Social Justice And The Diminishing Concept Of Class
Social Justice And The Diminishing Concept Of Class
In Western societies, in line with the civil rights movements of the ’60s, many young upper-class whites, freshly graduated from universities, took on the mantle to protect the oppressed minorities, to become “social justice warriors” (SJWs).
The legitimate battle for justice and equality undoubtedly resulted in a positive change of legislation (for instance, racial equality was enshrined in law in the USA). Yet, those self-proclaimed protectors of social justice continued to fight against the presumed societal ramifications of the past constitutional prejudices.
If in orthodox Marxism, the world is interpreted as a struggle between classes for wealth, for those social justice warriors, the world is a struggle for power between identity groups. Consequently, their idea of social justice revolves around the fight against oppressive (Western) structures in order to redistribute this power.
This took the form of a full-scale censorship operation on cultural production deemed problematic (text, film, speech, etc.). The interpreters’ viewpoint predominates the factual content of the supposed controversial medium, the context, and the real intention of the author.
Their ideology transcends space and time. History is an eternal present at best if not a series of infamous and appalling injustices against minorities. Past events are judged according to modern values rejecting the evolution of morals over time. Their interpretation of actions from people who lived centuries ago prevails in any contextualisation or specification of what was considered good or bad.
This modern form of social justice, unlike the legitimate civil rights movement in the ’60s demanding “equality at the start” i.e. equality before the law, oppositely request “equality at the end” i.e. equality of outcomes. Social justice warriors despise natural hierarchy, their ideology is an apex egalitarianism.
As such, if fewer women than men occupy CEO positions, it is because the system is misogynistic, and not due to innate biological differences between sexes that could explain disparate career choices (no one questions the over-representation of men among garbage collectors…)
And so, the social justice warriors are consistently aggrieved on behalf of others, and take offence from the outset in the name of minorities, for an alleged prejudice committed by an illegitimate and abstract pseudo-authority.
On account of protecting and defending marginalised groups, they portray them as victims across different kinds of interpersonal relationships (fascism, homophobia, sexism…). They signalled their virtue (often on social media) to be identified as an ally. They condemn (white) silence as violence. Their fight against presumed oppression is necessarily a “good thing” that no one can criticize.
However, their ideology is nothing more than political opportunism in which the concept of justice is narrowed down to justice for groups perceived as discriminated against rather than justice for all. It implies treating individuals differently based on their race, sex, and sexuality … in order to balance supposed injustice in society, it favours some according to their alleged oppressed characteristics.
Fundamentally, freedom must be sacrificed in order to accomplish that new social justice. Any seeming unfairness must be corrected by the government or groups, the anointed few, imposing the orthodoxy via policies sweeping indictment of a free society e.g. with Canada’s gender identity rights Bill making it illegal not to address a person in their preferred pronoun, the state governs the contain voluntary speech.
Those who dare to challenge the dogma should be rightfully coerced to do what is socially just or they would be cancelled and punished.
In summary, the social justice warrior’s ideology has erased justice i.e. the individual responsibility (“who did it”) in profit of justifiable i.e. the culture of excuse (“why this has been done”): obliterating the true victim(s) in profit of the oppressed/oppressor paradigm.
However, if social justice warriors hastily take offence when a person from a so-called oppressed minority is accused of wrongdoing, the individuals or groups identified as oppressors – indigenous working class – are denied the legitimacy of the present position that any form of oppression can exercise against them, e.g. racism against white people does not exist because it is not systemic.
Furthermore, the bourgeois SJW eager to be recognized as allies shamelessly demonise and offer to vindicate the autochthonous proletariat, those who actually live among the non-Western minorities, only rub shoulders with those minorities when ordering their dinner on an app to be delivered home or get a coffee in multinational franchise coffeehouses.
Want some new merch while supporting free speech? Check out our store!
The more extreme among them, often upper- and middle-class university students, join groups such as Antifa and enforce their ideology on other people to the point of violence. Their intolerance for anybody with a different opinion is justified by the fight against injustice, racism, and fascism … a fight against all evil that warrants brutality. They appropriate the legitimate anger of minorities and weaponized it against the dissidents.
As per the so-called oppressed minorities, guided by this ideology, they blow small interactions out of proportion or even manufacture instances of personal hurt in order to gain recognition, compassion, validation and remorse from the supposed aggressors (e.g. Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax).
They harbour swelling animosity against those labelled oppressors. And as this animosity escalate, so is the desire for revenge to relieve this anger. Ultimately, personal grievances masquerading as a genuine social concern would rationalize brutality.
And so, the most vicious actions are justified by virtue and (ironically) moral (ex: annihilating the oppressors in order to save the community, abolishing whiteness– euphemize to avoid saying abolishing white people). Social justice activists create a circle of increasing cruelty disguised as righteousness.
As explained by the French historian and Philosopher, René Girard (1923–2015) in mimetic theory, human beings imitate each other, they desire the same place, things, status … and this eventually gives rise to rivalries, even violent conflicts. The antagonism born from the mimetic crisis would be partially resolved by a convergence of all collective anger and rage toward a scapegoat.
A stream of accusations, even built on lies, would convince the whole community of the scapegoat’s guilt and prevent retaliation against the accusers. As the scapegoat becomes the carrier of our mimetic rivalries, the radical source of evil one can blame everything upon, the rest of the group structures their identities in comparison i.e. maintaining themselves in the innocent and righteous position.
Then, to match the scapegoat depravity, maximal violence must be exercised as a purgative release. In extreme cases, a founding murder would provide the catharsis needed.
When on April 2023, Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old male transgender, killed six people including three children at her former Christian school, gender activists voiced their outrage against media misgendering the perpetrator and expressed their fear of a possible backlash against the trans community, completely obliterating the actual victims of this mass murder.
Some campaigners on social media also accused the state of Tennessee of transphobia for passing months earlier a bill limiting medical care for trans minors and a bill restricting drag shows in public spaces. They found a justifiable motive for the killings.
In summary, this postmodern social justice is the end of any moral framework. Being on the side of the virtuous allows you to perform brutal actions, even giving you the power to sentence the identified oppressors to death.
Ironically, in this ideology, the concept of class has disappeared and maybe that is why social justice activists come principally from the upper and middle classes, finding in this doctrine a way to absolve themselves from having privileges without the responsibilities – namely the privilege of class – while chastising the indigenous proletariat caught in a vice between the violence of the neoliberal capitalist system and the thirst of revenge from minority communities.
With this postmodern social justice, the largest injustice of our time (the economic injustice) is therefore completely ignored.
 | A guest post by
|
“Ultimately, personal grievances masquerading as a genuine social concern would rationalize brutality.”
Expanding on this point, when guilt under the law is replaced with guilt by moral condemnation of a selected elite class, the subjective nature of the moral purges, combined with natural rivalries, eventually leads the elites to turn on one another in an effort to gain power. This has been played out in history (see French and Soviet Revolutions).
The progressives are ultimately fighting for a system that is just as likely to turn against them should they ever be perceived as a threat to the newly established and ever changing hierarchies of power.