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 That definition has long been as outdated as the steam engine.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 1950s or the 1850s 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 progressive-ocracy, 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.
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