Ethical progress produces a beneficial form of dogmatism. In a healthy society, there is no discussion about whether rape and torture are acceptable, because the public is "dogmatically" convinced that they are not. On the other hand, a society whose leaders talk about "legitimate rape", like an American Republican congressman, or about the justification of torture, shows clear signs of moral decline where once unthinkable actions are rapidly becoming possible.
Take for example Russia today. A video of dubious authenticity circulating these days shows a mercenary from the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group, accused of switching sides to "fight the Russians", being hit in the head with a sledgehammer by an unidentified assailant. When asked to comment on the video published under the title "The Hammer of Vengeance", Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group and a close ally of Vladimir Putin, replied that "a dog is followed by a dog's death". As many have noted, Russia's behavior is becoming similar to that of Isis.
Or take Russia's close ally Iran, where young girls are arrested for protesting against the regime, allegedly forced into marriage with prison guards who then rape them, because a minor cannot legally be executed if she is innocent.
Or take Israel, which proudly presents itself as a liberal democracy, even as it increasingly resembles the fundamentalist theocracies of its neighborhood. The latest example of this trend is the news that Itamar Ben Gvir is joining Benjamin Netanyahu's new government. Before entering politics, Ben Gvir was known for having in his living room a portrait of Israeli-American terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who killed 1994 Palestinian worshipers and wounded 29 in Hebron in 125.
Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister until he is replaced in June 2021, wholeheartedly supports this collapse of all values. Thus, in 2019, he called "for a fight against growing Muslim and left-wing anti-Semitism in Europe, hours after his own government published a report saying that the biggest threat to Jews in the EU is the far right." Why is Netanyahu being ignored by far-right anti-Semitism? Because he relies on it. The Western New Right may be anti-Semitic at home, but it unreservedly supports Israel as the last bulwark against a Muslim invasion.
And that's only one side of the story. Moral decay is increasingly evident on the "awakened" left as well (woke left*) which is increasingly authoritarian and intolerant. She advocates all forms of sexual and ethnic identity, except one. Sociologist Dwayne Russell characterized the new "cancellation culture" as "racism in a time of many without One." While traditional racism humiliates the intruder who poses a threat to the unity of the One (dominant group), the awakened left would do the same to anyone who has not completely abandoned all the old categories of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity of the One. All sexual orientations and gender identities are now acceptable, unless you are a white male whose gender identity matches your biological sex at birth. Members of this cisgender cohort are told to feel guilty for just being who they are, for being "comfortable in their own skin," while everyone else (even cisgender women) is encouraged to be whatever they want.
This new one awakened order is increasingly noticeable in absurd episodes from real life. This month, the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania planned to sponsor a student-run event for anyone "tired of white cis men." The plan was for participants to "paint and write" about their frustrations with white men who are "comfortable in their own skin." After an outcry and accusations of racism, the event was postponed.
There is something paradoxical about how awakened non-binary fluidity coincides with intolerance and exclusion. In Paris, at a prestigious school École Normal Superior now the proposal to reserve certain corridors in the student dormitory exclusively for people who have chosen is being discussed mixed variety (mixité choisie) as their sexual identity, in order to exclude cisgender men. The proposed rules are strict: anyone who doesn't meet the criteria will be banned from entering these corridors. And, of course, those rules lead to even tighter restrictions. For example, if enough people define their identity in even narrower terms, they too could request a separate corridor.
I emphasize 3 features of this proposal: it excludes only cisgender men, not cisgender women; it is not based on any objective classification criteria, but only on subjective self-labeling; and requires further classification subdivisions. This last point is crucial, because it shows how the insistence on reshaping, choice and diversity ultimately leads to a kind of new apartheid, a web of fixed, essentialized identities.
Dogma awakening can serve as a prototypical analysis of how inclusion leads to prohibition: under the regime awakening any of us can be dismissed for something we said or did (the criteria are unclear), or simply because we were born into a despised category.
Instead of opposing new forms of barbarism, as it often claims to do, awakened the left is an equal participant in it, promoting and practicing an oppressive discourse without irony. Although she advocates for pluralism and promotes differences, her subjective position, the place from which she speaks, is ruthlessly authoritarian, tolerates no debate and imposes arbitrary exclusions that were once considered inappropriate in a tolerant, liberal society.
However, it should be borne in mind that this confusion is largely limited to the narrow world of the academic community (and various intellectual professions such as journalism), while the rest of society moves rather in the opposite direction. In the US, for example, 12 Republican senators voted this month along with the Democratic majority for the right to marry only same-sex couples.
With its implicit paranoia, cancellation culture is a desperate and apparently futile attempt to compensate for the real violence and intolerance that sexual minorities have long endured in our societies. It is a retreat into a cultural fortress, a false safe space whose discursive fanaticism only strengthens the resistance of the majority.
(Project Syndicate; Peščanik.net; translation: M. Jovanović)
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* Woke, an expression denoting attitude awakened due to injustices in society, it became a pejorative term over time; prim. prev.
Bonus video:
