When I posted this article pointing out the double standard surrounding cultural appropriation versus technological appropriation, I knew I was courting controversy. I am no stranger to it, having posted on topics like religion, consciousness, economics and gender identity in the past.
What I didn't expect, given the leanings of this website towards extreme individual freedom of expression and living, was to run into a full blown Tumblr SJW. I don't just mean that he holds some dubious opinions that align with critical theory, he's literally got the iconic SJW mustache and glasses:
The article in question is basically one long complaint about how we're commanded not to appropriate art, music, clothing, food, etc. from other cultures but they are free to appropriate western technology. His contention is that questioning the SJW narrative automatically equals racism. Does it?
What is racism? To @Blackvapor, it's wrongthink. It's anything contrary to the SJW narrative. To me, it's holding scornful views of entire races of people. I do not hold such views. It's ranking races on a hierarchy according to imagined metrics of superiority and inferiority. I find that absurd and have written at length about it in the past.
@Blackvapor, perhaps new to my blog and unaware of my posting history, decided that a single article was all he needed to know everything about me and cast his final judgement. So certain was he that he then undertook a one man campaign of harassment, spamming the comments sections with "bigot", "racist" and the like:
Once or twice he chided me for not engaging him in argument. In fact, I continued to attempt it, asking him for citations for his implied claim that the statement in the article he objected to was false. He ignored these invitations to actual debate and continued spamming insults. This is par for the course when engaging an SJW, as many of you have personally experienced.
Take note of the one where he says that he wants legitimate debate, but that I am censoring him:
Now look at this post, also by him:
So, is censorship bad or not? Is it bad for me, but good for him? It must be for him to admonish me for censorship in one breath, then threaten to take away my voice in the next. Christians do not have a monopoly on hypocrisy, as you can see. SJWs, their mirror image, have taken a page out of the same strategy book.
Repeatedly, he said "I am a good person" in defense of his actions. The implication being that officially Good People™ (read: members of the social justice movement) are justified in whatever they do against non-members. This should sound very familiar to anybody who has ever gotten on the wrong side of a Christian, Muslim or Scientologist.
Social Justice, as I have written before, is the pearl-clutching publicly visible moralism of our day. In antiquity, to signal to everybody what a good person you were, you'd be over the top religiously pious in a publicly visible way. Nowadays, with religion on the wane, social justice has filled the exact same role.
This is why @Blackvapor imagines he is a virtuous underdog fighting valiantly against the Great Satan. I sort of respect that. It does take bravery and willingness to suffer as a result of doing what you believe is right. The tragedy being that he and I probably agree on almost everything.
My voting record was solidly Democrat up until Bernie was thrown under the bus. Then I voted for Gary Johnson, a Libertarian in the hopes of cultivating a viable third party. Probably in @Blackvapor's mind I'm some sort of right wing authoritarian caricature, because that makes it easy to dehumanize me. It makes it easy to justify any degree of aggression he feels like.
That is the other main purpose of Social Justice in today's society, an outlet for aggression. It supplies adherents with a clear cut right and wrong, good and bad, and a dehumanized outgroup they are told is A-OK to unleash their pent up aggression on.
That resonates with a great many people. They want a cause to fight for. Not so much because of the cause, but because they want to fight. We are still basically glorified chimps and retain every bit of their violent tribalism. Social Justice gives us an outlet for it which is culturally sanctioned.
"Give me your faith, something I can believe in
And you'll be my family, my brother, my friend
Tell me a truth that I find not deceiving
Teach me a lesson that I understand
Build me a shelter, a place I can dwell in
Show me a future that I can enjoy
Give me a reason and I'll be your fellow
Show me the target I have to destroy
Show me my leader and I'll pledge obedience
Whisper the name of the enemy mine
Blessed be my fate and my tools of expedience
I'm going to fulfill what's my mission divine"
'Exterminate, Annihilate, Destroy' by Rotersand
Going by the standard SJW playbook, he's now promised to rouse the larger community against me. To lie to them about what I stand for so that they will converge upon me like swarming piranha. So that I will be like the ant singled out for immolation by the child wielding the magnifying glass.
This has happened to me before, because I argued against Christianity. I upset a group of Christians badly enough that they followed me around, put up webpages slandering me, contacted my friends and family to tell them I was a depraved, dangerous man. This did not fool anybody close to me of course.
However it made it exceedingly difficult to get work or hold down a relationship for the better part of a decade. It's actually why I'm here. It's basically impossible to get a regular job when the first page of Google results for your name are all pages claiming you're a murderer, or a thief, or a rapist.
This was the loneliest period of my life. I struggled with suicidal ideation every day. I was briefly homeless because of roommates who mistook the misinformation as factual and did not want to cohabitate with me until they looked further into those materials and realized they were fraudulent.
SJWs destroy lives and livelihoods over internet arguments without remorse because they imagine they are the sole arbiters of morality and have the only truth. So they feel no compunctions about organizing mob action to destroy the lives of anybody they remotely suspect of racism. A sort of bizzarro-McCarthyism for the modern era.
These people do not care about the damage they do. They operate outside the law. There are no trials, no real investigation or process of appeals. If they think you're a racist, then you are. If you say you aren't, then you definitely are because "that's what a racist would say".
When Christians came after me this way, my only recourse was to trust that people who knew me would know better. I expect the same will be true this time as well. I will have to rely on what you, my follower base, has seen of the inside of my mind and heart for the past two years.
I wish @Blackvapor had followed my writing for that long. He wouldn't have wrong ideas, then, about who I am and what I stand for. I have tried to argue the matter with him. Besides repeating that he is a good person, he also repeats that he wants legitimate debate. But when I invite him to substantiate his claims, he returns to spamming accusations:
He's been at it for quite some time to the point where the overwhelming majority of the comments under that article are by him. That's some impressive, if misplaced, ferocity!
I have been flagging the shit out of him in hopes that he'll eventually stop for the sake of his earnings, or read far enough back in my post history that he realizes what a stupid misunderstanding this was. I already tried and failed to persuade him of that, so I am content now to let him tilt at windmills until exhausted.
As for the rest of you, I already know you will not believe the distorted picture he paints of me. But please do set straight anybody who does. I rely on my income from this site to live, because of what people like him did to me in the past. This man wants me homeless because he's misunderstood one of my articles and presumed to be my judge, jury and executioner. He may yet succeed, if only because a lie gets around the world seven times before the truth can get it's pants on.
Why don't I just give him what he wants? Because what he really wants is for me to bend the knee. For me to be afraid, and beg for his approval. That's the gratification SJWs get out of what they do, aside from the sense of power that results from making people homeless because they did not march to the SJW drumbeat.
I'm not going to bend the knee for somebody who has no real authority of any kind, doesn't understand what I'm about and apparently doesn't care to. We do not yet live amid an inquisition wherein a stranger can accuse you of sinful thoughts, then demand you kiss his shoes and beg for absolution.
At least, I don't think we do. I guess we'll see.
Stay Cozy!