
I’m sorry, but the free market is shit at arbitrating morality.
http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/2015/02/03/on-the-skepticism-of-free-market-economics-part-1/
This comes down to what your morality is wrt positive descrimination or, in pragmatic terms, the Rooney Rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule#Impact
You may argue that, for example, the Rooney Rule appears on the face of it descriminatory, but if it acts in the long run (ie consequentialism) to bring about great equality of opportunity, then it is a good thing.
Morality is complex, and problematic whatever model you adopt (hence moral nihilism is the only coherent approach!). I would argue for Shevinsky’s original point: that there needs to be more people involved in tech if a desire is to have more gender equality in the industry. I would argue this is a no brainer.
I suppose, then, one might look at whether one does want that equality, and whether one accepts minor bads to achieve greater goods.
JP
Which I expressed on my old old blog here:
http://atipplingphilosopher.yolasite.com/a-tps-blog/the-rooney-rule-and-positive-discrimination
I’m sorry, but complexity and difficulty in the source material is not an argument for moral nihilism, which is basically the philosophical equivalent of ‘math is hard, let’s go to the mall.’ You may want to look up Julia Annas and Lawrence Becker, et.al., who appear to have achieved fairly good results. Stoicism appears to have been confirmed.
I think that’s a superficial view of what happened with Whedon that ignores important details. That he just bailed on Twitter is also the narrative the dumped want everyone to believe, which is a good reason you should at least be skeptical of it.
I know little of Shevinsky, but I think it’s more a poor choice of words than anything else. I took the article as saying that we can self-regulate (a term that has no necessary economic component). And this does work in society quite often. There’s no law saying you have to tip a waiter, form an orderly line at the bank, or give two weeks notice when you quit a job, but almost everyone does these things anyway. Not every problem requires (or even can be remedied by) dictates from government or other authorities. Naturally, the wisdom of any proposed remedy depends on the details.
They’re like the 9/11 Truthers undermining genuine progressive movements with their conspiracy theories.
Truthers might have opposed the ‘War on Terror’ but the last thing the anti-war movement needed were crackpots claiming George Bush blew up the towers with alien technology.
Absolutely dead-on. Congratulations to Rebecca on this article. There’s a perspective here that I don’t think I’ve often seen covered elsewhere. Usually, people are tied up in the details of the argument, so to speak, but this rather pinpoints something entirely disturbing and ridiculous about the radical SJW movement.
Nice job showing that Social Justice Warriorism is nothing more than secular cult. It really rankles me that there are so many irrational and non-critically thinking secular people, and it really really rankles me that these blinkered dogmatists seem to be going out of their way to provide evidence for those Christian fundamentalist who insist that “atheism is just another religion”.
I loved your post. You get to say so much without writing a treaty-lenght post I almost envy I had written a post like this myself.
I have shared it all over my social media and I will translate your post!
Cheers, Rebecca.
Well written.
JP. I don’t see how affirmative hiring implements equality of opportunity. It probably does the opposite in many cases. The Scandinavian experience shows that when basic necessities of life are guaranteed by the state and people are free to gravitate toward professions that suit them, you end up with a more pronounced traditional gender split between the professions than in patriarchal cultures like Pakistan’s. Affirmative hiring in the tech field often ends up replacing people who are really dedicated to a career path, and may well have spent many years preparing for it, with people who feel entitled to work in the field without doing the groundwork. You see this a lot in the IT industry where there is some effort put into fast tracking women into areas which are traditionally staffed by geeks who’ve lived and breathed the work since early teens. The only fair policy that I can see is to remove discriminatory practices so that anyone is free to pursue the career they want without facing prejudice.
“In SJW terms, the prime enemy is white males, plus anybody who does not engage in knee-jerk demonization of whites and males.”
While I think you’re generally right here, it’s worth noting that ‘white male’ in this context does not always contain the literal meaning. Indeed, a lot of the most prominent SJWs are white males themselves. Instead, it’s something that I guess you could call the concept of white male, the embodiment of the various postmodern critical theory oppressive systems that SJWs view as their true enemy (patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, etc). “Some kind of original White Male after which all white males have been woven, marked, copied, colored, curled, and painted, but by unskilled hands, so that no copy turned out to be a correct, reliable, and faithful image of the original form.”
It is still very much an Other, but if any given white male speaks in the right language and assails what is presumably his own race and sex, then they are in no way a substantive part of the issue. On this same note, never mistake this signaling process for self-criticism or introspection: it’s the same outgroup dynamic you see anywhere, except with a few extra layers of BS on top.
A much better rundown is here, and it helped to kind of break me out of this way of thinking: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
I’m still very much on the left but this stuff is poisonous and needs to be called out more.
Very nice piece of work, Rebecca. Seriously.
Oh god.. I wish I had seen this article just a few days ago..
I just had a friend of 13 years get swallowed whole by this cultist movement.
I’m now an “evil misogynist harasser” and doubt I will speak to him again.
Thank you. Spot on.