Sam Harris, Identity Politics and Valid Argument

A white female commentator on Sam Harris's statements regarding identity politics had this to say:

I get very annoyed with Sam Harris whenever he speaks negatively about “identity politics.” Please understand that the suppression of what is thought of as “identity politics” is used to maintain the status quo of white supremacy and patriarchy. It mainly suits white men in power, and only works to silence and dismiss women and minorities further. 

Here is an example of what I’m talking about: In order to understand the serious problems of systemic racism and abuse within police departments, you have to listen to and validate the experiences of black people. You cannot simply value the data that is written down and reported, considering that it’s written down and reported by the police themselves, so it’s always biased in their favor. You should never simply assume that they are reporting every interaction objectively and honestly. If you assume that they are, you are incredibly naive. 

Additionally, think about everything that is never actually reported. Many black individuals describe a lifetime of being targeted and harassed by police officers, from the time they were young children. They often describe the disrespectful, rude manner in which many cops have spoken to them. There is no data that would describe this. But just imagine how a lifetime of being harassed and mistreated by rude cops might affect you and your reaction to the police. It would make sense to be a little angry and defensive with them, if you’re fed up with being harassed and mistreated. It also helps to paint a picture of the problem of systemic racism. 

The same can be applied to women as victims of sexual assault, rape, and sexual harassment. There is so much that we never report. The numbers don’t tell you the whole story. It’s far more common for women to be victimized by men than one might think.

When Sam Harris says in this video that speaking about your experiences related to your identity is “not the sign of clear thinking,” he is gaslighting minorities and women. He is making a judgment about their rationality and is implying that they’re somehow crazy and less rational than him. But this is easy for him, a white man, to say. He is speaking from a place of privilege. 

This is an example of white supremacy and patriarchy in action. Sam is not a bad person. He doesn’t realize he’s perpetuating white supremacy and patriarchy. But he absolutely is. He is in the dominant majority, so his experiences are in line with those of the people who overwhelmingly have power, write our laws, and make the rules throughout our society. 

Here is more gaslighting from Sam, painting women and minorities as crazy and irrational: 

“If you’re reasoning honestly about facts, then the color of your skin is irrelevant” —(Easy for a white person to say!) 

“Not being emotionally engaged usually improves a persons ability to reason about the facts.” — (But of course you’d be “emotionally engaged,” if you’re speaking of how you’ve been abused and victimized. That shouldn’t make your experiences any less valuable! He is dismissive because he doesn’t have to be emotionally engaged. He comes from a place of privilege, so he doesn’t feel the same emotions about these topics. He hasn’t experienced the abuse, discrimination, marginalization, etc firsthand.) 

“The color of your skin simply isn’t relevant information. Your life experience isn’t relevant information. And the fact that you think it might be is a problem.” — (This is a very privileged, white supremacist, heteronormative, cisnormative thing to say.)

Sam's views on identity politics that are being discussed here are outlined in the below video

I think what Harris is trying to say here comes down to this: Either there is or there is not systemic discrimination against minorities in America. Whether that's true or not does not depend on whether the person making the claim is white or black. Above, a white female commentator, is making the claim that there is systemic discrimination against minorities in America. This is a claim regarding the status of minorities in America. Is that claim rendered false by the fact that the commenter is white?

The answer is obviously no, and that's what Sam Harris is really saying here.

The irony of a white woman invoking identity in this manner to defend identity politics should not be lost on us. Were she to discount the claims made by Black Lives Matter activists regarding police treatment of minorities, her own logic allows for the invalidation of her claims on the basis of her race. So why wouldn't this be the case since she's agreeing with them? Ditto for male feminists who discount male critics of feminism on the basis of they're being male? Funny how identity only seems to matter when it's a defense of a feminist or critical race theory from criticism, but becomes suddenly irrelevant when those theories are being defended. This is precisely the kind of rhetorical slight of hand that has led Sam Harris and many others, myself included, to distrust identity politics.

That is a very different thing from saying that the voices of minorities should not be considered when determining whether such discrimination is occuring or not. I don't think that's what Harris is claiming. He does admit in this clip that there are times when a person's identity and experience can be useful in determining whether a claim pertinent to that identity is true or not, as his example of Catholic theology exemplifies.  To fail to take into consideration what feminist or BLM activists have to say regarding the status of their groups would ultimately be guilty of the same kind of fallacy as these activists themselves would be when they shoot down their opponents for being white males. It assumes a-priori that the arguer has a vested interest in their claim and uses this to discount the claim. While either or both sides may indeed have a vested interest, and that should be noted, that does not make the claims made true or false in and of themselves. 

Blacks either are or are not subject to a greater degree of police harassment than white people are. Women either are or are not subject to a greater degree of street harassment and workplace sexual harassment than males are. The truth of those claims does not depend on the identity of the person making the claim, though actually listening to the testimonials of blacks and women is essential to establishing those truths.

As such, I think we certainly should listen to what women, minorities and so forth are saying about the realities of being what they are in America at present. We should be mindful, however, that the dean of women's studies or black studies at Harvard may not be the best exemplars of the typical woman's or black person's experience. Quite often, the loudest purveyors of feminist and/or critical race theory are light years away from the typical experience of their respective demographics and do have an ongoing vested interest in the claims that they make being accepted entirely at face value by the broader society. I worry that a self appointed vanguard of quasi intellectual activists are going to exploit popular movements in order to seize institutional power (as we see in academia, in Silicon Valley, in a lot of media outlets, Hollywood, Disney and so on) and then use those positions of power to impose their will on the broader population and the postmodern academic ideologies they fabricate within the very privileged and cushioned walls of the ivory tower as legitimizing rationalizations for their own very real power and privilege. That's been happening a lot and is a major driver in the online backlash against social justice warriors. 

So we should be mindful of issues like that. The voices of women and minorities who do not uphold the oppression narratives cannot simply be dismissed. When concepts like false consciousness or internalized racism and/or misogyny get raised, that should raise red flags for critical readers and listeners. What's worse than actually arguing from identity consistently is cherry picking arguments from identity, and assuming them to be valid if and only if they conform to preexisting ideological narratives. This is quite obviously intellectually (and ultimately morally) dishonest.

But we should, if we want to reason honestly about the status of minorities in America, actually listen to what minorities are actually saying life is like for them and considering that when making the evaluation. Not all will say it's tougher being black - blacks have no way to know what it's like to be white so if identity is to be the basis of our arguments, it merely puts them back at square one for this reason. But many more blacks than whites, on a per-capita basis, will describe harsher treatment at the hands of police, I would suspect. I do think women and minorities face issues that white males do not, or face to a far lesser degree, and I do worry about the tendency to handwave their claims as mere SJW pearl clutching, and that tendency has grown online in the last few years. What's crucial to understand, though, is that their claims are true if and only if their claims are, in fact, true. Not merely because they belong to minority demographics. The distinction is subtle yet crucial.

Additional Commentary from the Alternative Left
Identity Politics: Pro Social Justice, Anti SJW
Socrates Talks Class and Identity
Why You Should Not be an Intersectional Feminist

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What Jordan Peterson gets Right and Wrong About the Regressive Left

Controversial University of Toronto professor Jordan B. Peterson begins this video thus:

Now the Marxist ideas are predicated on the fundamental assumption that, I would say, individualistic western capitalist culture is corrupt beyond redemption, and that it's fundamentally erected to nothing but benefit those who have maximum power.  So then you get the racial issue like white privilege and you get the patriarchy idea, that it's white men in particular who've created this only for themselves and that all of the processes that are used to support this system, including logic, rationality and dialogue, all of those things, are only offshoots of the desire for that small group of power mad creatures to maintain their dominance over the rest of the world, and the only reason that there's any wealth associated with that is because the wealth was generated as a result of oppression.  Now, the thing is is that story is partially true.

What parts would be true, I wonder?  That Marx's works critiqued white privilege or patriarchy?  These had very little to do with Marx, for whom oppression was a matter of economic relations, as were most things. He and Engels touched on the implications of women's reproductive role in their broader subordination to men (Engels would pursue this much more thoroughly than Marx), but otherwise had little to say about identity and culture except that it was ultimately derivative from economics.  Base and superstructure, remember?

Patriarchy did not enter into the leftist lexicon until the late 1960s and early 70s, with Kate Millet's Sexual Politics, published in 1970 being exemplary, and white male privilege would have until feminist theorist Peggy McIntosh unpacked that knapsack in 1989.  In both cases, more than a full century after the publication of Das Kapital.

A more apt comparison would be with Lenin, and his authoritarian notions of a vanguard party that would exist only to advance the interests of the social class whose identity it usurped in order to justify its extremely machiavellian and opportunistic approach to gaining and wielding power for power's sake.  Whether what happened in the USSR was truly in line with Marx's hopes for the future development of man is highly debatable.  Replace a romanticized notion of a red flag waving working class with a romanticized construction of women, people of color and other marginalized identities to emerge out of the new social movements of the summer of love era, led by a vanguard of academics schooled in critical race theory and feminist theory, and you have the basis of today's SJW regressive left.

What are these "Marxist ideas" which hold that logic and rationality were to be dismissed as tools of the white male oppressor?  Really?  Marx regarded his take on historical materialism as a scientific means of understanding history and society.  Its core problem might be that it's too logical and rational.  Two words that all too often fail to accurately describe human behavior.  That it claimed a foolproof means of understanding human social organization.  This was precisely the kind of thing that postmodernism, with its rejection of "metanarratives" and skepticism towards absolute truth and universal morality arose in opposition to.  And this is what's crucial here.  Postmodernism arose out of disillusionment with Marxism (and other strands of western philosophy), not as an extension of it.

Likewise for critical theory.  While it began with a view of social conflict between oppressed and oppressors as an axiomatic principle of social organization that was modelled on Marx's analysis of class conflict, their critique went well beyond mere relations of production to posit that western civilization itself was somehow fundamentally wicked and oppressive. This view was based on the observations that nationalism and racism seemed to trump class consciousness during the era of the world wars, just as Trump uses nationalism and, some would say, racism to similar effect today.  However, the idea that culture and identity, not economic relations, drove history and social relations was a 180 degree deviation from core Marxist thinking.

Leftist identity politics arose out of a quasi Marxist oppressed/oppressor dynamic, but crucially divorces the concept of class struggle from class itself, defined by Marx in terms of relations of production.  Privilege and marginalization in identity politics become intrinsic characteristics of certain racial and gender identities, and so no means of resolving the contradiction via politics - through the creation of a democratic system of universal suffrage and individual rights or via economics - via the social ownership of capital, becomes possible.  What we are left with, then, is a darwinian struggle between the races, defined by relationships of zero-sum adversity.  While it won't be phrased specifically in this way, implied is the notion that noble races must strive against naturally exploitative races for mastery of the world.

Where have we seen this before?

It's worth noting that the whole reason that the fascists and Nazis of early 20th century Europe hated both socialists and liberals is because the primacy of identity and race was to take a backseat to universal ideas of liberty and equality.   This is why Hitler and Mussolini railed against them back in the early 20th century, and why paleo-cons and the alt-right go so wrong when they attack "cultural Marxism" today.  Cultural Marxism is an inherent contradiction in terms.  Any philosophy in which culture and identity are to be axiomatic in social relations, that philosophy ceases to be, by definition, Marxist.

Today's regressive left, which Professor Jordan Peterson rightly criticizes, doesn't hold to postmodern philosophy or Marxism in any principled sense.  Much like their predecessors in Bolshevik Russia and Fascist Europe, today's militant feminist and critical race theorists cherry pick Marxist and postmodern kinds of ideas for their own ideological convenience.  Marxism and postmodernism both have their flaws, but these flaws are not what is wrong with the regressive left.

What drives them is no core philosophical or moral convictions at all, but rather raw machiavellian collectivist egocentrism and opportunism.  To advance their own group interests ahead of all else, at all costs.  They must be stopped, but before that, they must first be properly understood.  This will not be successfully done by a reactionary right that can't let go of its cold war era obsessions with anti-Marxism.

The Rise of Right Wing SJWs

"I'm not Leaving Until I've Castrated Every Last One
of You White Male Shitlords!"

The women-only screenings of the recent Wonder Woman film have prompted both praise and criticism on social media.  In other news, water is wet.  Much of the praise has been about its feminist and girl power themes, with little mention of the directing, acting, writing and production - which I've been told were all quite good. But there's been criticism too.  Most of that being of the fact that the feminism of Wonder Woman was not sufficiently queer or intersectional.  In other news, the sun is hot.

When it comes to issues of representation in media and the whole dynamic of identity politics (bleh!) behind it, It's the obstinacy in both camps, and the anxieties underlying said obstinacy that I find notable.  If a film comes out that is entirely directed and produced by women, that features exclusively female leads, if not an exclusively female cast, and is intended to be enjoyed exclusively by women, I could honestly care less.  Am I going to go see the recent Wonder Woman movie?  No.  But I didn't go and see Super Man either.  No interest.  So there's no need to involve my country's Orwellian human rights boards in my movie going tastes, because at least I'm consistent.  

But I am suspicious of the "Geek Feminists" of this world who strike me as being excessively preoccupied with identity to the point of obsession, and would need a constant deluge of such films to quench their need for constant acknowledgement of the greatness of their gender.  It seems oddly reminiscent of pre WW2 Germanic Volkisch.  Very similar dynamic.  The ongoing implication that "girl power" and women's equality in general somehow necessarily implies a rejection of men or the creation of women-only spaces should be disquieting for people with a genuine interest in gender equality.  Women and men do need to be equal, but they also need to coexist, get along together and generally accept one another.  To a fair extent, I do think some criticism of the girl-power obsession in our culture is warranted, and it will be a while yet before mainstream media steps up to the plate to deliver.

But just as ridiculous do I find the anxieties displayed by certain kinds of men towards releases like Wonder Woman, or to Rey's character in the new Star Wars films, or their outrage on social media over an all female Ghostbusters reboot that amounted to little more than gendered accusations of cultural appropriation.  A lot of this just reeks of castration anxiety to me.  A mirror image of the kind of fears of male virility that underlie a lot of pop cultural feminism.  And we're seeing a very toxic interplay between these two camps repeat itself over and over and over again on social media.  Donglegate, Elevatorgate, Shirtstorm, Gamergate.  On and on and on.   

One of the main reasons I've abandoned the mainstream political spectrum is that neither side is really exemplary when it comes to stuff like this.  It became fashionable on social media from about 2014 onwards to rail against "SJWs" and their endless Orwellian crusades against free speech, especially on college campuses.  Their obsessions with safe spaces, trigger warnings, hate speech, harassment and so on.  It should be apparent by now that I'm no fan of any of that.

But let's take a bit of a step back here.  I find it astounding just how prevalent the view is that censorship, moral panic, the propensity to read absurd agendas into otherwise innocuous pop-culture products and other forms of projecting personal anxieties onto the broader society is something exclusive to the left.

Anyone remember the Moral Majority?  The PMRC?  The Satanic panic of the 1980s?  I sure do.  Conservatives like Jack Thompson were going after video games for their violent content well before Anita Sarkeesian did.  What of the Comic Codes of the 1950s?  What of McCarthyism and Hollywood blacklisting?  A big, BIG part of the reason why people like me who had concerns with political correctness and speech codes were brushed off for as long as we were is because the center left in much of the western world was so accustomed to censorious moral panics coming from the right that they couldn't believe or accept that it could possibly come from the left (despite the obvious examples behind the Iron Curtain), even as their embrace of hate speech laws, date rape kangaroo courts on college campuses and so on laid the foundations for their own kinds of McCarthyism. 

Plus, I don't think we can say that censoriousness and prudishness on the right have been confined to the ash heap of history, and it is now a libertarian right defending free speech against a regressive left hell bent on creating the world of 1984, as the dominant culture wars.  What I would call a right wing kind of SJW - apparently called culture warriors, is definitely becoming a thing now.

For instance: the aforementioned outrage over women-only screenings of the new Wonder Woman film causing massive backlashes on social media and even lawsuits.  Howls for Kathy Griffin to be fired from CNN (despite not technically being an employee there) or even prosecuted after her admittedly tasteless image of herself holding up Donald Trump's severed head went viral on Twitter.  Conservative pundit Tomi Lahren being sacked from the Blaze for being pro-choice.  Milo Yiannopoulos being dropped from Breitbart and losing a book deal with Simon and Schuster over controversial comments regarding sex with minors.  

Donald Trump himself has indicated that he would like to tighten defamation laws.  In the UK, Conservative leader Theresa May made cracking down on unbridled expression on the internet in the wake of recent terrorist attacks there part of her campaign, and this may well have contributed to her disappointing performance in the election.  Those brave defenders of free speech: the religious right are up in arms over video game Far Cry 5, which apparently features a Christian Cult as antagonists.  I could go on.  Breitbart keeps 'em coming just as fast and just as stupid as Buzzfeed does.

I tried warning regressive leftists over the last several years.  They were fooling themselves if they thought they were going to be able to keep the tactics of the angry twitter mob to themselves forever.  If they could get a CEO fired for having once opposed gay marriage, how long would it take before Christian conservatives - who are still numerous and powerful in some places - would be able to get a CEO fired for transgressing some boundary and, more importantly, having a political affiliation they didn't like?  As if there was no historical precedent for it, or anything.  And once that did happen, the social justice mob would have zero credible ground from which to cry foul, since they had so recently used all the same tactics themselves.  

You can guess their responses:

• You're a racist.
• The progressives were never, ever going to lose power because the growing hispanic vote.
• You're xenophobic.
• Stop sympathizing with young Earth creationists.

Yada yada yada.

Truth is, though, I don't think it's the case that one side is valiantly libertarian while the other advocates for the world of 1984.  It's more the case that one side advocates for the world of 1984 while the other advocates for the world of The Handmaid's Tale.  And the other is just as predictable in their dismissals of valid objections and warnings about their own pet causes:

• Communism doesn't work so STFU.
• <Post a Moon Man or Pepe the Frog meme>
• Degenerate!
• Cuck!

Again, yada yada yada.

Can't say I'm enthusiastic about either one.

If you ask me, it would be kind of nice if the redpills and manosphere types, and the 3rd wave feminists, could take their sexual hangups and their parental issues to the psychologist's office, where they belong.  If nothing else, our geek culture would be far better for it.

Salon, Heal Thyself!

Salon is at it again.

In "Bye bye, Bernie: He’s not fit to captain the Democratic ship if he can’t stop chasing the great white male," Anna March writes:

Economic populism and what are commonly erroneously and dismissively referred to as “social issues” — such as reproductive rights, immigration reform and civil rights for people of color, those who have disabilities, people of all faiths, LGBT people and women — are indivisible.

How?  We are not told.

Sanders routinely divides matters of race and gender and class — which, again, cannot be untwined — by discussing the “pain” and needs of working-class voters and perpetuating the dangerous myth that the Democrats have ignored them. Sanders has insisted that Democrats have failed to reach these voters, while dismissing the fact that 75 percent of working-class voters of color voted for Clinton, not Trump, last year.

This paragraph makes clear exactly why Sanders is correct in saying the vote of the white male working class must be sought after.  You already have the vote of 75% of working class voters of color.  It's the white male ones they don't have, and that they should go after if they want to improve their performance over 2016.  Are we to surmise that Anna March would rather not have the votes of the white male working class because they are white male?

Based on the content of her article, that would be a wise assumption.

Despite all of this, cisgendered, heterosexual men are quick to explain why “identity politics” cost Clinton the election. So frequent is this occurrence, I have started using the term “Solnit’s Law” — in honor of Rebecca Solnit, author of the book “Men Explain Things to Me” — to shut down conversations that include men’s mansplaining to me how Clinton blew it and other “facts” about the 2016 election. 

Solnit’s Law — a version of Godwin’s law — is that the longer a debate thread goes on, the more likely it is that someone will mansplain. Once the effect of Solnit’s Law has been declared, the conversation ends and the mansplainer has “lost.” Try it and see how often the conversation will end once Solnit’s Law is called.

I doubt the conversation ends because the "mansplainer" has lost.  It ends because he assumes, quite rightly, that further discussion would be wasted on someone so egocentric and childish as Rebecca Solnit or Anna March.  The only suitable response at that point is to shake one's head at the narcissism, and from there make the decision to have no further interaction.  I mean, we can simply ignore the fact that many people who did abandon the Democrats in the last election supported Obama - a black man, or that many who abandoned the Clinton ship in 2016 opted for Jill Stein - a woman.  After all, when upper middle class feminist bloggers with audiences of thousands need to feel like the victim because of their vaginas, who needs facts?

Democrats should instead focus on translating how inclusion translates into economic advancement.

Well and good.  But then March grumbles about how Sanders actually thought that reaching out to the white male working class might have been a good idea. Hell, she even uses terms like mansplaining unironically. Some chick wants to lecture us on inclusiveness, then brushes off criticisms of her favorite candidate because they come from white cishet males. Okay.

It seems that men — including and especially Sanders — would rather blame inclusion for Clinton’s loss than take a look at themselves, at sexism, racism and bigotry. Apparently it is easier to blame “identity politics” than to seek to change hearts and minds, in order to dismantle bigotry."

Inclusion wasn't the problem. Intersectional feminism is not inclusive. That's precisely what's wrong with it. Intersectional feminism is all about competitive victimhood where whomever has the most marginalized identities is given carte-blanche to be as big of douchebag as they want and insulate themselves from being called on it through cries of "white male fragility!" Not exactly a means of dismantling bigotry.

March figures men should look at themselves.  Perhaps they should.  Many working class white males did vote for Trump, identity politics was a factor in that decision, and look what they got for it. Trickle down economics and deregulation.  What's the Matter with the white working class?  It's a fair question to ask.

Physician, heal thyself, however.  It was your candidate, Anna March, that lost, after all. That's usually where the self reflection is most needed. It seems that the Anna Marches of this world would rather blame "men explain things to me" for Clinton’s loss than take a look at themselves, at decades of neoliberal policy beneath a thin veneer of pandering to cultural smugness passing itself off as progressivism. Apparently it is easier to blame “mansplainers” than to seek to change hearts and minds, in order to dismantle bigotry.

And then there is the purity testing.

She questions Sander's progressive credentials because he brushes off "Identity Politics." Inclusiveness is precisely the reason you do brush off identity politics, and campaign instead on ideas that can benefit everybody: universal health care and so on.  Sanders attempted this, with some deviations that he doubtlessly judged, rightly or wrongly, as politically necessary, and did surprisingly well.  He may well have won, had the internal DNC deck not been stacked against him to begin with.  By moving away from identity and by speaking to issues more specifically, the dialogue becomes inclusive by its nature.  

We persist though we are blamed for her loss, while a historic voter gender gap showed that a majority of women, not men, as supporting Clinton over Trump.

White women favored Trump over Clinton, if I'm not mistaken, though not by a tremendous margin. A fact that intersectional feminists are all too eager to take hold of when they scold "white feminists."  Apparently, what we all need is more condescending lectures and scolding from people with more marginalized identities. All of us. White feminists need it from women of color. Cisgendered white gay men need it from transgender and nonwhite and nonstraight women of color. Black males, cishet ones especially, need it from black women, and especially nonstraight women. Kind of makes one wonder who's going to be left standing when next the music stops in this sick game of competitive victimhood musical chairs?

The media has not done nearly enough lecturing on how all of us need to hang our heads and check our privilege. Salon, the HuffPost, the Guardian, Mic, Upworthy, Being Liberal, Everyday Feminism, Occupy Democrats, not to mention tumblr and twitter, to say nothing of every college or university in the western world. They haven't done enough of that. Had there been more, Clinton would have won.

And more purity testing:

Further, we need to expect the Democratic Party to stand firm on its pro-choice platform and not lend national support to down-ballot candidates who are not pro-choice. We must refuse to debate choice again within the party. One hundred percent pro-choice is the only pro-choice position. One hundred percent pro-choice is the only pro-choice position.

Because purity testing always works. Not that I'm against the pro-choice position, mind you. But the last thing progressive thought needs now is more of a sacred cow mentality.

There is no tactical reason to abandon women’s rights and civil rights and every reason for Democrats to entrench more on these issues, now that our liberties are being revoked and under siege. It is upon all of us who care about the future of the Democratic Party, and indeed the nation, to say so.

I highly doubt Sanders, or anybody in the Democratic Party is suggesting that women's rights and civil right should be abandoned.  They are not going to abandon a core constituency.  But perhaps you should consider putting your money where your mouths are.  White and male does not always equal privileged, however ego stroking it may be to tell yourselves that.  However gratifying it might be to have someone to look down on, to blame your problems and your woes on.  Much like the white working class themselves scapegoating immigrants in minorities in much the same way.  You are no better than they.  You are as much a part of the problem as the reactionary working class is.

Don’t abandon us, Democratic Party. Don’t abandon we, the voters who by 3 million votes said, “I’m with her.” Let’s see you kiss Sanders goodbye and embrace the rest of us.  Let’s see Sanders give up the spear. Let’s see you say, “I’m with you, all of you” instead.

You will not be abandoned, Anna March.  Calls for the Democrats reach out to the white male working class are not calls for it abandon women and minorities.  They are calls that the Democrats become still more inclusive than they would be if they continued to exclude the underclasses that the Anna Marches as opposed to the Archie Bunkers of this world choose to scapegoat and look down on.

Bamboozling the Huffington Post

So, the Huffington Post got bamboozled.

The Huffington Post has published a meandering attempt to shift the blame away from itself for posting a hoax blog by a fictional social justice warrior which called for white men to be stripped of the right to vote.

The article, headlined “Could It be Time to Deny White Men the Franchise?”, went viral last week for its claim that banning white men from voting for 20 years would be a good way to advance progressive politics.

The HuffPo deleted the piece and in its place issued a statement stating that they will "bolster and strengthen their blogging procedures" and that "bloggers will have to verify themselves."  The original piece is, however, archived here.  They also add that, "Huffington Post SA stands aligned to the Constitutional values of South Africa, particularly the Preamble of our Constitution which states that: "We the people of South Africa believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity."

A remarkable statement, especially in light of the fact that South Africa has recently seen a spike in violence against white farm workers, amid calls for violence against its white citizenry from both ruling ANC politicians and leftist opposition groups.  A concerning precedent, and one that should be studied by those who would claim that anti-white racism is impossible or would do no harm.  While Genocide Watch does not yet think that anti-white genocide is occurring there, they are concerned that "early warnings of genocide are still deep in South African society, though genocide has not begun."

Reasonable people should see the handwriting on the wall in South Africa.  It is set to become another Zimbabwe, and would get the hell out of dodge if they can.  So much for the idea that denying whites the franchise would be a good idea from any standpoint.

It is well and good that the Huffington Post intends on tightening its quality controls.  Funny this was not their original response, however.  The HuffPo had originally boasted about the traffic that the piece had generated, and were quite taken in by the feminist and progressive credentials of "Shelley Garland" who described herself as an "activist working on ways to smash the patriarchy."

Am I to guess that burglaries and torturings occurring on white owned farms in South Africa would qualify? First, they defended the Garland piece and the "logic" underlying it - "pretty standard feminist theory."  Following enormous reader backlash, which was doubtlessly dismissed with form letter responses of the "whiney white dudes mad that everything isn't about THEM" and "Bigotry! Fascism! Racism!" sort, they finally relented and took the piece down.

Their replacement was a denial of being able to confirm the existence of Garland.  Once Garland's true identity as Marius Roodt (another hero for the 4chan crowd, as if they needed more) was known, his employers then accepted his resignation (I let you draw your own conclusions) and the Huffington Post has since published his apology (I let you draw your own conclusions again).

It's hard to tell which apology is less sincere, Roodt's or the Huffington Post's itself.  Roodt was fairly upfront about his intentions:

A further indictment on the Huffington Post is the fact that its editor, Verashni Pillay, then took it upon herself to defend the total garbage that I had written. Although Ms Pillay claims that her website does not necessarily agree with what I said, it is unlikely that she would publish a piece with the same sentiments but aimed at a different race group written by someone ostensibly from the other side of the political spectrum.

It is highly doubtful that she would publish a piece saying perhaps apartheid wasn’t that bad, or defending Donald Trump’s ban on people of certain nationalities entering the United States, and rightly so. Pieces defending apartheid or the ‘Muslim ban’ would be hurtful claptrap. What we have seen is the South African equivalent of the Sokal Affair, where something will be published, even if it’s ‘liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions’. My article does not meet criteria a, but it certainly meets criteria b.

Succinctly put.

So with that in mind, I'm offering my assistance to the Huffington Post, in the form of a prepared statement and implied internal policy changes, that they may wish to adopt if they wish to get to the real root of the problem revealed by Roodt's deception and humiliation of the Post.  It would read something like this:

The Huffington Post would like to take the necessary time and space to apologize to its readers.  Especially, though not exclusively, its white male readers.  Shelley Garland's piece on White Men and the Vote was offensive and discriminatory.  In allowing it to be posted under the Huffington Post banner, we have enabled the expression of these vile and offensive views.  Made all the more vile and offensive by the fact that we would never permit such things to be said of non-whites and non-males in our publication, and rightly so.   

We simply cannot call ourselves a liberal publication while permitting to be expressed beneath our banner advocacy of the removal of the franchise, that most fundamental of all democratic rights, from any segment of the population on the basis of race or gender.  It is unacceptable.

In failing to analyse and fact check the piece, and in failing to analyse and conduct a proper background check on on the piece's contributor, who turned out to be an alias, we have failed in our duties of journalistic integrity.  Marius Roodt is entirely correct in stating that we allowed this to happen because the piece flattered the senior editor's ideological preconceptions.   

Placing adherence to ideology and political partisanship above journalistic integrity and basic human decency and morality is the very definition of propaganda, not news.  Senior editor Verashni Pillay received considerable negative feedback regarding this piece. We are disappointed, though not at all surprised by the nature of her response, which was to publish a piece laden with ideological sloganeering dismissing reader feedback.  Given how crucial independent and critical thinking is in the role of a senior editor, and how dogmatic adherence to ideology undermines these qualities, this is unacceptable.  Verashni Pillay will no longer be associated with the Huffington Post.

The Huffington Post would like to exonerate Marius Roodt of any allegation of wrongdoing.  His actions, motivated as they were by an honest desire to speak truth to what we must now honestly admit to being an ideologically ossified status quo in the journalistic profession, do not undermine or disrespect that profession but rather holds it in the utmost highest regard.   

It is our excessive devotion to ideology, partisanship and identity politics rather than Roodt's actions, that have undermined the Huffington Post's image in the public eye, and it is our responsibility as an organization to repair that image.

Don't hold your breath.

It also bears mentioning that the Huffington Post, despite its ostensibly progressive slant, is refusing to bargain with the union representing its staffers over salaries.  Besides celebrity feminism, the Huffington Post has garnered a reputation for "sh!ting on its writers."  Go figure.

Looks to me like its boycott time.  Archive.is for everything from the Huffington Post from here on out.

Sam Harris on Identity Politics

Sam Harris talking sense about identity politics.

Sam Harris:

I distrust identity politics.  Of all kinds.  I think we should talk about specific issues.  Whether it's trade or guns or immigration or foreign interventions or abortion or anything else.  And we should reason honestly about them.  I'm not the first person to notice that it's pretty strange that knowing a person's position on any one of these issues generally allows you to predict his position on the others.  This shouldn't happen.  Some of these issues are totally unrelated.

Why should a person's attitude on guns be predictive of his views on climate change? Or immigration?  Or abortion?  And yet, it almost certainly is in our society. It's a sign that people are joining tribes and movements.  It's not the sign of clear thinking.  If you're reasoning honestly about facts, then the color of your skin is irrelevant.  The religion of your parents is irrelevant.  Whether you're gay or straight is irrelevant.  Your identity is irrelevant.  

In fact, if you're talking about reality, its character can't be predicated on who you happen to be.  That's what it means to be talking about reality.  And it also applies to the reality of human experience and human suffering.  For instance, if vaccines don't cause autism, if that is just a fact and that's what the best science suggests at this point, then when arguing against this view, you need data, or a new analysis of existing data.  You need an argument.  And the nature of any argument is that its validity doesn't depend on who you are.  That's why a good argument should be accepted by others, no matter who they are.

So in the case of vaccines causing autism, you don't get to say, "as a parent with a child with autism, I believe X, Y and Z."  Whatever is true about the biological basis of autism can't depend on who you are, and who you are in this case is probably adding a level of emotional engagement with the issue which is totally understandable, but would also be unlikely to lead you to think about it more clearly.  The facts are whatever they are.  And it's not an accident that being disinterested - not interested, but disinterested, that is not being emotionally engaged, usually improves a person's ability to reason about the facts. 

When talking about violence in our society, again, the facts are whatever they are.  How many people got shot, how many died, what was the color of their skin, who shot them, what was the color of their skin?  Getting a handle on these facts doesn't require one to say, "as a black man, I know X, Y and Z.  The color of your skin simply isn't relevant information.  

When talking about the data, that is what is happening throughout the whole society, your life experience isn't relevant information, and the fact that you think it might be is a problem.  Now this isn't to say that a person's life experience is never relevant to a conversation.  Of course it is.  And it can be used to establish certain kinds of facts.  If someone says to you, "Catholics don't believe in hell" it's perfectly valid to retort, "actually, my mother is a Catholic and she believes in hell."  Of course, there's a larger question of what the Catholic doctrine actually is.   

If a person is making a statement about a certain group of people, and you are a member of the group, you might be in a position to falsify his claim, on the basis of your experience. But a person's identity and life experience often aren't relevant when talking about facts, and they're usually invoked in ways that are clearly fallacious.  Many people seem to be making a political religion out of ignoring this difference.  

So I urge you not to be one of those people.   

Sound advice, Sam.

 

 

SJW Grandstanders will NOT go Away on Their Own

Youtubber "Mouthy Buddha" praises the stoicism and resolve of University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson in the face of a noisy SJW demonstration against a talk he recently gave.  Mouthy Buddha commends Jordan for "time and time again setting an example for us" as the video shows him largely ignoring a rowdy group of protesters trying to shut down his lecture.  Mouthy Buddha's video may be viewed here.

These sentiments are echoed in the comments following the video.  

"Jon the Bastard" writes, "I wish I could be as stoic as Professor Peterson. The man is a Legend in the making."

"Mike Stewie" writes, "I agree - Peterson sets the standard. While I enjoy listening to the likes of Bearing & Undoomed; an abusive medium is not the way to engage public interest productively. By arguing rationally and non-offensively we make serious arguments, but we also polarize the conversation in a way that shows SJWs for what they are: spoiled & irrational children."

"quizads" writes, "Peterson has truly become a worthy example of nonviolent discourse. I am moved to tears as well."

Others praised him in almost religious terms:

"Jeremy David Evans" writes, "I also almost cried watching his upload.  Truly, he walks his talk. He is shooting for the Christic ideal and reaching it.  When the Israelites were bitten by their own sins and temptations, Moses placed the bronze serpent on a cross so that all who looked on it would be saved. Peterson has taken up the cross of persecution, gained the spotlight, and those of us that see his truth are ever more drawn into that place of truthfulness. The cost is great, but the reward greater: the resurrection of society."

"Marthin Lukas" writes, "Shit....that was.....Jesus-esque......damn it Prof. Jordan."

I would not condemn a man for being stoic and resolved, and I do find Prof. Peterson's conduct in the video to be admirable.  But sometimes turning the other cheek doesn't cut it.  Sometimes appeasement isn't the answer.  Neville Chamberlain is not remembered as a superior Prime Minister to Winston Churchill, and the Dalai Lama no doubt still waits for the communist Chinese to return to their senses so that he can return safely to Lhasa and resume his duties there.  He's been waiting a while now, and will be waiting a long time yet.

People have been waiting a long time for college leftists to come to their senses.  Political correctness was dismissed as a passing fad in the early 1990s, though the ideologies underlying it go back further than that.  Sure, the Students for a Democratic Society did peter out, but their legacy has not.  Feminist theory and critical race theory are multigenerational now.  The umbrella of ideological protectionism - the equation of criticism of the theories with actual misogyny and racism - has sheltered these theories from real scrutiny or opposition for decades.

Sometimes, a firm and decisive stand is what's required.  The SJWs are one of those times.  We've been waiting and appeasing.  Things only get worse.  It's time for the gloves to come off.  It's as simple as that.

The forerunners of today's SJWs did not go away after Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American mind in 1987.  They did not go away after Dinesh D'Sousa published Illiberal Education in 1990.  They did not go away after Christina Hoff Sommers published Who Stole Feminism in 1994.  They did not go away after the minor humiliation of the Alan Sokal affair in the late 1990s, Rolling Stone's false rape story, and have not gone away after Milo Yiannopoulos's repeated exposure of their campus antics.  

Smugly dismissing them as mentally unbalanced, as crybabies or as special snowflakes is not making them go away.  They will not go away despite the fact their women's studies degrees will not qualify them for good jobs.  They will not go away after being unfavorably compared to the generation that stormed the beaches of Normandy or even the generation that marched for civil rights back in the 1960s.  They have not gone away despite being shown on social media time and time and time again for being fools.  

Criticisms spanning the decades, from libertarian, men's rights, traditionalist, classical liberal or marxist materialist perspectives has done nothing, not one thing, to dislodge them.

Voting conservative will not make them go away.  Neither Brian Mulroney nor Stephen Harper did anything about this during their tenures as Tory PMs in Canada.  Nor did Margaret Thatcher, John Major or David Cameron in the UK. Even if Justin Trudeau was unseated by a Tory, even one so un-PC as Kevin O'Leary come 2020, or were Nigel Farage to (somehow) become PM in the UK in the next general, the smart money is on the SJWs becoming more, rather than less vehement. Stateside, they didn't go away after Nixon won the 1972 election or after Reagan won the 1980 election or after George W. Bush won in 2000.  

The foolishness of those who believed Trump's 2016 victory would prompt a rethink on part of identity politics progressives in academia and mass media must by now be perfectly representative of the oft quoted definition of insanity.  

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

In fact, the title of Mouthy Buddha's video really does say it all.

SJWs are STRONGER Than Ever 2017.

He damn well knows this, and admits it in his own comments section:

The title may seem like hyperbole but it's not. Jordan Peterson's views are a minority within a minority in our university campuses, and although many students do side with him, and show him support, the onslaught from the regressive's truly are stronger than they used to be, because academia is now 100% behind the methods and tactics involved. 

They are vehemently against Jordan choosing not to say certain words, but are ok with students screaming "transphobic piece of shit". 

The following is the first sentence in a statement made by McMaster University: 

"We are 'deeply troubled' that Dr. Jordan Peterson has been invited to speak at McMaster." 

Right. He's too fashy, all the freedom for all and free speech stuff is troublesome. 

Let's all get our heads out of our asses here.  The SJWs aren't going anywhere on their own.  They won't be coming to their senses soon, or ever.  Because what they're doing is working, and they damn well know it.  The SJWs are winning.  It's as simple as that.  Brexit and Donald Trump did nothing whatsoever to change that.  One look at the advance of feminism, gay rights, and so on, especially in cultural institutions like academia and mass media make that perfectly clear.  It's so much easier to just shrug your shoulders and capitulate to whatever the latest demands are than it is to do what Jordan Peterson has done and dig in your heels on a matter of principle.  Especially when, unlike the SJWs, you're pretty much guaranteed to stand alone.

And that's precisely the problem.

If you wish to win a culture war, as the SJWs most certainly do, not standing alone is a fairly elementary principle.  And that's just the first of many things the regressive SJWs know that their shoulder shrugging, "what do you do?" asking political opponents don't.

The campus SJWs understand how grassroots activism and organizing work.  At the very least, they seem able to get names on petitions and participants for boycotts and protests.  They analyze the structures of institutions like colleges and look for the weak points where they can get the best results through the application of pressure.  They gain key positions of authority and instruction within academic institutions and use those positions to establish curriculum, guide research efforts and either allow or hinder the career development of students and fellow faculty depending on whether they tow or oppose the ideological party line.  They also structure their ideologies in such a way as to lend credibility to their inclination to use their institutional authority for ideological purposes.  By making claims that erode the perceived differences between scholarship and activism, for example, or subject to postmodernist deconstruction enlightenment notions of objectivity, neutrality and equality of right.

They study media and media relations, and not just on a surface level.  They know full well that the medium is the message.  They deconstruct literature and understand how language frames thought.  They understand the mythopoetic structure of political thought, and understand how important narrative construction is.  They are fully cognizant of the fact that framing and narrative consistently trump even the most airtight of logical arguments.  These people get degrees in English, psychology, sociology, religious studies, media studies and a host of other fields that delve deep into the workings of the human mind and the operations of social interaction.  While their ideas are flawed in the sense that any ideas that take root and become hegemonic in any closed social system become flawed due to ideological siloing, it certainly can't be said that they are lacking in political shrewdness or are fundamentally stupid.  If the SJWs are so dumb, why are they in charge?

They understand these things, and have understood them for decades.  The results speak for themselves.  In Canada, besides academic and media hegemony, a firmly established deep state consisting of advocacy on behalf of women's groups, aboriginal groups, pro-immigrant groups and so on insures that they control the narrative regardless of the party in political office, and genuine dissent carries with it risks of ostracization, job loss or even an appearance before one of our Orwellian "Human Rights" tribunals, as indeed Professor Peterson is being threatened with.

That's quite the little knapsack of privilege we've just unpacked.  The good news is that there's nothing preventing those with a genuine concern for free speech on campuses and elsewhere from understanding the workings of any of the above either.

The end game for anti-regressives, whatever their stripe, will have to look something like this.  I've already published these, but will do so again, to give an idea of what's possible given time and, more importantly, effort.

Three particularly important goals for enemies of regressivism:

• Requiring that intent to harass or create a “poisoned environment” be proven on at least a balance of probabilities or a preponderance of evidence in order to secure a remedy in court over a harassment or hate speech allegation.  “Privileged” people cannot be held responsible, on pain of professional or even legal consequences, for the emotional states of “marginalized” people, given what we know of how the human mind works, regardless of “social context” so prized by regressive social theorists.

• As a corollary to the above, political opinion and opinion on social issues should be a protected category of legal discrimination, especially in employment, just as race, gender, etc.  It should be especially costly to terminate an employee for expressing an opinion on political or social issues, just as it is for protected grounds for discrimination.  Exemptions to this can be extended if the non-expression of certain views can be shown to be a bona-fide occupational requirement.  There’s plenty of information about these  concepts in fields pertaining to human resources management and employment law.

•  Strong College Campus Free Speech legislation must be passed, preferably at the federal level but at least at the state/provincial level.   It's provisions would include the following:

1. Require colleges to adopt, at the governance level, policy statements that make crystal clear organizational commitment to free expression, and make crystal clear that it is not the university's role to protect students or faculty from ideas they find offensive or disagreeable.
2. The campus must be declared open to any speaker invited by students, student groups or faculty.  Disinvitation of controversial speakers should thus be prohibited.
3. There must be serious consequences for actions that result in shutting down speakers on college campuses or harassment of students and faculty for political reasons, including complicit administration failing to act accordingly in response to such events.  Suspensions for first offenses, expulsion/termination for cause in the case of repeat offenses, and even legal prosecution if warranted.  
4. Independent bodies should be established to investigate student and/or faculty allegations of "ideological gatekeeping", which I define as attempts to block the academic progress or careers of students or staff for political or ideological reasons.  This body would also be emboldened to investigate claims of ideological indoctrination in academic settings.  Remedies could include reprimands or other disciplinary measures up to and including termination (in the case of multiple repeat convictions) against offending faculty members.
5. The legislation itself would contain language cautioning academic institutions against fostering or allowing to be fostered a campus culture that romanticizes violent extremism, direct action, and other militant and confrontational forms of activism.  Honest discussion of the above would be permitted.
6. Strong protections for the due process rights of students and faculty charged under any of the above sections, and strong protections for the rights of student and faculty to engage in peaceful and non-disruptive protest. 

People simply must have assurance of their protection from legal or employment related repercussions for expressing their views if regressivism of all kinds is to be pushed to the margins of society.  If they not already have been, these ideas or ideas like them need to be adopted in your jurisdiction.

The SJWs will not go away by themselves. We must know this.  We must accept this.  This means complete acceptance of the fact that they will settle for nothing less than totalitarian control.  They are indeed getting stronger and getting bolder because they've been successful, for the most part.  It doesn't matter how many people dislike them.

The good news is, it doesn't have to.  If dislike can make the jump into no-nonsense organized and effective opposition, I think we'd all be surprised at just how weak the SJWs actually are.

New from Samizdat Broadcasts!

Guard your mind against toxic identity politics.  Don't miss these videos on Samizdat Broadcasts, on YouTube.  And subscribe and share while you're at it!

Why I am not an MRA.

Why I am not an Intersectional Feminist.

Why You Should Not Be An Intersectional Feminist

The Wikipedia description of the concept of intersectionality begins as follows:

Intersectionality (or intersectional theory) is a term first coined in 1989 by American civil rights advocate and leading scholar of critical race theory, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. It is the study of what Crenshaw contends are overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination. Intersectionality is the idea that multiple identities intersect to create a whole that is different from the component identities. These identities that can intersect include gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, age, mental disability, physical disability, mental illness, and physical illness as well as other forms of identity.  These aspects of identity are not “unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather…reciprocally constructing phenomena.”  The theory proposes that we think of each element or trait of a person as inextricably linked with all of the other elements in order to fully understand one's identity.

On the face of it, this is not an unsound concept.  So what is so wrong with intersectional feminism that you should not be one?  The devil is, as he so often is, in the details.

An an insightful article critiquing of intersectional feminism, author Helen Pluckrose describes the philosophical and ideological shift that took place as intersectionality became the party line in organized feminism.  And, by extent, the state religion of all first world nations.

Liberal feminist aims gradually shifted from the position: 

“Everyone deserves human rights and equality, and feminism focuses on achieving them for women.” 

to 

“Individuals and groups of all sexes, races, religions and sexualities have their own truths, norms and values. All truths, cultural norms and moral values are equal. Those of white, Western, heterosexual men have unfairly dominated in the past so now they and all their ideas must be set aside for marginalized groups.” 

Liberal feminism had shifted from the universality of equal human rights to identity politics. No longer were ideas valued on their merit but on the identity of the speaker and this was multifaceted, incorporating sex, gender identity, race, religion, sexuality and physical ability. The value of an identity in social justice terms is dependent on its degree of marginalization, and these stack up and vie for primacy. This is where liberal feminism went so badly wrong. When postcolonial guilt fought with feminism, feminism lost. When it fought with LGBT rights, they lost too.

Pluckrose details how cherry picked postmodern philosophy enabled the jettisoning of universal liberal and egalitarian values as underpinning feminist theory and replacing it with moral and epistemological relativism.  I detail elsewhere both the strengths and weaknesses of postmodernism, and how it has, on balance, been a negative thing for leftism.   Long story short, postmodernism asserts that metaphysics and epistemology - the nature of reality and the nature of man's means of knowing reality were, to a considerable degree, socially constructed and subjective.  At the very least, it rejected the idea that there are singular overarching "metanarratives" applicable to all people at all times.  Claims to objective reality were to be broken down or "deconstructed" to reveal that their foundations are little more than self serving biases.  Implicit in this was a cultural relativism that urged people to not be so judgemental of other cultures, even if those cultures appeared on the surface to be less advanced and prosperous than our own.

This is not so, so bad.  But it can be problematic if carried to a natural, logical extreme.  If cultures and morality are truly culturally subjective, than on what grounds could it be asserted that cultures that stressed racial and gender egalitarianism are truly preferable to racist or patriarchal cultures?  How could claims that universalistic liberalism was a western social construct that could be shown to implicitly favor white males be reconciled with racial and gender equality being values belonging exclusively to western liberalism?

If such questions were posed, they were no doubt deemed taboo.  The claims of critical race theory and feminist theory seemed strangely immune to postmodern deconstruction, and tended to be treated as if they were eternal truths binding on all people at all times.  Metanarratives, for lack of a better word.  It was just implicitly assumed that theories built around marginalized identities were infallible.  Best not to say anything, though.  It's not wise to point out the cherry-picking when the people doing it could make or break your academic career.

Thus began the move into intersectionality that Helen Pluckrose describes above.

Add Peggy McIntosh's knapsack of privilege dogma that was adopted into the women's studies canon in the late 1980s, and the prejudice plus power encyclical that also became canonical, and the foundations for the most toxic regressive left theory since Lenin were set.

Intersectional feminism in any kind of practice inevitably becomes a complete trainwreck.

People are all inevitably placed on several abacuses of privilege vs. marginalization:

• Male vs. Female
• White vs. P.O.C (person of color)
• Heterosexual vs. LGBTQ
• Cisgender vs. Transgender
• Thin vs. Fat
• Able bodied vs. Disabled
• Christian vs. Atheist vs. Non Christian vs. Muslim

With identities falling to the left being considered privileged compared to identities on the right.  The tendency in intersectional feminism is to assume that incontestable moral and intellectual authority is conferred by the possession of marginalized identities.  Those with fewer marginalized identities are generally expected to shut up and feel guilty about their privilege.  At the very least, they are not to challenge people with more marginalized identities on anything.  Those with more marginalized identities are implicitly expected to resent their more privileged counterparts, and are given full license via the prejudice plus power rationalization to abuse them as much as they want.  

No intersectional feminist will admit to the above paragraph, but that is the observable truth of it in action.  The problems have become so glaring that even that even Everyday Feminism - the spiritual successor to Pravda if there ever was one, has speculated that its ideological structure lends itself to abuse.  Not that intersectional feminists would deal with such an accusation directly, mind you.  If you are more privileged than they, they would simply point this out and, as far as they're concerned, this would shut down the argument.  

An exaggerated example to illustrate the way this works in practice: In a disagreement over math, wherein a white male asserted that 2+2=4 and a queer woman of color asserted that 2+2=5, typical intersectional feminist sophistry would not take the form of coming out and saying that the answer was five.  Instead, they'd point out that the math textbooks of the past were written by white males, and thus the queer woman of color experienced oppression while being taught, most likely by a teacher who was white, cis and straight, that 2 and 2 made 4.  Claims made under a marginalized person's experience of oppression in intersectional feminism can only be compared to outright divine revelation and command in fundamentalist religion in terms of being absolute in all conceivable ways: moral, metaphysical, epistemological and otherwise.  These claims supercede any and everything else and to contest them is evil with a capital E, beyond even heresy or treason.

The white male would then be chided and told to check his privilege for arguing with the queer woman of color on the matter in the first place.  His insistence that 2 and 2 made 4 would, most likely with some canned formulaic copy-pasta response, be attributed to an unwillingness to relinquish privilege, because "when you are privileged, equality feels like oppression."  Expect lots of reference to "angry white dudes" or the like, often some witty portmanteau: "mansplaining" or "whitesplaining", and some likewise clever and satirical misspelling of  "dewd" or "wypepo."  These kinds of vacuous signalling are, for whatever reason, prized in intersectional feminist circles.  

They've also made an artform of other kinds of disingenuous and deceptive argumentation.  Expect lots of bulverism - short and vague responses that imply that you've crossed some unseen line placing you beyond the pale of reason, morality or respect.  "Wow!  Just Wow!" is the ur-copy-pasta here.  Greenwalding - intentionally taking parts of opponent's statements out of context and making them say something very different than what they were intended to say, is also common.  As are more common logical and referential fallacies including slippery slopes and moving goalposts.  True Scotsmen are unheard of among intersectional feminists.  Two wrongs making a right is the basis of much of its "prejudice plus power" moral system. 

Showing that you "get it" is of paramount importance.  Dogpiling on nay-sayers is one of the very, very few actions that privileged sympathizers (that for reasons I can't fathom, are vast in number) can be almost assured of approval of from their more marginalized superiors.  Appeals to authority come with the territory here, with the "experience of marginalized people" and the theoretical dogmas underlying this kind of thinking being considered infallible.  Emotional reasoning is rampant - a marginalized person being "triggered" is considered oppressive, no matter the intent behind the action that caused said triggering.  Bootleg videos of SJW meltdowns, of the kind so often captured at Milo Yiannopoulos lectures, are a result of this.  

Catastrophization underlies the dogma of the "microaggression", where even the most innocuous actions or gestures on part of the privileged are taken as indicative of privilege and oppression, and therefore just grounds to trigger a marginalized person.  The privileged, of course, are completely responsible, regardless of intent, and cannot argue for reasons outlined above.

The ends always justify the means with intersectional feminists.  As with Lenin and his historical idea of "Kto Kovo" - "Who, whom?" actions are judged not on the basis of whether they are right or wrong, but by who benefits and who suffers as a result of them. There is no recourse or appeal for the "privileged."  

Another Leninist trait is vanguardism.  Intersectional feminists make bold statements on behalf of entire demographics of people.  Are they really speaking for all blacks or all women, or are they speaking for the women's studies department or the black studies department?  They represent themselves and their ideologies, not all people who share their demographics, whatever they may tell you.

Suffice it to say, this is hardly a recipe for mental health or satisfactory relationships.  I do not think it out of the question that there is a disproportionate prevalence of cluster B personality disorders within intersectional feminist ranks.  Like fascism, fundamentalism and Stalinism, intersectional feminism is a completely closed and completely authoritarian system.  This has been shown, with such examples as the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Shock Experiment, to bring about blind obedience to authority regardless of who is getting hurt, and can even attract outrightly sadistic personalities.  As Nazi and Stalinist examples demonstrate, absolute power combined with a legitimizing ideology is the formula for atrocity.

Of course, intersectional feminists are guilty of nothing on the scale of the holocaust or the holodomor.  But honestly, the only thing holding them back at this point is not having absolute power.  But they are given carte-blanche in most media and academic environments.  This should be troubling for everyone.  No idea should be above criticism.  Sacred cows walk the road into regressive darkness.

Not all intersectional feminists are malignant psychopathic nutjobs.  Many, if not most are well meaning people who genuinely want to give voice to the downtrodden.  The problem is not that every intersectional feminist is a bad person.  The problem is that intersectional feminism as a belief system is both tightly closed and - quite ironically - extremely hierarchical.  And this does attract antisocial people.  Many too deal with psychological problems stemming from abuse, bad upbringings or a general lack of self esteem that they find easy to project onto other people or society as a whole via intersectional feminist rationalizations, as opposed to the challenging work of seeking therapy and healing via challenging themselves.  

Beware of psychologizing people, however, unless you have good cause to do so - you've observed clearly bizarre behavior or, as they do surprisingly frequently, the intersectional feminist just comes right out and tells you they have issues.  I see this in blog posts and magazine articles quite consistently.  Or you are a trained psychologist.  Keep poor mental health as a possible explanatory factor for truly unhinged behavior in the back of your mind, as opposed to it being a go-to response that you can use to easily and conveniently handwave claims you disagree with.  

It also bears mention that economic inequality is regarded as being of lesser importance to intersectional feminism, and class is treated as race, gender and so on are: as an identity.  This is a distortion of the nature of economic class as a vector of identity.  Class is attributable to relations of production, not an immutable genetic trait.  Another problem with intersectional feminism is that in attributing privilege to genetic factors such as race, gender or sexual orientation, the real halls of power: big business and big government, escape scrutiny.  Perhaps that is why media and academia likes intersectional feminism as much as it does.  And libertarians have no less reason to balk at intersectional feminists than Marxists do.  The smallest and most marginalized minority of them all is the individual, who turns out to be completely invisible in intersectional feminist praxis.

If at all possible, do not deal with intersectional feminists unless they show you that they are at least open to other points of view.  Especially steer clear of them if they demonstrate abusive or manipulative behaviors.  Do not allow yourself to become subject to their authority.  A common intersectional feminist strategy is to assume positions of influence and authority in organizations and use them to impose their will.  Stop them if you can, or leave organizations wherein this happens, if you can.

And for the love of God, do NOT let them convince you that they are within their rights to control, manipulate or abuse you in any way simply because they have more marginalized identities than you, and because guilt by association and collective responsibility, you owe this to them.  You don't.  Let me make that crystal clear.  You don't owe it to anyone to be a doormat.

On the other hand, listen with an open mind to claims intersectional feminists make regarding the realities of life for marginalized people.  They can be valuable repositories of knowledge regarding specific social issues.  Not uncommonly, they advocate for good reforms, if you can sort the moral absolutism and panic from the legitimate claims.  Resist the temptation to "whataboutery" in a vain effort to establish moral equivalency.  You will not convince them. Sometimes, agreeing with them, especially when warranted, can disarm them.  Sometimes.

I do not condemn intersectional feminism because, as a white dude, I get short shrift from it.  That is sufficient reason to condemn it, but that it not its greatest sin.  What is truly damning about intersectional feminism is its betrayal of the core values of racial and gender equality.  It turns all of our backs on the reasons we abandoned racism and sexism in the first place.  Because people are more than their genitals, their skin color or who they're sexually attracted to.  And people want to be, and deserve to be, evaluated on more than just those characteristics.  People told to "check their privilege" rightly feel objectified, reduced to bare biological characteristic, by the praxis of intersectional feminism.  

White people can, and should, have opportunities to enjoy healthy and mutual beneficial relationships with people of color.  Men can, and should, have opportunities to enjoy healthy and mutually beneficial relationships with women.  Straight people can, and should, have opportunities to enjoy healthy and mutually beneficial relationships with LGBTQ people.  Poor and working class people should have opportunities to benefit from a progressive movement centered around economic inequality and keeping money out of politics, and the opportunities to rise as high as their talents and efforts allow them.  These opportunities benefit everybody.  Guilt and shame for the marginalized together with resentment and self righteous entitlement for the marginalized benefit no one.  For a fleeting sense of self righteousness, the "marginalized" people who accept intersectional feminism's faustian bargain loose all of the above opportunities.

As I write this, the greatest threat to these opportunities comes not from the Ku Klux Klansman or the homophobic and puritanical fundamentalist preacher.  Rather, the greatest threat now comes from those who have usurped the mantle of the good causes that brought us to the brink of victory over the Klansman and the fundamentalist.  That victory begins to slip away.  We must snatch it back.

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