Call it the progressive pile-on.
Whenever a reasonably well-intentioned media actor wades into waters deemed problematic by progressives on social media, reflexive hysteria ensues, and Twitter buzzes with hyperbolic clap-backs decrying the person’s alleged racism, or sexism, or whatever the relevant -ism happens to be that day.
Two components of this process are worth examining: (1) the expansive definitions of racism, white supremacy, sexism, bigotry, etc., that the mobs slap onto tons of reasonable opinions if they land somewhere to the Right of your average Oberlin student; and (2) the intensity of the backlash, characterized by the kind of vitriol people are far more inclined to apply in their digital interactions, and a brand of self-satisfied smugness only engendered by groupthink.
The first point is one we’ve written about here before, and it’s easy to draw a connection between expanding definitions of racism and the inevitable hysteria. When one group has been conditioned to interpret harmless statements as legitimate racism, their response is going to seem exaggerated by the standards of people who do not share those underlying definitions.
Writing in The Atlantic on Monday, Conor Friedersdorf reflected on the “dragging” of New York Times writer Bari Weiss, who was castigated last week for a tweet about an Olympic figure skater that was clearly meant as a celebration of immigrants. Of course, even well-intentioned statements can cause harm, but Friedersdorf wondered whether the response to Weiss was ultimately helpful to the cause of social justice activists.
…I’ve interviewed, studied, and interacted with enough adherents of social-justice ideology to know that a great many are in earnest, even if they operate among others who are less scrupulous in their conduct. And those earnest participants are the people I still do not understand.
I don’t understand why they believe that extreme anger and stigma should be directed at people whose intentions and substantive beliefs are so close to their own …
I don’t understand whether they don’t see that policing language so strictly will invariably cause a backlash, or don’t care, or believe that their coalition is so obviously ascendant and powerful and likely to prevail that a backlash doesn’t matter.
Even if every object of dragging deserved it, I don’t understand how the outcome could be anything other than punishing an infinitesimal percentage of bad actors while turning off so many with the excesses that it provokes a backlash.
And I don’t understand how so many on the left can dismiss concerns about overzealous policing of language as fragile cis-white men trying to repress the voices of marginalized people when these divisive fights most often break out among or are directed at people in historically marginalized groups.
Weiss’s detractors might reevaluate whether these responses collectively do more harm than good to their own efforts. Of course, I believe the approach is fundamentally wrong to begin with, but even setting that aside, it’s hard to see how the treatment of Weiss, for instance, served to sway anybody in their favor. In fact, it probably did the opposite, and further alienated more people with similar end goals.
