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I'm continuing my once-a-weekend blog post on how I feel that the left has left me, and why I think the new left has abandoned its liberal roots. I'm a liberal, and as such I think for myself.
There's more than one way to be on the left.
What I've been seeing in the new left is a slow growth of social authoritarianism. Rather than hearing a group of liberals voicing their opinions about oppressed groups and what we, as a society, can do to change, I'm seeing a group of leftist authoritarians busy trying to force everybody to adopt their ways. This group has its own terminology, which is often appropriated from academia, but then changed.[1] It viciously attacks and defames all outsiders as being prejudicial and immoral, simply for voicing a differing opinions. The new leftists try to persuade people by claiming that only they know the truth and that anyone who's not them is somehow seeing things falsely. If you complain about them, you're simply talked down to, told you're part of the problem, and that you shouldn't complain. Dissenters are shamed. The new left seeks to suppress logic and expects everyone to take their message on faith. Apart from their pseudo-academic jargon, which creates the illusion of authority, they rarely appeal to reason to convince anyone of anything and instead resort to emotion to either appeal to our compassion or lash out at us with rage. They call themselves social justice warriors, but I call them the social violence warriors.
Just because a group does not have the force of the state behind it, does not mean it's not authoritarian. The Nazis, at first, did not have the support of the state, but later seized power. They were always authoritarian, they just couldn't act on it as effectively as they had been until they seized control of the state. If any political group that is philosophically and socially authoritarian came to power, we have every reason to expect that it will use the force of the state to force its authoritarian designs on the rest of us.
Here's a list of some of the things I'm seeing that have brought me to these conclusions...
Enforced Labeling
My aunt Midge served as a public high school teacher from the 1950's through the 1990's. Ever the progressive, she wanted nothing better than to instruct her students in which terms for black people were respectful and disrespectful. Being a little before the hippy generation, though, she wasn't hip enough to have received the memo when these terms changed. In the 50's, "negro" was the respectful word and the N word, of course, disrespectful. "Black" and "colored" were both considered disrespectful. Then, "colored" was considered respectful and negro, black and the N word were all bad. Later, "black" was considered good and colored was listed along with negro and the N word as bad words. For a brief period "Afro-American" was considered correct and black, colored, negro, and the N word were all bad. Quickly, Afro-American was listed among black, colored, negro, and the N word as bad and replaced by "African American". I remember that myself, because, when I applied to college in 1992, I asked my interviewer if they were so PC that people would jump down my throat for saying "black" instead of "African American". She laughed and assured me that they would not. Shortly after I started college, the terms switched and African American was listed along with Afro-American, colored, negro, and the N word as disrespectful and black was brought back as the good word. The result of all this as that my aunt, although desperately trying to be respectful, was constantly embarrassed and shamed for being behind the times on the ever-changing list of respectful and disrespectful terms.
Today I see much the same thing with people saying we should say "First Nations People" instead of "Native American", while, when I was in high school, all the progressives were saying we should say "Native American" as opposed to "Indian".
Constantly changing the "in" term like this serves no purpose that I can see other than to shame anyone who's not "cool" enough to have received the memo. Much of it seems arbitrary. "Native American" always made sense to me, because it refers to the natives of the American continents, though I can understand that it might be even better to refer to them by tribe, if possible, since they're not actually a single culture, but many cultures. Whatever term you use it's never good enough for the new left, it would seem.
A liberal, on the other hand, would be open to a discussion from anyone who sincerely respected the oppressed group the term referred to. If the new left really wanted to use respectful terms and not disrespectful ones, they would have settled on one set of terms a long time ago. The only reason I can see to constantly change them is as a mode of control: to signal to its members who's "woke" enough to have gotten the memo and who's out enough not to.
Shaming
I see a lot of this going around. It seems that whenever a European American, a man, a hetero-, or whatever says anything at all, even if this person is just trying to be helpful and supportive, the social violence warriors jump down their throats with a litany of "you don't understand...", "you need to hear this...," "you have so many privileges you don't even know about...," "you're fill-in-the-blank-splaining...," "you have a fill-in-the-blank perspective," "oh that term you used, fill-in-the-blank, is such an archaic and offensive term, because... reasons," etc. The upshot of this is that the person is shamed. Shaming is abusive. When a political movement is abusive, it's authoritarian, because it's using emotional abuse to punish and control people.
While we should certainly express ourselves politely and respectfully, liberalism holds that we all have a right to express our opinions. Others have the right to disagree with us, but not to oppress our freedom of expression or abuse us over it.
Stacks
As near as I can tell, a stack is a brainwashing technique that I've seen used in panels and "facilitated discussions". The way it works is that, when hands go up, people of color who look like women are called on first, then fair skinned people who look like women and male-looking people of color, and finally fair skinned people who look like men. It's all line of sight, so gays and Lesbians don't factor in. Neither do trans or queer, apparently, because anyone who looks like a woman is presumed to be one and anyone who is a man is likewise. The stated goal is based on the presumption that members of oppressed groups are heard less often than people who are not. Fair skinned people who look like men are never called on if anyone from any other category ever raises their hand, even if he (or she) has been waiting patiently for half an hour. Even if all of the original volley of hands have been called on and new hands are going up, will he (or she) be ignored.
This is oppresses free speech. First of all, I hear people of color, women, gays and Lesbians, trans folk, etc. all the time. They're very vocal. So, I find it hard to believe that they need a "stack" in order to be heard, particularly when the person implementing the stack is a woman of color, which was the case in every situation in which I've personally seen it used. Can't a female moderator of color be trusted to simply call on people in the order that hands go up? I can see that some people might claim that a white person or a man might "see" the order wrong, due to prejudice, but that's not the case with a woman of color who's using line of sight to make sure people of all groups are allowed to speak. Secondly, and more importantly, the only liberal solution that's fair and equal for all is that hands are called in the order in which they're raised. Anything other than that is the oppression of somebody's free speech. If you oppress free speech, you're an authoritarian.
Bullhorns
I have read numerous news reports of speakers at universities being physically prevented from speaking by leftist protesters coming in with bullhorns and making so much noise no one could hear them. Lest you think these speakers were just neo-Nazis and neo-Fascists, think again. I mean, as liberal as I am, there's part of me that would love to see neo-Nazis and neo-Fascists shutdown. Unfortunately, it's ordinary speakers that they're shutting down. At Reed, the Lesbian professor lecturing on Sappho was shutdown from lecturing at the required freshman humanities class, on the grounds that it was "westo-centric". Isn't a Lesbian lecturing on Sappho exactly the kind of diversity they want? The moderate feminist Christina Hoff Sommers and her more leftist feminist opponent in a debate were both shutdown, because the protestors liked the leftist opponent and didn't like Sommers' views. Sommers now has universities provide her with a security detail whenever she lectures. Harvard cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker has similarly been shut down and reported that his colleagues have as well. He's a very middle-of-the-road and not-terribly-political intellectual. These are our precious universities! They're supposed to be places of learning, in which different scholars can freely express different views.
This is oppression of free speech and oppression of free speech is a form of authoritarianism. The liberal way is to let people speak, picket outside the auditorium, and speak out ourselves, but not shut down everyone else.
Jumping Down People's Throats
Finally, I'm often shocked by the rudeness, the animosity, and even the physical loudness with which the social violence warriors will jump down my throat for daring to voice an opinion, even a helpful one. They'll often interrupt me before I can make it clear how full and thoughtful my point is. What I think they basically object to is the very fact that I'm expressing an opinion at all.
Well, like everyone else, I have a right to express my opinion. You may disagree and my opinion may make you emotional, but jumping down people's throats is a subtle way of attacking their freedom to express an opinion. I won't go so far as to call occassional outbursts like this social authoritarianism, but when people consistently do this to a member of a particular group (even if it's not an oppressed group, by their reckoning), that's an abusive pattern of behavior. When you abuse other people's freedom of expression, that is social authoritarianism.
The liberal solution is to be the change you want to see in the world by respecting everyone and their opinions. You can always dialog with people you disagree with, too. Freedom of expression goes both ways. I just think the key is to be respectful and tolerant.
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[1] An example of this is the term "trigger". My understanding is that it originally came from the real psychology of PTSD. From what I understand, people with actual diagnoses of PTSD experience heightened anxiety when certain things happen that remind them of the trauma that caused the PTSD. These are called "triggers". Real triggers are almost impossible to predict. When I was in a car accident five years ago, I became anxious when I was in someone else's passenger seat, because that's where I was when the accident happened. There's no way for someone else to have predicted that that would happen with me, and, fortunately, it faded after about a year. That's not how I hear people using the term in leftist circles, however. They seem to use it to mean something that can be predicted and not something that's necessarily because of actual, diagnosed PTSD, but mereley because of any negative experience in the past that they associate that thing with. So, that's an example of a term that originated in the field of psychology and then got appropriated to mean things it didn't originally mean.
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