Why read the musings of a former critical social justice adherent?

Deprogramming myself after being a warden of woke.

Why I write for a hitherto non-existent audience

I’m not anyone of public import. I’m simply a former adherent of identity leftism who’s self-deprogramming and wishes to do it through writing. I wish to explore the effects of millennial ideological culture on the political and individual expression of those under forty-five. These are the people who drive cultural production and, therefore, exert an outsize influence on social order, even as they proclaim to dismantle old structures and replace them with restrictions on speech and behavior that are sold as ‘liberation’. What is old is always new again. I hope that this public introspection on the culture among the knowledge worker class gives more regular people intellectual ammunition to resist what I see as a worldview riddled with illogic and illiberalism, and I’m especially speaking to those whom this paradigm considers marginalized.

To be sure, my conclusions (and writing) are rather incendiary, and they are not for those who won’t tolerate a challenge to their thinking. If that’s you, don’t bother reading; you’ll just get angry.

But, I feel compelled to say these things out loud because they’re uncomfortable to hear. If the bounds of acceptable speech are narrowed, the thoughts of individuals in society are also narrowed to only accepting that which the socially powerful want us to believe.

I particularly exacerbated my mental health challenges and perhaps even manifested them because of this ideology, which makes living well and having an internal locus of control impossible. This is because we are encouraged to see ourselves as powerless.

In this case, I posit that the people who consider themselves least powerful have amassed enough power to irreversibly shape culture, even as they deny they possess power. This must be explored because it strikes me as among the roots of our political paralysis and unending culture war. This war erases economic justice from the picture of a free and fair society in favor of every other identity.

The principles of liberalism must be constantly defended.

I and countless others in Western societies that hold liberalism dear feel politically unmoored. The left calls us closet conservatives, though nothing we believe is compatible with modern Republican/conservative politics. Part of the problem is we associate the two parties with liberalism and conservatism, but those terms describe neither.

Both have strains of liberalism and conservatism in them, making this analysis all the more muddled. But, mine is a straightforward defense of the principles of rational inquiry, regardless of where we are led as a result. I also, heretically, think that conservatives are as necessary to society as liberals because social development is the result of a dialectical process - conflict and resolution cycles between these opposing forces, the motivation for which is intrinsic to individuals. Circumstances tend to determine where we fall on the spectrum.

I’ve sought my liberation from oppressive and conservative cultural structures inherent in Hinduism and the Indian diaspora because the moral frames of that society value social cohesion over the desires of the individual. That’s not to say that collective concerns have no value, but when I was growing up I saw them as inherently hostile to my being.

As I’ve aged, however, I realized that individual liberation and social cohesion will always have tension, but are still equally necessary for living a good life. If we always subsumed our inclinations to the group, we would be unsatisfied. But, if we always give in to our desires, they will eventually destroy the social fabric. Feminist liberation has become an excuse to do exactly this.

Women like me are unmoored from our former political homes.

I’ve always found myself somewhat apart from people, though I have tried to conform. But, conformity with group opinions has never been my nature. Social exclusion (by girls) as a child gave way to conformity through my mid-thirties, after which I realized the cost of the agreement wasn’t worth it. This cost is especially high for women, and our spaces tend to enforce conformity with the most zeal. I will explore the reasons for this with time, as these conclusions are perhaps the most incendiary.

The illiberal nature of leftist (women’s in particular) spaces, almost all of which severely punish deviation is my primary reason for bothering. I see many of our present culture wars being driven particularly by the political commitments of college-educated women who came of age after second-wave feminism. The new Right contributes, of course, but the two are foils of each other in driving the intensity of the war. Neither can live while the other survives.

Gender and the culture wars

The new Right is fundamentally driven by men, while the new Left is driven by elite women, though both are conservative and authoritarian. At its core, this is a conflict both over gender roles and fought through gendered frames using similar tactics - cancellation and public shaming of both each other and those within their tribes. The rest of us are watching, unable to intervene as political conditions devolve.

Generally speaking, few commentators are willing to say out loud that an illiberal strain in feminism could be driving the phenomenon that’s known today by many names, and that is why I feel compelled to write even if no one reads this. It must be said precisely because the social cost of saying it is so high. People refusing to dissent from prevailing political frames is how authoritarian movements are born.

This movement neither sees itself as illiberal nor authoritarian, which makes it even more insidious. If you can’t name it, you can’t fight it. But that’s the name: illiberal identity leftism. One could argue that a generally authoritarian tendency has grafted onto an ideological spectrum that no longer exists because it’s flourished among all political subcultures. If authoritarianism festers on both the ‘left’ and the ‘right’, where does that leave those who still hold dear the principles of liberalism? Many writers are exploring this, but they are mostly white men, which immediately destroys their credibility among the people who really should engage with the critiques.

The problem with leftist women’s spaces

Western women’s spaces in these societies are, paradoxically, conservative and so concerned with group cohesion that they compel people like me to keep our mouths shut lest we be cast out. But, since I’ve let myself be cast out, I feel uniquely free to reach my conclusions. Social costs indeed keep people, and particularly women, from speaking up. But, for some of us, the cost of conformity is our ability to think freely and the devaluation of rational inquiry. Seeing this, I feel compelled to name it as an authoritarian tendency that undermines what college-educated women say they desire - social justice.

To be sure, there are plenty of men pushing the illiberal identity leftist agenda, but I do not think they are the primary drivers of this phenomenon. If we consider that media, non-profits, education, and healthcare are dominated by women, the correlation between the cultural directives coming from these sectors and the rapid spread of the ideology stemming from these communication-heavy (where women excel) industries is hard to ignore. Add to that the fact that the Democratic party is increasingly dominated by the college-educated and that women earn the majority of degrees, we have correlations significant enough to explore.

Most commentators on this topic are men, who are understandably afraid to blame women for anything lest they be canceled. But I have no qualms about laying this phenomenon at the feet of elite feminist culture, particularly because it has become patently anti-intellectual with the advent of social media. An anti-intellectual culture would produce illiberalism and shun logical reasoning. The elite has abdicated their responsibility to society in this way by letting the illogic take over their politics.

A new intellectual project

Regardless of what you’ve concluded about these topics, we all owe it to ourselves to constantly question what we believe. After all, that is the very basis of the intellectual movements that led to the American Revolution (more later on why America is no more evil than any other nation). No society is without problems, but one must also examine one’s role in creating and exacerbating those problems. We are all complicit, as the identity leftists like to say.

The cause of creating a just society has been as dear to me as self-determination. For those of us who want to work toward justice but don’t agree with how this cause is being pursued, it is necessary to point out where progressivism went off the intellectual rails and devolved into emotional authoritarianism instead of rational inquiry. I write at the intersection (!) of ideology, psychology, philosophy, and culture. I have always considered myself a liberal and a feminist, but these two paradigms have been hijacked, and it’s time free-thinking people forcibly reclaim them from the queen bee types (of any gender) who’ve emptied them of meaning.