The illusory heretic: Case study of SF Democrats' exclusion

Is everything “far-right” now? SF's Dem Central Commitee lambasted a newly-founded Dem family club for a litany of absurd complaints—including the unfounded suspicion that the co-founders are racist or, worse, conservative. Bari Weiss discusses the leftist phenomenon of nervously name-calling anyone signaling individualism, and how this undermines language's impact over time.

Why are so many demonstrably non-fascist people being accused of fascism?

Partly, this phenomenon is driven by our current political moment, in which millions of Americans — and not just those who identify as liberals or progressives — are horrified by the policies and the rhetoric oozing out of the White House. When the shadow of genuine chaos and extremism looms, people tend to get jumpy.

Partly, as the writer David French and others have pointed out, this ritual we keep witnessing of an in-group wielding its power against a perceived heretic seems to come from a deep human desire for a sense of belonging and purpose. Organized religion may be anathema on the political left, but the need for the things religion provides — moral fervor, meaning, a sense of community — are not.

Partly, too, it is the result of a lack of political proportion and priority. It’s instructive that students at the University of Chicago spent their energy a few years back protesting Dan Savage, the progressive sex columnist who used the word “tranny” in a talk that included a discussion about reclaiming words, while ignoring a lecture the very same week by former Senator Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican who has compared gay relationships to bestiality. Freud called this the narcissism of small differences.

But it is also a concerted attempt to significantly redraw the bounds of acceptable thought and speech. By tossing people like Mary Beard and Christina Hoff Sommers into the slop bucket with the likes of Richard Spencer, they are attempting to place their reasonable ideas firmly outside the mainstream. They are trying to make criticism of identity politics, radical Islam and third-wave feminism, among various other subjects, verboten. For even the most minor transgressions, as in the case of Professor Beard, people are turned radioactive.

There are consequences to all this “fascism” — and not just the reputational damage to those who are smeared, though there is surely that.

The main effect is that these endless accusations of “fascism” or “misogyny” or “alt-right” dull the effects of the words themselves. As they are stripped of meaning, they strip us of our sharpness — of our ability to react forcefully to real fascists and misogynists or members of the alt-right.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times. Read the whole thing here.

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