White men can only survive in this new landscape through self-flagellation and groveling apology for what they are, by promoting how they’re “woke,” a “male feminist,” or a “straight ally.” (See: Macklemore.) “Straight white man” has become a socially acceptable form of insult. It’ll be a while before we see Dear Black People on our screens, much as America’s police officers might have something to say to that community.
The future of the progressive movement will be akin to the nightmarish community of grievance-bloggers on Tumblr, where minorities, both real and imagined, engage in an endless competition for supreme victimhood status. Welcome to the era of Minority Wars.
If you’re gay, they’ll ask what your skin color is.
If you’re black, they’ll ask if you’re a woman.
If you’re a woman, they’ll ask you to stop worrying about Muslim rapists, you racist.
If you happen to fit into every conceivable minority group, heaven help you if your opinions do not precisely follow political orthodoxy.
Donald Trump, and Margaret Thatcher before him, were both right when they said identity politics and name-calling is what people do when they don’t have any arguments left.
The modern Left is an ouroboros, the ancient Egyptian serpent that eats its own tail, constantly consuming itself in a twisted, never-ending cycle of victimhood, hatred and name-calling. No matter how nice they are to you when they’re focusing on your particular group’s causes, leftists will always, in the end, find a way to shame you about some alleged “privilege.”
And if they can’t win by public shaming, they rage and flounce off, or at least threaten to. What an entertaining spectacle it was, watching all those celebrities walking back their promises to leave the country if Donald Trump was elected. To the typical actor, threatening to leave the United States over the election was just another set of lines to read. A Trump presidency was supposed to be as likely as Trevor Noah ever having successful ratings.
Did you notice that these whiny celebs uniformly threatened to move to overwhelmingly white countries? Imagine the chutzpah and obliviousness it takes to call working-class Americans racist while you plan to move to Canada if your candidate loses. At least Snoop Dogg promised to move to South Africa, although, it’s hardly the Congo down there. I’m guessing what Snoop had in mind was a nice gated complex with other rich westerners.
Aside from Snoop Dogg, if it wasn’t Canada, it was New Zealand, Australia or another primarily white, English-speaking country. Why not Mexico or the Gambia? Guatemala doesn’t have a Whole Foods, so Lena Dunham had to cross it off her list.
SO WHY DOES THE LEFT HATE US?
“Scab” was a derogatory word used by the unionized workers of the old Left to describe strikebreakers: people who, during a strike, decided that feeding their families took priority over an abstract idea of left-wing solidarity.
The Left loathed scabs with a passion far exceeding their hatred for the bourgeoisie. After all, the bourgeoisie were just protecting their own interests. By not following the Left’s marching orders, scabs were allegedly betraying theirs.
Once branded a scab, you and your family were scabs for life. No amount of denial or explanation could expiate it. The word scab was (and for some is) akin to a swear word. A cursed word. It wasn’t Twitter that gave name-calling its power: social media just added mass scale and mob mentality to an earlier leftist strategy to adorn the untouchables with scarlet letters. No prizes then, for guessing why the Left hates me so much. I’m not one of them. I don’t fit into the box they demand of me. I don’t fit into any fucking box. “I am large, I contain multitudes.”
My existence infuriates them, not only because I debunk their myths with style, wit and humor, but also because their usual smears don’t work on me. Feminists can’t accuse me of suspect motives, because I’m not interested in women except in an academic sense. I can’t be accused of being homophobic—only that laughable charge of “self-hatred,” which, come on, I love myself, a lot.
In short, I’m the Left’s worst nightmare: a living, breathing refutation of identity politics, and proof that free speech and the truth wrapped in a good joke will always be more persuasive and more powerful than identity politics.
I’m also particularly terrifying to the Left because they see in me a repeat of the 1980s, when workers across Britain and the United States turned to Reaganism and Thatcherism. In the age of Trump, the Left are worried I might not be the only dissident minority. They’re afraid you might agree with me. Because if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you might have realized the Left doesn’t have your best interests at heart, because your heartbreak isn’t sad enough.
Just as leftist’s old base abandoned them to become conservative-voting “Reagan Democrats” in the U.S. and “Essex Men” in the U.K., so too will a new wave of dissident women and minorities break apart their coalition.
The Left’s deepest wish is that we rebel minorities didn’t exist. Nothing terrifies them so much as the thought of their cherished identity classes going off the reservation. That’s why they reacted so hysterically, or in many cases, so silently, to Gamergate’s #NotYourShield. It’s also why Clueless actress Stacey Dash literally lost her social life (and wrote a book about it) when she came out as all-in Republican. And it’s why I, an obnoxiously proud gay man, continue to be called homophobic.
The Left champions the powerless, and fights the powerful. In itself, that’s not a bad thing. Many of the basic luxuries we take for granted today like two-day weekends, eight-hour workdays, and basic occupational health and safety, were won by leftist worker’s rights movements. Other more important achievements, such as the end of lynching in the American South, were won by left-wing activists who instinctively detest injustice.
The dark side of this instinct, however, is the hatred of people deemed too successful or well-off: the “privileged.”
“Puritanism,” wrote H.L. Mencken, whose lifetime spanned the first progressive era, is the “haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.”
Who could possibly hate happiness?
Those who are denied it themselves.
Morally authoritarian movements are attractive to ugly, miserable, talentless people. It offers an outlet for their hatred of the successful and good-looking, and anyone who looks like they might be enjoying themselves. Rush Limbaugh famously described feminism as a way for ugly women to get attention and enter the mainstream.
On my travels around campuses, I observed happy, well-groomed, ambitious and intelligent Milo fans, as well as the greasy blue-haired social justice apparitions protesting outside. My time on campuses exposed a massive flaw in the Left’s plans for world domination: they’ve taken for granted their lock on the youth constituency.