Nutpicking Left and Right

The Left, the Right and the Milkshake

Recently, there occurred an interesting conversation between one Stephen Woodford, better known as Rationality Rules - the title of his YouTube channel, and Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad. It delves into the nature of belief systems and how they're defined and represented.



The crux of the conversation comes down to a video wherein Woodford defines Sargon's overall method as being:

1 - Find a nut.
2 - Ridicule and expose that nut.
3 - Conflate that nut with the entire group to which they belong
4 - Profit

And a response made by Sargon here.

Examples presented by Woodford show Sargon highlighting celebrity leftists and progressive politicians expressing extremist positions on a variety of issues: Michael Moore claiming that white people should be feared, Lily Allen and Jess Philips making similar claims about men, and so on. Woodford charges Sargon with "nutpicking" - which is defined as selecting and presenting a weak member of a particular set as a representative member of that particular set.

Is it really true that "the left" as a whole engages in the wholesale demonization of men and white people? Does it truly hold that all whites are racist, or that all men are rapists, etc? These contentions, among others, are the subject of a cordial discussion had between the two, What's Left?

In this conversation, a resurgent religious right is presented as a possible right wing counterpart to the hardline social justice crowd that Sargon so often likes to attack, at least in the United States. Are anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage fanatics a kind of right wing counterpart to the militant SJWs? Woodford's channel, Rationality Rules (comes with my recommendation, btw) might suggest they are, though I haven't surveyed his material exhaustively so can't say precisely one way or another. But his channel is devoted to promoting atheism, agnosticism, skepticism and criticism of religious claims, with a special focus on the logical fallacies that religious and ideologically dogmatic groups tend to make, so I would be surprised if he took a generous stance towards the religious right. Were I in his shoes, I sure wouldn't.

Is there a meaningful comparison to be had between both the character and influence of the two groups? Are the most strident progressives and Christians representative of the whole?

I'm going to suggest that's perhaps the wrong question to ask. What's more important is this: are the "extreme" positions taken within a particular religious or ideological camp consonant with the broader ideological thrust of that particular religious or ideological camp as a whole?

What do I mean by this?

Suppose one were to claim, based on biblical scripture, that adulterers and homosexuals should be executed for their behaviors. Surely this would be an extreme view, right? One not endorsed by any mainstream or significant Christian denomination and believed by only a small handful of self identifying Christians. This would be true. But now lets suppose a preacher were to come along and call for precisely that - the execution of adulterers and homosexuals. It would surely be wrong to condemn this preacher's views as being in line with Christian thought, right? To hold such a preacher up as exemplary of Christian thought would surely be "nutpicking", right?

To answer this, we'd need to look at and define precisely what Christian thought is. If one definition of Christian thought would be to regard the bible as the irrefutable word of God, than the claims that our violently fanatical Christian preacher do not, in fact, accurately reflect Christian thought fall apart. The bible is actually quite clear in its calling for the execution of adulterers and homosexuals:

Leviticus 20:13: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death.”

Leviticus 20:10: “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife— with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.”

Now one can counter argue that these passages have to be interpreted in a specific context or the like, or one could cite other passages that might call for a more lenient stance: Christ's admonition in John 8:7 that "he who is without sin cast the first stone" or something similar. Or one could even deemphasize scripture all together and hold up "the life of Christ" or some similar concept as the yard stick of Christian thought and action. Any of these are entirely possible and doable.

But one cannot argue, based on the above passages from the Book of Leviticus, that it is not a sound and viable interpretation of Christian doctrine that homosexuals and adulterers actually be put to death, if one takes a view of the bible as the inerrant word of God. And that most certainly is a plausible means of defining what is and is not Christian thought. This matter is obviously quite controversial in Christian clerical circles, and it's also quite obvious that Christians in the west have had to reconcile their doctrine with prevailing attitudes on these matters and soften their stances accordingly. That's all true, and also a bit beside the point.

What matters is that it is consonant within the ideological thrust of the Christian belief system that adulterers and homosexuals be executed for their actions. Their scripture is rather unambiguous in calling for it. That is not the only valid interpretation of Christian doctrine, but it is a valid interpretation of Christian doctrine. That's what really matters here. That such a view is "extreme" or not representative of the typical Christian is ultimately beside the point, even if true in the west in the current year. This is the real reason why one does see evangelical ministers taking such positions from time to time. They're actually valid positions within the belief system they profess, whether the rest of us like it or not.

Along similar lines, let's look at the apparent fringes of Social Justice ideology. Are claims calling whites and males dangerous or at least potential, if not actual rapists something that can fit within their broader ideological framework?

In this, I'm reminded of what is often cited as the most ludicrous straw man position held by feminist theorists: the equation of heterosex with rape. Or at the very least to suggest that heterosexuality itself is structured so as to benefit men at women's expense. To support such a claim, one like Sargon could point to feminist theorists who've supposedly made this claim. Theorists and activists such as the late Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, for instance. They're the usual suspects here.

Of course, these figures and their supporters would answer that they've truly made no such claim and that their statements are being taken out of context. Defenders of feminism would claim that these activists don't represent the whole, that their views are controversial even within feminist circles, and that they're just two out of innumerable feminist advocates and that it's disingenuous to cite them as being exemplary of feminist thought. Then again, Dworkin and MacKinnon could well constitute the no-nonsense 'Leviticus' strand of feminist thought, and be the heterophobic counterparts to homophobic preachers like Steven Anderson and the late Fred Phelps.

Either are possible. And quite beside the point. What we should be considering isn't whether Dworkin or MacKinnon held views that equated heterosex with rape, or at least was part and parcel of male dominance over women. What matters is whether such views are possible under a sound understanding of feminist theory.

I'd suggest that they are, and all that's really necessary to come to such conclusions is a willingness to take core principles of feminist theory to deterministic extremes. If we truly live in a patriarchal society, one wherein institutions and relationships are structured for the benefit of men at the expense of women, then the idea that the most intimate of those relationships should reflect this privileging of the male over the female should follow quite logically. Indeed, to exclude heteroromanticism and heterosexuality from a feminist deconstruction that casts them as, if not inherently misogynistic, at least corrupted in a misogynistic manner by the patriarchal societies in which they are normalized, would actually be the out-of-step stance to take.

Of course, in the real world, many women who identify as feminists would identify as heterosexual and are in romantic and erotic relationships with men and enjoy the benefits thereof. This was even true of Dworkin(!) and MacKinnon at some points in time. Plus there are very real questions that one might raise about the societal consequences of a wholesale condemnation of heterosex along feminist lines. Fair enough. Consequences I wished mainstream media pursued a lot further instead of simply taking feminist propositions entirely at face value, but I digress. Feminists would no doubt appeal to a "my body, my choice" line of reasoning when it comes to defending their own heterosexual choices and proclivities, when and where these proclivities exist. Again, fair enough.

The point, however, is that it's not inconceivable under feminist theory to regard any kind of heterosexual relationship as something that oppresses women for the benefit of men. Why exempt personal relationships from the overarching social critique, especially when the personal is the political, after all?

I would go as far as to suggest that to exempt heterosexuality from the inevitable conclusions of feminist theory would be like to exempt homosexuality from condemnation under Christian theology. While it may make the doctrine more socially palatable, it also amounts to a form of cherry picking. So anti-homosex Christians and anti-heterosex feminists alike, far from being "nuts" may in fact be the most consistent in their views. They're willing to follow the logic of their core ideologies to their inevitable end conclusions, even when those conclusions would be quite understandably unpopular.

This isn't to say that their more moderate and liberal takes are "wrong." Sometimes, such as in the case of postwar social democracy vis à vis Marxism, the more moderate and watered down variant of the ideology actually also produces vastly superior results when put into practice. I strongly suspect this would be true of feminism also, and even Christianity were one to define it so loosely as a mere adherence to the golden rule, for instance. But in either case, we have to accept the fact that the more extreme views are not untenable given the core belief systems, and actually tend to hew more faithfully to the underlying axioms of those belief systems.

This goes a good ways towards answering the question of why the "nuts" end up in charge of movements like the religious right and the progressive feminist left. Plus, both belief systems are quite manichean, which is to say they both see things in very black and white terms. It is a valid interpretation of either to claim that you're with Jesus or you're with Satan. You're a feminist or you're a misogynist. Such ideological systems don't easily lend themselves to moderation or accommodation with rival belief systems in their core areas of concern.

They can and do moderate so as to accommodate themselves to the realities of the world they operate in. But this moderation inevitably arises from a begrudging acceptance of the need to work within the realities of the world in exchange for at least a shot at changing the world to at least a little bit better reflect their aims, rather than true compromise on principle. As such, both are susceptible to "revivals" and "reformations" wherein corruption by worldly/patriarchal thought must be excised and the movement returned to an initial pure state. The radical feminists of the 1970s, the SJWs of the 2010s and the religious right of the 1980s and 90s are all examples of this, or at least featured these kinds of revivalist currents within their broader movements.

Suffice it to say, questioning core doctrines in movements with these kinds of ideological systems is not the done thing, to put it mildly. If the bible really is the inerrant word of God, what does it say about you if you question it, or try to interpret it in a way to better reflect a preferred stance or doctrine? In the case of the progressives, it's a bit more nuanced. A bit. But questioning feminist, queer and critical race theorists and activists is frowned on as showing a glaring lack of empathy and commitment to equality at best, especially if done by a white male. At worst, it's outright collusion with the oppressor, just as questioning Marxist Leninist dogma back in the USSR was seen as aligning oneself with capitalists and imperialists and could entail a one way train ride to Siberia.

This is why Sargon can have this conversation with Rationality Rules but not Anita Sarkeesian, and why Rationality Rules couldn't have this conversation with Steven Anderson. When one sees the world in stark good vs evil terms, one does not negotiate with the forces of evil if one is to remain pure on the side of good.

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Dear Angry White Men

Niko Shimada is right. Angry white men are right to be angry. But let's be angry at the right targets. While I can't say for sure, Niko doesn't seem to be taking us down a productive path here, though I could be wrong and hope I am. Perhaps it would be useful to break this tweet down and look at it in more detail.

"The media despises and belittles you."

Definitely. Hatred of white males is rife in the media. The more important question here is: why? (((Easy answers))) are attractive because they're, well, easy. Blaming some or another group of others comes naturally to us. We're hardwired for tribalism. But ease sacrifices accuracy in cases such as this. Sometimes the real enemy isn't some or another group of others from a foreign land, but rather our own elites - the people we naturally view as beautiful and even heroic - who are much more the real threat, and the situation much more complicated than reactionary conspiracy theorists who lay it all at the feet of "cultural Marxism" would have us believe.

Let's take a closer look.

The most crucial thing to understand about media is how it really works. This is best outlined by Noam Chomsky in his seminal work, Manufacturing Consent - two and three quarter hours of solid red pill - real red pill, if you're ever of the mind to invest the time - wherein he describes media as corporations whose real purpose is to sell audiences to other corporations. In short, it profits through advertising, and it attracts advertisers by offering them large and/or prosperous consumer bases.

So what does this have to do with white male bashing in the media?  If media needs to attract advertisers, it needs a relatively prosperous consumer base. This usually entails an educated consumer base, since education and income levels correlate.  It should be no secret by now that feminist theory and critical race theory, attributing oppression and inequality to racial and gender identity exclusively, have a considerable presence on college campuses.

So called "social justice" and identity politics are a safe, nerfed form of radical deconstruction and protest culture. Engaging in them allows otherwise privileged students to feel as though they're progressive, edgy, subversive, challenging oppressive power structures and on the right side of history. It also gives them an acceptable target on which to project any guilt they may feel over their very real privilege, given that they're able to attend elite post secondary institutions and the numerous benefits this entails, have access to influential media sources and so on. All of this without ever actually posing a real challenge to the real corporate and state power that really calls the shots, to the detriment of most. Were you in a seat of corporate power, what more could you want?

The narrative that white males have gotten where they are entirely off of sexism, racism and oppression is necessary to uphold because it helps make neoliberal economic policies that have devastated the white male working class more palatable. It eases the conscience of the political class. No need to look at who the real beneficiaries of deindustrialization and global capitalism have been, since those who've suffered from it deserve it because colonialism, patriarchy and white male privilege.

Not to say that racism, sexism, colonialism and patriarchy are not now (to some extent) and have not in history been very real evils, worthy of criticism, condemnation and opposition. But let's be honest here, that's not what this vain, pseudo leftism is really about. If these "woke" corporations such as Gillette Razors really cared about the well being of women and people of color, they'd start by looking at the wages and conditions in their 3rd world manufacturing facilities. The pseudo leftism so beloved by academia, Hollywood and Silicon Valley ends rather abruptly where corporate and state power begins.

Plus, white men do not help themselves by consistently being the most conservative, pro-corporate voting block when broken down by race and gender. Look at any internet libertarian, mad as hell about taxes and the "gibmedat" attitude of those stupid liberals and it's usually, though not always, a white male.

But then, what has the left offered him in return? The so called left abandoned the working class long ago. Looking at the US Democrats, this beginning even in Kennedy and Johnson's time and being more or less complete by the presidency of Bill Clinton. So when given a choice between a center right that pretends to sympathize with them, and a center "left" that openly scapegoats them, can white males really be blamed for opting for the former?

Plus, it's worth noting too that most domestic, consumer spending in the 1st world is controlled by women, though the precise figures vary. Some estimates are that women control or strongly influence over 80% of non-business consumer spending. This figure is not universally agreed on, however. But there's no question that the purchasing power is there. Moreover, women constitute a higher percentage of college graduates overall than men.  Most crucially, women are vastly more likely to be activist consumers, display a willingness to organize and participate in boycotts, liaise effectively with corporate media structures and criticize the media, all for its portrayal of their gender and concern, or lack thereof, for women's issues.

So why not pander to the vanity of this group and contrast them favorably against an inferior male of the species? Especially if this can be effectively disguised as social justice and female empowerment, offering up "thoughtful" criticism of "toxic masculinity" or the like? All for their own good, of course. Plus demonizing men makes them less attractive as partners for women, and we all know what happens when men and women get together: love, marriage and the baby carriage, as the child's jump rope chant goes. And from there maternity leave, prenatal health care, K-12 education, dependents to cover with expensive health plans, and so on. All very expensive. Better to outsource our reproduction to the 3rd world in the form of mass immigration. We outsource most everything else these days, so why not that?

Women are more valuable as workers and consumers than as wives and mothers, and since we can't fire them for hooking up with men anymore like we could in the bad old days of early capitalism, better to disincentive all of this heterosexual liasing as heterosexist, objectification and harassment. Men who protest can be dismissed as hypersensitive (even though lacking in sensitivity is precisely what is highlighted in these criticisms of masculinity - but then you don't need logic or consistency because the media won't scrutinize your claims when feminism is your marketing gimmick) or reactionary cranks, yesterday's men and so on. Who cares about them, right?

"Corporations seek to feminize and pacify you."

No argument here. But again, it's worth asking why?

Capital has been seeking to subdue labor since it first emerged out of the middle ages as a power unto itself. So it should not surprise us that a pacified work force is exactly what they want. Wages, benefits and amenities to improve working conditions tend to fall under the 'expenses' section of your average income statement. Since net income equals revenue minus expense, there's a powerful incentive to keep these figures as low as possible.

Historically, this was done in a rather messy and heavy handed way. If the workers got uppity, just send in the Pinkertons, the National Guard or maybe even the Ku Klux Klan to bust some skulls. Prior to Roosevelt's 1935 signing of the National Labor Relations Act, it was not uncommon for labor disputes in the US to result in an actual body count, almost always consisting of labor, not capital. Worker's rights were never genuinely accepted by the US policy making elite, and the presidency of Ronald Reagan is known for being an era of renewed hostility to labour. The 1981 firing of striking PATCO workers was merely the beginning.

This era of mass media presents both new challenges and new opportunities. New challenges in that violent union busting or even scabbing out striking workers poses a significant public relations problem. New opportunities in that mass media can be used to keep workers pacified in other ways. Union suppression and union avoidance is now much more psychological and relational, basically taking on the characteristics of a public relations campaign, although threatening to close the doors and relocate if workers do not accept rock bottom wages and remain non union is always an option, if you have the capital to pull it off.

Of course, you can go the Koch Bro's route and fund media and outreach projects that frame capitalist productive relations along libertarian and conservative lines. This has worked quite well in the internet age, and many young white men trade fast and free in Friedmanite talking points, and are quite understandably icy on working class identity and solidarity. Except when it can be used to attack feminism, of course.

A more subtle technique, alluded to above, is to reframe public conversations about inequality, power and privilege. Again, cast these as race or gender issues. Redefine power dynamics in the workplace, especially in the post me too and time's up era, along gender as opposed to class lines. Better yet to get your work force to internalize guilt-inducing narratives surrounding power and privilege. A white male working class that has been effectively neutered by internalized white male guilt delivered by incessant intersectional feminist propaganda is likely to lack the spirit needed to fight for their interests in the economic sphere. I mean, if you already feel that you have too much because what you already have is the result of unearned white male privilege, how motivated will you be to go on strike for improved wages and conditions?  The deconstruction of western patriarchal culture undertaken by the postmodern left may well have undermined religious and national loyalties, but in doing so has undermined class consciousness as well. Last I heard, white male workers have no need to unionize, since they already have white male privilege, and so would be taking union protection away from more marginalized people by doing so.

Sigh. Yeah.

Moreover, a left wing preoccupied with racial and gender identity politics will care a lot less about class and economic issues and lend less support to working class political and workplace efforts. If all else fails, dismiss working class leftism as "Bernie bros" "brocialists" or "class reductionists" or something like that.

In any event, most politics aimed at working class white males will not be friendly to their political or economic interests in the long term. Besides demonizing immigrants and feminism, these kinds of reactionaries are also anti-union and favor leaving all to the wolves of the free market, often equating anti-white and anti-male politics with socialism and Marxism. The "globalism" they so love to deride is a corporately driven phenomena, motivated by profit and was criticized first by organized labor, who rightly saw the threat it posed not only to the working class, but to the economic and ultimately the social fabric of the nations who so eagerly embraced it back in the 1990s.

Finally, while I do disagree with a lot of feminist deconstructions of masculinity, we would do well to ask ourselves how good this go-it-alone tough guy mindset has really been for us. Machismo and right wing politics have a long history of being in alignment with one another. Unions, social welfare and regulations are for wusses. Real men, with barrel chests and square jaws, don't complain or whine, they roll up their sleeves and power through anything and everything, all by themselves, long as it takes. Gee, I wonder who the long term beneficiaries of that end up being in a capitalist economy?  Oh well, just ball up your fists and punch anyone who asks questions like that.

"Immigrants seek to disempower you, rape your women and murder you."

Now come on. Really? I'd say this is true of a small portion of the immigrant population. But the general sentiment here is just silly. And on top of that, it's mean spirited and distracts, perhaps intentionally, from the real issues.

I'm no fan of open door immigration and am no opponent of "borders." Don't misunderstand me here.  Some militants will exploit loopholes in the refugee system, and the grooming gangs in Europe are not exactly a secret now, and failing to vet immigrants for things like membership in militant organizations for fear of looking "racist" is definitely an act of political irresponsibility. But is it reasonable to think that most immigrants are coming to the west with the intent of destroying our culture and raping our women?

I mean, fair's fair here. If it's wrong to hold all males collectively responsible for the crimes perpetuated by some men against women, as reactionaries and "red pill" types rightly assert, why is it okay to then do precisely this to Muslim, minority and immigrant communities? If it's okay to profile people, it's okay to profile everybody. If it isn't okay, it's not okay to profile anybody. Of course, progressives merely reverse this mistake when they cry racism against protests over grooming gangs, but then attribute rape to a culture of toxic masculinity and privilege which benefits all men, and therefore render all men morally culpable. Double standards are fine because power plus prejudice, apparently.

Realistically, most immigrants come to the west for a better life. Why might that be? Notice that no one asks why they're migrating in the first place? It couldn't be because neoliberal austerity measures imposed on the third world by the globalists stymie economic development in the global south and farm them for cheap exports to be consumed in the west and the profits hoarded by global multinationals? Couldn't be that, could it? It couldn't be because neoconservative foreign policies topple governments not friendly to the aforementioned neoliberal austerity measures, and reduce targeted nations into rubble heaps and war zones? Could it be that also, maybe?

Never! They're coming to the west to burn our churches and rape our women! Yeah, has to be! I read it on 4chan, I heard it on a redpill YouTube channel, and they're never wrong!

"Your leaders want another war for Israel"

I really, really hope this is rooted in a reasoned criticism of Israeli foreign policy and valid concerns over the strength of pro Israeli lobbies in Washington, and not just a stupid anti-semetic dog whistle. Because when reasoned analysis of complicated geopolitical situations that take into account a bevy of historical, economic, religious, ethnic, military and cultural factors runs up against baseless and long debunked conspiracy theories, we all know that people are reasonable and appreciate a factual analysis, right? I mean, we know that people will also take energy politics and the petrodollar into account when looking at western middle east foreign policy, right? Right?

Nah! Our leaders want more war for Israel in the middle east because Elders of Zion. You know, the same Elders of Zion who want the very same Muslims they want our aid in fighting against in the middle east to flood our own nations and convert our populations to Islam because they just hate white people that much. Or something. Who needs logic when you have a good, old fashioned conspiracy theory to make you feel self righteous about being victimized and persecuted!

"Billionaires give your jobs to machines"

Yes they do. And why might they do this, I wonder? And what should we do about that? Increased education and job training? A guaranteed income or maybe even a job guarantee? A sovereign wealth fund, to enable western governments and peoples to share in some of the profits so generated by these newly automated industries? Hell, dare I say it ... nationalize industry and/or place it under some form of worker's or social control? You know, seize the means of production and all that?

Never! That stuff is all communism, and if that's what you want, soy boy, how about moving to Venezuela! Those billionaires legitimately earned all of that money. Every cent of it. Workers should consider themselves lucky they had their overpaid jobs in places like Walmart and Amazon to begin with! Jeff Bezos and the Waltons would not have been successful had then not been both geniuses and saints, and they and they alone deserve every last cent earned by their respective corporate empires, because nobody else did anything at all to contribute to or enable their success. That'll trigger the libtard snowflakes!

So what we really need to do is show these feminists, immigrants, cultural Marxists, liberals and George Soros - who somehow isn't like other billionaires because he apparently hates white people and the west because reasons - who's boss and elect a strong, traditionalist right wing government. Who can then deregulate these automated megacorporations, and give their c-suite executives lavish tax cuts while they're at it. So that they can, in turn, off-shore more industry to further increase their profits, because capitalism and that will somehow make the west great again. Or something.

So I'm going to be serious and honest now. White men, you have every right to be angry. Your leaders have betrayed you. Absolutely they have. But let's be angry at the right people here. While you don't have to tolerate white bashing and male bashing from the pseudo left, and you have been tolerating far too much of that for far too long now, please don't see women, immigrants and minorities as your true enemy. Their anger at white males is likewise engineered and misguided, and by the same people as the people who betrayed you. Surely by now you know who they are, right? At least let's be clear about (((who they are not)))

Perhaps one day, angry women and minorities and angry white men can come to realize that they stand to gain way more together than by flying at one another's throats in a contrived, for profit culture war, and eventually create a world where we all have a good deal less to be angry about.

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Feminism: the New Religion?

As International Women's Day rolls around again, I wonder if feminism has become the new religion of the western world? At first glance, the answer would be no. Even up here in Trudeau's Canada. The relationship between feminism and religion has been complicated at times, but usually icy and ambivalent at best.

Feminists have criticized, generally accurately, the propensity for religions to relegate women to 2nd class roles. Male dominance in religion is claimed to be either implied or directly mandated by the following:

• God reveals himself as masculine, not feminine. Ditto for the angels, for most the history of their representation leastwise.
• God mandates strict gender roles as part of the divine order. 
• The husband/father as head and absolute ruler of the household.
• This patriarchal rule carrying over into the church: positions of authority in the ecclesiastical hierarchy (and it is, of course, a hierarchy) being occupied exclusively by men. 
• The woman Eve being the first sinner in the Garden of Eden, and subsequently tempting Adam, the first man, to sin.
• Women being expected to adhere to strict rules of chastity and modesty, lest they "tempt" men into sexual sin. 
• Sexual strictness, going as far as to claim that a man who looks at women with "lust in his heart" is already guilty of adultery. Women's vulnerability to the same sin is never mentioned.

This list is not exhaustive, and the list of sexist practices in the church throughout its history is long. 

To be fair, there is an opposed point of view. This view claims that Jesus was as free and open (and quite naturally sinless) in his relationships with women as with men, that he frowned upon any sort of dominance of one gender over the other and his stance of relative leniency towards a woman accused of adultery (let he who is without sin cast the first stone), among other things. And St. Paul carries on this tradition, claiming that, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ".[Galatians 3:28] As such, some denominations have liberalized, allowing for the ordination of women and so on. 

Moreover, even those who adopt a religiously patriarchal stance maintain that it's not about men lording power over women, but of having responsibility for both the physical and spiritual well being of his family.

I have here confined my analysis to Christianity. Is the plight of women better in other faiths? Based on what we've seen in Iran since 1979, what we're seeing in Saudi Arabia and what we saw in Afghanistan under the Taliban, I'd say that Islam would be an "out of the frying pan and into the fire" kind of deal for women. The occasional Linda Sarsour claiming otherwise notwithstanding. I can't speak for Hinduism, Buddhism and others.

On the surface, the rationale for this is quite simple: most religions mandate a subordinate place for women vis-a-vis men, and feminism is quite naturally and rationally opposed to this. Fine so far. But is there a deeper reason? Could it also be that claims to absolute truth are naturally mutually exclusive? Strict ideological systems tend to view other belief systems as competitors. They may ally with one another out of convenience or against a common foe, but never as a matter of principle. 

Why do I suggest this? Because it seems to me as though feminism has grown to be quite alike a religion in more recent times. At least in some regards. Feminism makes no claims about the supernatural or truly transcendent, except occasionally suggesting that God be a woman, or something such. Funny that the devil is never likewise possibly a woman. In any event, religion isn't just about supernatural entities. It's also about philosophical concepts that are bigger than the lives of individual people. Gods obviously fit the bill. So too can philosophies or social systems.

Despite very obvious doctrinal differences, these kinds of belief systems inevitably end up sharing a lot of meta-political characteristics. Let's look then at the similarities between current year intersectional feminism and historical Christianity in the west:

Man exists in a fallen state: Original sin in Christianity vs white male privilege and complicity in historical atrocities such as colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade for feminists.

Manichean World View: This means that history is seen in terms of a sweeping and epic conflict of good against evil. In Christianity, it is the Church's ongoing struggle against Satanic infiltration and rule over worldly affairs. In feminism, it is the movement's ongoing struggle against patriarchy, racism and other forms of oppression. 

Claims of Ideational Exceptionalism: This means that each either implies or states directly that its own world view is the one and only truth, and must be accepted on faith. Claims of papal infallibility, scriptural inerrancy and church magisterium in Christianity vs feminist standpoint theory: the belief in the philosophical superiority of the world views of marginalized people, or their self appointed representatives.

Belief in pervasive evil outside the faith: There is no salvation outside the church, and some variations of Christianity take this to the extent of total depravity, meaning that man cannot consciously choose good and therefore requires divine grace for salvation. Feminists tend to view everything outside feminist theory as being creations of a patriarchal society, and therefore rooted to some extent or another in the oppression of marginalized peoples, if only subconsciously.

On the plus side, both have a tendency to champion the oppressed, the poor and the marginalized. At least in theory. The last shall be first in both feminism and Christianity. This can be a two edged sword, though. Both can also define who is and isn't poor and oppressed in self serving ways, placing themselves squarely in the oppressed camp even when that's clearly not the case. When victimhood becomes a virtue and a badge of entitlement, it also becomes a sought after commodity.

A darker side to the above is a proneness to antinomianism. This means that the elect are not bound by moral law. The elect are saved by grace no matter what sinful or evil acts they do. Likewise, the oppressed and marginalized are incapable of being racist, sexist, oppressive, etc.

Both have an antagonistic relationship with science and the enlightenment. At least on occasion. The Christian church's standoff with the theory of evolution is well known and perhaps the best example. Less well known is feminist academia's contention with biological sex differences, sometimes going as far to claim that science and reason are "masculine" and therefore oppressive ways of knowing. Some on both sides have bemoaned the enlightenment, worrying that loss of religion will lead to widespread social chaos, devaluation of human life and the loss of European indigenous culture (in Christianity) vs propensity to oppress and impose white western values and cultural norms on non-European indigenous cultures (in feminism).

What initially tipped me off to feminism and Christianity's common philosophical roots is a mutual tendency to sexual puritanism. The alliances formed between the religious right and feminists to combat pornography are the most obvious examples. One can't help but see the influence of Christ's claim, "But I tell you anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28) in current feminist obsessions with sexualization and objectification.

In more extreme cases, a tendency to live in community and shun outsiders. This can be physical, in the case of Christian cults or the feminist Womyn's lands. Both seemed to have strong counter-cultural movements emerging from the socially turbulent times of the 1960s and 70s. Both can be very stifling environments for free thinkers. Questioning the leadership and straying from strict codes of personal conduct can result in shunning and excommunication from the stricter and more doctrinaire groups of feminists and Christians alike.

Widespread institutional study and a large body of apocryphal work: Feminism and Christianity alike present themselves as complex doctrines and both have produced large volumes of self-referencing devotional literature. Christianity has its numerous seminary schools and monasteries, feminism has institutionalized itself in the women's studies departments of colleges the world over.

Ritual observances: One thing that atheist critiques of religion do not often account for is the need for ritual and mythology in the lives of many people. Christianity has its liturgical calendar, feasts in honor of the Saints, lent and advent. Feminists celebrate international women's day, black history month and gay pride week, among others. Likewise common to both is a faith based vocabulary - words commonly used by the faithful to signal belief. To outsiders, this means a lot of buzzwords, slogans and jargon. Both feminists and Christians understand, at least subconsciously, that belief is very much a social thing and reinforced through regular communion with other believers.

Emphasis on victimhood and oppression: Christ tells his followers that they will be hated for his namesake (Matthew 10:22) and the bible is replete with warnings that Christians will face persecution, especially in the end times. This carries over into the present day, when conservative Christians claim that they are being persecuted by a liberal political and cultural establishment.  Likewise, feminists have become notorious for their claims of widespread rape, violence against women, objectification in the media, opposition from right wing political and media figures, among other things. In some cases, activists on both sides conduct themselves in so obnoxious a way that you can't help but wonder if they're not intentionally visiting criticism on themselves, to legitimize claims of oppression.

Propensity to censorship and drives to control media content: Both have activists concerned with media content. Concerns that video games drive youth to violent tendencies appear on both sides, notably Jack Thompson (conservative Christian) and Anita Sarkeesian (feminist). Both have criticized heavy rock music, rap music and have sought, with varying degrees of success, to influence film, television and comic book content. Both have an antagonistic relationship with "geek culture." Both Christians and feminists are adept at organizing to achieve these goals, but they occasionally backfire and galvanize backlashes against them - think GamerGate or punk, metal and rap musicians pushing back against the Parent's Music Resource Center. 

Whence come these similarities between belief systems otherwise so different in their emphasis and goals? Some possibilities:

• Feminism and social justice's roots in Christianity. This seems strange at first, given Christianity's above listed patriarchal characteristics. But issues of concern among early feminists tended to involve reining in immoral and unchristian conduct among their men: curbing alcohol use, gambling and so on, as well as the aforementioned sexual purity issues. The social purity movement exemplifies this. Social justice was originally a Christian concept. 
• Feminism stepping in to fill the void left by declining religion. Kind of like how communism and fascism played a similar role in the early 20th centuries, replacing a declining Church. This seems plausible. Some people, at least, seem to need what religion provides, and if religion has been discredited, a surrogate ideology can fill the same role.
• A certain type of person, be it the authoritarian personality or the true believer, craves systems of thought that profess absolute truth, and gravitate towards such systems.
• People naturally gravitate towards that which is successful and capable. Organized belief systems give otherwise disparate people a common identity and a common purpose. This in turn leads to group cohesion and a propensity to organize and strategize to achieve specific goals. Even neutral bystanders conclude that they're doing something right, and decide to be a part of it.
• Both profess to champion the marginalized and downtrodden. How effectively or sincerely is another matter.
• There are only so many tools at the disposal of individuals or movements seeking to create a morally homogeneous society, thus explaining why ideologically divergent religious and political movements end up creating doctrines and societies with similar characteristics. 
• Success copies success. If the Moral Majority can achieve political success by adopting certain methods, why can't the Feminist Majority?

Of course, they are frequently enemies in the political and cultural sphere. Religion, when it becomes political in the western world today is usually conservative and allied with the Republican party. Likewise feminism skews liberal and towards the Democrats. There have been exceptions, of course. The issue of abortion will forever bitterly divide the two.

But this division reminds me of the division between fascism and Bolshevism in early 20th century Europe. So different in some ways, so similar in others.

For more relevant content, view The True Believer, Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, on Samizdat Broadcasts!
Read Intersectionality is Itself a System of Power at the Alternative Left.
Read The False Promise of a Return to Religion and Tradition at the Alternative Left.

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Who's Really to Blame for Male Decline?

A recent Huffington Post article blasts conservative pundit Tucker Carlson for blaming male decline on women earning higher wages. Read the article and view Carlson's video clip here.

In a recent video segment on Fox News, pundit Tucker Carlson discusses the declining marriage prospects for an underclass of blue collar men who've been dislocated by the evaporation of blue collar jobs in America over the last generation or so. Women have less interest in marrying men without financial prospects, and this in turn exacerbates single motherhood which conservatives, according to Carlson, claim is a significant factor in pathologies such as alcoholism, drug abuse and crime that plague young men in affected communities. Behind this ominous rise in single parenthood and its associated pathologies is big government and the high taxes it levies to enact the social programs that incentivize fatherlessness and create reliable voting blocs for liberal democratic politicians. Or so we are told.

It would well behoove conservative Republicans to take the plight of displaced young white men in rust belt and heartland communities seriously, Carlson urges, since this is the G.O.P voter base.

While Carlson's take on all of this isn't entirely false, it's far from the whole story and while he does allude to the nature of the core problem, he's reluctant to come right out and say it. This is because conservatives Republicans are just as guilty, and benefited from this just as much as liberal democrats did, if not moreso. It's a little late now for conservatives to lament the decline in male wages and the impact this has had on their marriage prospects, when lower wages, not just for male workers but for everyone who isn't a majority shareholder or c-suite executive, are exactly what the conservatives want and have been pushing for for decades now. Don't expect Fox News to host a pundit who will admit this.

One would think, therefore, that progressive newsblogs would be shouting this fact from the rooftops. One would think. But not quite. The mainstream leftist Huffington Post lambasted Carlson for "blaming higher earning women for men in decline."

The narrative that the Huffpost and Media Matters seem to be pushing is that of Carlson being an old, sexually insecure curmudgeon incapable of reconciling himself with rising female empowerment.

The Huffpost then goes on to quote numerous tweets from empowered women and their new age sensitive male supporters who are simply outraged that Carlson would dare suggest such a thing!

@jbinnie7 tweets:

@JennyCraig Please cease advertising on the Tucker Carlson show. He continues to advocate for outmoded ideas that are used to repress women. Throughout history, women have fought and struggled for the right to vote, to be paid equal wages and not be victimized.

Sigh. This is always the go-to response among feminists, isn't it? Somebody said something they don't like. Therefore deplatform them. Women are apparently so empowered and strong that they're leaving men in the dust in the job market, but still need mountains of ideological protectionism and moral dependency when faced with even the slightest lack of support and encouragement from those same men. Doesn't sound too empowered and independent to me.

@kelownascott tweets:

Tucker Carlson is a misogynist afraid of economically secure women who can't be dominated by cash

The comments section in the Huffpost article is loaded with similar sentiments:

So.... my high achieving daughters are to blame because BillyBob can't find a date?  I think Darwin had an explanation for the 'problem' and the likely outcome.  Meanwhile, I don't think I am going to worry about it.

So progressives are social Darwinists now? When the losers are lower class white males - "Billy Bob" - I guess they are. It all just depends on who your untermensch are, I suppose.

If higher earning women have led to the decline of men then Carlson recognizes and acknowledges the power and superiority of women over the weakness, decline and subordination of men. Hear them roar down there Carlson!

Men are losing! Women are winning! Hooray! This can only be for everyone's greater good. Right?

This is the whole problem with the Huffington Post's take on this. Feminists, not surprisingly, are making this all about themselves and the only thing that really matters to them at the end of the day: their egos. Some whiny conservative MRA is snivelling because women are succeeding financially and socially without men, and he needs to get with the times or get the hell off the media.

I wouldn't disagree with this take if that's all there was to it. But while Carlson's off the mark in his interpretation of what's going on here, due mainly to his own ideological limitations, he is highlighting a legitimate problem. Men and women really are in this boat together. If either gender loses, neither gender wins. An injury to one is an injury to all, after all.

And finally:

Carlson has become a bad parody of a political commentator.   

Women have greater pay equity in places like Finland Sweden Denmark and Norway, where incarceration rates  (along with suicide, infant mortality, medical bankruptcy) are much, much lower than in the US.

Now that's interesting. Gender equity in pay alongside much lower rates of incarceration among men in the Scandinavian countries. Why might that be, I wonder?  Something to do with stronger unions and a social democratic political tradition perhaps?

This conversation, if it can be called that, highlights everything wrong with American political discourse. So let me make this very easy for people.

• American conservatives, of whom I trust we can consider Tucker Carlson, Fox News and much of its viewership as being examples of, caused this. Men weren't brought low by feminism. Feminists celebrate the defeat of the white male, quite naturally, but they didn't cause it. Neoliberalism caused it.  Let me repeat that. Neoliberalism caused it. Outsourcing and free trade caused it. Blue collar male wages were decimated when the unions were decimated. And that's precisely what conservatives wanted and why they went ahead with it. They have no business now portraying themselves as the champions of blue collar men.

• American liberals are not without blame here. The democrats of the Clinton and Obama eras largely acceded to the macroeconomic realities created by Reagan and Bush. Their politics is simply about putting a woman's or a person of color's face on the same neocon foreign policies and neoliberal economic policies. The conservative criticism of the democrats is not without some validity here. Creating whole blocs of demographics dependent on a threadbare welfare state in order to farm votes is no solution here. But we're not exactly seeing the G.O.P push for an industrial strategy that prioritizes full employment and living wages themselves. 

• White males abandoned in group preference and thus made themselves vulnerable to this. When I say in group preference, I don't mean it in the half way and degenerate sense that reactionaries mean it, which is the construction of an identity politics around a narrative of white male victimhood and resentment against a risen middle class of women and people of color. We don't need a white male version of feminism. I mean the only form of in group preference that really matters: class consciousness. White males were the demographic that most reliably supported Reagan in America, Thatcher in the UK, Mulroney and later Manning in Canada and others world wide who pushed for neoliberal policy. As such, white men should resist the allure of anti-feminist conservatives, libertarians and reactionaries. While feminism certainly isn't the friend of the white male, the right wing is his true enemy - all the more sinister an enemy for how it masquerades as his friend.

• Anyone celebrating the immiseration of the blue collar white male as a victory for women and people of color has no business calling herself a progressive or a leftist. To be on the left is to side with the poor and marginalized against corporate and state power. Full stop. Race and gender do not matter beyond that. The Huffpost's brand if "leftism" isn't at all leftist. It's conservatism for women and people of color. If the impoverishment and stagnation of the white male worker is to be considered a victory for feminism, then feminism is little better than fascism. And women would do well to take heed here, and not get too smug. Their newly arisen status has nothing to do with their inherent greatness that has been so long and unjustly suppressed by white males. It has everything to do with their being a relatively new market, and more easily used as workers and consumers. Once some other demographic, or maybe robots, can do their jobs for cheaper, they'll be cast aside just as quickly.

• Yeah, women aren't interested in marrying men with dismal economic prospects. Why should they, and why should we be surprised to discover that economic relations so consistently underlie social relations?  Why should women not seek greater independence and earning power? In their shoes, I'd do the same. It should go without saying at this point that women's increased earning power isn't why men are in decline. While stable marriages would certainly be a benefit for the reasons conservatives outline, a stable economy is a necessary prerequisite for this. Financial matters stress even secure marriages. A financialized banana republic of a nation firmly dedicated to trickle down economics, with minimal checks on wild speculation and zero protection for workers is no place to raise a family. So libertarian MRAs need to STFU and eat this one, because they brought it on themselves. So long as the men's rights movement tends towards libertarian capitalism, they will be their own worst enemies.

• As something of an aside, these same MRA types who lament women's declining interest in marrying men are themselves avid critics of marriage in other contexts, citing marriage as a trap best avoided by men. Who wants eighteen years (at least) of child support and alimony payments, they ask. Not the kinds of financially unstable men we're discussing here. And no, abolishing child support and alimony won't really help, since that merely shifts the risk from men to women, and further disincentivizing their marrying. No one commits to a disadvantage, as MRA godfather Warren Farrell once put it. This is a complex problem with no easy answers.

• The feminist IdPol left and the free market libertarian right need to step aside and let the Bernie Bros, the brocialists and the "dirtbag left" types step in and straighten this whole mess out, because we're the only ones who seem to know what the problem really is and what needs to be done about it.

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What's the Matter with YouTube's Alternative Influence Network?

Skipping over to YouTube and noting the subscription levels for various content creators deemed to be part of the right wing "Alternative Influence Network", I make the following observations. Note that these figures are rounded approximations, not exact figures as these fluctuate as subscribers come and go:

Styxhexenhammer666: 329,000 subs
Lauren Southern: 675,000 subs
Milo Yiannopoulos: 839,000 subs
Sargon of Akkad: 865,000 subs
Stefan Molyneux: 883,000 subs
Dave Rubin (Rubin Report): 899,000 subs
Jordan B Peterson: 1,670,000 subs
Steven Crowder: 3,168,000 subs

This is just a sampling of so called right wing YouTube. There are dozens more. I could go on. Now a quick detour for those of you who don't know, YouTube's "Alternative Influence Network" was a term coined by researcher Rebecca Lewis in a New Data & Society report entitled Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube.  Read a Guardian article on the subject here. The Alternative Influence Network apparently consists of "65 political influencers across 81 channels" that tend to lean right to varying degrees (though some vehemently deny this, with varying degrees of accuracy), do tend to be affiliated with one another despite numerous personal and political disagreements and play a prominent role in the alleged radicalization of socially marginal young men. Does this sound familiar?

As a matter of comparison:

Feminist Frequency: 222,000 subs
Kat Blaque: 135,000 subs
Chescaleigh (MTV Decoded): 247,000 subs

These being among the more prominent feminist and social justice channels. The new punching bag (as of this writing) of the YouTube reactionaries, Edinburgh University professor "Tiny" Tim Squirrell's channel has a whopping 364 subscribers as I type this, and he boasts 2,770 followers on Twitter, as of this writing. Proving that sometimes people really do live up to their names.  My own Samizdat Broadcasts on YouTube dwarfs this (I have the big 513 subscribers, and I haven't really done any work in ages). Progressive media watchdog Sleeping Giants, allied with Squirrell who apparently claim responsibility for Alex Jones's deplatforming and was instrumental in Sargon's being kicked off Patreon, claims 214,000 followers on Twitter and 55,000 on Facebook.

To be fair, some leftist YouTube presences are substantial. The flagship here would be The Young Turks, with over 4 million subs. For ways of thinking closer to my own, Kyle Kulinski's Secular Talk has around 618,000 subs, David Pakman has around 558,000 subs, the Jimmy Dore Show has around 427,000 subs, and the Amazing Atheist has just over a 1 million subs, as of this writing. The later four would not participate in a deplatforming campaign against Sargon, I'd wager to say.

Still and all ... does anyone else see what I'm getting at here?

Now I get the fact that the social justice crowd has influence beyond their numbers. Their presence in academia and mainstream media is commanding. Despite a recent study finding that only 8% of Americans identify as "progressive activists" and that somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% of Americans believe that "political correctness is a problem in our country" and that these figures are remarkably consistent across all demographic lines, race and gender included.

Which is really the problem here. How did we end up in such a tail wagging the dog kind of situation? Are progressive activist dollars just worth ten times more than those of the subscribers to supposedly reactionary YouTube channels? Patreon and PayPal must certainly think so. How else does one explain the rapidity with which the mighty tech trusts of Silicon Valley, truly the robber barons of our era, knuckle under to the demands of social justice warriors so swiftly and readily, despite the greater numbers of reactionaries on these platforms?

Sargon of Akkad boasts approximately 865,000 subscribers on YouTube. For perspective, this is slightly higher than the current membership rolls for the United Steel Workers (currently about 860,000) and dwarfs the total number of employees for each single private employer in America except Walmart. This is greater than the total membership of all three of Canada's major political parties combined (near 300,000 for the governing Liberals, around 260,000 Conservatives and about 125,000 New Democrats).

Granted that many of these are generally passive followers, many no doubt haven't followed his channel in any real sense in years, or are not necessarily loyal true believing subscribers to his ideology but who agree with him on some things (I'd be among these). Never the less, he manages to continually get six digit view figures. "You can't Trust Patreon", detailing his expulsion from the platform, published 8 December of 2018 boasts a bit over 373,000 views as of this writing.

So the obvious question is: why can't this kind of subscriber base be wielded as a significant political or even cultural force? Can a constellation of social media personalities with millions of followers between them (granted a considerable degree of overlap) not use that to leverage access to more mainstream media platforms, and from there commandeer the narrative regarding what it is they exactly stand for, making them less vulnerable to "alt right" smears from pseudo leftist outlets with lower subscriber bases? This might have to entail some research and study into media and public relations, marketing, political strategy and similar disciplines, but I'm sure that's not beyond the capacities of the intellectual dark web. These guys aren't stupid.

One fourth of Sargon's subscriber base surpasses the number of twitter followers Sleeping Giants has. And that's just Sargon. So why are Sleeping Giants and not the legions of Kekistan calling the shots here? Is there something preventing them from, at their emperor's call, exerting their own leverage in the marketplace and leaning on advertisers a bit themselves? I can't help but wonder if that isn't why these faux progressives are actually so afraid of this alleged dark web of YouTube reactionaries. If they got their act together and flexed their muscle - really strategized and organized effectively - who knows what they could accomplish?

I'm here to tell you that with 865,000 followers, I'd be seriously discussing a general strike. When I wasn't hiding or running for my life from C.I.A assassins, that is.

So why is this Alternative Influence Network so vulnerable to social media deplatforming? They've hurt Patreon via a substantial exodus already. Imagine what a truly well coordinated strategy involving even a half dozen or so content creators close to Sargon (Jordan Peterson is an obvious choice here) could accomplish. It's not like they don't have the loyal and dedicated fan base.

Is it those dirty rotten SJWs refusing to listen to reason? Are social media executives fanatical SJWs themselves, or just stupid? If they're so willing to hemorrhage loyal paying patrons to appease a vocal ideological minority, than the CEO's basic competency must be called into question. Boards of directors, who hire the CEO, have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders to maximize shareholder value and run the company responsibly. Notice that the fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders, not to the women's studies department of their local college or university. Are you paying attention to this, libertarians and reactionaries? This is how the capitalist system you claim to so love works. There's more of you than there are social justice warriors if YouTube subscription rates and social media following figures are any indication. So take the hint. Anyway, is it the influence of George Soros? Of the "globalists?" Of the "cultural Marxists"  or of (((you know who?)))

Or is the real problem deeper and more subtle? A fundamental weakness embedded in the very deep structure of conservative, classical liberal and libertarian thought? A weakness that isn't so much a falsehood in the direct claims that this constellation of ideologies tend to assert, but rather something that's more nebulous and metapolitical, if I were to call it anything.

To illustrate, let's compare libertarianism with its opposed strands of critical theory. Deriving ultimately from Marxism, critical theory both in its specific formal Frankfurt School form and more generally as a tendency in political thought, tends to posit some sort of oppressed/oppressor dynamic as being at the heart of how western civilization operates. This has deep and significant implications: Individuals belong to broader classes of people, and different classes have different interests and thus naturally antagonistic relationships with one another. Marx's bourgeoisie vs proletariat dualism is, perhaps the ur-example of this. Other variations I'm sure we're all familiar with posit people of color vs. whites, or men vs. women and non cisgender heterosexuals.

Contrast with libertarianism, which tends more towards the kind of belief that "there is no such thing as society, just individuals and their families" or something similar. For the critical theorist, social inequality is seen as the result of some or another kind of social power structure, and its role is to ensure the dominance of one group of people over another. In this world view, inequality isn't a bug, but a feature, so to speak. The upshot of that is that there's an impetus to change the system.

Contrast with libertarianism, which isn't necessarily opposed to equal outcomes provided they occur on a free market and are thus "voluntary" or "volitional" as they'd put it. But let's be honest here. These transactions are often taking place between the owners of productive capital on the one hand and a proletariat who have only their own labor power to sell on the other. So the outcomes are going to be very unequal, and the libertarian is much more okay with this than they are with government intervention into the process to level the playing field at some point. This makes libertarianism fundamentally conservative, however different a policy direction they would go from dominant neoliberalism or neoconservatism. Reactionaries go further, and insist that inequality is indeed the natural order of things. Attempts at social change in a more egalitarian and inclusive direction is "cheating" as far as the reactionary and the libertarian are concerned, since this involves the imposition of more equal outcomes where more unequal outcomes would be more natural or even desirable.

The important takeaway here is that for the critical theorist, the marginalized and oppressed categories of people are individually weaker than their power wielding counterparts, it is therefore necessary for them to organize, which is to realize strength in numbers and to strategize, which is find and exploit choke points in institutional systems so that marginalized groups can achieve what they believe to be more balanced outcomes - social justice so called.

A very brief peek into the Alternative Influence Network and into libertarian, conservative and reactionary spaces is all it takes to quickly gather their opinion of this way of looking at the world. This is the "cultural Marxism" or the "postmodern Marxism" they're always railing against. Libertarianism (the purest form of what conservatism and classical liberalism are) denies the existence of competing power interests among differing groups in a capitalist society, where conservatives and reactionaries view society as something in which all have a shared stake. Some people earn more because they work harder or smarter, or fulfill a more important place in the social structure, and therefore deserve it. 

Now, read this next sentence closely, because it's the crux of the whole problem for the the right on social media and by itself the entirety of the reason they're losing the culture war against the social justice warriors: This denial of class, race or gender based antagonisms in western civilization obviates the necessity for organization and strategization on the right. That statement is bold red because it's that important. It's absolutely foundational for understanding why things like Sargon being booted from Patreon happen. If you don't get it yet, the core of the problem is that the conservative, reactionary and libertarian world views mitigate against their adherents organizing politically, except perhaps to exchange views or, at most, achieve electoral victories so as to reduce the tax burden on higher income earners. But electoral politics are fundamentally limited in liberal democracies, and a separation of politics and culture is actually a fairly crucial thing in classical liberal and conservative thought. This is precisely why the critical theorists and the social justice crowd long ago deemphasized traditional politics in favor of culture war long ago. 

The right simply has no idea how to effectively wage a culture war, because as far as they're concerned, culture is taking place in a realm consisting only of individuals and maybe their families. Not society and certainly not anything systemic or structural for the benefit of some people at the expense of others. If you don't believe me in that assessment, go and use words like systemic and structural in your next conversation with reactionaries or libertarians of any stripe and see what kind of response you get. 

So they don't think in terms of a "long march through the institutions" or of organizing any kind of wide scale political activity targeting the institutions they claim have been hijacked by social justice warriors. That sort of "playing dirty" is precisely what they despise about the SJWs. Some libertarians explicitly reject all forms of political activity, for it implies collective action.  For their part, the SJWs, on the other hand, have zero qualms about doing any of that. Indeed, the need to do so is likewise built into their ideology. There's no such thing as fighting dirty against the beneficiaries of structural oppression. 

The Alternative Influence Network, the Intellectual Dark Web, the Skeptic Community, the Cultural Libertarians, the Kekistanis or whatever they're calling themselves in current year cannot defeat the social justice warriors, even if they enjoyed five times the numerical advantage they already enjoy. They would never consider any kind of organized strategy for dealing with of any of these supposedly leftist social media platforms. They may seem to depart one for another in tandem, but only because each has decided on his own to do so for his own reasons. Hardly a recipe for changing the world in any sort of serious way.

The libertarian core of their philosophy was quite deliberately designed to mitigate against any kind of sustained organized activity against corporate power. We have them to thank in good part for four decades of neoliberal hegemony. The reactionaries may claim that feminism is cancer - a good metaphor since feminists operate by invading both public and private spaces of all kinds and shift the purpose of those spaces towards the promotion of feminist ideology. Very much like how a cancer cell operates. Could we not likewise suggest that libertarianism is AIDS. The capacity of individuals within the polity to politically organize is its "immune system" against tyranny, and libertarianism attacks that immune system to such a degree that the polity becomes vulnerable to capture by any interest with the desire and capacity to do so. As such, I sometimes find them hard to feel sorry for when they get kicked off of social media, though I certainly don't condone or support it. Hair of the dog that bit you, boys. Maybe learn your lesson here.

What then can defeat the social justice warriors?

Only one thing: the use of their methods of analysis and activism against them. That would mean viewing current year critical theory, feminism and social justice, however radical they may have at one time been, as being themselves systems of power designed to benefit a certain class of people at the expense of another.

The democratic centralist vanguard party in the Soviet Union is a clear and obvious example of a left wing version of an oppressive system of power - regressive leftism, so called. They appropriated the moral force of the worker's struggle and socialism - considerable at the time - to legitimize their claims on power, but never altered the fundamental relations of production because they were now the beneficiaries of those relations. Marxist ideology became mere slogans legitimizing Bolshevik claims to absolute power while upholding precisely the kind of alienating productive relations Marxism so rightly criticized.

The highly educated professional activists that make up the core of current year social justice activism are the cultural version of a democratic centralist vanguard party, as they were envisioned by the critical theorists who came to see it necessary to wage a cultural revolution as a prelude to the establishment of a centrally planned economy. They've merely replaced socialism and the worker's struggle with feminism and anti-racism as sources of moral legitimacy. Since totalitarian methods were not available to the self styled revolutionaries of the west, this kind of Marcusian kulturkampf became necessary instead. Where the power structures constrained by liberal democratic norms are forced to manufacture consent for their oppressive policies, the self styled revolutionary vanguard must manufacture dissent to achieve its own regressive goals. 

This has been a failure, and no metric more closely measures that failure than the historical materialism that so brilliantly animated Marx's initial critiques of class structure. 

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#MeToo One Year On

One year on

According to Wikipedia:

On October 15, 2017, actress Alyssa Milano encouraged spreading the hashtag #MeToo, to attempt to draw attention to sexual assault and harassment. Milano later acknowledged earlier use of the phrase by Tarana Burke.

The phrase "Me too" was tweeted by Milano around noon on October 15, 2017, and had been used more than 200,000 times by the end of the day, and tweeted more than 500,000 times by October 16. On Facebook, the hashtag was used by more than 4.7 million people in 12 million posts during the first 24 hours. The platform reported that 45% of users in the United States had a friend who had posted using the term. 

Tens of thousands of people replied with #MeToo stories

The rest is, as they say, history.

I've yet to encounter a serious voice who didn't recognize the need to call out the sexual harassment and abuse of women, both in and out of professional contexts. As revelations surrounding the conduct of Harvey Weinstein emerged, the man proved impossible to feel sorry for. It wasn't long before many more Harvey Weinsteins were outed. The ugly underbelly of the entertainment industry, and indeed of many industries, and of many men even of progressive and feminist political sympathy (especially of such men, according to Sargon of Akkad) was revealed. Not that left leaning men were exclusively guilty, of course.

The list of casualties is long, and reaches as high as the US senate, wherein left leaning Democratic senator and comedian Al Franken eventually resigned amidst sexual misconduct allegations, and Republican Roy Moore lost his bid for the Alabama senate seat abandoned by Jeff Sessions in large part due to misconduct allegations made against him. In my own home country, it is Doug Ford and not Patrick Brown who won the leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party and subsequently went on to become Premier of Ontario because Brown was disgraced by sex misconduct allegations made against him. There's little doubt that Me Too and Time's Up have impacted the cultural and political landscape enormously, and ultimately (one would hope) for the better. Even right leaning populist Steve Bannon recently admitted this in a recent interview with Sargon of Akkad.

Me Too and Time's Up were, and still are needed. But while these movements have revealed a dark underbelly of sexual exploitation in many areas of western culture, these movements also have a dark underbelly of their own.

Most notably, the fact that they're embedded in a radical feminist paradigm that is itself, to borrow one of its own terms, problematic. A quick glance at twitter is all it takes to confirm this.

In this world view, there is no such thing as an innocent man. All men have fed at the trough of male privilege and rape culture. All men, we are told, even those who do not assault or even verbally accost women, walk the streets in safety and confidence while women live in fear due to the male proclivity to rape and sexual harassment, and though by no means all men are harassers and rapists, a sizeable majority of rapists and harassers are male. This can't be denied while still trying to claim any kind of intellectual credibility on the issue. Surely it is not unreasonable to suggest in light of this that there are pathologies within male subcultures and male socialization that result in an increased proclivity towards sexually predatory conduct that have no comparable female counterparts.

This idea dates back at least as far back as 1975, and radical feminist Susan Brownmiller's publication of Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape.  So what, ask many women today, if men live in fear of a false accusation? Women live in fear of rape. One ill turn deserves another, right? Besides, false allegations are rare in comparison to the number of men who do rape and get away with it. So false allegations simply do not occur, or if they do occur, do so in numbers too insignificant to be of concern. It is in this idea of relative deprivation that problems begin to arise.

This radical feminist movement's take on the question of sexual misconduct is troubling. In keeping with its underlying standpoint theory, it would be left up to individual women (in a radicalized feminist zeitgeist) to decide for themselves whether or not they'd been harassed or even raped in a particular interaction with a male, and the allegation would be tantamount to guilt on the male's part.

There is little distinction to be made between forcible rape, sex between a sober male and clearly intoxicated or even drugged woman, sex between intoxicated partners, sex between a boss and a coworker, failure to obtain "enthusiastic consent" for "any stage of sexual activity", boorish comments and wolf-whistling, tactfully delivered compliments in the workplace, a non-consensual hand on a knee or invitation to a coffee date - men don't get to decide what's rape or harassment and what isn't, we are told. Men face an undefined yet very high burden of care, not merely for obtaining consent, but for women's comfort and enjoyment of the sex act itself. In light of patriarchy, male privilege and rape culture, regrets or discomfort on her part even if consent has nominally been given, can only mean that she's been violated, or at least unduly pressured somehow or another.

Legal theories long taken for granted and fundamental rights of the accused: presumption of innocence, the right to counsel, the right to impartial and fair trial, rights against self incrimination and even the idea that prosecutable offenses be clearly and objectively defined are handwaved away as being mere devices whereby the patriarchy maintains the availability of women's bodies for male sexual use with impunity. These lines of reasoning are seen not merely in the women's studies classroom or among the leftist twitterati. Such views are given serious exposure in academia and mainstream media, as was the case with female attorney Marie Henein faced accusations of "betraying women" after successfully representing Canadian media personality Jian Ghomeshi when he faced multiple counts of sexual assault.

Thus far, there haven't been (to my knowledge) any willfully falsified accusations of sexual misconduct made by a woman against a man following the proliferation of Me Too. Which isn't to say it hasn't happened. But denial even of the possibility of this occurring despite the fact that it does occur, along with denial of female on male sexual misconduct, which also occurs, is not uncommon among Me Too stalwarts. At the very least, male privilege vs female marginalization diminishes the moral gravity of male victimization when it does occur.

It's one thing to be honest about the gender ratios when it comes to who perpetrates and who is victimized by sexual misconduct. To say that men and women are statistically equally guilty for the sake of gender parity would be grossly dishonest. But to invisiblize male victims of sexual misconduct and of malicious false allegations so as to preserve a popular narrative of universal female victimhood and male privilege is likewise dishonest and ideologically driven.

Trial by social media and public opinion has been turned to because legal proceedings are long, expensive, complex and the numerous legal statues defending the rights of the accused are hard to overcome. This is intentionally so, and has no doubt allowed for many guilty men to go free, doubtlessly to the consternation of female victims. This consternation is understandable, but the substitute method of public shaming is notorious for its lack of objectivity and due process, and thus vulnerable to exploitation and misuse. Sure, one might object that since publicized allegations of misconduct on social media are not criminal trials, legal concepts like due process don't apply. But this treats due process as though it were a strictly legal convention and not a social and moral principle that a free society depends upon to remain free.

This troubling lack of procedure makes Me Too vulnerable to exploitation for political purposes. Want to remove a competitor for a job or a political opponent? Just dig up some salacious sexual goings-on in their past, and let the twitter pitch fork mob do the rest. The recent fiasco surrounding the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States is but the latest example. The aforementioned Patrick Brown was taken down by sexual misconduct allegations from his distant past that just happened to arise at a politically opportune time. Other examples include the ousting of Cenk Uygur from the board of the Justice Democrats due to some "sexist" blog posts he'd made back in 2006 being dug up and publicized by conservatives.

Allegations, and defense against such allegations can be expected to take on a more partisan character as time goes on.  Going back to the Kavanaugh case, it's hard to determine who's harder to take seriously: the democrats, who circled the wagons when Clinton faced sexual misconduct allegations, or Kavanaugh, who was basically Kenneth Starr's right hand man during those same proceedings. We should not take the GOP's sudden and anomalous concern for due process and the rights of the accused as being anything other than rank opportunism. Kavanaugh was involved in the writing of the Patriot Act and its roll backs of civil liberties, after all. A Republican administration moves one step closer to a Court that could overturn Roe vs. Wade, and they'll be damned if they're going to lose that to some thirty plus year old sexual misconduct allegation against their court pick.

The real threat faced by the Me Too and Time's Up movements is less a backlash of civil libertarians concerned about due process or a men's rights counter-surge, but more an undermining of the cause's credibility due to partisan and political exploitation.

One wonders what impact this is going to have on the future of romantic and sexual relationships between the sexes. Here again, one look at social media tells us that this is a low area of concern for women especially (but not exclusively), to put it mildly. Women have had little good to say for decades now about how men are holding up as romantic, marital and sexual partners. That men would refrain from pursuing women for romantic and sexual relationships out of fear of rape or harassment allegations would seem to be of little concern to women, and more than a few of them would see that as welcome relief from a status quo of apparently relentless pursuit by thirsty men.

Here too we are operating in a zeitgeist dominated by feminist views, and while these have retreated somewhat from the Dworkinite equation of intercourse with rape, attraction with objectification and so forth, the progressive consensus isn't in any big hurry to substantially define that which differentiates the romantic from the inappropriate and creepy either. The contexts wherein they use their terms would certainly seem to equate a man's unreciprocated attraction to a woman with something inappropriate at best, if not outrightly threatening, invasive and predatory.

The point of deterring male sexual interest in women - a point valued and sought after by women and their progressive male allies is better served by a muddiness and lack of definition than it is either by direct equation of male sexual interest with objectification, which would invite widespread backlash, or a clear definition of what differentiates the two, which would invite widespread legalistic exploitation. If nothing else, it gives women and progressive men much more room for plausible deniability when they decide that their implicit ideological code doesn't really apply to themselves and they do what humans naturally do, as these same progressives are very quick to point out in their denunciations of clerical celibacy or abstinence only sex education.

Not many women, and not all that many men either, have seen intimacy between the genders as worthy of anything resembling a spirited defense. Not merely in the Me Too era, but in the last three or so decades of feminist radicalization of women in cultural spaces leading up to it. I can't help but wonder if this will really be a good thing long term? Persons concerned about demographic meltdown due to low birth rates or mental health issues stemming from chronic loneliness, isolation and sexual/romantic frustration have reason to be concerned. We can probably expect more "incels" in the future.

All of that aside, the temptation among many in the broader reactionary idea space, including the alt-left, to simply dismiss Me Too and Time's Up as feminist hysteria is a temptation we should resist. Steve Bannon has the right of it in his interview with Sargon. The very real concerns of all too many women who have faced harassment and non-consensual sexual behavior from men can no more easily or rightly be dismissed than the concerns raised about Tiime's Up and Me Too by civil libertarians. Perhaps the best question we can ask is that which Emily Yoffe asked in a recent Atlantic Magazine article: Does Anyone Still Take Both Sexual Assault and Due Process Seriously?

Enthusiastic consent must certainly be sought as the answer to that question.

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