Sultan Knish
What we think the talking heads are talking about when they condemn racism, misogyny or some other form of bigotry is entirely detached from what they are actually talking about.
If you are reading this, the odds are that you define racism as an expression of racial bigotry. That is the formal definition, but it is as meaningful to the actual use of the terminology as reaching for a Latin dictionary or trying to make sense of the vocabulary of the Picts. That definition has long been as outdated as the steam engine.
To the progressive left, and by that I mean the people who actually write the policies, set the agenda and control the national dialogue, racism is not about race, misogyny is not about gender and anti-semitism is not about ethnicity or religion. They are forms of reactionary behavior and thinking. Remember that definition because it's important. It is why asking questions like, "What about liberal misogyny?" is as useless as asking Nazis why their leadership didn't seem to include a lot of blonde supermen. The Nazi definition of Ubermensch was not based on physical or intellectual qualities, but on political ones. It was impossible to be a true member of the Master Race and not be a Nazi. It is equally impossible for a liberal to be a racist.
The left describes bigotry not in terms of the act, but in terms of a reactionary mentality. To be a reactionary is to be beholden to a more primitive era like the 1950's or the 1850's and its backward attitudes. Even when a progressive engages in bigoted mentation, that is the reactionary attitudes that he picked up from his father or grandfather or some other member of the patriarchy coming into play. A warning sign that he needs to properly cleanse himself of those reactionary attitudes to be a proper progressive.
Anything done in a progressive cause is inherently not reactionary. Racism and misogyny is completely acceptable when attacking reactionaries. It is even encouraged.
How can that be possible? Simple. Why does the left view bigotry as wrong? Because it's a reactionary attitude that prevents the mobilization of all sectors of society in the struggle for universal social justice. Beneath all the word games, all the people of color sessions, the plays, the movies and the impassioned appeals for a better world-- this is what it all comes down to. Bigotry is wrong because it inhibits the ultimate goals of the left.
You won't find this definition in modern sensitivity guidebooks, but it is the real one, the root of the thing and the one that matters. It is why the left opposes bigotry and campaigns against it, not for moral reasons, but for tactical ones. It is also why racist and sexist attacks against conservatives are completely acceptable. Women and minorities on the right have opted out of the global struggle for social justice. The rationale against bigotry does not cover them. They are fair game.
If this sounds strange, surreal or irrational to you, pick up your copy of 1984 or Animal Farm. Orwell saw political language seeping through the left all along and its usages repelled him. Newspeak was the endgame, a language in which it was impossible to express dissenting ideas or to think clearly. It was a purely political language. But English and the languages of most First World nations are becoming Newspeakified.
The division between English and Newspeak pops up when you encounter political words. Some of those words are new. Others are existing words retooled with new political definitions. Their goal is to teach you to think in the appropriate ways. No matter how specific they seem, their definitions are always vague and subject to constant revision, requiring teams of experts to "educate" you on their true meaning.
This deceptive transition is often confusing. You think that you are speaking in the mother tongue, but you have actually slipped into Newspeak and it is not intended to allow you to express the ideas that you might wish to say. You might wish to use Newspeak to call for the authorities to be held accountable, but the authorities cannot be held accountable with dictionaries that they create.
Most terms for bigotry have a different usage by the left and the people trained by them than they do for the common man or woman. They also have a different purpose.
Bigotry is used by the progressive left to detect and expose reactionary attitudes with a member of the persecuted group acting as the representative of her people culminating in a demonstration of how such reactionary attitudes inhibit social progress for her people. This show has been playing in American theaters for generations and will go on playing for generations until the walls cave in. It is a basic teaching tool of the left that plays on emotions and is utterly immune to truth or reason.
The victim approaches, the lawyer passionately argues against the westernocracy, the patriarchy or the something or other cracy or archy, so long as it's not the progressivecracy, the oppressed applaud, the reactionaries are shamed, and everyone goes on to pull the lever for the left. Social progress has once again been achieved. But the entire Punch and Judy show, which as an adult you have probably already encountered in multiple novels and movies, has nothing to do bigotry. It is about power.
The progressive left does not recognize any form of bigotry except within the context of their social agenda. A truly apolitical case of discrimination would interest them as much as the price of beets. An explosion of bigotry directed at the right from the left cannot be recognized as such by them because it is not compatible with the ideological framework which they use to define bigotry.
The social agenda is collectivization,balkanization can be exploited to break down existing group identities as a temporary phase in the process, much as the Soviet Union briefly adopted the NEP to allow some capitalism in order to achieve the larger goals. Bigotry is only recognized to the extent that it inhibits that collectivization and the extension of progressive power.
While conservatives still treat racism or sexism as standards of behavior, the progressives who control the narrative and politicize the language, define them purely in relation to their political agendas. That makes the pretense that there is some generally equally valid standard of things that should not be said about women or minorities so much bunk. There is no such standard. The left violates it all the time, the right is accused of violating it even when it hasn't violated it.
Without a universal standard of behavior, manners and mores have no meaning. And they don't. The left has only one sin, inhibiting the progress of their program. The right too often tries to keep pace with the phases of enlightenment that they inflict on society only to realize that they mean nothing.
The right is morally oriented, it identifies improper behaviors that represent universal standards and tries to abide by them. The left is politically oriented, the only offenses it recognizes are political ones and progressives thrive on flouting standards on behavior in a way that still fulfills their political goals. High ranking progressives may entirely deviate from the script and behave in the most disgraceful ways possible, so long as they remain high value assets to the cause.
Members of two entirely different moral systems cannot be expected to agree on the definition of an improper act. The Muslim and the non-Muslim both consider murder wrong, but differ on how one defines murder. This is a habit that Mohammed had in common with Orwell's Napoleon the pig who rewrites the commandments to suit his own lust for power. The left and the right both consider hating people for the color of their skin to be wrong, they just differ on the definitions of hate and people.
To understand the left, you have to speak its language. That language is Newspeak. It is not a language of values, but of ideas. It is fluid, flexible and above all else political. It is innovative, but basically dull. It is a language of obsession that inaccurately describes the unreal for the purposes of those who pull its strings. It is not a moral language. It is indeed a wholly immoral language. Its entire purpose is to blot out conscience and replace it with pervasive guilt and uncertainty that can only be exorcised through constant political activity and denunciations of reactionaries.
The left needs Rush Limbaugh for the same reason that Oceania needed Emmanuel Goldstein, as an object for their Two Minute Hates that exorcise the doubts that their ideology breeds in its own followers. By denouncing Limbaugh in an orgy of hate, rising to their feet, shaking their fists and spitting at the screen, the progressives feel a temporary sense of relief from the worry that they have allowed reactionary racist attitudes to creep into their minds, that they have eaten food that isn't locally grown, shopped at K-Mart or sympathized with Israel. A symbol of opposition soothes their insecurities better than volunteering at a soup kitchen, donating money to Africa or some other visible symbol of bleeding heart do-goodism can.
It isn't the dehumanization of people of color or women that the left is obsessed with. It is the dehumanization of all people at their hands. Their only interest in exploiting racism or sexism is as a means of destabilizing whatever power structure exists and unquestioningly replacing it with their own cadres. They have no sympathy for individual victims of persecution, only the collective solidarity of all peoples under the red flag. They can only see people who are useful in getting them closer to it. They can only see that final shining future that can never come to pass and feel pity only for those who help them up the ladder to Utopia.
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