Beholder
Senior Member
As a person who values staying informed about discrimination and injustices directly from friends in minority groups, you can probably call me old school woke. Most people who are against discrimination are more or less woke in the true sense (being aware of social injustices when they do occur), before it became a right wing insult against loud leftists with double standards.
As a disabled person, I was recently attacked by online trolls of political correctness on a Swedish forum. My proposal was a way of speaking that respects the feelings of one group, while also being easy to understand for the elderly who can't remember anything that happened since they were young, and avoiding ambiguity for autistic people. The response was angry as if their world view was under attack. They used demeaning slurs against anyone who suggested alternatives to their ideas, sounding like racist biggots, while proudly wearing their new words of political correctness like medals of impunity. As long as they throw in a politically correct word once in a while, actually being politically correct has no meaning, because all they value is acceptance from the group by rigid dogmas. They ended up censored by left-wing moderators for their behavior.
Called it out for what it was, a cult pretending to care about the rights of oppressed minorities. They strictly adhered to the only allowed solution to all problems, without allowing any alternatives. Everyone was kept from deviating using fear of exclusion from the group. They made far fetched counter arguments that made no sense, and when they could not argue properly, anger took over with unfounded accusations of being a biggot. When I explained how they checked every box on the cultist checklists, they turned silent and probably had a lot to think about.
Most people have more common sense than them, but it only takes a few to damage the ideals of social justice. I am not against what they claim to stand for, they just don't truly stand for those ideals and I don't want to be in a cult where autonomous thinking, debate and progress is replaced with dogmatic rules enforced by social exclusion and oppression.
Politically correct used to mean acceptable by a common sense consensus. Now it just mean accepted by the select few, who use symbolism to supress guilt over failing their original mission. Political correctness is a subculture and identity surrounded by impunity, no longer a useful tool to avoid accidentally hurting others when the new politically correct words include those previously considered slurs of hatred. No progress will be made for social rights if shallow symbolism and identity politics is allowed to define politics as one or another cult throwing immature insults at the other side.
On the right-wing side of politics, it is important to distinguish between idealists and cultists, just like left-wing people need to distinguish between free thinkers who care from actual biggots. Maybe some new words are needed, to weed out the people who give both sides a bad reputation. People should not be fighting between left and right, only between common sense and counter productive dogmas.
What do you think is needed to end the cultism of identity politics?
As a disabled person, I was recently attacked by online trolls of political correctness on a Swedish forum. My proposal was a way of speaking that respects the feelings of one group, while also being easy to understand for the elderly who can't remember anything that happened since they were young, and avoiding ambiguity for autistic people. The response was angry as if their world view was under attack. They used demeaning slurs against anyone who suggested alternatives to their ideas, sounding like racist biggots, while proudly wearing their new words of political correctness like medals of impunity. As long as they throw in a politically correct word once in a while, actually being politically correct has no meaning, because all they value is acceptance from the group by rigid dogmas. They ended up censored by left-wing moderators for their behavior.
Called it out for what it was, a cult pretending to care about the rights of oppressed minorities. They strictly adhered to the only allowed solution to all problems, without allowing any alternatives. Everyone was kept from deviating using fear of exclusion from the group. They made far fetched counter arguments that made no sense, and when they could not argue properly, anger took over with unfounded accusations of being a biggot. When I explained how they checked every box on the cultist checklists, they turned silent and probably had a lot to think about.
Most people have more common sense than them, but it only takes a few to damage the ideals of social justice. I am not against what they claim to stand for, they just don't truly stand for those ideals and I don't want to be in a cult where autonomous thinking, debate and progress is replaced with dogmatic rules enforced by social exclusion and oppression.
Politically correct used to mean acceptable by a common sense consensus. Now it just mean accepted by the select few, who use symbolism to supress guilt over failing their original mission. Political correctness is a subculture and identity surrounded by impunity, no longer a useful tool to avoid accidentally hurting others when the new politically correct words include those previously considered slurs of hatred. No progress will be made for social rights if shallow symbolism and identity politics is allowed to define politics as one or another cult throwing immature insults at the other side.
On the right-wing side of politics, it is important to distinguish between idealists and cultists, just like left-wing people need to distinguish between free thinkers who care from actual biggots. Maybe some new words are needed, to weed out the people who give both sides a bad reputation. People should not be fighting between left and right, only between common sense and counter productive dogmas.
What do you think is needed to end the cultism of identity politics?
It's why I call them "government worshipers".
