@thanatokephaloides Virtue signalling is another name for it.

It's an establishment ploy, certainly, and largely fake--but lots of people on the left are falling for it. It's not just that they're creating facsimiles of us, and puppeting them through talking points useful to the establishment, though that is, of course, true. They're also playing us. Some of the left, and more liberals, are falling for the establishment's stupid shit. Because they're playing on weaknesses in our thinking and divisions in our movements.

The divisions in our movements are self-evident (I think) but we might need to face the fact that some of the sacred cow truths of the 60s-80s need to be analyzed rigorously and honestly, even if we're scared to do it.

Because they're playing with our belief that Black people are automatically smarter, better, righter than white people; women than men, etc. Also the belief that minority groups have the absolute right to define their oppression and no one not in that group is allowed to question those definitions. They are making hay with that one. As soon as the establishment gets hold of that, they can make anything true that they want to be true, and call anybody racist or sexist that they want to, and all they need is the collaboration of a relatively small percentage of any minority group--enough to provide commentary as talking heads on major media channels and enough leadership in the community to get together a rally for optics. Online, it's even easier, because it's easy to create the impression of a large number of people with the digital tools we have. It's like a character assassination generator that they can use on anybody who is white, male, straight, whatever. You could even take a white woman and call her racist, a Black man and call him sexist, a trans native-born American and call her xenophobic. It's endless. And that plays off another quality in the left: our habit of endless vigilance, scanning our hearts, minds, and souls for evidence of bigotry--and that's supposed to be helpful in producing revolution or even reforms to make things better for oppressed groups? The results don't seem to bear that out.

Kai Cheng Thom is what I would call an honest social justice warrior, a fighter for genuine fairness and justice for all. This statement of hers downright nails it:

[C]ynical, crazy East Asian transsexual that I am, I have to believe that another way of seeing, of speaking, of being with one another is possible. That compassion and forgiveness and generosity might join justice and accountability and survival as the core values of our movement. That we might learn to develop tools for reconciliation even as we hone our tools for battle.

(To which I say "Amen!" as well!)

The use of "social justice warrior" or SJW as a pejorative term is inaccurate, really. The narcissistic, self-centered, "only my sufferings matter" kind of crapola which infests the Turd Way Democratic Party and Daily Kos today is more accurately described as Injustice Collecting, is as phony as a Series 2000 USA 3-dollar bill, and is the very thing Kai Cheng Thom is fighting against (as well as the vast majority of us!).

Social Justice, a just society, will only be arrived at Kai Cheng's way (Cat willing, sparing the violence!). Injustice Collecting only makes matters worse, as Kai Cheng points out and most of us know altogether too painfully well.

Thank you for posting this Essay, Steven D!

@riverlover
baby! Need a ride let me know.

"Experts". In the trenches, then-Black Panthers, met over an impromptu dinner at a Great House in the Thousand Islands. Abby Hoffman downriver, in hiding. His ghost may have visited. Others did. Plenty of old history on the River. Always a War or a skirmish. A chance to be an Outlaw or a Pirate for a moment in time.

@GreatLakeSailor @GreatLakeSailor

...Decades ago I had a prof of mine tell me that anyone that used the term "LifeStyle" instead of life was a fucking idiot. True-dat. Real humans have lives.

Thanks, cheers and applauds!

Life (in all senses) is complex and it drives me nuts when such things as basic biology, individual imperatives and interwoven relationships of all sorts are so commonly misrepresented as being simplistic - for control purposes.

...."Lifestyle" v life. The simplification of something so complex as humans for the purpose of marketing/sales (in the case of lifestyle) for buying/consumption of unneeded goods, in the case of IDPol, for political distraction/gain for the oligarchs.

Decades ago I had a prof of mine tell me that anyone that used the term "LifeStyle" instead of life was a fucking idiot. True-dat. Real humans have lives.

@Meteor Man Leaders and organizers of the movement against racism should stop tolerating the transformation of anti-racist discourse into an establishment tool for silencing criticism and dissent.

It's not a question of "being too extreme" or "going too far," and it's not about people's fee-fees, not even mine. It's the hijacking of what used to be a justice movement and the looting of its moral history for establishment use.

I say again, I've been called racist for opposing NSA surveillance. I've been told I have a problem with Black male authority because I don't like drone assassinations. I've been told I was racist for opposing Social Security cuts. When I asked why Bernie Sanders was being called racist, as in, what had he done? I was told I was racist. Interesting how shutting down that criticism--and that question--serves the interests of the richest people in the country, most of whom are white.

Not gonna be part of a movement, even as an ally, if the movement is willing to use, or accommodate those who use, the tactics of Joe McCarthy. Not interested in any movement that works with the establishment to silence the establishment's critics. And, by the way, it's disgusting to watch the establishment put on a facade of anti-racism to gin up moral credibility to paper over the vast, empty hole in its chest where its heart should be. Particularly disgusting is the part where the establishment changes anti-racist critique to eliminate all economic considerations and all mention of money, and talks a great line about racism in the police and the courts, but studiously avoids suggesting or supporting any concrete reforms (check out Nancy Pelosi's directive to Congressional Democrats on how to respond to BLM).

A lot of Black activists appear to be glad enough to go along with this shit because it gives them a space to voice their anger at white people, racists, and the right wing. It gives them visibility all over the culture, particularly in the mass media. But they are not only being given no real concessions or reforms--none that will materially benefit anybody Black apart from Black pundits and politicians--but their movement, its frames, and its language generally, and even its demands, are being rewritten in a way that would make this discourse unrecognizable to anybody from even a decade ago.

A few years ago, if a person had said that questions of money, finance and economics have nothing to do with racism, that person would have been, at best, laughed out of the room, and, at worst, decried as a racist. Now, as long as a Black person is saying it, or as long as a Black person is supporting a white politician who's saying it, it becomes gospel. Just put a camera on the Black person saying it, or cheering on the white politician who's saying it. Now suddenly it's racist and wrong to consider allocations of wealth in this society to be racist. Who benefits from that revision?

I pulled that term from an article at Raw Story:

To be clear: I’m not here for scapegoating “identity politics.” Has the language of social justice been weaponized inappropriately? We all know it has, but that doesn’t mean that conversations about identity and intersectional struggle aren’t wholly necessary. Any necessary idea can be taken to an unproductive extreme.

Yeah, she's talking to you Markos, you ignorant little twit:

So many people and groups have been disempowered by the clubhouse politics of leftist movement spaces.

And liberals, you all are some of the worst movement critics of all. Harping about “purity politics” when yours is just another form of “purity.” If yesterday didn’t teach you to stop busting out your critiques of antifa, BLM, window-breakers and monkey-wrenchers, you need to spend some time on yourself.

If you think those people are your enemies, or where your critique ought to fall in this moment, you have a lot of confusion to overcome. You are doing a lot of harm, both to individuals and to the possibility of a united front, every time you take aim at resistors. And when you vilify us, you validate the violence inflicted upon us by the state and others.

So stop. We are not the problem. We did not put this man in office. We are fighting for our survival against a force that is clearly bent on killing us. Standing on the sidelines, acting as a critic in those moments is not a good look.

Kelly stresses the necessity for the left to get back to building bridges to work together against the real common enemy:

I am not trying to give out hall passes here. I want people to be held accountable. But I want us to find language and ways to hold each other accountable while still trying to get work done.
I want answers other than voting people off the island. I want people who say they believe in transformative justice to do more than gossip about the organizers who’ve offended them.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/08/dear-fellow-leftists-it-is-time-to-get-o...

As dkmich has pointed out on more than one occasion, the good people here at c99% are doing it right. Nobody is ostracized or banned for having the "wrong" opinion. Our conversations are all about listening as well as speaking.

The only reason Markos and Armando would not fit in is because they lack the capacity to listen and learn. Well, they also happen to be idiots and assholes, but nobody's perfect.