“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation.”
–George Orwell, 1984
Earth houses a multitude of political movements vastly worse than the “social justice” (or “wokeness”) crusade. North Korean and Chinese communism, Islamic fundamentalism, and Russian nationalism all have far worse intentions and have done far more harm than wokeness ever will. Even in the United States, anti-immigrant conservatism has unjustly ruined far more lives in the last four years than Social Justice Warriors are likely to ruin in my lifetime. Still, there is one way in which “social justice” stands out from the competition: Out of all the major political movements on Earth, none is more Orwellian than “social justice.” No other movement is so dedicated to achieving the opposite of what its slogans proclaim – or so aggressive in the warping of language. While every ideology is prone to a little doublethink, “social justice” is doublethink at its core.
To see what I’m talking about, picture North Korean and Chinese communism. Their official story is that totalitarian rule by the Communist Party is wonderful – and they impose totalitarian rule by their respective Communist Parties. The official story of Islamic fundamentalism is that fanatical Muslim theologians should enforce the teachings of a 7th-century book – and when in power they do so. The official story of Russian nationalism is that authoritarian Russians should rule Russia with an iron hand and sadistically dominate neighboring countries – and they do so with gusto.
In contrast, the official story of the social justice movement is that we should swear eternal devotion to “diversity and inclusion.” Yet in practice they strive to achieve uniformity via exclusion. The recent University of California scandal is an elegant example. In affected departments, job candidates had to write a “diversity and inclusion statement.” Unless candidates vigorously supported the social justice movement through word and action, the faculty never even got to see their applications. How vigorously? To reach “the next stage of review,” applicants needed a minimum average score of 11 on this rubric. Since a rank-and-file dogmatic ideologue would probably only score a 9, this cutoff predictably causes ideological uniformity of Orwellian dimensions.
More generally:
1. The diversity and inclusion movement is nominally devoted to fervent “anti-racism.” In practice, however, they are the only prominent openly racist movement I have encountered during my life in the United States. Nowadays they routinely mock and dismiss critics for the color of their skin – then accuse those they mock and dismiss of “white fragility.” Just one prominent recent case:
The signatories, many of them white, wealthy, and endowed with massive platforms, argue that they are afraid of being silenced, that so-called cancel culture is out of control, and that they fear for their jobs and free exchange of ideas, even as they speak from one of the most prestigious magazines in the country.
2. The diversity and inclusion movement doesn’t just bizarrely redefine racism as “prejudice plus power.” Since their movement combines explicit racial prejudice with great power, they neatly fit their own Newspeak definition.
3. A popular social justice lawn sign includes the plank, “Be kind to all.” Yet the movement greets even mild criticism from friends with hostility, and firm disagreement with rage. Plus the harshest punishments they can arrange, especially ostracism from high-skilled employment.
4. While we’re on the subject of “being kind to all,” let me point out that making harsh, ill-founded accusations against any large, unselective group – such as a race, gender, or age bracket – is the opposite of kind.* Yet the “social justice” movement hasn’t just heaped collective guilt on whites, males, and “the old.” It has heaped scorn on even mild pushback like “Not all men are sexist.” Basic kindness, in contrast, enjoins you to (a) calmly investigate the validity of your accusations before voicing them; (b) carefully distinguish between misunderstandings and malice; (c) reassure innocent bystanders before you call out the demonstrably guilty.
5. The “Love is love” slogan is comparably Orwellian. Thanks to #MeToo, almost every person who values his job is now too terrified even to meekly ask a co-worker out on a date. Where is the love there? When faced with compelling evidence that male managers were responding to the climate of fear by avoiding mentoring and social contact with female co-workers, the #MeToo reaction was not to mend fences but to make further threats.
6. “Science is real” would also bring a grim smile to Orwell’s face. The diversity and inclusion movement shows near-zero patience for the pile of scientific research that estimates the share of group performance gaps that stem from discrimination versus other factors. Instead, they (a) ignore the science; (b) speak as if science shows the share is 100%; and (c) treat people who discuss the actual science as if they’re personally guilty of discrimination. The same goes for any unwelcome scientific conclusions about gender, sexuality, academic performance, etc. Either embrace the foregone conclusions of “social justice,” or risk the wrath of the movement. Just beneath the propaganda lies uniformity via exclusion.
7. What’s the relationship between Orwellian language and the motte-and-bailey fallacy? Quite distant. Orwellian language amounts to saying the opposite of the truth. Motte-and-bailey, in contrast, is about strategically toggling between moderate and extreme versions of your creed. E.g., sometimes feminism is the moderate view that “Women should be treated as fairly as men”; yet the rest of the time, feminism is the extreme view that “Women should be treated as fairly as men, but totally aren’t in this depraved sexist society.”
8. If all this is true, how come I’m not too scared of Big Brother to write it? Tenure is a big part of it. The official point of tenure is to make professors feel free to voice unpopular truths – and I’m all about unpopular truths. Still, I’m no martyr. If I were looking for an academic job, I would shut up. I hope many tenure-seeking readers feel the same yearning to voice unpopular truths with impunity, though I fear your numbers are few.
9. What’s the least Orwellian feature of the “social justice” movement? Support for illegal immigrants, of course. First World countries really do treat illegal immigrants like subhumans, and to its credit the social justice movement offers them moral support with the poetic slogan, “No human being is illegal.” Yet sadly, the volume of this moral support is barely audible, because the movement has so many higher priorities. If its activists took the immense moral energy they waste on costumes, jokes, and careless speech, and redirected it toward the cause of free migration, I’d forgive their Orwellian past today.
10. Meta-question: Why do Orwellian movements exist at all? Why doesn’t each movement say what it means and mean what it says? “Marketing” is the easy answer: When your true goals are awful, you resort to deceptively pleasant packaging to keep forward momentum. While this story makes sense, it’s incomplete. The most Orwellian movements actively revel in the contradiction between word and deed – and even in the contradiction between word and word. The best explanation is that submission to an Orwellian creed is a grade-A loyalty test. Insisting that all your members admit that “The sky is blue” doesn’t weed out the doubters and fair-weather soldiers. Insisting that all your members admit that “The sky is green” or “There is no sky,” in contrast, selects for fanatics and yes-folk. And sadly, those are the sorts of people movements like “diversity and inclusion” appreciate.
* “Social justice” is of course a selective movement. You can disaffiliate anytime you like – and if you don’t want to be blamed for poor behavior of your compatriots, you should.
READER COMMENTS
Art Carden
Aug 5 2020 at 9:57am
The “social justice” movement embodies this quote from C.S. Lewis:
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)
robc
Aug 5 2020 at 11:06am
This is the 2nd CS Lewis quotation I have seen on econlog today. As I mentioned with the other, I credit Lewis is as the primary influence in me being a libertarian.
nobody.really
Aug 5 2020 at 1:38pm
Did C.S. Lewis address the regulation of drugs/prostitution/nudity/pornography?
Did he discuss government-provided social safety nets?
robc
Aug 5 2020 at 1:44pm
In general, see my quotation you responded to – “live his life in is own way” and “enjoy the fruits of his labours” answers those questions.
In specific, not that I recall, although maybe on some of them, depending on how far you are willing to stretch the term “merry-making”.
John Smith
Aug 5 2020 at 10:58am
But there is great comfort in knowing that true wokeness can never happen, just as true communism cannot. The real world cannot have such events. Long before true wokeness occurred, there would be such widespread chaos from the resulting collapse of the physical sciences that people would change their minds.
Fred_in_PA
Aug 6 2020 at 9:37am
John Smith;
You say, “. . . true wokeness can never happen.”
Would that it were so.
But I’m afraid that history shows many instances of civilizations collapsing. From that I conclude another Dark Age is quite possible.
Jose Pablo
Aug 5 2020 at 11:38am
Thanks Bryan, really appreciate your courage denouncing this “american illness” (by the way, any thought on why this “orwellian development” is becoming even worse during the pandemic?. I have the feeling this is the casse)
There is a wonderful quote from Nassim Taleb on this topic: ”
The more you institutionalize rules of ethical behavior that should be voluntary (say, anti-racism, anti-sexism), the more they will be used as a cover for unethical actions.
and the definition of “bigoteering”:
Bigoteering
describes tagging someone (or someone’s opinions) as “racist”, “chauvinist” or somethinglikeit-ist in situations where these are not warranted. This is a shoddy manipulation to exploit the stigmas accompanying such labels and force the opponent to spent time and energy explaining “why he/she is not a bigot”.
ee
Aug 5 2020 at 1:20pm
I agree in part with a lot of your assertions but this is an uncharacteristically weak post by you, Bryan. Generally I’ve noticed that academic critics of social justice movements lose their ability to function rationally. Arnold Kling and Scott Sumner are two others who lose varying amounts of rationality on this topic.
Some important things about the social justice movements that you seem to forget:
They don’t have much direct political power
They are grassroots, it’s hard to speak generally about the movement when there are no leaders or much consistency in their positions or actions
There are many movements and their strongest advocates don’t overlap much: BLM, #metoo, trans advocates, etc. So treating them as one voice is inaccurate.
They are formed in response to real problems
When you compare social justice movements to communists, Islamic fundamentalists, and Russian nationalists: that’s crazy, social justice power is almost entirely exercised through public pressure, not the barrel of a gun. The organizations that bow to that power are doing so voluntarily.
When you call these movements Orwellian: I don’t see this at all. I think they sincerely believe in their slogans. I don’t think they think it’s insincere marketing or an insincere loyalty test. I think you’re taking your own opinions about their positions and assuming they agree with you. But they don’t. I think you’d flunk the Turing Test.
In your numbered assertions 1-10: I agree with a lot of your high-level points but there are tons of errors, not enough examples, and most examples don’t match the point. The signatory story is not the best example of open racism. Point 2 lacks substance or relevance in it’s current form? Point 4 skips the real problem social justice movements face when dealing with opponents who argue in bad faith (see “All Lives Matter”). “Love is love” AFAIK is not really related to #MeToo. You skip the problem #MeToo advocates face when trying to work around people who treat them poorly because of sex. Also #MeToo isn’t just about the workplace. Point 6 skips over the fact that these are grassroots organizations and the average person doesn’t know the science. 7 is weak.
8 is interesting: disincentive effects of talking about controversial issues. This is way more complex than “lol I should be able to say what I want!!” People have lost job opportunities for all of history for not being conformist. This isn’t new. I also think the most unfair examples of this are probably rare and sensationalized and overrated as an important problem. Has anyone tried to calculate how many people “unfairly” lose their job for a reasonable public comment? And divided it by all employed people? What is that rate?
Your PS statement at the bottom is just trolling. See my point 4 above: there are real problems these movements are trying to address. And see my point 2: these orgs are grassroots, they don’t have control over their idiots. Ideally they would publicly rebut them more. But that does not seem common in politics unfortunately.
The best things that could happen for the various social justice movements are: (1) refine their vocabulary (Scott S addressed this recently) so, instead of criticizing things by calling them racist or sexist, we have a more nuanced criticism; and (2) refine their demands into solid defensible policy positions.
Then you could argue with them in a way that could possibly gain traction. Unlike this post which is criticizing millions of faceless people for a bunch of unconnected events.
Fat chance, but I’d like to see you re-address this with your usual quality: research it, steel man the other side, make good faith suggestions for the movement, maybe debate somebody.
Mark Z
Aug 5 2020 at 2:01pm
As Bryan mentioned, California universities engage in overt ideological discrimination. The state also just legalized use of racial discrimination in university administrations. Similar policies are pursued by school districts in New York. So it’s not all voluntary. And even if a company voluntarily joins the movement, it isn’t voluntary for the people fired or ostracized. I would also say that these movements do in fact have strong overlaps. Obviously professional activists can usually only focus on one thing, but among followers there’s a very strong overlap between these movements, which I think one would find by looking at their twitter hashtags (inasmuch as that means something).
On “AllLivesMatter” and “MeToo” you seem to be arguing that encountering bad faith arguments from opponents – something that happens with every movement or position – justifies this kind of behavior. Social justice activists often tend to treat anyone they argue with as arguing in bad faith. This is largely how they turned slogans like “All lives matter” into slurs, by regarding anyone who tweeted it as a white supremacist, until few normal people were willing to do so anymore (or the amusing but absurd case of the “ok” symbol that had nothing to do with white supremacy until activists decided it did).
You generally characterize this as an overall reasonable movement with a small radical fringe, and I just don’t see this as warranted. I think it would be difficult to treat Ibram Kendi and Robin DeAngelo, for example, as being on the fringe of this movement; they are major standard-bearers, their books are widely read almost as textbooks for the “antiracist” movement, they are write for and are almost uniformly praised in mainstream outlets, and if anything I would say Bryan’s general description here, if applied to those two, may be too charitable.
Scott Sumner
Aug 5 2020 at 2:33pm
ee, One thing I’ve noticed about people claiming that I am “irrational” on a topic is that almost never cite a single example of where I am incorrect.
People on the right also accuse me of being “irrational” in my dislike of President Trump, and say things to the effect that, “Don’t I realize that the SJWs are a much bigger threat than Trump?”
With these competing claims of my supposed irrationality, from people who are often biased because they are either left wing tribal members or right wing tribal members, I feel that I’m in a pretty good place.
Dan
Aug 5 2020 at 4:43pm
Scott,
I agree with almost all of what ee writes above, except for the gratuitous swipe at you. I sometimes disagree with your takes on some of these social justice and adjacent issues (it’s probably generational), but you definitely aren’t falling into the same identity politics of “i’m someone who criticizes identity politics, so people like me are good and what we do is good” trap as Bryan does here and in other posts.
I particularly appreciated your recent post in which you outlined the criteria that would make you think you were really doing something racist (e.g., criticism from someone like John McWhorter). It seems like you can talk about identity politics while retaining the ability to conceive of being wrong about something, and that seems to be an extraordinary ability.
Scott Sumner
Aug 6 2020 at 8:02pm
Thanks Dan.
ee
Aug 7 2020 at 12:16am
Sorry to Bryan and Scott, my swipe became a distraction. But to answer Scott:
You overrate wokeness (social justice advocacy? vague term) as a major problem. You mildly endorsed the possibility that the biggest threat in Washington could be wokeness in 10-20 years. I’m sure we both agree there are more likely threats but we differ in that I don’t see wokeness as a threat at all. Wokeness is not violent, it’s politically weak in its raw form, there are problems it’s trying to solve, and its biggest sin is its advocates overreach in comically stupid ways sometimes
You overrate cancel culture as a major problem. I addressed this in my reply to Bryan, point 8. You anticipated my argument in your excellent post “Identitarians vs. liberals”
You become derisive when you run into wokeness or PC culture you don’t like. I tried to find some examples, usually they’re in a PS somewhere. I couldn’t find what I was looking for, you’re very prolific. Once recently I asked you about it and you responded you just think it’s funny. From my view you’re just picking on low hanging fruit.
Your analysis suffers on these topics. IMO your “Glass houses, stones, etc.” post is mainly a rant, it doesn’t correctly analyze why people dropped off the letter, and your endorsement of the deBoer quote at the end tells me we disagree heavily about the goals of “progressive people”.
Generally I feel right wingers and academics and you focus on wokeness and PC and cancel culture because it gives you and your audience an enemy and an emotional reaction. In particular cancel culture has zero impact on the lives of 99.9% of Americans so to me the heavy focus on it seems irrational.
On the flip side your posts “A monologue about ‘a conversation about race'” and “The truth of racism” were great.
Hey btw I’m a huge fan of Bryan, Arnold, and Scott. I only comment when I disagree, so I’m sure it doesn’t seem like I’m a fan.
anonymous
Aug 7 2020 at 2:58pm
These are only opinions, I certainly see no justification whatsoever for the conclusion that Scott or Bryan have “lost their ability to function rationally”. Rather it seems that you just disagree with them.
I pretty much think the opposite of you on every point.
No, they significantly underrate it. Bryan goes out of his way to say that immigration conservatives are many times worse that SJWs, etc.
Wokeness may already be the biggest threat in Washington. If not, probably within 5 years at the outside.
Wokeness is violent- see antifa, BLM riots, mobs shutting down speakers on college campuses, etc.
Cancel culture is an enormous problem. Surveys show a vast majority of people on college campuses- both students and academics- are afraid to say what they think for fear of reprisals. Even off campuses, most people are not free to say what they think even in a friendly and well-considered way. I know I am not.
Scott’s analysis was good and correct.
We focus on it because it’s an enormous problem that we are really concerned about. It is taking up all the oxygen in the room and making progress on other problems very difficult. It also is endangering liberal and enlightenment values and is inherently fascist and may lead to a fascist state in the near future.
Absolutely wrong. It affects virtually every American. Even the most woke person is in constant danger of a misstep and must guard themselves vigilantly and continuously. Mental illness is rising. Scientific progress and civil liberties are threatened.
Alexander Turok
Aug 5 2020 at 2:13pm
This is very far from reality.
mark
Aug 17 2020 at 7:14am
pls, elaborate. It is very short, indeed. I consider it fitting.
But feel very welcome to give an alternative defintion of “Russian nationalism” short or shorter and better. (btw. I worked 12 years in Russia and its “near abroad” (other countries Russian nationalists feel they are entitled to mess around with)).
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