Social Justice Warriors Seek the Total Ruin of Dissidents

Discussing writer  Douglas Murray’s new book the Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, Barbara Kay (National Post, November 20, 2019) writes: “The interpretation of the world through the lens of ‘social justice,’ ‘identity group politics’ and ‘intersectionalism’ is probably the most audacious and comprehensive effort since the Cold War at creating a new ideology.” Christianity has been spurned, but the religious impulse is inherent and abhors a vacuum. The ‘religion’ of social justice, Murray observes, poured itself into the handy campus vessel of Marxism with remarkable speed.  One of the hallmarks of Marxism – not a bug, but a feature – is its ruthlessness. I was particularly struck by Murray’s quite poignant chapter, “On Forgiveness.” Normal religions offer redemption to sinners. But there is no forgiveness or statute of limitations for thought crimes in the religion of social justice. A mural of Rudyard Kipling’s “If” – voted Britain’s favourite poem – was painted over at the University of Manchester in retroactive punishment for Kipling’s now politically incorrect views on empire. The past, Murray says, is “hostage — like everything else — to any archeologist with a vendetta.

This new religion gives permission to those of ‘oppressed’ status — women, people of colour, indigenous peoples, LGBTQ — to hate their oppressors: heterosexual white men, racists, transphobics. (Gay himself, Murray refuses to play the LGBTQ card as the sole, or even most important marker of his humanity.) For many unlucky people, a silly joke tweeted, an incorrect opinion on Facebook or an inadvertently touched knee can be the kiss of death to career and reputation. Murray provides plenty of examples of good people cut down without mercy — indeed with unseemly relish — by relentlessly vigilant activists. Toby Young, for example, once divided his time between journalism and the New Schools Network, where he worked to help disadvantaged children get a better education. Long story short, a few naughty references to ‘boobs’ on Twitter, excavated by the usual suspects, lost him a government appointment and all his writing gigs in a fusillade of opprobrium.”