The PC movement on campus is a mutation from traditional leftist groups. While it shows concern for the same kinds of people and injustices as familiar liberalism, it has very different goals and strategies. It is highly authoritarian and pursues an absolutist egalitarianism where the high are brought low and the lowly rise to power. Where it holds power, it accepts no different opinions or points of view, demonizing any holdout till they either surrender or leave the community.
The most important and dangerous thing about the PC movement is that is that it is a culture virus, a contagious meme, and an extremely virulent one. I’m a liberal and I am in no way endorsing either standard or extreme right wing positions as my alternative of choice. I’m trying to make visible a dangerous social phenomena that could become a cultural and intellectual “Spanish Influenza” for our time. At the very least it can poison healthy institutions and create an oppressive atmosphere of coercion and censorship.

An epidemiology 

A virus needs a host. A social virus needs a community. This virus causes behavior changes that alter social norms and expectations. Ironically, it elevates the PC group to a high status powerful minority with special rights and powers. It supercharges the social consequences of being accepted or rejected by this group.

To be infected, the host must be a relatively small, self-contained community. In a large enough community, the viral effects are too diffuse to snowball.  The community belief system can’t be starkly opposed to the viral version or the initial resistance would stop the virus. The community culture should be cooperative and polite with an aim to find consensus and generally get along. This allows the PC group to blow the doors off community resistance as people hesitate, tolerate outrageous behavior and simply avoid conflict. As we have observed since Trump became president, a bully with power violates social norms and undermines community standards with frightening speed.

The virus exploits human social fears, promoting the infection and suppressing “immune system” response. In this case, that immune response would be from any opposing belief or standards of community behavior that are at odds with the viral behaviors. This social virus affects those inside the movement, but also outsiders.

For insiders, the primary exploits are fears of:

1.  Not being accepted by the group
2. Rejection by the group, once accepted
3. Being ostracized, scorned and harassed if rejected

For outsiders, there is nothing subtle about the fears. In-group behavior uses overt intimidation to threaten:

1. Horrible public embarrassment, humiliation
2. Relentless harassment, knowing it won’t stop
3. Job security, reputation, future options

If you are ostracized from the in-group, social intimidation is moments away. The oppressive fear created by this combination pushes group insiders into being more extreme to prove their bonafides. Outsiders witness intimidation by large hostile crowds screaming at a selected victim and understand at once what could happen in they get noticed the wrong way. These ugly tactics make people anxiously toe the line inside the group and suppress empathy and conscience toward victims.  Outsiders mostly capitulate in silence if they disagree. The horror facing them if they become targets often reduces faculty, administrators and college presidents into timid, mealy-mouthed collaborators.

Most scary mob behavior is like a tornado. When the circumstances are right, it emerges with a wild, destructive energy, and runs its course till the effect is exhausted. It can’t reproduce or achieve homeostasis and persist. The campus PC movement is mob behavior that can do both. It grows more extreme the more successful it is.  Continue reading →

Is knowing when and where to stop, but also HOW. I’m not sure that anyone really knows how to stop. 

In this article the phrase “class-based treatment” refers to the treatment of all members of some identifiable group simply because they are a member: Examples could be Women, Blacks, Latinos, Whites, etc.

Identity politics begins with awareness of an injustice done to a class of people and the recognition that they deserve the same protections and freedoms granted ALL citizens. It’s all about recognizing our common humanity and the sacred value of “Equal justice for all”. What’s not to love about any of this? This is all good and ethical behavior. None of this is the problem, and all of this is completely in the wheelhouse of being a Liberal.

An American citizen’s rights are theirs as an individual and when these rights are denied because of race, religion, sexuality or culture, a false filter is being applied. Justice will be done when that filter based on membership in some group is stripped away, allowing their natural individual rights to flow to them, unobstructed. The filter of identity is an illogical red herring containing two very bad but very human ideas:

1. That human rights can be stripped for identity reasons.
2. That a different identity group with more power can do this because of course, that is exactly what happened.

Continue reading →