The Totalitarian Doctrine of ‘Social Justice Warriors’
Because SocJus is so focused on changing bad attitudes and ferreting out subtle biases and insensitivities, its hostility to free speech and thought is not an unfortunate byproduct of the movement but its very essence. You can be welcoming and respectful toward transgender people yet still be branded a bigot if you don’t quite believe that transwomen who identify as female but have an intact male anatomy are “real women”—and even if you keep that opinion to yourself, you can be
challenged to prove your loyalty to the party line.
Obviously, retaliation for unpopular opinions isn’t limited to SocJus, but it’s hard to think of another present-day political group so unforgiving to even inadvertent verbal offenses. At California’s Claremont McKenna College last fall, Dean of Students Mary Spellman had to
resign after protests. Her crime: In an email replying to a student who had written to her about racial issues on campus, Ms. Spellman had mentioned her wish to “better serve students, especially those who don’t fit our CMC mold,” supposedly implying students of color don’t belong at the school.
Nor is any other group so preoccupied with linguistic cleansing. A
discussion on a social justice forum advocates expunging from one’s vocabulary such “ableist” terms as “crazy,” “dumb” and even “depressing”; at Smith College last year, the student newspaper’s report on a panel (ironically, one dedicated to free speech)
rendered“wild and crazy” as “wild and [ableist slur].” Calling somebody one’s “spirit animal” is
frowned upon because it’s an “appropriation” of a concept specific to some oppressed cultures. An academic list of “
microaggressions” includes asking, “Where are you from?” or complimenting a foreign-born person’s English.
SocJus speech- and thought-policing includes self-policing. “I rigorously manage my own thinking and purge myself of dangerous ‘unthinkable’ thoughts—‘mindkill’ myself—on a regular basis,” wrote columnist and former
Jeopardy champion Arthur Chu in a 2014
Facebook discussion. “This is what you have to do to be a feminist anti-racist progressive, i.e. a social justice stormtrooper.”
Example of Social Justice Warriors post on Tumblr.
Some conservatives describe SocJus as “
cultural Marxism”; it has also been
compared to Maoism, and particularly to
the Cultural Revolution, with its focus on re-education and public confessions of ideological errors. But, as atheist blogger Rebecca Bradley
has argued, the movement also has many elements of an apocalyptic religious cult that sees the world as mired in sin and evil except for a handful of the elect. A popular
post on Tumblr, a major SocJus hive,
laments, “being on Tumblr all the time gives me such a deluded view of the world. I start believing that everyone is pro-choice, open-minded, have moral compass…care about sexism, racism, body shaming, etc, but then I walk out my front door and realize that everyone is still just as moronic as they were two years ago.” This is a classic cult mindset.
There is a word for ideologies, religious or secular, that seek to politicize and control every aspect of human life: totalitarian. Unlike most such ideologies, SocJus has no fixed doctrine or clear utopian vision. But in a way, its amorphousness makes it more tyrannical. While all revolutions are prone to devouring their children, the SocJus movement may be especially vulnerable to self-immolation: Its creed of “intersectionality”—multiple overlapping oppressions—means that the oppressed are always one misstep away from becoming the oppressor. Your cool feminist T-shirt can become a racist atrocity in a mouse click. And since new “marginalized” identities can always emerge, no one can tell what currently acceptable words or ideas may be excommunicated tomorrow.
Conservatives have long railed against ‘political correctness’; but now, even some progressives are saying that activism based on identity politics, self-righteousness and intolerance toward dissent and error is a dead end.
Intersectionality also makes SocJus uniquely vulnerable to internal conflicts and tensions. How do you reconcile progressive beliefs about gender with an “anti-Islamophobia” that treats defenders of misogynist and homophobic Islamist fundamentalism as sympathetic “marginalized people?” Very awkwardly: At Goldsmiths College, University of London last December, campus feminist and LGBT groups
joined in solidarity with the Islamic Society, which complained that a campus talk by Iranian-born feminist and ex-Muslim Maryam Namazie was a violation of “safe space.”
The social justice movement has many well-meaning followers who want to make the world a better place. But most of its “activism” is little more than a self-centered quest for moral purity. Dropping “crazy” from one’s vocabulary won’t improve health services or job opportunities for the mentally ill. Protesting a white singer’s “appropriation” of cornrows or rap music will have zero effect on the actual problems facing African-Americans.
Absolute nutter butters. Lol. 
