Category: Social Justice Warriors

Roma and Gypsy Lives Matter: Or do they?

Posted on by leftinnewzealand

The Roma/Gypsy community are by far the most persecuted group in Europe. This is why I am making a case for Roma and Gypsy Lives Matter (RGLM). If we are looking for true equality and support for minority groups, why does this not make sense? The Romani in case people reading this don’t know or care (in which case proves my point) are an Indo-Aryan Ethnic group, who have been persecuted for many centuries and are considered the most intolerable group as recorded in several studies.

A survey in 2015 was conducted by YouGov.com in; Denmark, Finland, France, Britain, Germany, Norway and Sweden. In each nation this minority group garnered the most negative impressions. As an example, in Britain, a question asking “which group do people have the most negative impressions of”; Roma Gypsies scored 58%, Muslims 40%, gay people 9%, Black 8% and Jews 7%. Now, given recent high profile campaigns from Black Lives Matter and the weaponisation of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party (UK), you would be forgiven to display a certain amount of shock regarding the result. Especially given how the media have pushed the plight of both of these groups incessantly over the last few years.

It would seem that minority groups, therefore, do matter, but only certain ones or at the very least there is a pecking order. If at this point you are tempted to suggest that Romani/Gypsies lack power due to small numbers, it is worth noting in Britain that there are approximately 225,000 in the UK, which is a little less than the Jewish community (290,000). So, is it possible we have a ranking system that generally favours groups who possess power in the upper reaches of the establishment or who can manufacture enough political pressure to mobilise the ruling elite into supporting them? Maybe, people really don’t like Romani/Gypsies as discovered in the survey. But isn’t that racist? Or is that a term only reserved for the protection of certain groups?

I’m sure people will be quick to state that racism currently being protested has occurred for many years among black people and this is indeed true. Equally Romani/Gypsies were widely enslaved in what is now called modern day Romania in the 13th and 14th century. They were also persecuted by both the Mongols and the Ottoman empire. In 1749, Spain conducted “The Great Roundup of Romani (Gitanos)” in the region. Later in the 19th century Romani were forbidden on a racial basis to go outside of Europe, primarily into the English speaking world.

In both Austria and Spain, Romani were forced to assimilate, while surrendering large parts of their culture, primarily horse and carts (Austria) and their language (Spain). Also in Spain, Romani men were sent to separate workhouses, while their children were transported into orphanages. This type of forced assimilation also occurred in countries such as Norway, who took 1,500 children from their parents in the early 20th century.

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In more recent history, in 1935 Nazi Germany stripped Romani people of their German citizenship. They were imprisoned in concentration camps and many later exterminated. This genocide was supported also by allies of the Nazis such as; Croatia, Romania and Hungary. Numbers are hard to ascertain, but figures are generally thought to be between 200,000-500,000, but could be as high as 1.5 million people. This is what Romani call “Porajmos“, which means devouring and was part of Nazi Germany’s ethnic cleansing campaign.

In the contemporary world, Romani are associated with poverty and accused of high rates of crime, while perceived by others as antisocial and inappropriate. In Eastern Europe some children still have to attend separate Roma schools which places them at an academic disadvantage. In Kosovo following the war, Romani people have been practically wiped out by ethnic Albanians. Furthermore, as late as 1973 Czechoslovakia carried out a terrible program of sterilisation of Romani women which continued until 1989.

The list of oppression is a long one, but the point is, when we are looking at group oppression certain ones get widespread recognition and others clearly don’t. This is a tricky game to play, unless you don’t truly care about equality, in which case you are free to pick the groups that you find palatable. Or maybe you support a group that you think will get you more likes or follows on social media. Which again smacks of racism.

Wouldn’t it be easier if we just treated all people with respect. Or as Dr Martin Luther King Jr more eloquently said;

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Sadly, even the words of one of the most important human beings in history does not seem to pass the purity test in the minds of many of these so called anti-racists. As I have repeatedly said, identity politics will lead to nowhere good and will achieve nothing positive. It serves to divide us and alienate us from our shared humanity. I used the Roma/Gypsy community as a suitable example in order to highlight the double standards on display and the misguided use of this divisive form of politics. The bottom line is, we need to treat all people with dignity and respect, judging people by immutable traits we cannot control is not the way forward.

Antifa: friend or foe?

Posted on by leftinnewzealand

I’ll nail my colours to the mast right from the start. I am primarily a Libertarian/ Democratic Socialist, mainly in tune with the works of Rosa Luxemburg and Mikhail Bakunin. I certainly agree with a more civil path to implement change. You could say a peaceful revolution, and no that isn’t an oxymoron. I strongly suggest that we must have direct democracy on every conceivable level. The class struggle and the fight against suffocating economic inequality is vitally important.

We need a message and a reason to bring people together, such as the quest to end neoliberalism and grotesque inequality. For me this makes sense, as someone who also has a strong utilitarian streak, this would have a positive affect on the most amount of people, regardless of their identity. This is why I reject identity politics, because it fragments society and counters discrimination with more discrimination. So the question is, does Antifa who claim to fight fascism, represent me, the majority of the left and the working class?

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The simple answer is no. Violence rarely solves anything and cannot create a stable platform for long term democracy. On both sides of the political spectrum, something that has been created on the back of hostility generally requires strong arm tactics to maintain it. This has been witnessed in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Chile, Argentina and Palestine. If your starting point is violence it can only escalate in a desperate attempt to keep control.

So who are Antifa? This is essentially a difficult question to answer, because it is generally used as an umbrella term. Plus they’re a fairly secretive bunch. On the whole Antifa have claimed the moral high-ground and yet they attack people who offer no physical threat to them, only a difference of opinion. When I looked on the Portland Oregon Antifa group, called Rose City Antifa, I saw a malleable use of language and an abundance of double standards. Even by their own admission, fascism is difficult to define. So let me help them out, because it surely must be difficult to fight something you can’t define. Here’s Merriam Webster’s crack at it;

Definition of Fascism

  1. Often capitalised: a political theory, movement, or regime (such as that of Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralised autocratic government, headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition.
  2. A tendency or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control early instances of army fascism and brutality – J.W Aldridge

In contrast, Antifa’s FAQ’s page makes for exceptionally opaque reading regarding a definition of fascism. It is wordy and yet doesn’t actually say a great deal. The term fascism has been broadened to the point of being a meaningless catch all term. In effect fascism seems to be, whatever they choose it to be. If you ignore their ideology and focus on their actions you could be forgiven for thinking they are describing themselves. The “FAQ’s” section is littered with hypocrisy and inaccuracies, which are clearly used to justify their warped existence.

As an example, they offer that fascists are hostile towards Enlightenment values, which is hard to argue against, however, many of the issues Antifa fight for are antithetical to these very values they claim to defend. The Philly Antifa group offer that they defend trans rights, which is fine, but much of the trans argument is not based on the values of the Enlightenment, such as; science, logic and objectivity. In fact, the very nature of self identification is subjective and not grounded in any scientific rigour, such as the notion that sex and gender is on a spectrum. These ideas share more common ground with Postmodernism, which incidentally strongly opposes the Enlightenment.

There is no argument that Mussolini was a fascist, so too was Pinochet, General Videla could also claim the mantle of a full blooded fascist. A man who headed the Junta in Argentina, who among other generals oversaw the disappearance of 30,000 people between 1976 and 1983. But these are not the sort of characters Antifa are targeting. In contrast Antifa’s victims fail to occupy the same lofty and frightening fascist credentials of the men mentioned above.

Their recent assault on photojournalist and Quillette Editor Andy Ngo would seem to support the suggestion that this is less about halting fascism and more about preventing any dissenting voices to emerge. Without doubt Ngo has been a vociferous critic of Antifa, but quite clearly posed no physical threat to them whatsoever. For his troubles, he received punches to the face, had his equipment stolen and a milkshake thrown on him (which seems to be the trendy tactic of identarians these days). In the end, this cowardice attack landed Ngo in the emergency room with head injuries.

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On the Rose City Antifa website, these ‘moral guardians’ claim to do battle against xenophobia, racism and homophobia and yet Andy Ngo is a gay, Vietnamese man. It would appear Mr Ngo is the wrong kind of homosexual son of immigrant’s. All this strongly infers Antifa’s moral claims are flimsy at best and more likely blatant lies in an effort to legitimise their violent actions. I fail to be convinced that Antifa possess any principled convictions, only a childish desperation to get their own way, like a petulant child.

Antifa is claimed by the right wing media to be made up of Marxists, Communists, Stalinists and any other ‘ist’ they can possibly dream up on Fox News. This is all done generally without any knowledge of what Marx even wrote about. This group I would hazard a guess, would be happy to be connected with such ideologies, feeling it would add some form of credence to their misguided cause. Both sides appear content with these convenient labels and so the idea of Antifa being on the far-left has stuck. However, when we dig a little into a couple of Antifa’s webpages, the idea of a proletarian Antifa carrying the fight to fascists and the bourgeois doesn’t ring true.

On the Philly Antifa site, their front page suggests they “are in direct conflict with Racism, Homophobia, Sexism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Transphobia, and all other flavours of Fascism”. Firstly, if you direct you gaze back to the definition of fascism, most of these issues, although distasteful, uncivil, and surely scary if on the receiving end of such bigotry, are not directly connected to fascism. Secondly, on any of the Antifa sites I’ve browsed their is no mention of fighting for the working class, securing workers control and abolishing capitalism. This is an important point, as this crucially was Marx’s main thrust.

Marx’s primary work (unsurprisingly called Capital) consisted of critiquing capitalism to the nth degree. However, confusingly for a supposed leftist group there is no sign of a counter narrative calling for a push against capitalism on their sites. Undoubtedly, according to the content of their websites this appears to stir little interest among the ranks of Antifa. In fact their main objectives could be considered centrist/3rd way goals, as championed by Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Justin Trudeau in Canada. Obviously these areas that they mention as their core issues, are unsavoury and it would be great if we could live in a world where discrimination of any sort wasn’t a factor, but equally these views do not constitute fascism.

JT
Trudeau virtue signalling

Third way politics headed by people like Tony Blair presented identity politics as a way to combat societal views considered unacceptable in his idea of a utopian world, while deflecting the populous away from the fact he was a neoliberal disciple. Democrats and Labour Parties around the world suddenly found themselves with a new enemy to rally against. Primarily anyone who didn’t think the same way as them. Meanwhile, the likes of Blair and Clinton continued to deregulate the financial sector with little resistance. This neoliberal blueprint has since been handed down to successive Prime Minister’s and President’s. During this time, the disenfranchised working class have been labelled public enemy number one, for not subserviently going along with this masterplan.

It is apparent that Antifa has more in common with the corporatist status quo, than they would care to admit. Incidentally, they only seem to have resurfaced since the arrival of Donald Trump. This is significant, because many workings of the government have changed little since Obama’s departure. For example the US have continued with their usual aggressive foreign policy. Of course, Trump is a narcissistic, sexist, bigoted idiot, who has no moral integrity, uttering anything so that he can maintain power. However, Antifa are more concerned with this loud mouthed political puppet, rather than the government machinery that continues to perpetuate massive inequality, climate change inaction and endless bombings of sovereign nations.

I have a very strong suspicion that Antifa are comprised of middle class, relatively well educated, financially comfortable, identarians and are the attack dogs of the liberal elite. This political class have recently been rejected by the working class, in the form of Brexit and the election of Trump. With many people voting against both Hilary Clinton and the chance to remain in the EU. This maligned group are now used as a conduit for hate, therefore, a seemingly appropriate target for these masked thugs. Cunningly, conflicting or opposing worldviews have been rebranded as hate speech, providing a justification for such violence.

This slide from a differing point of view, to suddenly branding an opinion as hate is known as concept creep, where definitions broaden and behaviour that is less extreme is suddenly considered dangerous, such as ‘problematic’ opinions. It’s this very idea that supports the notion that “words are violence“, leading to punishment, which includes no platforming, censorship or violence. This is then passed off as a valid response and classified as a form of self-defence.

Far from being defenders of the free world Antifa are authoritarian and these self-proclaimed arbiters of morality silence all murmurings of dissent in any way they see fit. This includes the shutting down of free speech, peacefully or otherwise. On the Rose City website this group admits that it is no fan of free speech, describing it as “not applicable”. They would also prefer the state to take a back seat when tackling far-right views or fascism, so that these vigilantes can directly confront transgressors. This is worrying as Antifa clearly have no idea what fascism is, making fighting it I would imagine, pretty tough going.

Equally disturbing, is the leeway mainstream media grants this group, playing down or at times openly supporting their actions. This should be seen as a red flag, signalling that this is not an anarchic left wing group, but a violent wing of the liberal elite, emboldened by selective mainstream journalism. The media regularly appear very keen to report that Antifa has a long storied history, all in an attempt to add a shred of legitimacy or decency to their questionable cause. This again is an effort to silence detractors, implying that if you are against Antifa you must be in support of fascists. Joe Rogan recently described them as middle class, privileged kids doing cos-play. I think they are slightly more dangerous than that, primarily because they hunt in packs and pick soft targets.

Does Antifa speak or act for me as a self proclaimed member of the left? Absolutely not. Do they support and protect the working class, the traditional core of the left? Not even in the slightest. They are defending the capitalist status quo, under the pretence of activism. Antifa are bourgeois, middle class, privileged thugs and bullies. They are more outraged by regrettable but relatively isolated incidents of racism or sexism than a system that has created a despicable level of inequality. This political ideology of neoliberalism is strongly connected to poor health, rising crime rates, sub-par education, a planet that is collapsing from over consumption and a precession of never ending wars.

Antifa has a myopic moral perspective, protecting dubious theories such as intersectionalism. They preach an authoritarian, puritanical, doctrine that has a religious quality to it, demanding full obedience at all times. As a group they fail on every conceivable level to protect and support the working class, the homeless and the powerless. All the while, endeavouring to do everything within their power to control how we act, what we say and how we think.

More than words: The identarian left and the manipulation of language.

Posted on by leftinnewzealand

If you’ve ever read 1984 you will have encountered many slogans used in the book such as; “ignorance is strength” or “freedom is slavery”. To people observing from the outside these phrases appear simply as contradictory. However, anyone having the misfortune of living with this type of indoctrination day in day out may view them as reminders or part of a spell designed to seep into your sub-conscious, influencing your actions. Social Justice Warriors use words in a similar way primarily to manipulate or create a powerful narrative, here’s a selection you my have heard; “words are violence”, “safe space”, “hate speech”, “invalidating my existence”, “woke”, “problematic”, “my truth”, “creepy”, “microaggression”, “toxic masculinity” and “white privilege”.

Both sides of the political fence routinely use these methods, but for the identarian left it is essential and a major tool of control. This political faction doesn’t revel in the luxury of money and the option of lobbying like the oligarchs of the right or the corporate left. Therefore, social control is imperative in order to implement their ideology. If a group can control the boundaries of acceptable language, this will in turn guide which thoughts are considered appropriate and those that are not. In summary the identarian left is very much adept at mind control. More importantly this group ascribe themselves as the morality police, pushing an intolerant and puritanical worldview, based on total subjectivity.

This movement is a belief system that has a religious feel to it. Their churches are college ‘grievance studies’ departments. These are sacred areas, holding ultimate power over the moral direction of both the academic institution and students alike. Social Justice preachers stand in the pulpit of the church of intersectionality, while delivering their sermons from the gospel of Jean Francois Lyotard or Michel Foucault. In truth, what we witness are poorly educated professors, who are graduates of these departments, rising through the ‘ranks of the woke’ while regurgitating a particular set of beliefs.

These gatekeepers of ‘special knowledge’ are held in high regard by often impressionable, young women, who are drawn to this area of study. This can be viewed as a process of confirmation for these disciples, who have convinced themselves that they are victims of a harsh and cruel world, one which should revolve around their every whim. In this sense college operates as no more than a very expensive echo chamber. A place to peddle subjectivity, unfounded beliefs and an anti-scientific doctrine with no space for critical thinking or reflection. Questionable ideas such as Derrida’s deconstructionism, Foucault’s musings on power and Lyotard’s criticism of empirical evidence, have chipped away at any notion of truth, thus the age of ‘lived experience’ is upon us as the gold standard of all knowledge.

Like all cults, what is required to recruit believers and to dupe outsiders is a believable story. As with all good tales, it has to evoke emotion, reality is not necessary, rather feelings are utilised to resonate with its target audience. Language embedded within this narrative sets the tone regarding what is considered civilised and indeed permitted within society. What is also crucial is an amplifier, in order to reach as many people as possible with their message. For this they have a willing ally in the form of mainstream media and their billionaire owners, who are keen to use this as distraction to divert attention from the real issues notably neoliberalism. So what is the story that has captivated, mainstream media, government departments, grievance studies students and even Hollywood?

75th Annual Golden Globe Awards - Show

Like many tales it’s simple, or more accurately life has been simplified for the simple minded. Our multi-faceted, complex, highly evolved distinctive features that make us unique, have been whittled down to things we can do nothing about. Our special blend of good, bad and indifferent, abilities and traits formed from a combination of nature and nurture are suddenly reduced to melanin levels and genital configurations. Individual assets, experiences or any contributions to the world in this subjective supposed utopia account for nothing, nada, zip.

If you are a white, heterosexual and male (like me), you are a sinner and there is nothing you can do to secure forgiveness. No amount of saving lives as a healthcare professional or educating our kids or even pulling people from a burning building, as a firefighter can shed the mantle of privilege placed upon your shoulders. You are riddled with “toxic masculinity” and considered a piece of shit by the high moral priestesses of grievance studies academia and you better just live with it.

To keep the moral sinner on their toes, identarians like many tribes have created their own language, designed to detect, socially isolate and destroy non-believers, often purposely annihilating their careers. This parlance is also used to excuse their own tribe from any undesirable actions they may perform, while creating mechanisms to silence dissent. One such method is akin to playing god and principally centres around victimhood, a strategy used extensively by intersectionalists.  By announcing certain groups as oppressed based on skin colour or genitalia, regardless of whether they have actually experienced oppression or not, allows them to decide who is good and who is bad. Ironically, identarians use all the tools of stigmatisation to achieve this; othering, labelling and stereotyping. But all in a good cause right?

Identarians created the word “woke” suggesting that they were somehow the enlightened ones. Hilariously, this has since been hijacked and is now used as derogative term by indentarian sceptics. The identarian claim of moral purity of course, is not supported by any evidence, but rather we are told it is “their truth”, thus immune from any form of critique. Furthermore, by occupying the role of victim it is considered that vitriol and hatred can be administered outwardly without complaint.

In a recent article, academic James Lindsay offered that “identarians repeatedly claim the final word, as people who have lived oppression (real or imagined) cannot be questioned or overruled, and their proclaimed truths are, therefore, considered final”. This logic (or lack of) produces another linguistic web, rendering any form of disagreement impossible. However, if dissention does occur this subsequently provides further proof for identarians regarding the potency of privilege and oppression.

The Social Justice establishment has created and implemented widely accepted word play guarding them against criticism and to admonish them from any irrational, violent and frankly thuggish behaviour. One of these linguistic Orwellian snares is the use of the term “microaggression“. Being called out, verbally flogged, doxed, no-platformed and socially ex-communicated for an overt disagreement with the identarian rhetoric is clearly not enough . Society in their opinion, should now be persecuted for unintentional transgressions against the church of Social Justice. This poses two severe problems; one is the complete reliance on subjectivity, thereby, the same alleged microaggression may illicit a very different response dependent on the recipient. Secondly, like most of postmodernism microaggressions completely disregard the nature of intent, while focusing on emotions and feelings of the individual involved.

As identarians see oppression everywhere, an example of a microaggression could be questions such as, “where are you from”? Apparently this line of ‘interrogation’ insinuates that the person being asked is not from around here. Clearly in the world of SJW’s this question has less to do with natural human inquisitiveness and more about perceived malicious undertones. This form of control extends beyond what the general public are permitted to say, focusing on the implications of what might be said. In effect, this is an attack on an individual’s thoughts not on the words uttered per se. Taking this a step further, behaviour such as this clearly opens the door for an Orwellian style thought police. Even more disturbing than monitoring conscious thought, identarians are attempting to adopt the role of judge, jury and executioner of unconscious thought.

To protect this bizarre idea, SJW’s employ yet another ‘booby trap’, thus curtailing any disagreement regarding alleged microaggressions. This is achieved by accusing the micro-aggressor of ‘victim blaming’. And so the game of oppression roulette continues. The intended outcome is to silence all open, inquiring dialogue, making society subservient to the wishes of the Social Justice thought constabulary. This link contains an example of suggested microaggressions and the alleged message it sends. It was published by the UCLA ‘grievance studies’ faculty. It’s fair to say that documents like this are clear examples how untethered from reality these people really are.

In Social Justice land any hostile language, conflicting words or aforementioned microaggressions are not just considered insulting, but are viewed as violent, contributing to trauma. The phrase “words are violence” is worryingly being accepted in society as a universal truth. This is yet another Social Justice mechanism of coercion that has gained traction, allowing the church of Social Justice to “strike great vengeance and furious anger” on unsuspecting sinners. This reasoning proposed by psychologist and emotional researcher Lisa Feldman Barrett goes something like this; chronic stress can cause physical damage, no argument there. However, she continues, “if words can cause stress and prolonged stress can cause physical harm, words can cause physical harm”. This logic suggest A causes B, B causes C, therefore A causes C. With this in mind her conclusion should be, words cause physical harm, not violence.

This “words are violence” strategy achieves a couple of things; firstly by believing this it allows identarians to lay claim to reprisals on the basis of self defence. Which is exactly what has occurred in numerous US colleges, a direct physical response to a verbal disagreement. Examples of this were played out at Evergreen State College, Middlebury College and UCLA Berkley. Secondly, the use of a disproportionate and aggressive response to a contrary opinion will likely convince many people to keep their views to themselves in public, effectively closing down free speech.

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This silencing of free speech is a major component of the identarian plan. Professor of English at New York University Ulrich Baer defended identarians, proclaiming in an article written in the New York Times, “when those views invalidate the humanity of some people, they restrict speech as a public good”. In this piece Baer is inferring that speech can invalidate the humanity of entire groups of people, when all the listener has to do is reject the idea and humanity remains whole once again. If somebody punched me in the face, I would undoubtedly label this as an act of violence. In contrast, as uncomfortable as being lambasted may be, they are and always will be words for which do no direct physical harm. The recipient may feel, upset, hurt and some words may have a lasting psychological effect, but it is still does not equate to violence. My suspicion is this conflation is intentional, allowing in the mind of an identarian an opportunity to respond in an heavy handed manner.

The ultimate game-plan for the identarian left is to prevent anyone opposing their puritanical version of morality. The jewel in the crown for identarians is the development of the concept of “hate speech” and furthermore declaring themselves as moral arbiters. This restriction of free speech may have, at one time been used to curtail bigotry and bullying, now it is primarily used to stifle any hint of resistance. Identarians invariably weaponize these regulations to shut down disagreeable speakers, destroy careers and at times justify violence. Even the laws around hate crime in places such as the UK are so vague and malleable that it effectively allows anything to be viewed as such. The Crime Prosecution Service in the UK defines a hate crime as;

“any offense that is perceived by the victim, or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person of disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; or someone who is transgender or is perceived to be transgender”.

What ideas of hate crime and indeed hate speech suffer from is “concept creep“. It is argued that notions such as; bullying, trauma, mental disorders, addiction and prejudice, now encompasses a much wider range of phenomena. In effect what is observed is an expansion of meaning, reflecting an ever increasing sensitivity to harm. Nick Haslam Professor of Psychology at Melbourne University proposes that the broadening of terms used to explain events is known as horizontal creep. Whereby, the behaviour qualifying an incident as abuse has become over time less extreme, this is referred to as vertical creep. In no way is this to condone any form of abuse, but rather to acknowledge that the boundaries have become elastic, vague and potentially unhelpful.

As an example we’ll use bullying, the meaning has expanded into; online behaviour, workplace conduct and forms of social exclusion that doesn’t actually target the victim with hurtful actions. Being excluded from a group of friends in this sense can now be described as bullying. Behaviour that was considered less extreme than once typical acts of bullying, now lie within these new boundaries. Haslam calls this vertical creep, stating that an incident such as this does not need to be intentional or repeated, nor is it required to occur in the context of a power imbalance.

Descriptions of trauma are also detaching themselves from any form of objectivity, as the recipient is now sole determiner of the meaning, thus providing further evidence of moral relativism. Trauma now encompasses a multitude of events from distress following wartime experiences, through to childbirth, sexual harassment and even a relationship breakup. Here’s a definition from the US Government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration;

“Individual trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being”.

My issue is certainly not to contest that these events can be difficult and contribute to mental health distress, but rather there is a distinct lack of a spectrum or a rational to refer to. Here, postmodernism rears it’s ugly head yet again. All trauma from the most mild all the way to life shattering events are now considered on an equal footing, as severity is now decided upon by the recipient. Through this lens, objectivity is seen as archaic and subjectivity holds sway. With all this in mind; a traumatic event does not need to be a discrete moment, it has no requirement to be a threat to life or limb and does not need to manifest to the extent where it would cause marked distress on almost everyone. Neither does this event have to be outside normal experience or cause significant distress within the traumatised person, who merely has to register it as “harmful”. This type of postmodern “word salad” renders any definition of trauma as pointless and begins to strip words of any remaining substance.

Within this piece, I’ve attempted to uncover the linguistic rules and games that most of us are required or forced to play by. They are created to trap, cajole, manipulate, silence, shame and mould society into complying with the moral fundamentalist minority. Here stands a group of people possessing a myopic viewpoint, with limited life experiences and no tolerance for diversity of thought or indeed freedom of speech. To counter this, these puritans only hold power if we indulge them in their stupid, infantile activities and enter into this charade. This is why it is vital to fight for free speech, resisting any invitation to tread into a murky world, whereby, words hold very little meaning, while emotion and subjectivity conquers all.

The identarian attack on science: Postmodernism strikes back.

Posted on by leftinnewzealand

By its very nature Social Justice and in particular the activism that permeates throughout the movement is antithetical to science. These departments who cultivate such ideas are deridingly, but arguably fairly described as “grievance studies”, they underpin Social Justice and are heavily influenced by postmodernism. This philosophy is deeply critical of meta-narratives such as science, suggesting that subjective opinion has more value than empirical evidence. It is useful to view this onslaught on science via the social justice movement as a postmodern assault. Primarily, because numerous theories surrounding identity politics originate from postmodernism, examples being; intersectional feminism and critical race theory.

It is reasonable to imply that postmodernism perceives science as another tool for social control. Postmodern guru Jean-François Lyotard postulated that there was an “interlinkage between the kind of language called science and the kind called ethics and politics”. Lyotard used this idea to reject science’s claim to any objectivity, by coupling the knowledge science produces to politics and thereby power. This can be condensed into two postmodern critical statements against science;

  1. Science is unable to produce any objective or truthful statements about the physical reality, therefore, cannot lay any claim to universal applicability.
  2. Scientific enquiry is not a value or interest free pursuit of truth that is independent of local culture constraints, rather it is inspired by hidden ideological motivations.

The question must be asked; why is the social justice movement, using postmodernism as an blunt instrument, to pursue science so vigorously? Heather Heying, former evolutionary biology Professor at Evergreen College and wife of Professor Bret Weinstein of Evergreen college fame, simply explains that science seeks truth and truth isn’t always convenient for this movement. The siege on science manifests in two primary ways; firstly there is an external attack on the credibility of science, followed by a secondary insidious infiltration of science via feminist/social justice ‘researchers’.

heather heying
Heather Heying

The predictable first battle for identarians began in the arena of the social sciences. Given that the social sciences investigate areas of complexity such as human interaction and society, it would make perfect sense that this would be postmodernism’s first port of call. Science searches for objective truths, but this is decidedly more difficult given the unpredictability of humans. Nevertheless, the Scientific Method should still form the cornerstone of any social science. To complicate matters, social sciences often have to perform a balancing act between objective truths and interpretation. The more objectivity a research paper entails, the more trustworthy it will be considered. In contrast, if an over reliance on subjectivity is evident, this could inevitably lead to an increase in confirmation bias, with a very real danger of producing erroneous results and the potential to be harmful to society.

The erosion of social sciences due to a concerted postmodern tide started roughly in the mid 20th century. This was characterised by a shift on the see-saw from objectivity to subjective experiences. This change in approach ushered in the concept of multiple realities. In contrast, objectivity increasingly took a ‘back seat’ leading to social sciences being at odds with objective natural sciences. Postmodernism at one stage was only a small part of the social sciences and was primarily utilized as a differing lens in which to interpret the world from, such as from a feminist standpoint. In recent times postmodernism has been catapulted into the forefront, becoming one of the predominant methods in which to view society. This change has spawned whole departments deeply attached to a singular and myopic philosophy.

Postmodernism and by association identarian beliefs are detached from reality. In colleges around the western world Social Justice is purported to be a distinct academic field, presenting with a set of established truths. It could be argued that Social Justice is little more than postmodern speculation anchored by en vogue ‘theories’ such as Intersectionality. Worryingly, these ideas are being touted as a set of universal beliefs accounting for the entirety of the human experience. With this postmodern input Social Sciences appear increasingly interested in tearing down current ideas and objective truths, rather than understanding them. It is an ideology drowning in subjectivity, divorced from the Scientific Method and marooned on self absorbed intellectual islands.

Most of the blame must go to the teaching staff, who are exploiting their students in an effort to propel their own agendas. Many Social Science students will leave college without any firm grasp of the Scientific Method. Students are taught that ‘lived experience‘ is truth, whilst encouraging them to discover what is referred to as “my truth”, which to you and me is commonly known as an opinion. In these hotbeds of wild ideas, good grades are attained by mirroring back to the educator their favoured ideology, without any requirement to critically think. Students indoctrinated into “right think” are generally ill prepared for the outside world, as their entire education is chiefly formed from a particular perspective.

Rather than considering certain ideas such as “Intersectionality” and “White Privilege” as opinions they are purported to be objective truths. Once in contact with the real world, students find that these beliefs can be met with strong assertions that run counter to the 21st century teachings of Social Science. This lack of preparedness is played out on Social Media everyday, as these identarian disciples are ill equipped to debate in a logical manner. Suddenly they discover that people are dismantling their firmly held beliefs, that were obtained in a safe college echo chamber. This for them will feel like personal abuse, these exchanges often culminate in ad hominem attacks in return, such as “Nazi”, “Alt-Right” and “Misogynist”. None of this partisan anger helps to encourage dialogue or an exploration for “the truth”, but in fairness exponents of “grievance studies” are clearly not interested in objectivity or discourse.

For now, we will make our departure from the Social Sciences and look at how the Social Justice movement has attempted to make inroads into the Natural Sciences. Increasingly, the attack on the Natural Sciences has been performed from the inside, rather like a virus attacking the host cell. As Heather Heying stated, identarians are compelled to attack science, purely because it is in conflict with their own belief system. SJW’s including feminist lobbies have spent decades trying to increase the amount of women taking part in STEM. Not only that, but it would appear that there has been a concerted effort from identarians to change the way science is conducted and moreover the value in which we place upon it.

Once you delve into the murky waters of postmodernism you will discover that many ideas or theories appear to lose value. In this universe you can pick and choose your ‘truths’ as you see fit. An area that ‘gender feminists’ fight to the death on is, the concept of gender being a social construct. This is despite mountains of evidence on the contrary, which I have discussed in depth in previous ramblings. In an attempt to strengthen the feminist claim, ‘feminist scientists’ have tried, with some success to add scientific weight to their ideology. The paper that I will highlight is Daphna Joel’s article published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America. This in summary asserts that the differences between men and women’s brains are negligible.

Daphna joel
Daphna Joel

I’ll start, by stating that this paper was taken on face value by the New York Times, The New Scientist and most liberal media outlets. Joel was even invited to talk at TEDx Jaffa. You’ll be pleased to know that this paper has since been thoroughly reviewed by her peers. To begin, let’s make it clear what Joel claims in this paper.

  • Brains of individual males and females show very little internal consistency in their combination of “male-typical” and “female-typical” features.
  • Overlap between male and females in the distribution of anatomical traits in specific brain regions is so large, that it calls into question the very idea of gender differences in brain structure.

Firstly, let us keep these findings in perspective, the study only suggests that the structure of the brain is “mosaic”, nothing pertaining to functional differences between men and women. In response to these claims Giudice et al starts off by drawing attention to the questionable methodology. Giudice states that the paper employs an unduly strict criteria for “internal consistency” (brain differences) but a lax criteria for “substantial variability” (brain similarities).

To demonstrate Giudice offers an example using a fictional male, who we’ll call Bob. Bob is tested on a number of sex typical preferences for leisure activities, these are; boxing, construction, golf, scrapbooking, using cosmetics and playing video games. He has no interest in scrapbooking and cosmetics, but is passionate about boxing, construction and golf, however, Bob also does not care for playing video games. Using Joel’s guidelines Bob’s profile would be classed as “substantially variable”, therefore, offered as evidence to display Bob’s brain as a “mosaic” of male-typical and female-typical features.

With regards to the second claim in Joel’s paper, it was noted that the original study did not test how well varying brain features predict a participants sex. Giudice did complete the testing using Joel’s original data, finding that an individual’s sex was predicted through brain features between 69-77% of the time. Furthermore, the multivariate overlap of male and female features based on Joel’s data was a moderate 42% on average, which was considered not high enough to invalidate the idea of overall brain structure differences. Another study by Chekroud et al conducted a multivariate analysis of structural MRI’s for 1566 participants, concluding that “whole brain patterns in brain morphology (structure) can reliably discriminate sex”.

At this juncture it would be fair to mention that despite Joel’s heavily publicised paper, discrepancies between male and female brain morphologies have been comprehensively demonstrated and published in a 2014 meta study. This list is long, so I will leave the finer details of the study here. The point I’m trying to make is Joel’s paper was founded on ‘cherry picked’ data and more than questionable research methods. Not only did it receive a pass from the media, but it was championed by them and declared as a breakthrough in science. It has been thoroughly demonstrated, although contentious in ‘gender feminist’ circles, that biological sex differences do exist. These findings could be used in a positive way to improve health and public policy. Regrettably, politics and ingrained ideology repeatedly obstruct useful science.

When we look at a research paper, it’s important that we note any biases from either the individual or any associated professional ties the author may have. Joel announced that she had no conflicts of interest in her 2015 paper, however, this declaration considering her area of study, appears a little disingenuous. Daphna Joel is heavily influenced by feminism and observing science through this lens. For example she regularly discusses the prospect of feminist neuroscience. Further to this, contrary to having no vested interest, Joel is a member of ‘The neurogenderings network‘. This group states;

“Neurogenderings Network is a transdisciplinary network of neurofeminist scholars, who aim to critically examine neuroscientific knowledge and to develop differentiated approaches for a more gender adequate neuroscientific research. Feminist neuroscientists generally seek to elaborate the relation between gender and the brain beyond biological determinism, but still engaging with materiality of the brain”.

Clearly (cue sarcasm), Daphna Joel and colleagues had no pre-conceived agenda while conducting their studies or critiquing the current body of knowledge. Once recognised, her affiliations begin to shed light on to why it appears she commenced her research with the conclusion and worked backwards. For me, one of the tell tale signs was her uncharacteristically (for a scientist) bold claims. The headline in the New York Times read, “Can we finally stop talking about ‘male and ‘female’ brains”? The answer I suspect is, probably not. These are not the words of an objective scientist diligently following the evidence. The general point of science is, you start with a hypothesis and proceed to disprove this idea, not manipulate the study to bolster a closely held belief.

Recently, medicine has also been on the receiving end of criticism. It has often been accused of being a hegemonic structure of power, while no more valid than Reiki or Homeopathy, implying that all therapeutic methods are equally valid. A postmodern paper by Holmes et al argued that evidence based medicine (EBM) was an example of “microfascism” and proved that health sciences are colonised by a specific research paradigm, which in turn prevents alternative forms of knowledge to surface. In this paper their central criticism is the legitimacy of randomised controlled trials (RCT’s), which are internationally accepted as the highest level of evidence. Alternative forms of ‘knowing’ that the authors allude to, generally manifest in an area called ‘Complementary and Alternative Medicine’ (CAM).

Many enthusiasts of CAM are openly anti-science, they claim that the Scientific Method misses the point of CAM and doesn’t account for cultural diversity. Another claim is that scientific testing is only one of the many ways of knowing and is not necessarily the best. Contrary to this assertion, clinical effectiveness is a falsifiable hypothesis applicable to all interventions. In other words, it simply aims to ascertain whether a particular treatment works or not.

Alternative research methods have their uses, concentrating on anthropological and sociological aspects using for example; intuition or somatic perception. These ideas may well help us understand patients’ beliefs about health, illness and the body, but they cannot inform us which treatment is the most effective for a given condition. The most conclusive evidence available proves that a modality such as ‘spiritual healing’ works as a placebo response. A placebo response essentially is fine and can be powerful, however, all treatments conventional or unconventional possess some form of a placebo affect. It is surely logical to suggest that having a treatment that possesses a physiological effect would be more beneficial than relying solely on a placebo. Forgive me if I appear to be stating the obvious here.

Science is continually under attack and closely regulated by identarians, but they rarely claim that targeted studies are poorly conceived or that the results are questionable. The objections are mainly concerned with the subject matter studied or the identity of the people performing the research. One such contentious area is the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’. In simple terms, this suggests that more men occupy the outer reaches of intellect on either end of a distribution ‘bell curve’ than women. Darwin observed these traits in many species throughout the animal kingdom, with reasonably consistent evidence being reported in species as diverse as; wasps, orangutans and humans. As a basic observation, there are significant differences in the number of men compared to women in; Nobel laureates, music composers and chess champions, but on the flip side, men make up the majority of homeless people, suicide victims and prison inmates.

Theodore Hill, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Georgia Tech University sought to discover why this variability occurs. His paper was written with Sergei Tabachnikoff, Professor of Mathematics at Penn State University and was due to be published early 2018 in the Mathematical Intelligencer.  Margaret Wikler, the editor, was untroubled by this potential controversial topic and proceeded to give it her blessing. However, almost immediately after posting a preprint on their website, the duo encountered the Women in Mathematics group (WIM), who warned them that this paper could be damaging to aspiring young women. All efforts by Professor Hill to discuss the content with WIM were ignored.

Following this, the National Science Foundation (NSF) requested that the authors removed any acknowledgement of funding from NSF. This was prompted by two Professors at Penn State University claiming that the paper was “promoting pseudoscientific ideas detrimental to the advancement of women in science”. Later on the same day editor-in-chief of Mathematical Intelligencer Marjorie Senechal withdrew her acceptance of the paper after being challenged by “several colleagues” stating that this paper would provoke “strong reactions”. She clarified that the research had received no scientific objections, but her decision was based on the response the article may elicit.

The U-turn was performed by the journal following a complaint by a senior professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago, Amie Wilkinson. After some back and forth with Senechal, Wilkinson recruited her father, a famous psychometrician and statistician to add academic weight to her disapproval. Long after the Mathematical Intelligencer rescinded the paper, Wilkinson continued to trash the journal and the editor-in-chief through social media. Due to mounting pressure co-author Sergei Tabachnikoff withdrew his name from the research paper, in order to protect his job.

WilkinsonIASWynne2019
Amie Wilkinson

Professor Hill eventually had the paper published via the New York Journal of Mathematics (NYJM), only for it to vanish from the online journal three days later. As it turns out, one of the editorial board members was Benson Farb, who is married to, yep Amie Wilkinson. It transpired that Editor-in Chief Mark Steinberger was effectively blackmailed into pulling the paper by half of the journal’s board led by Farb. Not satisfied, Professor Wilkinson continued her moral crusade, directing her vitriol at the NYJM and the editorial board, threatening to ‘unfriend’ them on Facebook if they did not sever ties with editor Igor Rivin. All this appears more like the insane actions of an angst ridden teenager, rather than a senior professor and yet it worked.

This isn’t the first or I suspect the last time that scientists have been professionally attacked for researching subject matters that identitarian’s consider ‘out of bounds‘. A published study at Brown University concluded that the “exceptionally rapid growth in cases of transgenderism among children and teens is very likely the result of a ‘social contagion'”. This outraged transgender activists, who attempted to discredit the author and the methodology, without really scientifically critiquing it. The article was subsequently pulled by Brown, with many academics since accusing the university of caving in to this group. Thus, ensuring certain potentially uncomfortable areas of study are off limits, while identarians monitor the boundaries of acceptable academic inquiry. If you would like to make your own mind up about the paper, feel free to click the link for the original article.

This directs me to my final area of discussion, which I acknowledge is at the more extreme end of science denial. The incident occurred at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Where a young student declared “science is a product of western modernity and should be scratched off”. She continued suggesting science needed to start again through an African perspective, which would include witchcraft.

It could be argued that this assault goes beyond colonialism, as these people seek to tear down universalism. It is true that the majority of scientists during the Enlightenment were white middle class men, but the knowledge that was uncovered goes far beyond identity. Mathematical equations and scientific principles are universal, theories only persist if the results hold, regardless of the place or person doing the testing. This desire to decolonise science is to dismiss all intellectual or social advances that have gone before. A relationship to truth, universal relevance, or intellectual worth are now considered secondary to the identity of the author, with the most oppressed carrying the greatest weight of opinion. Sadly, this movement is supported by lecturers in varying departments throughout the academy. No doubt, we are in the midst of a huge shift towards relativism, which ultimately will stifle any intellectual or scientific advances.

I am sure I will get a reasonable amount of pushback on this article, primarily because I will have been seen to ‘pick on’ the left, while giving the right some sort of critical immunity. Firstly, I will make the point that I have been deeply scathing of the right’s anti-science credentials in previous articles, principally with regards to climate change. We know that the right are just as willfully blind when the science doesn’t match their ideology as much as this portion of the left are. Specific areas of science denial for the right include; climate change and the anti-vax campaign. However, it’s worth mentioning that this offensive on science by groups who proclaim to be on the left is seldom mentioned. I’m relatively sure that this is a comparatively small group who oppose science, but the problem, nevertheless, still persists.

It is duly noted that the right tend to become increasingly concerned when any scientific developments interfere with the rich making ever more money. This often results in aggressive lobbying, for example the fossil fuel industry convincing democratically elected officials to follow the money, while turning a blind eye. The left in contrast get ‘hot under the collar’ when their pre-conceived societal ideologies are challenged by ‘inconvenient data’. Make no mistake science is facing a two pronged attack, with both sides more than willing to denounce empirical evidence to protect their ‘truths’. This erosion of the Scientific Method is a regressive measure, destined to transport society to pre-modern times, which effectively helps nobody.

Collective narcissism and identity politics: No empathy required.

Posted on by leftinnewzealand

I’m not writing this to gain favour with a certain political tribe, or to provoke people, although I’m sure there will be a range of reactions to this. I’m chiefly trying to make sense of all this craziness that continues in the west particularly on college campuses. This thought initially permeated into my brain while watching a video of the Evergreen College collective breakdown and the witch-hunt of Bret Weinstein (Professor of Evolutionary Biology) in 2017. For those of you who haven’t heard about this, I’ve shared a video below to give an example of the type of antics that are occurring regularly on college campuses around the ‘anglosphere’. This episode is much like the psychotic Yale university ‘Halloween costume’ incident. I still find it difficult to understand such behaviour, as well as acknowledging that it’s disturbingly interesting. It also boggles my mind why education facilities and government entities continue to listen to such idiocy. But they do and therein lies a major problem.

I’ve written numerous articles about social justice activism, but I continuously struggle to the grasp the mentality surrounding these collegiate outbursts. Recently, it occurred to me partly due to watching these social justice car crashes, along with reading about narcissism from people like Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell, plus my own experiences with narcissism that there was something more to this lurking in the depths. While watching this video on Evergreen, I invite you to play a game called, spot the infantile, self absorbed, entitled, narcissist. Alright, so I’m possibly starting this article with a slight bias. Ooops!

Joking aside, it would be sensible at this juncture to define what a narcissist is, with a view to making sense of what collective narcissism means further into the article. Many people would possibly conclude that to explain what a narcissist is, all that would be required is a picture of Donald Trump. Alas, it’s slightly more complicated than that. Firstly, I want to nail down the definition of narcissism. Slapping a tag on someone who may be displaying a lack of self doubt or overconfidence isn’t really the best way to proceed. Narcissism is only present in approximately 1% of people and characterised among other traits with a lack of empathy. On top of this, there is a permanent desire for constant appreciation, a belief of being special and a solid conviction that they are more deserving than others.

It’s worth noting, that not all narcissists are bombastic fools like Donald Trump. Narcissists come in two general flavours; covert and overt. They share many traits such as; conceit, self-indulgence and a complete disregard for others, ‘overts’ are linked to an extroverted personality type and ‘coverts’ to introverts. Overt narcissism is marked by arrogance, a preoccupation with fantasies of success particularly in; attractiveness, power, brilliance and wealth. They expect preferential treatment and have an insatiable need for admiration. If this fails to materialise, it will be viewed as a narcissistic injury, which regularly leads to an excessive action, usually in the form of rage and almost certain revenge. To overt narcissists, other people exist purely to be exploited, therefore, unsurprisingly they display a poor perception regarding their own functioning, primarily in self concept, relationships, social adaptations, ethics, standards and morals.

Covert narcissists also have overblown fantasies, but these are not realised and are unable to be achieved. They have unfulfilled expectations and a vulnerability to stress is also a primary characteristic. Covert narcissists are hypervigilant to humiliation and rejection, while searching for power and glory. Often they live life vicariously through their children, viewing family members as a way of attaining their own rights, desires and values. Covert’s are generally devoid of any respect for authority, while being prone to boredom and depression. These types can fit in with society better than overt narcissists, but will often have a distinct lack of interest for work, known as “narcissistic deficiency”. In a nutshell, ‘coverts’ have an unconscious feeling of grandeur, but these thoughts and emotions are not reciprocated by the outside world.

Narcissism like many things is considered to be on a spectrum, a certain amount is thought to be healthy and required to function in daily life. At the extreme end of this is Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Well known narcissists are; Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Ted Bundy and Elvis Pressley, plus modern day narcissists are notably; Simon Cowell, Kanye West, Madonna, Mariah Carey and Donald Trump. So what has this got to do with identity politics and social justice activism? The link is collective narcissism, this was a theory proposed by Theodore Adorno to explain how the Nazis gained and maintained support from the 1930’s to the end of World War II. No, I’m not implying that identarians resemble Nazis, but give them time (joke, sort of).

In a wonderfully ironic article posted in ‘The Conversation’, there are some fantastic examples regarding collective narcissism, rightly mentioning that the group in question fails to accept criticism and feel they deserve special treatment. The piece continues, suggesting collective narcissists are selective regarding their prejudices, while rejecting or attacking groups who do not share their grandiose image. Surmising that they use spin and conspiracy theories to attack competing groups. Noting that these ‘special’ groups also detect insult where nobody can see it (more narcissistic injury).

The ironic part is that the author only links collective narcissism with right wing endeavours, such as Brexit and Trump and displays no awareness that narcissists exist quite prominently within his own political tribe. Sure there’s plenty of collective narcissism on the right, just look at the US evangelical conservatives for suitable examples. However, social justice groups ticked just about every box in this article and yet there was no pause for reflection regarding their own team. This is despite that the piece mentions scoring high on the narcissist scale predicts an increase in prejudice, regardless of people’s age, gender or education.

The crux of this is that the ‘old left’, as I would call it, have been correct on many occasions; writers from Marx to Sartre catalogued the problems with wealth and capital. They predicted the psychological damage, the profound effects on health and the dismantling of society, as we collectively immerse ourselves in mass vacuity and banality. The truth is, the left are losing ground in just about every facet of society and in most geographical locations. The despairing reality is the left, what remains of it, is a shadow of its former self. It is unashamedly unrelated to the working class and hopelessly detached from global injustices. The new identarian left has fallen in love with its own reflection and has subsequently lost interest in the state of the planet, continual wars, free speech, democracy and even poverty.

The left of old created healthcare for all, pensions, economic safety nets, education and housing. These things were universal ventures, so people could have the basics in life, to live, prosper, participate and contribute in society. This now seems long ago, the new/identarian left are instead fixated on race, sexuality and gender. All the while as people on the streets of the world are starving, identarians get apoplectic with rage over the correct use of pronouns. It’s no wonder that people across the western world have rejected these ideas and now often resort to voting against their own best interests.

Democracies are failing and society is fragmenting, so these drastic, sometimes ill advised actions are a basic response to fear, in an effort to protect themselves. The needs of the many are being continually rejected in favour of supplying the demands of the ‘woke’ few, who are generally well off, educated and privileged. Surely valuing, fairness, truth, justice, democracy, morality and decency takes precedence over what is good for the self. Lets be honest what’s more important a starving child or validating your identity?

wierdo

If this identarian group doesn’t acquire what they feel is rightfully theirs (narcissistic supply) then as previously documented they will instinctively lash out. Narcissistic supply for identarians equates to people colluding with them (also known as allies) for causes such as cultural appropriation or deciding whatever they would like to be called that week. This isn’t the collective, universal vision of the left I once knew, this is pure self indulgent, infantile behaviour. These people should be challenged, rejected from the left and given no credence. They bear no resemblance to the great people who came before them, the likes of; Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Mikhail Bakunin, Bertrand Russell and Peter Kropotkin. Frankly, none of the identarian left would be fit to carry their books.

So lets explore why narcissists are attracted to identity politics and social justice activism in particular. It has been postulated that this arena allows young radicals to indulge their narcissistic urges, enjoying power, support and praise, regardless of their conduct. Their theories and beliefs are absent of any responsibility, the only concern is for themselves and their group, as they embark on a journey of hedonistic self-gratification. This insulation from reality rejects any acknowledgement of personal agency and plays out as an overgrown group of kids who have created the rules to feed their self-obsessed, infantile fantasy land. In a cult like fervour they are bound together as a collective, propelled by teenage infused hatred, aimed at all who refuse to agree with their every utterance.

All opposing narratives aimed at SJW’s are met with, anger, dismissal, derision and a desire to dismantle the perpetrators lives. Western colleges are littered with tales of destroyed reputations and careers, any hint of non-conformity is swiftly punished through a series of reprisals. The use of an opaque, malleable language, ensures that any individual caught in this web of lies is unable to escape these allegations of racism, sexism and the deadly accusation of being transphobic. Cultural appropriation, privilege theory, critical theory, intersectional feminism, micro-aggressions and the use of safe-spaces are all tools used to obfuscate the purpose of identity politics from the masses, while simultaneously justifying their beliefs. These are classic techniques used by narcissists, with the end result appearing rather like 1984, you are left questioning your own name or indeed how many fingers are held up.

Control can certainly be found in the lexicon of the narcissist and the one region these reins are held tightest is regarding the questioning of identity. Identity is used as a way of gaining respect. I regard myself as this, we are oppressed, therefore, you have no right to question or even discuss this with me. This purposeful stifling of dialogue is evident no more than in the arena of the trans debate. Many trans people state they have a right to be recognised for who they are (which they have), but proclaim obstacles are being put in their way and this is interpreted as questioning their right to exist. The phrase is often proclaimed as “you are invalidating my existence”. But this flamboyant fallacy alludes to a whole segment of society being wiped out. Alas genocide it is not, the real purpose of these grandiose declarations is to halt any debate, emphatically announcing that trans lives are clearly not up for discussion.

A term that is ubiquitous with narcissism, is ‘gaslighting‘. Simply put, it is a process of making an individual question their perceptions and version of events, in order for the narcissist to exert power over them. An example of this would be turning an ordinary event, such as someone questioning their beliefs and then comparing it to an abusive relationship. This conversion of a mundane moment in time to a massive overreaction from the alleged ‘abused’, manifests in actions such as doxing or the popular activity of calling out on twitter and can be categorised as a further ‘narcissistic injury’. This response from the alleged ‘abused’ in this current cultural climate can lead to a job loss, a removal from college or even a custodial sentence.

Which leads us to an obvious narcissistic trait as seen within Social Justice land, which is how nauseatingly public it all is. Live tweet Tinder dates are posted for all to see, this is coupled with a superficial casualness, in a vain attempt to display detachment. Relationships are increasingly talked about in a blasé manner, with advice webpages discussing issues such as, “not falling in love with someone you had casual sex with”. This behaviour is clearly a narcissistic trait, using avoidance particularly of emotions in an effort to maintain control. This inability to form authentic relationships, screams of fragility of the self. It is punctuated by further overreactions regarding any perceived transgressions by an individual. This is topped off with a distinct lack empathy for any other human being, typifying malignant narcissism.

The narcissistic group is held together by a need for external validation. This collective can be driven by a narcissistic individual, a core of narcissists or less prevalent due to the relative scarcity of narcissists (1 in a 100) a whole group. In the individual scenario, a single person idealises where the group belongs, in contrast this ideological process can also take place at a group level. It is surmised that the more actively involved a group member is, the higher the opinion this individual will have of the group. An increased affinity towards their tribe is related to personal investment and a feeling of positive contributions connected to their success.

Personal narcissists will invariably see the group as a defining extension of themselves and will defend it as a form of protection against outsiders and also to strengthen their social standing within the group. A further potential adhesive is the charismatic leader creating the follower/leader dynamic. All members of the main group are narcissistic, but within this a charismatic leader emerges. It’s not uncommon for it to be a ‘grievance studies’ professor either, such as Suzanna Danuta Walters who wrote in the Washington Post, “why can’t we hate men“. This group consists of two types of narcissist; the ‘mirror hungry’ narcissist, seeking a constant flow of admiration from the followers and the ‘ideal narcissist’ who obtains comfort from the confidence, charisma and security provided by the leader. This is essentially a symbiotic relationship, but it can be toxic.

Intergroup aggression is a hallmark of group narcissism. They are more sensitive to perceived criticism externally, often resulting in the out group being attacked with disproportionate force. Again, these are overblown responses, but they are a reaction to a narcissistic injury. Below is a good example of what epitomises group narcissism. We have a charismatic leader, with her followers, who feels suitably emboldened to yell at a Yale Professor, over an extremely minor event. This collective tantrum was ‘initiated’ by Mr & Mrs Christakis (both professors) for suggesting that if students had a problem with a Halloween costume, then maybe they could discuss it with the wearer, rather than expecting the university to adjudicate. Below is a shortened video of the fallout in response to these benign ‘grown up’ emails. Take note that Yale is supposedly one of top universities in the world.

You may ask with some validity why I have concentrated most of this piece on linking narcissism with Social Justice Warriors and identity politics. There is no doubt that the right wing of politics and capitalism itself is awash with narcissists, history proves this; Hitler, Mussolini and John D Rockefeller to name a few. More recently we could easily use the dynamic duo of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. Of course many CEO’s would have a range of narcissistic traits, some of these people who fit this criteria are; Bill Gates, the late Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos. But they are all relatively obvious, arrogant, overt narcissists. However, on the other side of political fence, there are scores of narcissists who go unchecked or are readily dismissed as “silly children” who will eventually mature. Unfortunately, they are growing up and changing the rules as they go, while destroying lives all to obtain their narcissistic supply.

The mainstream media doesn’t write about narcissism and the identarian left, because identity politics is the mainstream. There are no critiques of how identarians arrogantly perceive themselves as the gatekeepers of acceptable speech, thoughts, actions and morality on campus. But even more worryingly, this ideology is now spewing out into the real world. This, at a time when the left has a damn good counter argument to neoliberalism. One that focuses on the human costs of massive economic inequality which includes; sub-standard education, increased crime rates, poorer health outcomes, an elevated prevalence of armed conflict and an acceleration of climate change. Frustratingly this strong, coherent message has undoubtedly been diluted by the cult-like, intrusive, puritanical behaviour of the ‘identarian left’, led and populated by a strong narcissistic element. Without doubt the ‘real left’ will not reconnect with the people, until we reject and eject the ‘identarian left’.

A false ideology: Why identity politics doesn’t add up.

Posted on by leftinnewzealand

We now inhabit a world where influential people in academia and increasingly the government decide who is privileged and who is not, purely by which group we belong to. These are not organised by who’s rich or poor, educational attainment, health levels, class status or even the environment we may live in, sadly nothing quite so objective. Individuals are crudely grouped by what cannot be changed (generally), this being genitalia and melanin levels. This grossly unscientific method, purposely ignores many parameters as outlined above and boils what is termed “oppression” down to race and sex.

To get to grips with how this occurred, our journey starts in France, with some very smart but terribly misguided philosophers. This bunch were largely responsible for a type of philosophy called postmodernism. Postmodernism is at the root of identity politics and underpins social justice activism. The movement, primarily artistic and philosophical began in 1960’s France. It claimed that life was viewed through a male, middle class perspective and sought to rally against this. Additionally, postmodernism outright rejected philosophy that valued ethics, reason and clarity.

This brand of philosophy dismissed overarching movements such as structuralism, which was an attempt to analyse human culture and psychology. While Marxism, endeavouring to make sense of society through class and economic structures was considered simplistic. Furthermore, the movement deeply criticised science, in particular, the idea of objective information. Postmodernists postulated that knowledge without human perception was just another example of arrogant western assumptions. Historically, the term “postmodern” was first used by Jean-Francois Lyotard in 1979, in his book The Postmodern Condition. Above all this was a rejection of meta-narratives, used to explain large phenomena such as religion and science.

In their place Lyotard offered that mini-narratives should be used, with the aim of getting smaller, more personal truths. This thought process led to epistemic relativism, or a belief in personal or culturally specific ‘truths or facts’ and also towards the advocacy of privileging. In summary Lyotard simply ranked “lived experience” above empirical evidence. In addition, postmodernism regularly promotes a type of pluralism, privileging the opinions of minority groups over views of a consensus, such as science or even a liberal democracy.

Another one of the French postmodernists was Michel Foucault. Foucault suggested that people were culturally constructed and a “product of the relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces”. In Foucault’s world, cultural relativity is expressed through structures of power, while shared humanity and individualism are practically ignored. Using this theory, people are constructed entirely by their position in relation to the dominant culture and labelled as oppressed or oppressor.

The third musketeer, in our postmodern yarn is Jacques Derrida. Derrida focused heavily on language, rejecting that words referred to anything in a straight forward way, suggesting that there were only contexts without any absolute anchoring. He implied that the author of a text is not the sole authority and that the listener provides their own equally valid meaning. Derrida’s main contribution to postmodernism was a literary critical method called ‘deconstruction’. This was utilised in an attempt to overturn what he perceived as biases in language.

derrida
Jacques Derrida

Deconstruction arose from the belief that all concepts appear in opposing binaries and that language privileges one concept over another. For example “male” and “female” or “good” and “evil”, the first term usually having dominance over the other. Derrida suggested that this showed great inequality in western/modernist thinking. Derrida’s second idea, was to offer that the identity or meaning of words could not be understood except in relation to what they are not. He suggested that the only way to overcome these inequalities was by deconstructing text and thereby the language which was thought as the inherent power within the binary structure.

Derrida achieved this by equalising the opposing “inferior” and “superior” terms, then placing the “superior” term merely as an expression of the “inferior” term. Using this train of thought, we could say “good” is just an expression of “evil”. Derrida suggested at this point that the terms were meaningless and subjectively imposed by violence as the identity of words are overturned by différance. Derrida used this term to point out that the meaning is not final, rather it is constructed by differences specifically by opposites.

By now, if all this postmodern speak has “baked your noodle”, to borrow an expression from the Matrix, well that is kind of the point. Even the brilliant academic Noam Chomsky failed to see the relevance of postmodernism, stating; “Seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn’t already obvious, etc? These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can’t be met, then I’d suggest recourse to Hume’s advice in similar circumstances: to the flames”. The underlying problem now is, conclusions drawn by postmodernists were used as the foundations by future sociologists, gender and race studies academics to build an even more misguided, subjective, divisive and flawed theory.

One of the main theories that underpins social justice activism is intersectional feminism. This was introduced to the world in the late 80’s by UCLA law Professor Kimberleé Crenshaw. Crenshaw rejected “classical liberalism”, which looked past categories such as; race, gender and sexuality, while it focused on levelling the playing field and enabling all people to succeed on their own abilities. Incidentally, this is also known as “Enlightened liberalism” and promoted not only universal human rights, but the freedom of individuals to pursue their own path. Despite this, it was opined by critics such as Crenshaw, that this type of liberalism built structures of power which needed to be addressed. In contrast to liberalism, Crenshaw’s theory suggested that areas of race, gender and sexuality, were essential as it added levels of complexity to the problem.

kimberlee crenshaw
Kimberlee Crenshaw

In general it is postulated that as a society we work primarily on 3 levels:

  1. As a member of the human race with common needs and drives.
  2. As a member of one of the numerous categories, such as; race, nationality, culture or religion.
  3. As a individual, with our own particular interests and abilities.

It could be surmised that while universal liberalism concentrates on 1 & 3, intersectionality gravitates almost exclusively towards the second group. Meaning that this ‘theory’ fundamentally views all issues through the lens of race, gender and sexual identity. Hence the rallying cries of, “listen to women, listen to people of colour”.

But this theory possesses some glaring errors. Firstly, women of colour and LGTB people are to be found all across the political and moral spectrum. Intersectionality, however, is firmly embeded in the ‘leftist’ identarian camp, complete with a distinct ideology. That said, intersectionality claims to support all of the aforementioned groups, but requires all members of these groups to subscribe to the identarian left. Judging by the stats available, this is just not obtainable. In the US 24% identify as liberals and 38% as conservative. In the UK the left and right are split roughly 50/50. Women are more likely to be left leaning than men. In the US 47% of African Americans identify as liberal and 45% conservative. The Conservative party (UK) claim 33% of Black and Middle Eastern voters, while 52% of Black Britons vote Labour. In Britain LGTB voters are as likely to be on the left as the right, but in the US LGTB voters are likely to be left wing. These nuances go on and on and do not fit the intersectional rallying cry.

As far as ideology is concerned, intersectionality alienates even more people. To be intersectional you are expected to focus on many categories at once, believing that they are all marginalised and worthy of your concern. Therefore, a woman describing herself as wholly a white, feminist would not be considered nearly committed enough to the cause. It would be assumed that the believer should also automatically subscribe to queer theory, critical race theory, trans-equality and anti-ableism discourses. However, as highlighted with politics, all of these varying groups do not have a single way of thinking. For a start in the US, only 20% of woman call themselves a feminist, while in the UK it’s as low as 9%. Using this information alone intersectionalists would have alienated over three quarters of their target population, that being women. Overall, the vast opinions expressed by the varying groups makes this theory totally unworkable.

Effectively what transpires, is the emergence of a small faction, with a minority ideological viewpoint, dominated by people from economically privileged backgrounds. This group generally has a university education, have studied the social sciences, or have had enough leisure time to have grasped the varying ideas encompassed by intersectional theory. Activists of this cult readily pronounce that the only way is intersectionality, as all other groups are dismissed as fake. Crucially, intersectionality undervalues shared human experiences and universal rights. It ignores personal autonomy, individuality and distinctiveness, concentrating intently on group identity and intersectional ideology. This in turn places the individual in an extremely restrictive “collectivist” position, which was often considered the domain of severe conservative cultures, such as the religious right.

Looking at postmodernism and then intersectionalism, we can see the erroneous foundations being laid for the modern social justice movement. When this is combined with other factors that are peculiar to the millennial generation and now i-gen (generation Z), it starts to makes sense why we are witnessing behaviour punctuated by a lack of tolerance for any differing views. Safe spaces, trigger warnings and microaggressions are all common parlance on university campuses. This development like previous politically correct movements aims to stifle free speech. But according to Jonathan Haidt social psychologist, the motivation this time around, turns out to be more concerned with emotional wellbeing.

Haidt suggests that childhood has changed dramatically over the last couple of generations and that unsupervised play is much rarer than in previous decades. Children, therefore, have less chance to develop skills, such as, how to negotiate in a difficult situation or how to critically think. Meanwhile, a change in perception during the 80’s and 90’s regarding crime, suggested that there was a marked increase of kids being abducted or murdered. One of the main reasons for this view, was that we started to hear more about incidents through an increasingly pervasive media. Following this, a common message millenials received from adults was, life is dangerous but we will protect you from harm. This has contributed to millenials and i-gen being less resilient and more hostile towards political or moral opposition.

jon haidt
Jonathan Haidt

To add another layer to this, professor of psychology Jean Twenge wrote the book ‘the narcissism epidemic‘, in 2009. In this, the professor looked at the changes in individuals and in culture, discovering that narcissistic traits were rising twice as fast than in previous studies. More disconcerting, was that the severe form, Narcissistic Personality Disorder was experienced 3 times more in people in there 20’s than individuals over 65. Other markers that Twenge used, showed plastic surgery was up by a factor of 6 in a decade. Furthermore, materialistic attitudes had increased, as people were more likely to go into debt to get what they wanted. Meanwhile the reading of gossip magazines increased and the interest in newspapers decreased.

When we start to stitch all this together, it’s not surprising that we have a group largely of millenials and gen Z who actively attempt to curtail free speech. They also vigorously take part in historical revisionism, for example trying to get certain statues removed, which are deemed offensive. While the poem ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling was unceremoniously removed at Manchester University, following allegations of racism, with no historical context, just a veil of ignorance, as proudly worn by SJW’s. These puritans are offended by the slightest utterance that may come into conflict with their pristine, logic free utopia. While they brazenly display no conscience either, as they repeatedly attempt to remove university professors for ‘wrong think‘.

Many followers of the ‘social justice activism’ have been exposed to a postmodern philosophy, that twists language to square with their pre-conceived conclusions. It is proposed that certain groups are oppressed, such as women and people of colour. This is supposedly a fixed position, bound by the illogical ramblings of postmodernism and now intersectional feminism. These adherents are perpetual victims, regardless of any personal factors that may not tie up with this label, such as; being a middle class, privileged student, as witnessed in many cases. Their assigned victim status enables the SJW to be absolved of any personal responsibility. With this cloak of victimhood, they are able to call out all men or white people, purely because they are oppressed and by virtue of this, are unable to be a misandrist or indeed a racist.

It is by no means a revelation that people who are less developed in terms of diplomacy, resilience and people skills gravitate towards such a movement. It carries little risk, you can gang up on a single speaker, shower them with nasty tweets, retreat to your safe space after a trigger warning and declare an incoming microaggression to your Dean. If you are narcissistic this is also perfect, you can metaphorically sniper your political opposition, all in the safety of your morally pristine ivory tower, thus not receiving a narcissistic injury in return. Outstanding! All this would be relatively bearable if it was limited to academia, but alas, we are not so lucky.

There are many examples of the cult of identity politics seeping into everyday life. We can start with the former Director of Public Prosecutions of the Crown Prosecution Service, Alison Sanders. It could be argued that Sanders utilised the CPS as a crusading tool, redirecting limited resources to focus on violence against women and hate speech. The former DPP was responsible for many victim-focused reforms, including the definition of a hate crime, which states; “any crime experienced by the complainant as motivated by hate”. Interestingly, during the last couple of years of her tenure, a series of rape cases collapsed. It had transpired that police and prosecutors had failed to pass key information to lawyers defending the men. This lack of ‘due process’ is what can occur when an ideological quest overrides the search for justice.

In Nottinghamshire, UK, unwanted sexual advances and unwanted verbal contact with a woman can now be recorded as a hate crime. The problem with the term “hate crime” is, it is purely subjective and, therefore, open to abuse. Across the Atlantic in Canada in 2017, bill C-16 was passed, meaning someone could be prosecuted for not using the correct gender pronoun for a person’s subjectively determined “gender identity”. In Brighton, UK, kids are now being taught that both boys and girls can have periods. The whole area around gender and sex is highly contentious and effectively pits science, based on rigour, peer review, evidence and objectivity against emotion, feelings, subjectivity and the idea ‘I feel, therefore, I am’.

Gender and sex are key areas where the Enlightenment collides with postmodernism and judging by the government orthodoxy in many domains Foucault et al. are winning. The primary concern with regards to basing society on subjectivity, is that it is potentially ever changeable, this makes it exceptionally difficult to create and enforce laws, such as hate crime. For example; An ugly guy walks up to a girl and starts talking to her, she might find him detestable and feels threatened. Under these rules, this conceivably could be called a hate crime and for the bloke no matter how well intentioned, he could find himself in trouble. However, a good looking guy could approach the same woman and say exactly the same words but this time, it could be well received. Neither guy has been offensive or violent, but one of them (lets call him Elephant Man) could end up being questioned by the police. Does that feel like a fair use of the law and resources to you?

It is this uneven handed use of the law, as demonstrated by many college Title IX proceedings in the US during the Obama presidency, that is a major cause for concern. Another campaign doing the rounds currently is “believe women” following sexual harassment or rape allegations. Their is an obvious danger behind this. It instantly biases any following investigation in favour of the accuser. Surely police departments all over the world can provide an environment that allows the person to share their perception of events without siding with them. For “believe women” to be effective, it must demand that women never lie and furthermore, never commit crimes, otherwise it’s a flawed premise. By promoting this we are asserting that women are morally superior to men at all times. Judging by the likes of Myra Hindley, Rose West or Joanna Dennehy this is patently untrue. Moreover, high profile false rape allegations such as the Duke Lacrosse team or Biurny Peguero also severely question this moral superiority theory. Just like men, women lie too, for a variety of reasons.

joanna dennehy
Joanna Dennehy

It makes absolutely no sense to enforce laws and rules that govern society based on a certain perception of a group as a whole. This is especially true, if the group in question is not 100% consistent. We hear from people on a daily basis, talking about white privilege or male privilege. Just an idea, but how about we look at what is occurring at an individual level, rather than writing off masses of the population via gross stereotyping. Identarians can get quite irate if they feel an individual for instance is stereotyping someone regarding gender identification. Yet, they are quite happy to put people in sociological boxes merely for traits that cannot be altered. Crucially, group stereotyping is what this whole identarian ‘belief’ system is built upon, it is the very core of their ideology, but makes no positive practical sense.

To point out how ludicrous this is; a black, middle class, well educated, relatively rich, woman, who has had no direct oppression, from a happy home, can be viewed as oppressed. In contrast; a white, ex-military, homeless man, with PTSD, with no formal qualifications and no support system, can seen as privileged. If this does not strike you as some sort of a scam, you are either benefitting from this in some way, or you are so blind with identarian doctrine that you have lost the ability to critically think. Which of course is the whole point of postmodernism, to appeal to emotion and subjectivity. It’s this loyalty to ones team, providing the power over government, media and society that allows, individuals like Professor Suzanna Danuta Walters to have an article published in the Washington Post enquiring, “why can’t we hate men”? A couple of weeks ago the American Psychological Association, published guidelines outlining the dangers of masculinity. This was nothing short of an overtly ideological exercise, using one social justice buzzword after another (see the link for original document).

Last week Gillette felt the need to jump on the bandwagon, releasing an advert imploring men and boys to sort their masculinity out. This has generally been lauded by the mainstream media, desperate not to stray from the feminist narrative. It’s worth noting, this is not in isolation, anti-male rhetoric is the social norm and is excepted in so called polite society. For instance, the Melbourne café who charged men 18% more, because of the supposed ‘gender wage gap’. Men are repeatedly told how to behave, when to speak (mansplaining), how to sit (manspreading), when it’s OK to talk to a woman, what to say and so on. The overwhelming percentage of men are not violent, do not rape, do treat people with respect, do act against bullying and the list continues. But if you’re trying to neutralise the very masculine traits that helped to build the physical world, that make up the majority of individuals who keep us safe, who love competition and do many of the dangerous jobs that keeps life ticking along, guess again.

For those who still buy into identity politics and in particular feminism, you need to have a serious chat with yourself. At this moment, the Social Justice movement currently feels emboldened, it has governments, media and much of society eating out it’s hand. Now feeling buoyant after #metoo, there is a huge offensive against masculinity, of course, not the bad men in society who it will never have any affect on, but ordinary men like many reading this. Right now, this is not a gender war, as only one side has turned up. It’s more like a massacre!

Why identity politics makes the left an easy target.

Posted on by leftinnewzealand

It doesn’t take long, particularly on the internet to realise that the ‘right’ are winning the war of the narrative. Video after video on YouTube are shown, viciously demonising varying antics from SJW’s. Some are baseless cheap attacks, while others are more thoughtful, with some examples displaying more than a kernel of truth in them. From the infamous Trigglypuff a student who blew a gasket at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, during an event, to identarians walking out of a speaking event. This latter stunt occurred when evolutionary biologist Heather Heying mentioned anatomical differences between men and women.

Unfortunately, these so called activists really don’t help themselves, or more precisely the left in general. This last apparently controversial nugget of information, mentioned that on average men are taller than women. Such malicious utterances triggered outrage among the SJW’s in the audience, who promptly stormed out, damaging the audio equipment during their theatrical exit (see below). Displays of tantrums and looks of utter disbelieve following offerings of, at times innocuous information have been witnessed on campuses all over the western world. In truth, I don’t really care if these science denying lunatics want to believe in the ‘blank slate theory’, ‘intersectional theory’, ‘structural violence’, flat earth stupidity or pink unicorn theory. What I do take issue with is, when these shenanigans are used against the non-narcissistic left, who genuinely support a better world for everyone.

Unsurprisingly, the politically right lurching media, particularly within social media, latch on to these escapades and then depict the protagonists as mainstream leftist supporters. They are shown as proof, that the left are indeed crazy, that they can’t be trusted and are determined to socially engineer society. Sadly to a large extent they are closer to the mark than I would care to admit. SJW’s are primarily adherents of postmodernism, where emotions, feelings and lived experiences are viewed as more important than objectivity, logic, critical thinking and science. In this topsy turvy world, the perception of the receiver is given far more credence than the quality of information being conveyed. This is the gift that keeps on giving for the conservative media such as Fox News. They repeatedly use this material to discredit not only identarians, but the entire left, as SJW’s repeatedly do their work for them.

In the US, the left to many is considered to be focused entirely on identity politics. Neoliberalism has now prevailed for four decades and the fight against economic inequality has mostly been unsuccessful. Bernie Sanders was a prime victim regarding this obvious lack of interest concerning the fight against economic inequality. It was clear that the Democrat party leadership was far more interested in installing a woman as President, rather than someone who demanded a recognisable change to the status quo. At the top end of the supposedly left leaning parties such as the Democrats, Labour (UK, Australia and New Zealand) for the last 20 years, the fight has been on the battlefield of social justice. Now, identity politics has gravitated to the nonsensical, for example; laws covering unwanted verbal contact from men, to the supposed life threatening fight against manspreading on public transport. The level of absurdity has suddenly been turned up to ’11’ (see Spinal Tap for details), allowing the political right to seize the moral high ground.

Once upon a time, the left fought for everyone no matter what your background was. It’s clearly understandable why the left historically battled for minorities, as they are the most likely to be disconnected from society. Initially, identity politics fought for the big groups, African American’s (US), gays and women. The aim was to undo historical wrongs, by gaining support and working through our varying political systems to secure rights. These noble intentions gradually gave way to politics of narcissism and self regard. Issues of self interest have become increasingly prevalent and for this cult the personal is very much the political. Western feminists often don’t care about women in say Saudi Arabia, who truly are second class citizens, nor do race activists have much empathy towards other marginalised ethnicities.

In contrast to today, the left could always pride themselves on looking outwards and assessing what needed to be done for the common good. There have invariably been groups with special interests such as; nuclear disarmament, anti-war and the environment. But these issues were not about the self and encouraged the individual to engage with the wider world. As students in particular, became increasingly identity conscience there was a shift from issue based movements to self-based movements. This is the central reason I don’t consider this group to be on the left. What’s urgently needed, is a common goal to bind people together, such as fighting for economic inequality, that is if we want to make a tangible difference in this world.

I would guess that there are many people from the ‘old left’  who shake their collective heads in dismay when they read about SJW stupidity on a regular basis. Much of the old left are socialists of one form or another. Predominantly concerned about the destruction caused by capitalism or more precisely neoliberalism, towards large swathes of the population. In recent times many on the left are now deeply disturbed by climate change specifically how this will pan out for them and future generations.

Unconvincingly, SJW’s repeatedly claim they’re socialists or communists without ever having a clue what these ideas truly mean. It would appear that the only requirement nowadays, is a T-shirt of Ché Guevara, thus providing you with a backstage pass to socialism. Incidentally, I place myself firmly on the left mainly because of my opposition towards massive economic inequality, which is statistically linked to; poor health outcomes, increased crime levels and an inability to access quality education for all. All of these issues have been thoroughly investigated and researched. But scarcely do you hear any SJW’s ever discussing these problems.

che

Within the myopic worldview of an SJW, the world’s social ills are solely related to genitalia and skin colour. This is irrespective of education level, current employment status or social standing. If you belong to a so called minority group, you have the right to call yourself oppressed and therefore, are eligible to apply for citizenship to the Kingdom of Victimhood. Conversely, a white, middle age man, ex-armed forces, who’s sleeping on the street with possible PTSD can be labelled privileged by middle class, identarians. While the man’s only crime may be a lack of melanin and male genitalia.

My biggest worry is, to accomplish anything within our so called democracy, some form of consensus is required, something that glues the masses together. At this tipping point, ideally anger, frustration and vitriol would be aimed at the ruling elite, neoliberalism and people who rig the game in favour of themselves. Not too long ago the left was more united, disagreements from varying factions existed, but the overall idea was broadly agreed. Identity politics in contrast is divisionary, it doesn’t seek to bring people together, it creates a pecking order based on arbitrary parameters. It makes no attempt to charm people into the fold and it outwardly endeavours to alienate people, using a criteria we can do nothing about. This behaviour adds yet another layer of disharmony, therefore, making life ever easier for the powers that be, to maintain a firm hold on society.

Just in case you are missing my not so subtle point, SJW’s are not socialists or on the left. Of course the right leaning media will push the lefty SJW spin, as this is a good way to launch an attack on us. Individuals such as Jordan Peterson continue to ramble on about concepts such as ‘Cultural Marxism’ in a way to demonise all on the left. Granted Peterson can sound persuasive at times for the disaffected, but to link concepts from Marx to what the right describes as ‘Cultural Marxism’ is a stretch, bordering on a barefaced lie. Although, credit where credit’s due, it is another masterstroke linking identarians with the left through Marx.

So what is Cultural Marxism and does it exist? The story begins in the early 20th century, when the socialist revolution failed to materialise beyond the USSR. Marxist thinkers of the time primarily Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukacs endeavoured to make sense of this. They suggested that culture and religion undermined the commoners desire to revolt. It was thought that the solution would need to investigate; universities, schools, government bureaucracies and the media, so that cultural changes could be implemented from above. This particular baton, was then taken up by the Frankfurt School, who concluded that the way to dismantle capitalism was to blend a bit of Freud and some Marx together. The idea was that workers were now not economically oppressed, but were made compliant through sexual repression and other social conventions. It was surmised that the problem wasn’t just capitalism, but family, gender hierarchies, religion and race.

There is glaring error with this synopsis. Marx did talk about oppressed and oppressors, but always from a class perspective. This slight of hand from the right, which suggests that descriptions of gender, race and sexuality is spoken in the context of Marxism is disingenuous at best. Identity politics does not have it’s roots in Marxism, however, it is closely aligned with postmodernism. In fact postmodern thinking, like it’s SJW adherents, almost completely neglect class. This intentional connection of the two lefts ‘economic’ and ‘identarian’, serves the right very well, despite being concocted from a fable.

Unfortunately for the economic left, ‘identarians’ are a strong influential group, which can be witnessed in numerous universities. They are also heavily supported by many power wielding politicians, such as Justin Trudeau. Just note the amount of laws that are now being implemented, that not only support, but favour the so called oppressed. For SJW’s the patriarchy, white supremacy, rape culture, transphobia and imperialism is the very air that they breathe. Far from being linked to Marxism, this is undoubtedly a postmodern creation; Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard being the primary actors. This ideology has spawned spin-offs such as; intersectional feminism, critical race theory and queer theory. Postmodernism has very little to do with economic inequality, apart from the occasional anti-capitalist sound bite. But the merging of the two philosophical factions with little in common, is a stroke of genius from the right.

Sometimes I wish SJW’s were coalesced into a single entity, in the form of a ‘baddy’ from the James Bond movie Goldfinger. In this situation all I would need to do, would be to push the ejector seat button under the gear stick flap of the Aston Martin DB5 and poof…….no more identarians to weigh the left down. Sadly this bunch are more akin to leeches, sucking the life out of a once coherent section of politics and equally the joy out of life. Doubtless, because the left is saddled with narcissistic, victim obsessive, self interested, fanatics, we will continue to be on the defensive, against the right. The left will also find it difficult to seize the moral high-ground from them. Not because they are bathed in moral superiority, but because the left’s weakest link, notably SJW’s are the ball and chain around the left’s leg. Both the conservative and libertarian right ideologies are riddled with flaws; morally, economically and socially. But the left metaphorically won’t have a leg to stand on, if we don’t clean house soon.

The libertarian and conservative right are now laying claim to the mantle of “defenders of free speech”. In reality the only free speech they approve of is the stuff they agree with, which is no different to SJW’s. We can witness this at the very highest levels of government, such as, every time Donald Trump smears journalists, denying them access to the Whitehouse. Or when he prevents the Environmental Protection Agency from providing information on climate change. But then again, SJW’s disable any ascendency or potency of a coherent argument to challenge these indiscretions, every time they no platform disagreeable invitees. These actions are often conducted under the infantile suggestion that speakers can make students feels unsafe and threatened. Meanwhile, SJW’s often forcefully try to disrupt events held by groups with differing views (see the first video).

Shutting down opposing views is thoroughly counter-productive, I want hear my opponents and debate them, because conservative and libertarian arguments are often weak. In a world with an ever growing population, looming climate change, global poverty and economic inequality, we can no longer consume our way out of trouble. Nor can we use meaningless metrics like GDP as faux markers, denoting how far we’ve come economically, when it only relates to a minority of people. For our species to survive and hopefully flourish, we can not allow a tiny proportion of the world to dictate terms to the rest of us. Inevitably, for the left to succeed with this message, we need to get into the Aston Martin, flip the gear stick flap and press the red button.

Standing up for masculinity.

Posted on by leftinnewzealand

Purely by broaching this subject, I will possibly be named as a member of the alt-right, called a fascist, a misogynist and will have effigies burned in safe spaces on liberal college campuses across the world. For what? Standing up for men? But, just in case you didn’t know, I am fiercely on the left, surely you remember, the place that used to mean fighting for economic inequality, workers rights and looking out for everyone regardless of; ethnicity, religion or gender. This was a time when we looked out at the world and challenged the injustices we found, rather than channelling our self interest and narcissism, based on melanin levels and genitalia.

Maybe I’m nuts, which there is a pretty good chance of, but I am starting to worry about this increasing attack on gender, more precisely masculinity. This gender agenda (see what I did there) is driven by a comparatively small but powerful group, usually found in ‘grievance studies‘ classes along with their guru’s pretending to be bone-fide academic professors, setting the narrative for puritanical social policy and morality. These groups are hugely ideological and their main goal is to smash the patriarchy. Which if you follow their logic, is perpetuated by all men, which therefore…….yep, you’ve guessed it, leads to smashing all men.

These very people who proport to be for equality, really want to emasculate the world. This goal has been addressed in a manner of ways. Firstly, there has been a total rejection of all values of the ‘enlightenment’ among this cult. This in effect is the denial of science, reason and objectivity, which has been replaced by a some postmodern thought, this by and large can be summarised as cultural relativity. It allows the group to deny biological gender differences of any sort, whilst supporting the idea that gender is a social construct. In my mind, this puts them firmly in the same bracket as ‘flat earthers’, as we’ll see later.

Lots of our physiological, psychological and anatomical traits are admittedly on a continuum of sorts. However, taking an average there is no doubt men and women are different, contrary to the views of blue haired identarians. Just in case any science deniers are reading this, I’ll pick just three points and I’ll throw in some scientific papers to back them up. For anyone who knows anything about anatomy, physiology or psychology, I’m sure you will concur that the notion of having to justify that we are indeed different would be hilarious, if only it wasn’t so outlandish.

weight lifter

So, without engaging in too deep of an academic search, this first paper looks at the differences of power production and energy capacities of elite level cross country skiers, from the European journal of applied physiology. This paper shows that the men displayed 87, 97 and 103% higher output of power production and 51, 65 and 71% of greater peak VO2 max than women.

In a nutshell, power output and endurance is greater in male athlete’s. Next! The second paper, and yes there is a slight sports theme, from the journal of sport health science; explains why men see differently to that of women. What this paper suggests is that men outperform women in spatial mental rotation and navigation tasks. While women tend to excel with object location or recognition, as well as verbal memory tasks. What do you know, we are different!

The last paper published in frontiers in neuroendocrinology called ‘The Genetics of Sex Differences in Brain and Behaviour‘, stated that it was hoped that the understanding of biological sex differences could help to improve healthcare for both men and women. This paper opined that although the brains of men and women are highly similar, they also have unique differences that affect biochemical processes, which may lead to the susceptibility of a particular diseases and contribute to specific behaviours.

So to round this off here is a quick summary of other differences; men see differently to women, they have good depth perception and distance vision, while women have better night and visual memory. Men are larger, stronger and boys mature later than girls, so on and so forth. So, now that I’ve wasted two paragraphs confirming the obvious, that men and women indeed differ in countless ways, let us discuss what is being done to subvert masculinity and why.

Currently it appears en vogue to bring kids up as gender neutral? Many of the ideas are based on the ‘blank slate theory‘ inferring that gender is socially constructed. A theory that seems to struggle to gain credence when it bumps into pesky old science, as identified in previous paragraphs. To confirm the ‘difference theory’ further, there is a raft of research concluding that toy preference is innate. That on the whole girls are inclined to gravitate towards toys such as dolls, while boys are attracted to mechanically interesting toys like cars and trucks. Moreover, these preferences are shown as early as 9 months old, considerably earlier than the emergence of gender awareness at about 18 months. Sadly despite some overwhelming robust science, the ‘choose your own gender’ brigade have blindly marched on, claiming mens and womens brains are the same.

This fable has persistently been comprehensively refuted. In a meta analysis of 126 studies it was found that men have larger total brain volumes. Primarily displaying more white matter from the anterior to posterior aspects of the brain, while women have more connections running between the left and right hemispheres. My suspicion is, the ‘gender neutral brigade’ is split into two groups; one group which is probably well meaning, but horribly misguided. Meanwhile, the other I will offer is completely ideological and is exceptionally conscious as to what it’s supporting.

By taking the second reason as motivation, it can be suggested that this is some sort of eugenics type of belief system, only this time they’re using social conditioning as the scapegoat. The overall premise behind all this is to bring kids up with no gender labels, culminating in the child being able to choose which gender they would prefer. This window of enlightenment (cue sarcasm) is thought to be at approximately four or five. Why stop there? How about we go the whole way and not tell them what species they are either, let them choose that too. That would be exciting, with so many animals to choose from!

So where does this anti-science, hullabaloo come from. For that information we need to delve back into postmodernism. Here we enter a parallel universe where practically all that we think we know is deemed socially constructed. In the modern era, we can look at the likes of Judith Butler and feminism, as an example of how this has been utilised. To clarify, Butler is an advocate for Gender Feminism. This is a group that strongly believes all gender is a social construct and all distinctions between men and women are socially and culturally developed, therefore, biology plays no role.

Using this thought process, it opens the door to such beliefs that gender equality can be achieved by quotas, or by teaching men to be less dominating of women. This apparently will solve all our problems. It basically boils the discussion down to ‘nature vs nurture’, and for feminists everything is nurture. Scientist will concede that cultural conditioning has a role, but biologically we are a dimorphic species. All in all, as this attack on masculinity persists, the feminist open admission is to dismantle the patriarchy. So what better way to achieve this than to socially condition any trace of masculinity out of boys.

Leaving this aside for now, another way that boys have been marginalised whether intentionally or not, is education. I suspect the majority of people in whatever roles in education they hold, have pretty good intentions. But it seems that until recently, certainly in the NZ, that they are just picking up on the failings of boys at school.

Currently 60% of university students are female, and rising. In UK primary schools, only 15% of teachers are men. While boys in the US are four times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and 80% of high school dropouts are also boys. It was known as far back as 1997 in the US that girls were outperforming boys in every subject. Despite this, most current education systems still primarily cater for girls, even though it is undeniable that boys learn differently to girls;

  • Boys show more areas dedicated in the brain to spatial mechanical strengths, girls focus on verbal emotive-processing.
  • Girls are generally hard wired to be less impulsive, allowing them to sit still and focus, therefore, reading and writing at an earlier age than boys.
  • Boys brains are hardwired to be single task focused, where girls tend to be hardwired for multitasking. These transitions are generally difficult due to lateralisation of boys brains, compared to a typical female cross-communication of brain hemispheres.
  • Less oxytocin in boys brains leads to more aggression and playful rough-housing, while girls have an easier time with impulse control.
  • Boys also learn better through movement, therefore, they find it much harder to sit and listen to a story.

Despite a plethora of evidence, many schools around the anglosphere still educate kids in a classroom centric and test based learning environment, that is contrary to the way boys thrive.

nepali kids

Switching subjects, another of the many tactics used in an effort to control men, is the use of the term ‘rape culture’. In reality, the people who commit these heinous crimes are a tiny minority of all men. Society doesn’t normalise these criminals and celebrate them, we rightly lock them up. Feminism has this nasty habit of accusing all men for; rape, domestic abuse, the gender pay gap and for the perpetuation of the patriarchy. This is achieved by using theories such as ‘structural violence’, which asserts that if one woman is abused, in some way, all members of the group, in this case women are by association abused. Using this logic, therefore, the entire male population are the oppressors and all women are the oppressed.

It’s this kind of lunacy, that leads to ‘Good Lad‘ workshops, which teaches boys about the perceived scale of sexual harassment and violence aimed at female students, and how they must stand up for women’s rights. This is an ideology that has been implemented throughout schools in the ‘anglosphere’. Taking this thought process to its logical conclusion, the implications are that all young men are potential perpetrators and abusers.

Doggedly sticking to this ideology overlooks the physical and sexual abuse boys and young men also encounter. In actuality men are almost twice as likely to be a victim of violent crime than women. Although, it appears that because the attackers are often men, it doesn’t even register with feminists, as we are all apparently identical. In their scary world ‘toxic masculinity‘ lurks around every corner. As a reaction to this, traits such as rough and tumble play, competition and stoicism are now treated with extreme suspicion and often discouraged.

Further attacks on masculinity have arose over the years, one of these revolves around International Men’s Day. Incidentally this year it’s on November 19th 2018. In 2015 a UK Labour MP Jess Philips laughed at the suggestion that MP’s should be allowed to debate a range of men’s issues such as; domestic violence, suicide and premature mortality rates. She even had the audacity to suggest that “every day was International Men’s Day”, despite the obvious seriousness regarding these matters.

Father’s Day has also been subject to attack in recent times. Last year in Australia Dr Red Ruby Scarlet (that truly is her real name), put forward that Father’s Day should be renamed “Special Person’s Day”. She defended her position, suggesting that there was much Australian research that informs international research to substantiate her proposal (none of which was forthcoming). An interesting article in 2015 (from the US) challenged the feminist view of dads and men in general. Here’s a few points;

  1. The myth of “Deadbeat Dads”, most Dads support their kids financially. The vast majority of fathers support their children, while most of the ones who don’t, fall under the poverty line. In 2011, 25% of custodial mother’s did not receive any child support payments, whereas, 32% of custodial father’s did not receive payments from mothers.
  2. Dads are more likely to refuse child support payments from the other parent and are less likely to alienate the other parent. 27.5% of dads and 22.9% of mums had no legal child support by choice. Just 12.7% of dads didn’t want their children to have contact with the other parent, as opposed to 21% of mothers.
  3. Dads would rather spend more time with their kids than receive gifts from them. When parents were asked what they really wanted for mother/father’s day, only 35% of dads chose a gift, as opposed to 52% of mother’s.
  4. Dad’s do their fair share of housework. Women generally work less hours of paid labour. With this in mind a fair division of labour would be an equal amount of time in all forms of work combined; paid work, housework and childcare. When this is calculated men spend on average 54.2 hours per week working, with women working 52.7 hours a week.

What is also blatantly obvious is, that children lose out without a father around.

  • 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes – 5 times the average.
  • 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes – 32 times the average.
  • 85% of children who show behavioural problems come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average.
  • 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes – 14 times the average.
  • 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average.

What seems abundantly clear is children need their fathers. Now, I’ll state my case as to why society needs men. In my home country New Zealand, women now make up 17% of builders, which has doubled over 15 years, great I hope with sincerity that they enjoy their trade. But pretty much throughout the rest of history, it has been men that have made most of the physical world.

Moreover, it is men that do and have done the vast majority of the dangerous and dirty jobs throughout the existence of human kind. Miners, oil rig workers, loggers, refuse collectors, sewage workers, power line installers among many others are predominantly staffed by men. Jobs that are performed regularly by men allow us to enjoy the life we are accustomed to, while keeping society ticking along.

In contrast, feminists often bemoan the lack of female CEO’s in the world, blaming all men for this perceived travesty, as if we are one homogenous tribe. The people who call the shots at the upper end of society, have as little in common with normal men, than an upper/middle class feminist such as Meryl Streep has with working class women. Feminist’s can deride men all they wish, but millions upon millions have given their lives in wars and conflicts all over world.

I’m sure some identarians will claim that they don’t believe in war, as if in some way this negates the millions who have sacrificed their lives. Nobody likes war, but for example, if the UK/US and the USSR had allowed Hitler his wishes, life would have been very brutal across much of the globe. Yes, I am acutely aware, regrettably many woman have died in wars too, but men are often drafted and have perished in their millions in varying corners of the Earth. So if there is a patriarchy tell me, why is society set up so men die in their droves?

quote-women-have-always-been-the-primary-victims-of-war-women-lose-their-husbands-their-fathers-hillary-clinton-47-10-70

Even men dying in war and conflict has been overshadowed at times, most notably by Hillary Clinton in 1998. It’s a fascinating comment considering she has barely encountered a war she hasn’t favoured. One of the sure fire ways to get abuse from identarians and certainly feminists is by merely mentioning ‘men’s issues’. But it is not a zero sum game, that is assuming feminists really are after equality. Both should be able  to co-exist, but they can’t, because for feminists it’s often about control and power. I’m certainly not about to apologise for being a bloke or for voicing pressing issues that are particular to men, so here goes;

Despite obvious issues that men report, any moves to highlight these disparities are quickly pounced upon, forcing men into silence. The screening of the film the ‘Red Pill‘ which follows a former feminist’s gradual questioning of her movement and a look into the ‘men’s rights’ movement, was treated like a Nazi propaganda movie. Equally disturbing all over the western world, particularly in places such as Canada and Australia men’s rights gatherings routinely receive feminist and SJW protests.

Critics of men’s rights groups describe supporters as misogynists, fascists and alt-right. In truth the people who attend these meetings are scattered from all over the political spectrum, but each one worries about the future of men and boys. The problem these groups face is, most of the mainstream media are on the side of the identarian feminists.

Feminists claim to be the underdogs and activists, but they control many aspects of life, while most social laws are distinctly two tiered in favour of women, such as ‘child custody’ laws. This juggernaut ensures that many of the very serious issues as mentioned previously get lost under a barrage of slurs and ad hominem attacks.

It is often surmised that feminism holds the key to men’s problems. This is disingenuous, dark and dangerous, on the part of feminism. We do not need feminism to fix problems men and boys face. Also I’m pretty sure we would wildly disagree regarding what these problems are. Throughout this article, I hope you’ve noticed the distinction I’ve made, I have never implicated women as a whole and I’m under no illusion that good mums are essential to the wellbeing of boys. But they need awesome dads and all men should strive to be brilliant role models and be there to help each other out.

I’ve already witnessed the death of two good male friends to suicide. I do not want to hear any more of my friends passing in this way again during my lifetime. What is needed is help in the areas where it is desperately required, primarily in health and education, so my half of the population can also flourish. If the males in society are healthy as a whole, all of us will reap the benefits.

The illiberal left, libertarians and neoliberals have one thing in common; self interest.

Posted on by leftinnewzealand

Recently, I’ve been reading and watching about identity politics. Possibly too much at times, in a desperate attempt to grasp the ideology of Social Justice Warriors. This produced several side effects, namely a plethora of highlight videos on YouTube from the right of the political spectrum, often right (US) libertarians. On viewing a multitude of films from both the left and right, I noticed a common denominator, that of self-interest. This self-regard is largely underpinned by a variety of drivers; money, freedom, liberty, power, diversity and societal control. What traits of political and moral selfishness you display, all depends on where you pitch your political tent. It’s easy to critique these video clips from our own echo chambers and muse, what’s wrong with liberty? Or, I can’t see how diversity is such a bad thing. On the surface this may appear true, but on digging deeper, I felt there was much to uncover.

As a libertarian socialist, the failings of the right are more intuitive and obvious to me, so this is where we’ll start. Neoliberalism is a particular aspect of the right that has appeared in the mainstream political consciousness since about 1979, due to the rise of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and later Reagan in the US.  Although globally, an experiment utilising these values occurred a few years earlier in Chile, following a coup in 1973, led by Augusto Pinochet. Renowned academic David Harvey, surmises that neoliberalism is a political project perpetuated by the corporate capitalist class, initially designed to stop the power of labour in the late 60’s early 70’s. For this group the motivation has consistently revolved around money, control and power. While for most of us the impacts have been negatively felt across the globe. We have all witnessed this, with the demise of our health service, our collapsing education systems, countless wars and the destruction of our ecosystem.

Neoliberalism’s omnipresence  is now ingrained into our society. We are told that competition is a natural human response, while freedom is found in the buying and selling of commodities. We are hypnotised into believing inequality is virtuous and is, therefore, a reward for working so hard. The rich persuade themselves and others that their wealth is acquired by merit, conveniently forgetting the advantages of education, societal networks and family wealth. Neoliberalism is undoubtedly a self serving racket; smashing unions, tax reductions, rising rents, privatisation and deregulation. But on the other side of the great divide, the majority of us have more insecure jobs, poorer public services, higher rents and we pay more, often for a diminished product. All the while a very small group of rich parasites have made vast sums of money at the expense of us all.

Neoliberalism could be fairly classified as systemic self interest, but it is nearer to a virus, as it invades and devours the human spirit. Money for the rich is maximised through a sympathetic system, encouraging maximum profits and preserved for example, via limited tax payments.  This cash is utilised to change policies to obtain further power in an effort to wrestle more control, to acquire ever more riches. Lobbyists paid by banking, fossil fuel companies or tobacco firms bombard politicians to vote for bills in their favour, while the minions get to vote every few years, that often has little to no effect. Routinely politicians are easily persuaded to side with the corporate world. All across the western world they generally enjoy the same education and societal advantages as the corporate community. It could also be argued that many share the same personality traits too, such as sociopathy. In a study published in 2014, it concluded that CEO’s possessed more sociopaths per population than any other job.

It is theorised that many leading politicians also share these sociopathic traits, which include; a lack of remorse and empathy, a sense of grandiosity, superficial charm, manipulative behaviour and a refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions, among others. Apart from the obvious ones such as; Hitler, Stalin, Trump, Nixon, LBJ and say Churchill, we could also make very strong cases for both Clinton’s, Tony Blair, Trudeau, Dick Cheney, Obama, Henry Kissinger, George W Bush and Thatcher as sociopaths without too many problems. It is, therefore, not surprising that a marriage between the political and corporate elite is often an easy fit, due to their end goals, namely power and prestige. The neoliberal motivation is blatant and obvious yet often goes unchallenged, as it is all encompassing. It is ideological in a sense, but the game is about power and control of the upper echelons of society. They, however, are not the only section of the right who believe in self interest, but for quite differing reasons, this next bunch are called libertarians.

Libertarianism is an ideology that is mainly peculiar to the United States, but not wholly. According to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, here are the key concepts:

  1. Individualism
  2. Individual rights
  3. Spontaneous order
  4. Rule of Law
  5. Limited government
  6. Free Markets
  7. The virtue of production
  8. Natural harmony of interest
  9. Peace

The motto that can be seen regularly associated with Libertarians is ‘don’t tread on me’. This is known as ‘Gadsden’ flag and goes back to 1775. The flag was adopted by the Tea Party movement in 2009. Libertarians claim the meaning is pacifistic by nature, suggesting they won’t bite unless stepped on, meaning of course their rights. The institution that is generally thought of as invasive and the most likely to infringe on these rights is the government. In fact in the minds of many libertarians, government can only threaten freedom. This lines up with one of the main beliefs of libertarians, which is the idea that ‘small government’ works best. Conceivably this could mean practically any government entity, dependent on who you talk to, could be privatised and that a pay as you go system for services required would ensue. From a social perspective, libertarians and libertarian socialists often find some common ground, such as; the legalisation of drugs, prostitution and a purely defensive military unless attacked.

libertarian bs

Ideas between the factions rapidly diverge when discussing the libertarian view of economics and how this relates to people. This ideology believes that the dubiously named ‘free market’ is guided and at times corrected by the ‘invisible hand‘. This is based on an idea from Adam Smith, implying that if we leave the markets alone, the correct outcome will be achieved, as if by magic. If that isn’t weird enough libertarians apply this theory to humans, stating that if we are left alone to satisfy our own needs, society will ultimately fall in to place. This is number 3 on the previous list and is called ‘spontaneous order‘. The idea is almost childlike in its naiveté, if an individual is driven by self interest as promoted by this ideology, these actions may come into conflict with what is good for society. As much as this is vehemently denied by libertarians, what is proposed is no more than a ‘dog eat dog’ philosophy with a few loose ethics wrapped around it, to offer a veneer of respectability.

It doesn’t take too much of an imagination to realise that in a free market system, the disparity between rich and poor would grow dramatically. Further to this the power imbalance between the haves and have nots would widen ever more. With no substantial government to intervene, the poorer end of society would live short brutal lives. On the other side of the tracks the rich in contrast would have the power to make the rules up to suit themselves, even more so than now. The oft mentioned libertarian ‘pin up’ girl is Ayn Rand, who preached a ruthless individualistic narrative, implied that the importance of personal rights and profit grossly outweigh the collective good. These ideas do not account for any interaction we may have as human beings, or the fact that as a species we tend to co-operate with each other. A problem to consider is, if one person is meeting their personal needs, it may have a direct affect on somebody else’s liberties and freedom. This is just basic causality, as none of us live in silo’s, we all have to interact at some point. Rarely do you hear a libertarian addressing this conundrum. I’ve always considered the libertarian ideology as politics of an 8 year old. I still conclude that as an ideology it just doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny and appears to be at odds with human nature.

To highlight libertarians self-serving and anti evidence mentality I will use two examples; the first one will be their aversion to tax and secondly their attachment to guns. A regularly used mantra heard from libertarians is “tax is theft”. Firstly, there is a fundamental problem with this statement, if we have no taxes, then we have no government and even libertarians belief in some ruling body, albeit a skeletal version. However, it’s worth noting that no modern society has ever survived without a government and this ruling body of course would need funding. Primarily because government’s are required to provide goods and services, therefore, tax is necessary to pay for this. The libertarian problem with taxes is entirely ideological, they disapprove purely because taxes are not voluntary and that a certain amount of coercion is required from the government. Libertarians believe nothing should be forced, so using this logic the government is wrong to collect taxes. Libertarians advocate for a voluntary exchange, where people are free to make their own choices with their lives. This is impractical, naïve and utopic by nature. A pay as you go system for services is a ridiculous notion. The general idea of being ‘free’ to do what you want without any civic responsibilities, has all the hallmarks of a teenager who hasn’t discovered the word accountability. We’ll finish with libertarianism on the weird American notion of the ‘right to bear arms’.

The 2nd amendment is something libertarians doggedly cling to. They will challenge anyone, along with the National Rifle Association (NRA) who attempts to tighten gun regulations. Their reasoning proposes that people have a right to arm themselves to make themselves safer, but this just isn’t supported by evidence. The data suggests that people who carry firearms are more likely to be shot, furthermore, it increases the risks of death for those around them. Libertarians also posit that gun restrictions wouldn’t work, this is contrary to much of the evidence, a good example being Australia. Over two decades ago Australia banned rapid fire guns, this was implemented just months after the mass shooting in Port Arthur by Martin Bryant. Bryant killed 35 people and wounded another 23 in Tasmania with 2 semi-automatic weapons. The effect of Australia’s crackdown on guns has been nothing short of incredible. In 18 years leading to 1996, the nation witnessed 13 fatal mass shootings (4 or more killings at one time) with 104 fatalities. Since 1996, however, there has been one fatal mass shooting in Australia, which took place in May 2018. What’s also important to note is that within the first 7 years of this legislation, firearm homicide rates dropped by 42%, and firearm suicide rates by 57%. Maybe these types of measures could have prevented the shooting at Sandy Hook, where 27 children and adults were murdered in 2012. Or the massacre by Dylann Roof in Charleston, S.C, where 9 people were killed in a church, June 2015. Even more recently, 59 people may not have been shot dead in Las Vegas in October 2017, with the tightening of regulations.

We are informed of these types of incidents in the news so often it almost seems commonplace, but this is something we should never get accustomed to. Here lies a good example concerning the problems with libertarianism, the very place where ideology clashes with reality. It would appear that libertarians are happy to forgo the lives of fellow citizens in order to keep the guns that they don’t really need. I would also strongly suggest that the victims of this type of crime have had their rights, freedom and civil liberties trampled upon much more so than libertarian gun advocates. These issues seem to be conveniently forgotten, as apparently the personal rights of a libertarian are more important than anything else despite the outcome, thus proving this ideology is not compatible with a functioning society. It’s also important to mention that the political right’s attachment to guns is not just a libertarian phenomenon. This strange love affair is also witnessed within the ranks of the authoritarian, religious right too.

Gun nuts
Former Republican Sen. Greg Brophy and his gun loving family.

With the right dealt with, next we’ll tackle the left, or more specifically Social Justice Warriors or more politely, adherents of identity politics. I generally like to call this group the illiberal left or identarians. Although, I would strongly suggest that they have no place on the left, as their self interest is the antithesis of what the left is all about. To recap, we’ve covered how the neoliberals are motivated by money and power, how the libertarians are driven by blind ideology, so the question is, what drives the SJW’s. I suggest that the SJW’s have more in common regarding outcomes as the neoliberals, which is power and control. While their motivation, is more ideologically driven similarly to libertarians. Identarians view the world based on a perceived power struggle between oppressed groups and systemic power. Often a supporter of identity politics will ensure they are a part of an oppressed group such as; women, people of colour, LGTB’s, disabled people and other marginalised groups. Many of these groups can be witnessed fighting among themselves regarding the legitimacy of their oppression, or even challenged individually if someone is perceived to have infringed upon the ever changing rules. Its believers claim they are a movement of diversity, but this status is only reserved for certain groups who pass the oppression test. Everybody else outside of the zone of marginalisation, is rendered mute and have no voice regardless of academic prowess or any expertise one may possess.

This ideology borrows heavily from postmodernism, valuing “lived experience” over empirical evidence. Therefore, the quality of information takes a back seat to the perception and feelings of the receiver, while all logic or reason is disregarded. Vast numbers of identarians are only oppressed by association and have not encountered any direct oppression. They will claim that oppression is systemic, so by purely belonging to a perceived ‘out group’ it allows them access to victimhood. Whether an individual has been on the receiving end of any kind of abuse is considered irrelevant and the enquirer is promptly accused of victim blaming. In fact the definition of oppression has become so broad and the bar set so low, that almost anybody could meet the criteria (unless of course you’re white and male). Identity politics possesses a myopic view of the world, one based on genitalia and skin pigmentation. Class rarely gets a mention as many identarians are economically privileged and middle class. It is through this distorted lens that Munroe Bergdorf, a trans-woman and part-time model stated, “a white homeless man can still be privileged”. You see it’s about equality, but only a certain type of equality, and it promotes diversity, but not alas diversity of thought.

Smash_Patriarchy_Detroit_Feminist_2014_Protest

SJW’s use the manipulation of language and the setting of moral boundaries in order to control society. Identarians do not possess the money and ability to influence the ruling elite through lobbying as neoliberals do. Therefore, they have to be creative in the way they exert their control. What they have constructed, is a victim narrative, whereby the ‘minorities’ are the victims and the ‘majority’ are the oppressors. This is used to attract help from the authorities and to obtain greater influence in the public sphere. The outcomes of this can be seen by the rise of ‘safe spaces’ on university campuses, or by making ‘wolf whistling‘ a criminal offence in Nottinghamshire, for example. Identarians are exceptionally puritanical, regulating who is and isn’t allowed to speak on campus, often no-platforming anyone who may be considered ‘problematic’. Opinions are blurted out freely from these groups and conflated with facts in this cesspool of ‘ideas’, while unwelcome, incoming words, are considered violence. All this is a desperate attempt to control the narrative and the terms of acceptable dialogue.

Often labels such as; racist, misogynist, fascist and transphobic are yelled to silence dissenters at the first sign of any challenging speech. We are regaled with stories about the gender wage gap, patriarchy, toxic masculinity and white privilege to maintain the story of oppression. This is not about changing the world for the betterment of society, this is pseudo-politics of the narcissist, designed to benefit and empower the individual. Identity politics is not just confined to academia either, pro-Israel lobbies regularly use anti-Semitism as a weapon to stifle debate or indeed discredit anybody who may be deemed ‘problematic’. The term has been manipulated over the years and is now so malleable that it can be deployed on anybody, regardless of the individual’s moral and academic integrity. So my summary of identarians is this; they are a collection of self-obsessed, self-involved, narcissists, who for them the personal really is the political and nothing else matters. Their goal is to attain social control and re-build society in their image.

All three of these ideologies are bathed in self interest, but for contrasting reasons. Neoliberals manipulate society from the top down, appealing to politician’s self interest via lobbyists. The idea is to control what the government does or does not interfere with for the benefit of their corporations and bank balance, the Koch brothers are a prime example (although they possess libertarian traits). Any collateral damage to people or the environment is inconsequential as long as their best interests are served. Libertarians on the other hand, are driven predominantly by ideology, such as, stating the markets should be allowed to regulate themselves and government should play a minor role in our affairs. There is, however, a conflict between how libertarian’s see the market and the real world, plus there is no evidence to support their view. Libertarian ‘theory’ also infers that corporation’s have no more power than the individual, for example banker to customer. Given the 2008 crash this notion becomes increasingly difficult to believe. Another suggestion is, we are ‘free to choose’, but what we choose is largely dependent upon what resources we were born with or have at our disposal. If corporations were allowed unbridled freedom, the planet and inhabitants would be destroyed by the people with the most power. It’s also telling that there is no country on the planet that is run in a libertarian fashion.

Finally, the illiberal left or SJW’s, this group cannot achieve top down control, therefore, the goal is to control what is acceptable in society. The objective is to strangle and hijack society through the regulation of speech, how we behave or even what we think. This is imposed through a particular worldview, where individuals are coerced into fighting structural enemies such as the mystical patriarchy. Whilst all human interaction is only acceptable through this narrow viewpoint. One such example of control, is terming the previously mentioned ‘wolf whistling‘ as a hate crime. This suggests that 3rd wave feminists instinctively know what is good for women and that they are somehow unable to defend themselves. Clearly some men need to grow up regarding their behaviour, but it is arrogant for SJW’s to suggest that they speak for all women. Identity politics is a set of puritanical beliefs enforced upon society purely for the good of their group.

As suggested earlier people are motivated in a variety ways and self-interest is a common factor observed right across the political spectrum. It is noticeable that the neoliberals control government, industry, the military and the global arena. This could be considered the most important type of power and in many ways it is. But there is another system to control and that is one of society. Here, identarians using postmodernism as their guide, are now starting to control and re-configure societal norms. Our behaviour, language, feelings and thoughts are now being scrutinised and punished through a specific ideological prism, often outside of the law. It’s a society where rules will not governed by logic, reason or science, but emotion, ‘lived experience‘ and subjectivity. The neoliberal ruling elite are relatively happy for radical societal change to occur as this keeps the proletariat divided, confused and aggressive towards each other. While any societal change from the illiberal left will have little or no affect on them. Unfortunately, for many of us, we are being affected or more precisely infected by this twisted world view. Identarians are desperate to dismantle society, while constructing a dystopian, puritanical, 1984 type thought prison in its place. This all started in academic institutions, but without doubt it’s coming to a home or workplace near you. Soon!!!