Semi-Partisan Politics

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When asked, a majority of these students accept that a short, white male is in fact a tall, Chinese woman simply by virtue of declaring himself so

Where does it lead when young people percolate in an environment where personal feelings always trump objective reality and where there is no greater crime than failing to praise and play along with the assumed identity of another person?

This video gives us a clue. Take 4 minutes of your time to watch it.

When the interviewer (Joseph Blackholm, director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington and a white male of average height) posits to students on campus that he is, in fact, a very tall Chinese woman, almost none of the students are able to bring themselves to contradict him, or to admit that they disagree with his statement.

What this video shows, above all, is a level of terror of committing thought crime more commonly seen in totalitarian societies and dystopian novels. Identity Politics makes every person (with a partial exception for cis white men) simultaneously an oppressed victim, a champion of the oppressed and a potential oppressor, with adherents gaining in status the more they can emphase their “victim” and “champion” sides while negating their “oppressor” qualities. And because this is a revolution which readily eats its own children – even those with long records of fighting for the movement can be undone with nothing more than a careless choice of words – everyone is perpetually on edge and terrified of giving offence, for fear of looking like an oppressor and consequently losing status within the community.

None of these students want to appear on camera failing to readily accept the declared racial and gender identity of another person, even when that other person is a smirking young man who is clearly trying to entrap them. They cannot tell him simply to take a hike, that he is obviously not a six-foot Chinese woman, because video footage would then exist of them being oppressive and failing to validate the existence of this man’s non-existent identity. And in identity politics circles, this would be committing social and reputational suicide.

Dreher sighs:

This is a freaky thing to watch. These are actual college students. Adults who have the right to vote. And their reason is so compromised that they are unsure what the man in front of them is, so terrified are they of saying the wrong thing.

Ah yes, students at the University of Washington, where they are scared out of their minds by the possibility of seeing a Halloween costume that makes them turn tail and run for their Safe Space™. These people are ripe for dictatorship. They will not let themselves see reality if it offends against the party line.

The only difference between this cowed behaviour and that seen in a totalitarian society is the fact that the students and other identity politics cultists do this to themselves. There is no higher authority, no dictatorship, which transmits these values and insists that they are observed. It is an entirely self-enforcing cult, though concerted efforts are underway to bully university administrators into enforcing the doctrine and punishing the new heretics without first having to be cajoled into doing so through protests and shaming.

Blackholm and the Family Policy Institute of Washington may have been joking, but we are now seeing real-world cases to test our judgement – like that if Stefonknee Wolscht, a 52 year old father of seven who decided that despite having had a family and raised numerous children, he is, in fact, a six-year-old girl.

Where does it end? Nowhere good. This madness will not stay confined to the academy – indeed, it is already leaching out into wider society. But as this blog remarked earlier this year:

Since we seem intent on burying our heads in the sand and denying that there is anything wrong with our new Politics of Identity, by that time our Prime Minister will probably identify as a Beagle, the Home Secretary will be a barn owl except on Tuesdays, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be a goldfish who looks suspiciously like George Osborne’s grown-up kid wearing a wetsuit, Number 11 Downing Street having been converted into a walk-in aquarium in deference to their “mental safety”.

Something to look forward to.

 

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