Former Social Justice Warrior Keri Smith explains why Social Justice as all about Power and Control [Archive]

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Mike

3rd July 2020, 22:41

Bill Ryan

3rd July 2020, 22:55

:bump: :bump: :bump:

Wow. Yes, Keri Smith is quite something else. Highly recommended for everyone here. It's the kind of super-clear exposition where you might want to stop and take notes — really.

Tintin

3rd July 2020, 23:08

norman

4th July 2020, 00:13

What I want to know is where did it all come from. Was it the schools, the media, the water, the what ?

There's a link under the video to the full length conversation ( 1 hour 33 minutes )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZmt0qIfeAc

Her youtube channel "unsafepace":
https://www.youtube.com/c/UnsafeSpace/videos

Satori

4th July 2020, 00:47

She sums it up nicely.

This is essentially Rhodes/Fabianism-collectivism, brought to you by Tavistock and such mind-control operations via the global media, informational (not truth) public and private networks they create and control. All working with other global private and public organizations, think for instance NGOs, towards a common purpose. A purpose that serves the interests of the few at the levers of control.

“What’s past is prologue.”

RunningDeer

4th July 2020, 01:03

This is very good.

I'll give it a gentle nudge through our Twitter account although our audience, including our many guests here, are greater in number anyway, I imagine :)

Keri has put a nice easy to understand nutshell around this, well, nuttiness :highfive:

@AvalonForum (https://twitter.com/AvalonForum?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)

https://twitter.com/AvalonForum/status/1279191532797599744
https://twitter.com/AvalonForum/status/1279191532797599744

Constance

4th July 2020, 01:14

Keri Smith explains how you can help your friends wake up from the ideology

Thanks Mikey for the brilliant video and thanks to Norman for posting the full video :heart:

6YFe31V3IUw

RunningDeer

4th July 2020, 02:07

Keri Smith explains how you can help your friends wake up from the ideology

Thanks Mikey for this the brilliant video and thanks to Norman for posting the full video :heart:

6YFe31V3IUw

Keri Smith @ Unsafe Space YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/c/UnsafeSpace/videos)

The books Keri referenced:

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=righteous+mind&qid=1593828548&sr=8-1), by: Jonathan Haidt, February 12, 2013

Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt, (https://www.amazon.com/Love-Your-Enemies-America-Contempt/dp/0062883755/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1EZJYDM579R1&dchild=1&keywords=love+your+enemies%2C+by+arthur+c.+brooks&qid=1593828701&sprefix=love+your+enemie%2Caps%2C200&sr=8-1) by: Arthur C. Brooks, March 12, 2019

Description @ the 'about page'

Think Dangerously.

Unsafe Space is committed to creating a culture that:

fully respects the freedom of speech;
viscerally understands the distinction between the initiation of speech and the initiation of force; and
upholds reason as the only valid tool of cognition, rejecting arguments based on feelings, faith, or force.

Those interested in learning why we’ve made it our mission to create such a culture will find an overview of the philosophy behind Unsafe Space at: unsafespace.com/about (http://unsafespace.com/about)

http://paula.avalonlibrary.net/smilies/red-line.gif

Dr. Karlyn B @ Karlyn Borysenko YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGTrP78wxs0OmJVxsDInVFw/videos)

Description @ the 'about page'

The focus of my life since 2012 was to bring sanity back to the work environment, because I believe we spend so much time at work that we shouldn’t be miserable. I have an MBA and a PhD in psychology, specializing in industrial/organizational psychology. I have my own practice - Zen Workplace - where I integrate organizational psychology and positive psychology with mindfulness techniques to help make work better. I’m also the Chief Science Officer of RallyBright, where I work to build high-performing, resilient teams.

But that’s not how most people know me. Most people know me as a (now former) Democrat of 20 years who went to a Trump rally. The article I wrote about my experience went viral and garnered 3 million views in the first week. I was featured by Fox News, Glenn Beck, Dennis Prager, and on dozens of radio shows, podcasts, and YouTube videos.

Find out more or contact me directly at www.drkarlyn.com (http://www.drkarlyn.com).

Constance

4th July 2020, 02:45

I Was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me
Published on July 14, 2018

written by Barrett Wilson. The author delivers food for a living. He tries not to be on social media. ‘Barrett Wilson’ is a pseudonym.

https://quillette.com/2018/07/14/i-was-the-mob-until-the-mob-came-for-me/

I drive food delivery for an online app to make rent and support myself and my young family. This is my new life. I once had a well paid job in what might be described as the social justice industry. Then I upset the wrong person, and within a short window of time, I was considered too toxic for my employer’s taste. I was publicly shamed, mobbed, and reduced to a symbol of male privilege. I was cast out of my career and my professional community. Writing anything under my own byline now would invite a renewal of this mobbing—which is why, with my editor’s permission, I am writing this under a pseudonym. He knows who I am.

In my previous life, I was a self-righteous social justice crusader. I would use my mid-sized Twitter and Facebook platforms to signal my wokeness on topics such as LGBT rights, rape culture, and racial injustice. Many of the opinions I held then are still opinions that I hold today. But I now realize that my social-media hyperactivity was, in reality, doing more harm than good.

Within the world created by the various apps I used, I got plenty of shares and retweets. But this masked how ineffective I had become outside, in the real world. The only causes I was actually contributing to were the causes of mobbing and public shaming. Real change does not stem from these tactics. They only cause division, alienation, and bitterness.

How did I become that person? It happened because it was exhilarating. Every time I would call someone racist or sexist, I would get a rush. That rush would then be reaffirmed and sustained by the stars, hearts, and thumbs-up that constitute the nickels and dimes of social media validation. The people giving me these stars, hearts, and thumbs-up were engaging in their own cynical game: A fear of being targeted by the mob induces us to signal publicly that we are part of it.

Just a few years ago, many of my friends and peers who self-identify as liberals or progressives were open fans of provocative standup comedians such as Sarah Silverman, and shows like South Park. Today, such material is seen as deeply “problematic,” or even labeled as hate speech. I went from minding my own business when people told risqué jokes to practically fainting when they used the wrong pronoun or expressed a right-of-center view. I went from making fun of the guy who took edgy jokes too seriously, to becoming that guy.

When my callouts were met with approval and admiration, I was lavished with praise: “Thank you so much for speaking out!” “You’re so brave!” “We need more men like you!”

Then one day, suddenly, I was accused of some of the very transgressions I’d called out in others. I was guilty, of course: There’s no such thing as due process in this world. And once judgment has been rendered against you, the mob starts combing through your past, looking for similar transgressions that might have been missed at the time. I was now told that I’d been creating a toxic environment for years at my workplace; that I’d been making the space around me unsafe through microaggressions and macroaggressions alike.

Social justice is a surveillance culture, a snitch culture. The constant vigilance on the part of my colleagues and friends did me in. That’s why I’m delivering sushi and pizza. Not that I’m complaining. It’s honest work, and it’s led me to rediscover how to interact with people in the real world. I am a kinder and more respectful person now that I’m not regularly on social media attacking people for not being “kind” and “respectful.”

I mobbed and shamed people for incidents that became front page news. But when they were vindicated or exonerated by some real-world investigation, it was treated as a footnote by my online community. If someone survives a social justice callout, it simply means that the mob has moved on to someone new. No one ever apologizes for a false accusation, and everyone has a selective memory regarding what they’ve done.

Upon reading Jon Ronson’s 2015 book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, I recently went back into my Twitter archives to study my own behavior. I was shocked to discover that I had actually participated quite enthusiastically in the public shaming of Justine Sacco, whose 2013 saga following a bad AIDS joke on Twitter forms one of the book’s central case studies.

My memory had told me different. In my mind, I didn’t really participate. It was others who took things too far. In reality, the evidence showed that I was among the most vicious of Sacco’s mobbers. Ronson describes a central problem with Twitter shaming: There is a “disconnect between the severity of the crime and the gleeful savagery of the punishment.” For years, I was blind to my own gleeful savagery.

I recently had a dream that played out in the cartoon universe of my food-delivery app, the dashboard software that guides my daily work life. The dream turned my workaday drive into a third-person video game, with my cartoon car standing in for me as protagonist. At some point, I started missing some of the streets, and the little line that marks my trail with blue pixels indicated where I’d gone off-road. My path got erratic, and the dream became other-worldly, as dreams eventually do. I drove over cartoon sidewalks, through cartoon buildings and cartoon parks. It’s a two-dimensional world in the app, so everything was flat. Through the unique logic of dreams, I survived all of this, all the while picking up and dropping off deliveries and making money. In my dream, I was making progress.

As my REM cycle intensified, my dream concluded. I was jolted from my two-dimensional app world and thrust back into the reality of the living world—where I could understand the suffering, carnage and death I would have caused by my in-app actions. There were bodies strewn along the streets, screaming bystanders, destroyed lives, chaos. My car, by contrast, was indestructible while I was living in the app.

The social justice vigilantism I was living on Twitter and Facebook was like the app in my dream. Aggressive online virtue signaling is a fundamentally two-dimensional act. It has no human depth. It’s only when we snap out of it, see the world as it really is, and people as they really are, that we appreciate the destruction and human suffering we caused when we were trapped inside.

You can listen to the audio here (https://player.whooshkaa.com/episode?id=369455)

Link to article (https://quillette.com/2018/07/14/i-was-the-mob-until-the-mob-came-for-me/)

ralfy

5th July 2020, 02:37

Can also be seen in critical theories taught in U.S. grad schools in the 1980s. The points about power, control, and even knowledge, for example, can be seen in Foucault's writings, which in turn borrows from Nietzsche.

Mike

7th July 2020, 22:11

another former social justice warrior describers her journey back to sanity. good stuff. 21 mins long:
VTj9MH355pY

AutumnW

7th July 2020, 22:26

I cannot share details about my son’s case because of a confidentiality agreement with the university. There were no criminal charges filed against him and we haven’t filed a lawsuit, so there is no public information about his case. His story is the same one that is happening all too frequently – drunken consensual sex that the young woman (usually many months later) decides was not consensual because she was drinking. Even though the accused man may have been in a worse state of intoxication and the accusing woman may have been sexually aggressive, if she later decides she was unable to consent, in today’s climate on a college campus the accused student will essentially be guilty until proven innocent.

https://www.facecampusequality.org/stories-8

This is an example of extreme prejudice. It is also, in a way, extremely insulting to women--as if they have no agency. Very disturbing. Young women who are raped have to call the police immediately and if they don't, there shouldn't be a case. Deciding you were raped months later? For God's sakes, that is so stupid.

PurpleLama

10th July 2020, 22:03

Mike

11th July 2020, 02:09

It might be worth looking into James Lindsay (https://mobile.twitter.com/ConceptualJames), if you haven't yet, Mike.

He co-authored a book called Cynical Theories, the substance of which ties very directly to the topic of this thread. New Discourses (https://newdiscourses.com/) is his website, and Helen Pluckrose (https://mobile.twitter.com/HPluckrose) was his co-author.

The links on their names go to their twitter accounts.

cool, thanks bro:handshake:. I am familiar with him. I like him a lot. And Helen, she's great too.

you might get a laugh out of this: http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?110237-The-War-On-Sanity-Joe-Rogan-and-Co-Discuss

Gemma13

22nd July 2020, 10:32

Couldn't resist. Thought you might get a chuckle outta this little vid Mike.

ROWl3yx_5ew

Mark (Star Mariner)

25th August 2020, 20:17

Keri Smith is brilliant and articulate. She describes a bit about her journey into the SJW cult and gives us all the ins and outs of being in such a cult. She dissects social justice and clinically explains it's origins and motivations. Fascinating to hear it from someone who once held the beliefs so fervently. Gives me some hope. 15 minutes long.

kcbybcWeLKA

I like this lady, very fair, very savvy. She has a lot of interesting things to say, all shaped by her unique perspective as a former SJW. Here she is again in a thought-provoking conversation. It's not all about Trump, or the election, but it covers a host of subjects, particularly in the long version, current to what is happening in the world today. Some powerful red-pill stuff too:

20min clip
WR46Lo_0Vos

The full video (well worth the time)
5Hd9WCE1Lu8

Bill Ryan

25th August 2020, 23:22

Bill Ryan

28th August 2020, 08:51

Here's a continuation of the interview in Mike's opening post, in the form of more extracts with Keri Smith. It's all 100% solid gold. :star:

Why "social justice" is a toxic, evil ideology: (7 mins)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT_0SULHCJI
How people become indoctrinated into the SJW ideology: (9 mins)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF4WPpiNAJk
(And in a follow-up interview, 11 days later)

What social justice ideology is: (10 mins)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogCnsDtPjz0

Bill Ryan

28th August 2020, 12:40

Here's Keri Smith's 13 May, 2017 Medium article, which became quite celebrated. A remarkable act of courage, as well. A short read, but it affected a great many people.

https://medium.com/unsafe-space/on-leaving-the-sjw-cult-and-finding-myself-1a6769b2f1ff

On Leaving the SJW Cult and Finding Myself

I’ve been undergoing a pretty significant change in the way I interpret the world and how to ‘be’ in it. As I’ve grappled with how to understand my shifting perspective, I’ve found that writing down my thoughts has helped to put them in some kind of order, so this is an attempt to continue doing that. I know some of my friends have wondered why I’ve lately been so critical of the left, my home, so I wanted to share with you what a vocal part of my particular and admittedly self-selected echo chamber is like.

http://projectavalon.net/SJW_violence.png
A tolerant pacifist who does not believe in political correctness or genocide and is most certainly against fascism.

For the record, this is not illustrative of all of the left or even and especially of all of my liberal friends. (That shouldn’t have to be said, but we seem to have spell out things like that these days.) In fact, I’m partially writing this because I know a lot of my liberal friends are blessedly NOT privy to this part of the left.

I was talking with a friend who is also liberal and she does not see this kind of stuff regularly, like I do. In the venn diagram that is Facebook, I hope you don’t find yourself overlapping with this circle, or maybe I do, because my vantage point may shed some light on why my beliefs are changing, and on where I see things possibly headed.

I see increasing numbers of so-called liberals cheering censorship and defending violence as a response to speech. I see seemingly reasonable people wishing death on others and laughing at escalating suicide and addiction rates of the white working class. I see liberal think pieces written in opposition to expressing empathy or civility in interactions with those with whom we disagree. I see 63 million Trump voters written off as “nazis” who are okay to target with physical violence. I see concepts like equality and justice being used as a mask for resentful, murderous rage.

The most pernicious aspect of this evolution of the left, is how it seems to be changing people, and how rapidly since the election. I have been dwelling on this Nietzsche quote for almost six months now, “He who fights with monsters, should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”

How easy is it for ordinary humans to commit atrocious acts? History teaches us it’s pretty damn easy when you are blinded to your own hypocrisy. When you believe you are morally superior, when you have dehumanized those you disagree with, you can justify almost anything. In a particularly vocal part of the left, justification for dehumanizing and committing violence against those on the right has already begun.

I don’t yet know what to call this part of the left. Maajid Nawaz calls them the “Regressive Left.” Others call them SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) or the Alt-Left. The ideology is post-modernist cultural Marxism, and it operates as a secular religion. Most are indoctrinated in liberal elite colleges, though many are being indoctrinated online these days. It has its own dogma and jargon, meant to make you feel like a good person, and used to lecture others on their ‘sin.’

“Check your privilege” — much like “mansplaining” and “gaslighting” — all at one time useful terms — have over time lost a lot of their meaning. These days I see them most frequently being abused as weaponized ad hominem attacks on a person’s immutable identity markers….a way to avoid making an argument, while simultaneously claiming an unearned moral highground in a discussion.

I have been wondering why more people on the left are not speaking up against violence, in favor of free exchange of ideas and dialogue, in favor of compassion. But I know why. I was in the cult. Part of it is that you are a true believer, and part of it is that you are fearful of being called an apostate — in being trashed as a sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, fascist, white supremacist nazi.

A friend recently wrote to me privately to say they find my latest posts “refreshing,” and that they believe in free speech, but as someone who works in entertainment, they can’t say anything that might cause them to lose their job. As someone who has gone through and is still going through a change in my underlying systems of belief, I can say this: when you finally get past fear, it is so liberating. After a lot of self-reflection, I eventually came to the opinion that if I lose friends or jobs over trying to speak and find the truth in situations, and to do so in a way that reflects my belief in compassion, then perhaps those were not friends or jobs that were healthy for my growth.

Since shedding the prison of my former ideology, I have a renewed passion for reading, a newfound interest in philosophy, psychology, history and spirituality. Instead of trying to fix others, these days I try to focus on improving myself, which I can tell you is a *much* harder though less futile endeavor. I question myself daily. I try to make a gratitude list daily. I try to meditate, although I admit I’m pretty ****ty at it so far.

I observe my emotional response to stimuli, then try to let it pass and practice empathy in my disagreements with others. Many times I fail, but over time it is getting easier (though I doubt it will ever be easy). I believe I finally understand that quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” It is not enough to speak about a belief in equality, justice, liberty, tolerance and love if by your actions you are illustrating the opposite by dehumanizing people, calling for their murder, justifying physical violence against them. Your actions speak louder than words.

What example are we each setting with how we act in the world? I am reminded here of Daryl Davis, the musician who is bringing people out of the KKK by befriending them (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-film-accidental-courtesy-20161205-story.html). What an evolved character he must possess. What a mode of being to aspire to be like, to set your course towards. I believe taking on the task of honestly assessing and trying to improve my character, and speaking up for principles of equality, justice, free speech, liberty, peace and love in a WAY that supports those principles rather than increasing resentment, hatred, and murderous rage, is the way to change the world. If that makes me a moron, a naive peacenik, a privileged bigot — a heretic — in your ideology, so be it.

https://www.jarofquotes.com/quotes/937433-he-who-fights-with-monsters-might-take-care-lest-he-thereby-becomes-monster-nietzsche.jpg

ralfy

29th August 2020, 01:54

I think the current cult consists of the ff. elements:

"Social justice" is an idea that spans several thousand years, and can be seen in collections like the Old Testament, especially in the Book of Amos and protection of widows, orphans, the poor, and the sick. It can also be seen throughout Western philosophy, and gained fruition during the Renaissance.

"Marxism" refers to a series of points raised by Karl Marx and partly inspired by, among others, thinkers like Hegel, which argued that ideas strongly influence cultures, that human societies have an economic base, that history has been inscribed by class struggle which leads to suffering, and that the only way to stop that suffering is to empower the largest group that have been abused by the rich, namely the working class. The same working class protested with or without agitation from Communists during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries because oppression was taken place: the poor who couldn't pay debts were taken to prison, children were forced to work in factories and farms, workers were forced into terrible conditions, and so on. Many of the ideas employed in Western democracies today, such as public education, the minimum wage, and various rights awarded to workers, are seen in Marx's "ten planks."

"Critical theory" was partly inspired by that aspect of Marxism which looks at how ideas strongly influence cultures and is probably called so because it theorizes on theories about society, such as eugenics and the superiority of certain races, the hard sciences, art, and so on.

Finally, there's "late capitalism," where societies reach a stage of prosperity thanks to industrialized capitalism, such that members who, with more leisure time and exposed to more ideas, now start attacking each other based on ideologies. In the case of this cult, they stem from the three ideas given above. In the case of opposing cults, like traditionalism and conservatism, they stem from idealized views of the past, especially those involving family, law and order, and other points which Marx attacked because he argued they were merely used by the powerful to control the rest.

Meanwhile, for most of the world (where, according to the World Bank, 71 pct earn less than $10 daily), social justice takes on a very different form.

Bill Ryan

29th August 2020, 13:17

I like this lady, very fair, very savvy. She has a lot of interesting things to say, all shaped by her unique perspective as a former SJW. Here she is again in a thought-provoking conversation. It's not all about Trump, or the election, but it covers a host of subjects, particularly in the long version, current to what is happening in the world today. Some powerful red-pill stuff too:

20min clip
WR46Lo_0Vos
The full video (well worth the time)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hd9WCE1Lu8

Here's Keri Smith's Medium article. :thumbsup:

https://medium.com/unsafe-space/a-liberal-for-trump-484abb7dc8aa

~~~

A Liberal for Trump

I’m voting for Trump because the Democratic Party is no longer liberal.

Hello, my name is Keri and I’m a liberal who is voting for Donald Trump.

A little background, I used to be a “Social Justice Warrior (https://medium.com/unsafe-space/on-leaving-the-sjw-cult-and-finding-myself-1a6769b2f1ff).” For 20 years I was a true believer, who preached this evil ideology, fully convinced that it was the way to end racism and sexism. It took me two decades to realize it IS racism. It IS sexism.

Before the 2016 election, I went down a rabbit hole of videos of Trump supporters being assaulted by people who were supposed to be on my side, who were supposed to be liberals and progressives. I was left in tears, utterly shocked and repulsed. Because the legacy media had not told me this was happening. Matter of fact, they had sold me, and I had bought without sufficient evidence, the opposite narrative.

I still cried the night Trump won. Because I still believed the things I was told to believe about him, without forming my own opinion. Social Justice Warriors do a lot of that. But it became really important for me to figure out why he won, because I wanted to prevent it from happening again in 2020.

So I started leaving my carefully cultivated echochamber. I started seeking out other points of view, and actually *listening* to why people voted for him, instead of projecting and telling them what the media had told me were their reasons. I started meeting Trump voters, most of whom did not fit the stereotype I’d been sold.

And in the past four years I watched as my old ideology, Social Justice Marxism, went mainstream. In the past few months in particular it has become culturally dominant to the point where it is being spoken by all of our major corporations, by academia, by entertainment, by Big Social, by the Legacy Media, and by the Democratic Party, my old party.

Social Justice Marxism teaches us that the way to end racism and sexism is by becoming racists and sexists. It tells us we MUST treat people differently on the basis of race and sex. It teaches us it’s impossible to be racist towards one particular race or one particular sex — gee I wonder what could possibly go wrong with indoctrinating children to believe this?

Social Justice Marxists LIE. Look at their behavior and see if it matches up even with their redefined words. It doesn’t. They tell us that we must shut up and listen to black voices, listen to women, listen to gay people and trans people. Oh but, not that black person, or that woman, or that gay person or that trans person. Or that one or that one or that one or that one.

What they REALLY mean is that we must speak their ideology, and only their ideology, or else remain quiet. They are the FIRST to use racist and sexist and homophobic slurs against anyone brave enough to stand up to their backwards beliefs.

This cancerous ideology is now being forced on us in cult-like indoctrination seminars in our workplaces. It’s in our churches. It’s in our hobby groups. I was indoctrinated into it in college 20 years ago, but it is now being forced on children in public schools as early as Kindergarten.

Heck, it’s even being pushed on babies — babies — I kid you not, with books like “Antiracist Baby” becoming trendy in this illiberal Cultural Revolution. And the Democrats support all of this. They are no longer a party of liberalism, but a party of Social Justice Marxism and authoritarianism.

Well I AM a liberal and I will not allow these Marxist totalitarians to redefine that word, the way they try to redefine so many. There is nothing liberal about supporting censorship by Big Social OR the government. There is nothing liberal about supporting violence by speaking LIES that conflate violence with speech, in order to justify violence as a response to speech. Silence is NOT violence. Words are NOT violence.

There is nothing liberal about indoctrinating generations of children into racism and sexism and saying it’s ok because you call it “anti-racism” and “feminism.” Clever, but you’re lying. There is nothing progressive about pushing escalating numbers of children to medically transition, only to mock and demean them if they later detransition.

There is nothing progressive about wishing death on people who disagree with you, about celebrating when a terrorist shoots up a Republican baseball game, about gravedancing when cops — both black and white — are gunned down at a Black Lives Matter rally.

I am a liberal who is voting for Trump because I am deeply worried about the state of our country and about the erosion of cultural values like free speech, equality, the non-aggression principle, reason, logic, objectivity and individualism.

I am a liberal who is voting for Donald Trump because I OPPOSE racism and sexism, and I see that my old party, the Democratic party, has been entirely eaten up with cancerous racist and sexist beliefs. A mind-virus that threatens to make monsters of men and to end civilization as we know it.

I am a liberal who is voting for Trump, because despite the names I will be called, and the friends I have lost and will lose, I believe he is the person running who has demonstrated the most commitment to ending war, the most commitment to individualism and equality, the most commitment to free speech.

In short, I am a liberal who is voting for Trump because I think he is the most liberal of the candidates I can choose from. And let me say a word about others like me who are a part of #WalkAway (https://www.walkawaycampaign.com), and those I’ve been blessed to get to know in the past year or so — nobody willingly subjects themselves to social ostracism, to name-calling and insults, to risk of losing their job, to risk of losing their family’s safety — without GOOD reason. And that reason is a pursuit of truth.

Mark Granovetter proposed threshold theory as a way of understanding riots. He said that there are those in a riot who have a threshold of zero, who will be the first to throw a rock, and there are not many of those. But then there are those with a threshold of 1, who will be emboldened to throw a rock as long as one other person is already doing it.

And then there are those with a threshold of 2, and so on, until you get a full on mob or riot happening. I think this theory explains what is happening in the Democratic party today — not only in regards to actual riots, but in regards to why so many are now mindlessly parroting racist and sexist social justice beliefs. Because others are doing it.

Well the opposite is true too. I believe in a threshold theory for truth. I believe there are those, and there are relatively few of them, who have a threshold of zero and who will be the first to speak truth, even when they are mocked and maligned and threatened and lied about. And those brave people encourage others, they encourage those with a threshold of 1, to start speaking truth because they see at least one other person doing it, no matter the consequences. And those people inspire those with a threshold of 2, and so on, until truth prevails.

One person turning on their light, can spark others to turn on their light. Martin Luther King Jr famously said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Or in the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a man who brought down a version of this ideology once before, simply by speaking the truth: “To stand up for truth is nothing. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph…. But not through me.”

Written by Keri Smith (https://medium.com/@KeriSmith?source=follow_footer--------------------------follow_footer-):

@ksemamajama
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More about me: http://www.wearebird.co/keri-smith (http://www.wearebird.co/keri-smith/)

Gemma13

13th December 2020, 01:33

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/07/wokeness-is-no-substitute-for-political-campaigning/

WOKENESS IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING

Paul Embery on the sad growth of social-justice activism.
7 Dec, 2020

2020 has been the most woke year on record. Despite the distraction of a major global pandemic, identitarian activists have ramped up their censorious and illiberal campaigns, and the culture war has escalated to new heights. From Black Lives Matter to the transgender movement, the cult of social justice is rapidly establishing itself as the new political normal. And, despite widespread frustration among the general public, neither Labour nor the Conservatives seem willing to challenge it.

Paul Embery is a trade unionist, writer and author of Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class. He joined spiked editor Brendan O’Neill for the latest episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show. What follows is an edited extract from their conversation. Listen to the full episode here.

Brendan O’Neill: In your book, you talk about ‘the religion of liberal wokedom’. Could you describe for our listeners how you understand it, and what it means to you?

Paul Embery: Wokeness is about people who are very pretentious in regard to certain social causes. But that is also coupled with a real, deep intolerance towards people who disagree. I think it is about people trying to signal their virtue by expressing fashionable moral or political opinions, or denouncing someone for expressing unfashionable ones. They often do this by spreading a hashtag or wearing a bracelet – the kind of stuff I refer to in my book as woke slacktivism. In my experience, many of these people have no real interest or involvement in grassroots political organising or campaigning. They think campaigning can be done simply sitting behind the keyboard and sharing a meme. That is not a substitute for the hard yards of political campaigning.

I have time for people like Marcus Rashford, who has taken what he considers to be an injustice, and lobbied, spoken to politicians and raised interest in it. But I have very little time for people who sit on their iPhones and just tap furiously in an attempt to gain some social kudos by being seen to be woke. That does not impress me at all.

O’Neill: Do you think this represents a broader shift, from a left that was concerned with tangible problems like the economy, jobs, housing, and people’s living conditions, towards a left obsessed with less tangible issues like cultural attitudes, what people say about trans people, and whether they speak the right political language? In your book, you talk about how a lot of the rot of contemporary left politics set in from the 1960s onwards, when there was a shift towards a new left. That left, as it has developed, has tended to leave working-class people behind because they do not share its outlook in terms of the religion of liberal wokedom and the rise of woke slacktivism.

Embery: Yes, and I think the two go hand in hand. That shift has occurred because the left itself has fundamentally changed. The Labour Party today is far more middle class, urban based, liberal and cosmopolitan than ever before. Because of that, it has adopted a different agenda to the traditional one, which mattered to working people. I am not saying it does not discuss those things, like housing and wages – it does. But it also spends an obsessive amount of time discussing issues that, for the vast majority of working-class people, are not particularly important.

Ordinary working people, when you speak to them on the doorstep, are worried about jobs, wages, their families, and issues like immigration and law and order. They want to talk about the things that actually impact on them day to day. And they would want a Labour Party that claims to speak for them to put those issues front and centre. But the amount of time Labour activists spend on things like LGBT rights, gender identity and climate change is in inverse proportion to the amount of time people in working-class communities spend on them. Until there is a major recalibration in language and emphasis on the left, Labour has no chance of winning again.

O’Neill: Anyone who says that sections of the left have a disproportionate focus on issues which most people consider to be fairly minor runs the risk of being told they think all working-class people are homophobic or do not care about gay rights. I do not think that at all. I think the opposite, in fact. I think there is a huge amount of tolerance in working-class communities and the rest of the country for gay relationships, for trans people, for all those forms of living.. In a way, these issues have become not simply things the left can obsess about, but almost useful tools for pushing back against and correcting the supposed wrongthink of vast swathes of the country. These issues have become means through which, quite opportunistically, sections of the left are almost chipping away at some of the things you write about in the book – the traditional convictions and beliefs of a majority of people in the country.

Embery: The big problem for the left is that it is all very well trying to foist this new way of thinking on people, but if you have not actually won hearts and minds, it becomes meaningless. As we have seen in Britain, and to a certain degree in America, that kind of wokeness does not penetrate the ballot box. People hit back at the establishment over Brexit, and in America the Rust Belt elected Trump in 2016.

I believe what you said – the vast majority of people in this country are tolerant. We have made huge progress on things like gay rights, for example. Abuse still happens, of course, but we have eradicated so much of that kind of stuff. But the idea that people who still hold some traditional, dare we say socially conservative, views should not be allowed to express them or should be denounced if they do is the very opposite of tolerance.

Maurice Glasman says there is none so intolerant as those who preach tolerance, and none so exclusionary as those who promote inclusiveness. I think that is very true. I see it all the time on the left. You argue particular opinions and people’s chins hit the floor, because they cannot believe someone on the left is arguing such a thing.[/B]

O’Neill: You mentioned wokeness not doing well at the ballot box. I think the most remarkable event of this year and possibly of the past four or five years was Donald Trump getting 74million votes in the presidential election in November. It tells us there are tens of millions of people who are still incredibly dissatisfied with the status quo ante, with establishment politics, with technocracy. And of course, we saw a similar thing here when the Red Wall revolted against Labour and voted for Boris last year. But even though wokeness does not do well at the ballot box, we always seem to end up with it anyway. It strikes me that the people who voted for Boris in December 2019 were not particularly woke. And yet, we have an administration which seems to be going down the woke route. It was very cowardly in relation to the Black Lives Matter protests in terms of defending statues, for example. How would you explain this disconnect, not simply between the left and working-class voters, but between the broader establishment and working-class voters?

Embery: [B]There is an awful lot of personal cowardice around at the top of politics. Politicians are frightened to be the first to say we need to push back against this nonsense. When you speak to politicians and others in senior positions, often they will say this stuff is mad, but what they say privately is often different to what they say publicly. We cannot put faith in politicians to address this. We need a united front across wider society.

There was the recent example of Greg Clarke, chairman of the Football Association, who made a simple slip in a meeting with politicians, and had to resign. Ironically, he was talking about the need to overcome discrimination in football and said something that nowadays is deemed to be offensive. He clearly did not mean any offence by it. In a sensible society, he would have earned at most a mild rebuke. But it is not a sensible society anymore. If you are in a position of authority, even the merest slip means people want your head on a platter and your reputation is destroyed.

Senior politicians are simply not brave enough to do the job for us on this. Like many things in life, it is going to fall to other people to do it.

Bill Ryan

17th December 2020, 00:00

Another excellent interview with Keri Smith, just over a week old. Of all the voices out there (and there are quite a few now), she may be most intelligent, articulate, and perceptive about all the dangers that the very authoritarian Social Justice mindset presents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVSgVlZjk8c

Bill Ryan

20th November 2023, 12:34

Bumping this wonderful thread with Keri Smith's YouTube channel, called Deprogrammed.

https://youtube.com/@RealKeriSmith/videos

There's a host of terrific content here. :muscle: Here's the text of the 'About' page:

~~~

Keri Smith spent over 20 years in the Social Justice ("Woke") cult, picking it up at Duke University in the late 1990s and then pushing the ideology through her work in the entertainment industry with comedians. After a slow process of waking up and leaving the cult over a period of years, she started Deprogrammed as a series of interviews intended to better understand and make sense of her old belief system, Social Justice (aka "Woke") ideology.

Deprogrammed is committed to fostering conversation, creating a culture that respects freedom of speech, and making space for both reason and faith.