Students protest Richard Spencer at the University of Florida Oct. 2017. People and Organizations across the state of Florida showed up in solidarity. Jonah Hinebaugh | The Crow’s Nest
By Jonah Hinebaugh
The critique of political correctness and a “modern progressive movement” published in the Oct. 1 issue of The Crow’s Nest, while well-articulated, falls apart once further examined.
Most of the article contains virtue signaling – a term used to insult peers for having superficial support of something – which, in this context, points out underlying motivations of people to seem self-righteous or “a paragon of equality” instead of showing meaningful solidarity of many movements.
It begins with attacking the concept of political correctness and the people who subscribe to it.
The main issue here is the focus of the comments and how it seems that any person who calls out hate speech can be immediately labeled, with no further investigation, as self-righteous. It begs the questions: What evidence does the author need to be convinced otherwise? Does any sort of comment disagreeing with his views fall under his sense of faux activism?
A blanket statement such as this beckons the call of conservatives calling liberals “snowflakes.” Let it be known I do not associate myself with liberals, but resorting immediately to attacking the character of the person rather than the point being made, or lack thereof, accomplishes nothing. It defeats any chance of discourse or ability to reach a compromise, which is advocated for later in this op-ed.
A strong factor in the disdain for every “social justice warrior” is the mess of identity politics most people get wrapped up in. Identity politics refers to individual movements that lack any governing body or concrete organization, creating a large pool of people with a variety of views on the given subject.
The issue born from this is the labeling of all for the views of some, again restraining compromise or whatever conclusion it may be. It can, unfortunately, lead to the misrepresentation of issues, ending in a skewed version of their original sentiments – an example being kneeling during the national anthem, which was never about disrespecting the U.S. or its troops, but rather drawing attention to the plights faced by people of color.
It’s a strong factor in the misguided views of the article.
Furthermore, only the “social justice warriors” spamming the internet with dumb and outrageous comments are addressed, leaving one to question the countless others with opposing views attacking with equal force.
The cesspool of internet political threads, forums and comment sections reckons that both sides have equally inflammatory and hateful remarks. You know how bad those on the right get, right? Especially with the continuous anti-semitic comments, continued use of racial slurs and support of the confederacy, homophobic and transphobic remarks or massive amounts of post-9/11 xenophobia. At least with SJWs, you only get called a Russian bot or get some cringe-inducing GIF in your mentions.
It’s never really established what a “social justice warrior” is in the article, but the farther left you go, the more SJWs are replaced with more militant and aggressive comrades (which is a whole other demon). Maybe these are the people he refers to – who knows though?
The article makes plenty of hollow and contradictory statements, such as the repeated usage of the “warped view” argument to totally destroy those dumb liberals – can I get an amen? It acts as if every other human has this completely bipartisan, unbiased view of any subject up for debate. It’s as bad as the Turning Point USA group and Ben Shapiro fanboys who only argue with facts and logic, can I get another amen?
It’s great to see that the only harsh opposition is from these progressives and their hateful ways when people you seem to be representing make insightful critiques. Let’s tack this onto another empty and blatantly wrong point.
The whole point is being inclusive, I guess, but to accomplish that, both sides need to be willing. They’re not, so we might as well shit on each other as much as we want because no compromise is going to happen.
I stand with my comrades who will actively ostracize people for hate speech no matter how polarizing it may be.
The neo-liberals who tweet about Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump being in love call Trump a communist (he’s a fascist, and there’s an incredibly large gap between those two) or call each other bots for no reason other than a disagreement, are far from any sort of meaningful work, and that is what op-ed should’ve been focused on. A much more nuanced critique is necessary with an article like this.
If one agreement could be made, it’s that people who are not part of the minority should not automatically take offense for that minority. Though, there’s a place and time to use your privilege to help, but “whitesplaining” is insulting, and most neo-liberals lack any sort of self-awareness to realize they may be doing that.
The op-ed doesn’t make any insightful points or offer anything of use. It’s just a run-of-the-mill “liberals are bad, we are good” cry with the same points made plenty of times before. But it’s good to see an opposing view in the paper, so a couple claps for that.
