Social Justice Warrior Snowflake
All the unimaginative neo-nazis and their alt-right fans glom onto certain catch phrases the way anxious middle schoolers glom onto the latest slang in a desperate attempt to pass for one of the cool kids.
Catch phrases and slogans are a great way to avoid thinking, and when you avoid thinking you dupe yourself into believing you are also avoiding responsibility, that if anything goes wrong the “they” are responsible and not “me” because “I was only following orders” or “they said it was okay”.
Neeps. Nope. Sorry. We allow none of that bullshit here.
Here we do the math, we show the work, we follow things through to their logical-even-if-painful conclusions…and we live with the results.
So let’s look at two phrases the neo-nazi propagandists and their stooges like to bandy about.
The first is “social justice warrior” or SJW.[1]
Let’s break the phrase down into its three components.
First, ”social”. From the Latin socialis "of companionship, of allies; united, living with others; of marriage, conjugal"; in this context it means “of or relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society.”
In particular, relating to an orderly, peaceable culture among people who follow basic principles that reduce friction and maximize benefits to as many people as possible.
A society adheres to certain codes / morals / taboos / ethics so as to maintain order.
Clearly, not all societies are the same, and what might fly in an Irish pub might not pass muster in a Moroccan coffee house.
However, both societies, Irish and Moroccan, possess certain standards they subscribe to, and woe to those who violate said standards by either acts of omission or commission.
If you deny a patron of either pub or coffee house their due rights in those environments, you can expect someone to stick up for them.
So “social” in the SJW context means a person who recognizes no one is an island, and that all of us owe one another basic rights and courtesies.
To be opposed to “social” means by definition to be anti-social, or to live one’s life only for one’s own benefit.
Not all anti-social people are destructive psychopaths, but by definition all destructive psychopaths are anti-social.
So to use “social” as part of a derogatory insult is pretty much declaring one is at odds with what society stands for.
This is not necessarily a good thing. Hunter S. Thompson wrote extensively about Hell’s Angels and other outlaw motorcycle clubs, and while he took a sympathetic view of them and pointed out the numerous times they had been framed or set up by the establishment, he also noted their isolation from society fueled their animus against it, a truly self-fulfilling / self-defeating prophecy.
The Hell’s Angels, a surprisingly conservative and authoritarian group on their own terms, at least possess a live-and-let-live attitude where they will not actively seek out confrontation if left alone.
Not so the neo-nazis, who see any gain by any non-neo-nazi as a loss for them.
Which brings us to the second part of the phrase, “justice”.
Bad movies and TV shows and comic books obliterate the original meaning of “justice” and replace it with retribution.
Retribution is not justice. Retribution is merely…retribution.
Justice is what happens before any wrong occurs; justice is not about returning pain for pain.
The neo-nazi mindset scorns the idea of justice while embracing the concept of punishment.
Punishment is what those in authority mete out to those who dare disobey them, and this is the rationale behind the alt-right’s scorn of justice.
“Justice” in the SJW context means taking pro-active steps to avoid harm or injustice falling on someone.
Justice is served if a store isn’t robbed, it is not served if it merely punishes those who committed the crime.
This is why the neo-nazis mock the concept of justice, frequently linking it to a straw man of their own devising: Political Correctness.
“PC” is nothing more / nothing less than the golden rule -- threat others as you wish to be treated -- writ large. It is an open and above board effort to forestall problems and injustice and harm by rephrasing issues so all sides are treated fairly,
I have yet to hear an anti-PC argument that does not boil down to some variant of “I can’t call people [slur of choice] anymore without being criticized for it!”
Anti-PC rhetoric is the mark of the coward and the bully, not of fearless persons who can defend their ideas.
As noted previously, the neo-nazi / anti-PC mindset is incapable of tolerating anything that challenges its authority, despite such authority often being unearned.
When they hear an oppressed group should be treated with the exact same dignity and respect them demand for themselves from others, neo-nazis respond with anger and resentment that their “right” to treat others unilaterally without fear of accountability or reprisal is being challenged.
Their argument against “Political Correctness” and their argument against “justice” are one and the same, and knowing that an open and honest assessment of their arguments would demonstrate their intellectual and ethical bankruptcy, they lash out in pre-emptive strikes (literally and figuratively) to prevent themselves from ever having to live up to the standards established by America’s founding fathers.
Their claims that “PC culture” squelches the free expression of ideas is simply further proof of the paucity of their own arguments.
Ideas can be expressed in a vast array of means, and if so-called “PC culture” requires a certain vocabulary, then intellectually fully engaged people can make their ideas known -- and known clearly! -- in any number of ways.
Neo-nazis fancy themselves as people of action, not intellect, and as noted do not want a genuine discussion of ideas but only acquiescence to a system that benefits them at the expense of others.
They refuse to embrace any system in which they are not the dominant group but instead are one of many.[2]
The final sneer from the neo-nazis’ lips is aimed at “warrior” which they use with deliberate irony, denigrating SJWs as impotent whiners while they are people of action.[3]
They hurl this epithet at those who stand up and voice support for people who have received a raw deal by society and want to see them treated fairly under the law.
This is where one must pause and scratch one’s head at the number of military and law enforcement personnel who support neo-nazi beliefs. They are either woefully ill-informed on who and what they are supposed to be defending, or else they are deliberately and willfully betraying the nation that has trusted them.
And I write this as a military vet. Even in the post-Vietnam era we were all acutely aware we had sacrificed certain rights and privileges guaranteed our fellow citizens in order to serve our country by protecting those rights and privileges for those fellow citizens.
Too many military and police today do not see themselves as servants of their nation and what it stands for, but rather as self-justified authority, might made right by application of force.
It’s easy to grasp why this appeals to the neo-nazi mindset -- inarticulate action aimed at others to force them to obey simply for the sake of obedience.
And it is a well documented fact that in many jurisdictions the police have indeed been infiltrated by crypto-fascists -- klansmen, neo-nazis, and white supremacists -- who subvert the mission of their own departments in order to wage war n those they consider “undesirable”.[4]
Thus, whenever one hears the term “social justice warrior” used as an insult, one is very clearly hearing the speaker rejecting all sense of society and justice in order to claim unearned power and authority over others.
There is no escaping this truth.
In the case of the military and the police, this attitude besmirches the huge sacrifice made by others in order to protect the weak, the poor, the powerless, the defenseless, and the oppressed.
The military and police who support neo-nazis and their alt-right followers are for all intents and purposes wiping their asses with the Constitution and turning Arlington into a vast cesspool.
If that image offends thee, soldier / sailor / airman / officer, ask yourself why.
As stated earlier, there is no dodging unpleasant truth here.
Finally, the neo-nazis’ use of the term “snowflake” to denigrate SJWs. Again, the all too literal neo-nazi mindset fails to grasp the irony of their use of the term.
To them a snowflake is weak and ineffectual, melting at the first sign of trouble.
As with the fasces, the symbol they use belies their own philosophy.
A snowflake by itself is weak and fragile; every human being is.[5]
You know what you call a bunch of snowflakes moving in the same direction?
AN AVALANCHE
And nothing stops an avalanche: You either get out of the way or you let it roll over you and hope you survive.
By their words ye shall know them. The neo-nazis and their alt-right supporters are incapable of recognizing how badly their own words portray them. They do not lack the intellectual capacity to grasp such ideas -- indeed, in technical fields they often easily grasp far more complex subjects -- but they lack the introspection to see how “social justice” is in fact a true measure of a person.
They lack introspection because they fear responsibility.
They love exercising authority over others, they loath exercising mastery over themselves.
. . .
[1] Another sign of weak minded neo-nazis is not only a fondness for reducing everything down to simplistic slogans but then boiling those slogans down even further into abbreviations. What this does is remove all intellectual thought and rational articulation from the equation, suspends critical thinking, and renders complex, profound, and often nuanced and complicated issues down to pure visceral emotional reactions -- reactions often totally at odds with the subject they are directed towards. Eventually even the abbreviations are discarded and replaced by a symbol designed to stir up violent emotion and spur unreflective action guided by others who are doing the thinking for those doing the work. “SJW” is always used in a sneering, derogatory, to ridicule and belittle those whom the neo-nazis and their alt-right sycophants have slapped this label on.
[2] Ironically, the very symbol of fascism -- the fasces, or axe with the handle reinforced by a bundle of sticks -- was co-opted by Mussolini and his crew of thugs despite the fact it symbolized the very thing they were opposed to! (i.e., trust, loyalty, and cooperation among all people).
[3] Yeah, I know, I’ve seen pictures of them, too. Irony is not one of their strong points.
[4] And the great tragedy -- the great betrayal -- is that honorable police officers, exhibiting loyalty to their own, allow the normalization of such treacherous behavior, and in doing so actually undermine their own real authority as well as the authority of the society that grants them that authority in order to protect the society itself.
[5] Though neo-nazis and their ilk live in a mental comic book where they are great invulnerable superheroes who can do no wrong and make no mistakes.
© Buzz Dixon
