BOURGEOIS NORMS FORESTALL PUNISHMENT CYCLES.

Helen Pluckrose, who, with James Lindsay, wrote Cynical Theories, which I recommend reading and might offer my review this year, recently wrote a takedown of the so-called critical theories that makes precisely the argument the post title offers.

When humans become too deeply invested in fighting for their “side” of the culture wars, they invariably cease to prioritise what is true and what is ethical. Their determination is to win at all costs, regardless of the collateral damage to liberal norms, the fabric of civil society, or innocent bystanders. The result is that there are no winners. One side might well emerge victorious for a time, but the manner in which this pernicious game is played has troubling implications. Every time one side goes too far, tribal pride and the blinding need to “win” prevents them from course-correcting. This leads to backlashes from the opposing side, which then engender counter-backlashes and so on, in a negative feedback death spiral. The primary casualties are usually not the culture warriors themselves but the “civilians” on whose behalf these wars have purportedly been waged in the first place, whether or not they themselves subscribe to any of the ideologies ascribed to them. The latest group to be caught in the crossfire is the LGBT community.

I fear very much that we are living through the beginnings of a pendulum swing on LGBT rights as the socially conservative “anti-woke” make significant headway in their reactive overcompensation to the bumbling missteps and extreme identitarianism of Critical Social Justice (CSJ, colloquially referred to as “wokeness”). Liberal critics of “wokeness” have been warning of this for many years, and with the dip in support for sexual freedom, the emboldened right-wing war on Pride, and the rise of “groomer” discourse, the backlash appears to have begun. Our best chance to break this cycle, and recapture some semblance of equilibrium, entails dialling down the intensity of identity politics.

The essence of identity politics, as practised by a particular element of the left, includes activists determining which views are to be regarded as authentic for each identity category.

The critical theories are devoid of testable implications, authenticity is a snare and a delusion, and what she calls "backlashes" are simply attempts to restore a state of good repair.  That "negative feedback death spiral" to which she refers is simply the punishment cycles of a grim strategy outcome.  Let all of that be: let us concentrate on her understanding of how the discourse practices of the critical theories lead to a breakdown of civilized discourse.

I fear that we are seeing a rise of people feeling perfectly justified in openly indulging in misogyny, racism, homophobia, biphobia, and hostility to trans people for simply existing. This, I believe, has come about as a form of reciprocation because the norms that made the open expression of prejudice against these groups so socially unacceptable have now broken down. Of course, some of the people giving voice to these abhorrent views have always done so and now feel able to let them out. But many, I fear, are developing these attitudes as a form of revenge in response to the authoritarian overreaches of left-wing culture warriors regarding so-called anti-racism, the alleged toxicity of masculinity, hostility toward free expression, and radical trans activism.

Indeed.  "If Someone With Authority denigrates a class of people, how will those people respond?"  The last thing a small class of people claiming Protected Status should do is give a large class of people the intellectual ammunition to simultaneously claim that status and to be belligerent.  And yet, that is what critical theories accomplish.

The rise of a reactive form of white identity politics has been even more evident and alarming. Right-wing racism is nothing new, of course, from segregationism to the opponents of civil rights, to anti-immigrant sentiments. But the surge in left-wing identity politics that often paints white people as oppressors has inflamed many on the right to lean into their own identitarianism. As I wrote previously, this dynamic has given white racists a sense of grievance and victimhood that they can use as justification for their bigotry. The identitarian left has endorsed negative racist generalisations against majority groups while insisting that minority groups cannot, by definition, ever be racist. By undermining the universal cultural taboo against evaluating people’s moral and social worth by their race, they have thrown open the gates. We have seen a proliferation of social media users fixated on disparaging black people in the name of “anti-wokeness,” posting fight videos, out-of-context photos, and misrepresented clips designed to gin up fear, anger, or racial resentment. An account called “End Wokeness” assumed a medical conference of black doctors to have achieved their positions through diversity quotas.

Once the punishment cycles start, though, everybody suffers.

The distinction between ideas and people has been blurred by both the identitarian woke and the identitarian anti-woke. It may well have been the “woke” who pushed the pendulum toward a form of divisive and illiberal identity politics. Nevertheless, because human rights depend upon the universalist principles that Critical Social Justice has abandoned, those most likely to be crushed as the pendulum ball gets shoved back are racial minorities and LGBT people, regardless of their own political views. This pendulum is not an ideology-seeking missile that takes aim at bad ideas, but a very blunt instrument that aims itself at identity-based tribes.

The wins, such as they have been, for the assorted affinity movements, have come under the rubric of Enlightenment standards of debate and discourse. Throw those out, and you don't get to that Bright Future any faster.

The advances made in women’s, racial, and LGBT rights have been largely achieved by liberalism, which rejected identity politics and called upon our shared humanity and ability to understand and empathise with each other despite our differences. This called upon our best impulses of compassion, fairness, and empathy and expanded that circle of empathy outwards. With a liberal individualist and universalist approach that treats people as individuals and advocates non-zero-sum outcomes that are mutually beneficial, there was far less push and pull on the pendulum, and its relative restfulness allowed for a period of rapid social progress.

Things began to change in the early 2010s as Critical Social Justice rose to prominence, first in elite universities, and then outward into wider society as graduates joined the labour force. The CSJ approach of boxing people into distinct identity camps — each with their own circumscribed levels of “privilege” and authority to speak on various subjects — and pitting them against each other called upon the worst of our tribal natures, undid decades of progress, and set it swinging wildly again. Finding a way to still the pendulum again won’t be easy, but any durable effort must be built on a foundation of open dialogue, mutual cooperation, and a desire to find common ground and compromise.

Fail to still that pendulum, enjoy the war of all against all.