I'm not sure what you mean by 'social justice has gotten to the point of ridiculousness'. Do you mean that society is ridiculously unjust? Or ridiculously just? Or that people who think that society is unjust have taken a ridiculously extreme view of its injustice, and it is in fact much more just than they perceive? Or something else?

Edit: also, do you mean danker or darker? You might mean danker, which would be interesting.

I mean that taboos are a go to for comedy, for the shock factor alone. Combine that with the taboo being enforced around just vices, unattractiveness, medical deformity, or some other thing to which the pity is suggested, but the problem is self, or nature caused... then you're asking for a high level of scorn. Placing a target, as they say.

I only suggest this, because it seems to me that teens don't laugh about, and mock the same things as when I was a kid.

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I'm not sure what you mean by 'social justice has gotten to the point of ridiculousness'. Do you mean that society is ridiculously unjust? Or ridiculously just? Or that people who think that society is unjust have taken a ridiculously extreme view of its injustice, and it is in fact much more just than they perceive? Or something else? — bert1

There is a movement based on the feeling that social justice is being forced down people's throats in an unnatural way that is something more than making sure everyone gets equal treatment. This could also be viewed as attempts to social engineer society from the top down.

To what extent that perception is real or a product of not wanting to give up one's privileged place in society is debatable (probably both to some extent). Also, humans have a natural tendency to want to rebel against being constantly being told not say or think certain ways, even if there is a good intention behind that. It can even be viewed as an Orwellian attempt to control society by redefining language to try and make the world more just.

An example might be:

Women and men are equal, and to ensure that society treats them that way, we must erase all forms of treating women differently from men. Which comes off as ridiculous and unnatural, since there are gender differences (although of course individuals differ across both genders). But to what extent this is just a sexist reaction and to what extent it's ideology gone to an extreme is the question (again some of both just depending). But I've definitely had people tell me that the only reason girls play with dolls and boys with toy guns is because of society, which I find profoundly silly, having been a child myself where the girls were plenty free to play with the boys (allowing for individual variance).

I don't think it's actually a Left/Right thing so much as it's a Globalist/Nationalist thing. There's definitely a resurgence of nationalism in Europe and European-derived countries, as a reaction to globalism, and the mass uncontrolled immigration to Europe and European-derived countries.

But one has to unpack "globalism" a bit: it's an ideological and political confluence of several factors, with three main strands:

1) modern liberalism as a quasi-religious cult that has aimed single-mindedly at the control of public opinion for nearly a century, the end result of a Gramscian "Long March Through the Institutions" (starting with academia, with the Frankfurt School in the 30s and 40s, moving through to media, government and mass entertainment in the 1950s, and again the influence of Cultural Marxism in the 1960s and onwards), and this would include Feminism from about the 1970s on;

2) the remnants of the Boomer "New Left" in both the US and Europe (themselves somewhat influenced by 1) in its 1960s iteration) finally come to major positions of power; and

3) major bank and big business interests (often using the rhetoric of the free market, but not overly-enamoured of the substance of the idea - they prefer big government).

The 2) people think of the nation state as the primary cause of war, the 3) crowd want Rome to have a single neck and love cheap labour, and the 1) crowd see the nation state and nationalist traditions as institutional obstacles to their vision of utopia.

The reaction is also somewhat complex, comprised of:

1) old school nationalists, including both ethnic and civic nationalists (American conservatives would belong to the latter group),

2) a formerly Left-leaning, but latterly disenfranchised, disaffected working class, despised by the "elites", etc., etc. (this has been canvassed fairly well by mainstream analysts in response to the Trump phenomenon),

3) younger cohorts who have been raised by 1)-type globalist indoctrination, but are rejecting it and looking for alternatives (and this group may actually include a fair number who formerly thought of themselves as on the Left). This is the internet-savvy group; also the group that's doing a lot of the mockery you're talking about.

Nationalism will win for the foreseeable future, because globalism (or rather, the kind of globalism we've had up till now) is fundamentally incoherent and insane, while nationalism is actually coherent and sane: the relatively ethnically-homogenous nation state remains the largest viable political unit.

Something like Kantian globalism (or what one might call "Star Trek globalism") will undoubtedly triumph in the end, but it can only really come about by an organic process of rapprochement between genuinely diverse nation states, not by a forced, top-down process of homogenization under a global totalitarian regime, which is what's been attempted over the past half-century or so.

The thing is, mocking those who have been historically mocked, discriminated against, exploited etc. just isn't that funny. And I don't see much evidence that younger generations are more conservative, outside a vocal minority of young alt-right groups who distribute ideas via memes.

"3) younger cohorts who have been raised by 1)-type globalist indoctrination, but are rejecting it and looking for alternatives (and this group may actually include a fair number who formerly thought of themselves as on the Left). This is the internet-savvy group; also the group that's doing a lot of the mockery you're talking about."

This I find most interesting. Just because, it was upon talking to someone else about their kids, and how they are surprisingly political, more so than we are, and surprisingly right leaning, in the sense of a rebellion against all of the diversity, and inclusion stuff, and what not. None of them had any actual person they're following that I know of, or group they claim to belong to, but just all of the internet mockery that they were right into. Constantly joking about it, with their punctuation of "R.I.P.".

I find that surprising, and don't remember people being all that political when I was a kid. So it got me to thinking about this, and realizing the increasing amount I'm hearing about it from a number of angles, but the effects particularly on the teenagers around me is surprising, which is what drew me to these conclusions.

I think that social justice has gotten to the point of ridiculousness — All sight

"Social justice" as in "social justice warriors" (saw) is not the same thing as "Justice". Much of the sjw kerfuffles we witness are outrage exercises directed at the small potatoes of cultural forms. Real Justice concerns very large and substantive issues such as distribution of wealth, destruction of community assets, pollution, crime against persons, etc.

It isn't that social justice warriors are unjust; their efforts are misdirected.

As far as your title goes, "the resurgence of the right"... "right" and "left" wax and wane on the basis of movements in the population at large. Big political movement change is generally driven by major events. For instance, economic depressions and booms, recessions and recoveries, war (especially unpopular wars, all have a large effect on the way people "feel" about their lives, society, politics, government, etc. Propaganda leverages itself on real events and drives movements further than they might otherwise go.

Indeed, I think that there is a natural wax and wane around an equilibrium.

I think that there is a natural proclivity for institutions to quickly become about their own survival and growth. They always go too far, because they don't do enough, and then all celebrate and disband. They keep on their track until they are forcibly derailed.

Just because, it was upon talking to someone else about their kids, and how they are surprisingly political, more so than we are, and surprisingly right leaning, in the sense of a rebellion against all of the diversity, and inclusion stuff, and what not. None of them had any actual person they're following that I know of, or group they claim to belong to, but just all of the internet mockery that they were right into. — All sight

Yeah, there have been some analysts who reckon Gen Z is more Right-leaning than any generation since WWII. On the other hand I've seen other analysts saying the opposite. I think the truth is probably inbetween. There's still a lot of hangover from the school/academic/media/entertainment indoctrination of the past 40 years or so in Gen X-ers and Millennials, so probably also in the young generation now growing up, but I think there is probably some shift in the weighting.

A fair number of Millennials are shaking off the trance currently just as a result of thinking things through and revising the received wisdom, while on the other hand there are probably still many Gen Z kids who are, or more likely pretend to be, ideological zombies (most likely, the "teacher's pet" types who are laser focussed on career and know how to make the right noises to get ahead with the culture as it currently is).

But there have certainly been a few documented amusing incidents of classes of quite young kids trolling their SJW teachers hard. That could be indicative of a larger trend, or it could just be accidental lumpiness.

At any rate, to some degree, younger generations are bound to be somewhat irreverent to the sacred cows of the establishment, whatever the establishment is. If the situation does fold over to the Right being in power for a few decades (which I think is likely), the irreverence will eventually go the other way again. (This is because there's always a lot of hypocrisy among adults wrt their kowtowing to establishment norms just to get on in life, and kids can smell it - for kids, IOW, it's more the result of an emotional reading of adults than an intellectually considered thing.)

Yes, quite right, on all points. Well put as well. Also happy to hear that there are at least some suggestions that this is the case, and I am noticing something.

I ended the OP with the suggestion that one's extremeness fuels the creation of the antithesis, so that balance, and temperance are very important qualities. To act too extremely, even when one is positive of their rightness is counter-productive to their aims. Could even make worse the thing they wish to diminish.

I think that there is a natural proclivity for institutions to quickly become about their own survival and growth. They always go too far, because they don't do enough, and then all celebrate and disband. They keep on their track until they are forcibly derailed. — All sight

What you say here may be true, but we could provide some concrete examples of this process happening.

We create "institutions" like Congress, United Way, the Church (whatever denomination), the Metropolitan Sewer Board, Universities, General Electric, libraries, etc. with the intent that they will and should perpetuate themselves. Persistent institutions are one of the ways we maintain continuity in culture (for better and for worse).

Here's an example: MN AIDS Project was founded in 1983 to somehow deal with the then-new disease among gay men. It grew rapidly, did very good work, had successes and failures like most organizations. By 2003 it was no longer very connected to the gay male community (which had itself changed over the years), it had found stable funding, it was thoroughly professionalized, (no longer fueled by volunteers). It was "an institution". It began looking for new problems to deal with, to continue its existence, rather than just admitting that it had done what it could and would throw in the towel. AIDS and HIV haven't disappeared, of course, but the problem of 2018 requires a newly founded group to deal with the much different circumstances (like HIV now being more common in young black men than in gay white men).

Many organizations have followed the same path. They begin with an urgent problem and committed people, work on that problem for a while, reach a stage of routinization, become entrenched, and go about surviving because they exist.

I've proposed that non-profits should come with a sundown clause: After 25 years, they come to an end, disband, liquidate, and disappear. New non-profits tend to do their best work during the first 10 years.*** IF the problem that the nonprofit originally addressed is still around (it often will be) then it is time for new people to start a fresh project to address that problem--for a limited period of time.

On the other hand, institutions like the Carnegie Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation et al, set themselves up to exist for a long time, for better or for worse, and tend to stick with their initial goals (which might or might not be good).

***No proof, of course. This is just my impression after working in nonprofits for 40 years.

Yes, I think that we agree, I just lacked specificity in my suggestion. I was speaking more to institutions that develop to address contemporary social problems, or goals. I fully agree that not all institutions are characterized in this way, but rather are designed to meet continuing needs, with no specific vision of conclusion, or accomplishment in sight.

I appreciate your first person account, and agree that it would be a great idea to have a "sundown clause". If the institution has a specific vision of completion, then they should have a time frame within which they can accomplish this, or be replaced with something fresh.

The pendulum has swung far one way, will it swing equally far back the other way for a bit? This ought to also be taken as a warning away from being too extreme, as your extremeness is the fuel for the genesis of your antithesis. — All sight

While the rest of the post didn't do that much for me so I almost didn't comment, your concluding summary seems to about nail it.

Thank you, I appreciate your thinking so.

I’m not a fan of the current POTUS. But the self-righteous mocking and mostly cringe-inducing unfunniness coming from comedians and talk-show hosts smacks of piling on and bandwagon jumping. Combined with the President’s tweeting and other bizarre behavior, the whole affair is more immature than middle school. Totally self-serving all around. Robert Bly’s The Sibling Society years ago warned that there were few adults left in the public sphere. Now there seems to be none. At least none with much of a platform or audience.

It's the birth of philosophy, or rather, what reigns supreme contemporaneously is sophistry, but philosophy wins the game over time, historically. Performance over substance.

I'm not a huge fan of comedy, I'm not a fun person, I think that laughter is a form of hysteria, or when a particular emotion is surrendered to. I like the idea that the ancient gods are faculties, or as Jung said, they all went inside to form psychology. So that, we worship gods, in the sense of what we surrender to emotionally, and allow to be the moving force behind our actions. Rather than a complete rejection of one over the other, I prefer the notion of an emotional caste structure, much like it was when the gods were external, and even then, Zeus, intellect, was king.

I'm not endorsing it, but just noticing it. Not being an unbiased observer as well, I have in fact become upset, and attempted to set limits to it, as well as reminded them that jokes become reality with time.

To act too extremely, even when one is positive of their rightness is counter-productive to their aims. — All sight

Just wanted to add: the fundamental problem with the Left at the moment is that having had cultural hegemony for so long, they've forgotten the basic principle of civil discourse: the capacity for self-reflection and self-criticism, the capacity to reflect on the possibility that for all one's certainty and moral conviction about one's analysis of the situation, one may yet be wrong, and the other fellow right.

When one forgets that, one starts to pre-judge everything that comes out of one's interlocutor's mouth, one ceases to listen, one ceases to learn. The Right has certainly been guilty of that in that past, in times when it was ascendant; now it's very much the Left's turn at making this fundamental error.

And that's why the Left is becoming a laughing stock. It's a kind of intellectual slapstick, the intellectual and moral equivalent of stepping on a rake.

I do agree. I think that one important aspect to wanting to persuade others to our positions is that it increases our own certainty of it, so that when most are on your side, you're all the more certain of it. This is precisely reflected in the way you describe, I think.

No, young people who want to see social justice are, on the whole, not ridiculous. They may sometimes be over-zealous and mistarget and get things wrong, but their orientation is spot on, and most of them are miles ahead intellectually of their detractors on the right. That it's become fashionable in right-wing circles to attack so-called SJWs and that that's gained some currency in the general population (in the US at least) is of no importance in the greater scheme of things. It's mostly a tool to make the right feel better about themselves. To criticize satire is even worse in my view. Political satire is essential to a healthy democracy and the right wing are more a target of comedians simply because they provide more fodder for them. Because many of their representatives (with plenty of exceptions but a much higher percentage at least than on the left, and certainly many more than before in the era of Trump) are markedly ignorant and intellectually backward and that should be highlighted. (I would be happy to demonstrate that with examples if necessary, but I think we all know it to be true)

ust wanted to add: the fundamental problem with the Left at the moment is that having had cultural hegemony for so long, they've forgotten the basic principle of civil discourse: the capacity for self-reflection and self-criticism, the capacity to reflect on the possibility that for all one's certainty and moral conviction about one's analysis of the situation, one may yet be wrong, and the other fellow right.

When one forgets that, one starts to pre-judge everything that comes out of one's interlocutor's mouth, one ceases to listen, one ceases to learn. The Right has certainly been guilty of that in that past, in times when it was ascendant; now it's very much the Left's turn at making this fundamental error. — gurugeorge

It's almost unbelievable in the era of Trump that you could unselfconciously come out with this statement. It's almost like you're satirizing yourself. Sure, there are actors on both sides guilty of a lack of civil discourse and an irrational certitude of their own opinions, but none come close to Trump, who now, along with the 90% of Republicans who support him, is the right.

Yeah, there have been some analysts who reckon Gen Z is more Right-leaning than any generation since WWII. — gurugeorge

Who? Show me the evidence because your post lacks substance. Do you have anything apart from some wishful thinking mixed with a few ad-homs against professors and others you don't like?

And that's why the Left is becoming a laughing stock. It's a kind of intellectual slapstick, the intellectual and moral equivalent of stepping on a rake. — gurugeorge

Except it's not. The right is. And that's what the complaints about political satire amount too. The right is hurt because it's not taken seriously in intellectual circles. The response is to bash intellectual circles as if they're the problem. As if intelligent people who know things and study things are the problem and the real laughing stock. It's projection at its most basic. Sure, you'll find the odd irrational professor who goes too far, but again, academics are generally miles ahead of their detractors on the right who generally resort to childish tropes like "nutty professor" to attack them. And academics are actually needed. We need academics and research and science and so on to push back against climate denial, creation science and other such demonstrable foolishness coming almost exclusively from the right. What we don't need are politically inspired talking heads who usually know nothing about the subject they're criticizing but think that by virtue of the fact that they have a public platform they should be taken seriously. Well, they shouldn't, and they aren't, outside their own commercially profitable echo chambers.

Nationalism will win for the foreseeable future, because globalism (or rather, the kind of globalism we've had up till now) is fundamentally incoherent and insane, while nationalism is actually coherent and sane: the relatively ethnically-homogenous nation state remains the largest viable political unit. — gurugeorge

Nationalism is one of the major causes of war and conflict and the most nationalistic countries are the most dangerous and the most insane. E.g. North Korea or, historically, Nazi Germany etc. This is why international organizations such as the UN were formed in order to quell nationalism and encourage global cooperation. So, this is just demonstrably flat wrong. Not that it even needs to be refuted as it's again just another one of your bare assertions not backed up by a scintilla of evidence. Also, what do you mean by suggesting an "ethnically homogenous" nationalist state is saner than the alternative (if that's what you mean)? Are you saying you would prefer America, for example, to be more ethnically homogeneous?

I am attempting to speak to a phenomenon I believe that I am witnessing, and don't mean to suggest which is actually funny, justified, or whatever.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2017/08/11/why-democrats-should-be-losing-sleep-over-generation-z/#5f6f65697878

There is an article about it, there are actually lots, now that I look.

the fundamental problem with the Left at the moment is that having had cultural hegemony for so long, they've forgotten the basic principle of civil discourse: the capacity for self-reflection and self-criticism, the capacity to reflect on the possibility that for all one's certainty and moral conviction about one's analysis of the situation, one may yet be wrong, and the other fellow right.

When one forgets that, one starts to pre-judge everything that comes out of one's interlocutor's mouth, one ceases to listen, one ceases to learn. The Right has certainly been guilty of that in that past, in times when it was ascendant; now it's very much the Left's turn at making this fundamental error. — gurugeorge

It's extremely curious to me that you think lack of self-reflection and self-criticism is, currently, an exclusive issue for the Left, particularly after the self-flagellation that occurred immediately after Trump's election, and the outright moral hypocrisy stemming from the Right.

It's extremely curious that you consider the Left a "laughing stock" and "intellectual slapstick" when prominent so-called "intellectuals" on the Right are mere grifters, such as Ben Shapiro who sells gold and brain pills. If academia is primarily left-wing, it's because the ideas of the right have become untenable garbage, which can only exist on Youtube and self-serving podcasts.

The Right elected Donald-fucking-Trump, the physical embodiment of the white, male Id, and yet some how it's the Left that are an "intellectual laughingstock". :ok:

Thanks for the link. It seems like a misleading article to me though. For example, one of the reasons Gen Z are more "moderate" and "conservative" about saving money is because they probably have relatively less of it. In the US at least, the average person is getting relatively poorer as more and more money is funneled to the rich (or at least that has been the trend from Gen X to millennials and is likely to be continuing (http://fortune.com/2018/02/19/millennials-less-money-generation-x/)). Also, what Gen Z considers socially moderate now was left-wing generations before precisely because with each generation we become more progressive. I can't access the actual study but the idea that generation Z is more moderate/conservative than baby boomers because less baby boomers considered themselves moderate/conservative isn't sensible. It was a whole different environment then and you have to focus on specific issues rather than mere self-identification to actually discover anything worthwhile in term of comparison across generations. As in, it doesn't matter if more Gen Zers call themselves conservatives than baby boomers if at the same time far more of them are in favour of gay marriage etc. than baby boomers (which they are). Anyway, if you have direct links to studies rather than news articles about them, please pass them on as looking at them makes it easier to analyze the issue properly.

Shapiro got in on Alex Jones' fake pill racket? Nauseating...

To the extent that there is a popular right, the popular right doesn't actually realise that it is the right. It thinks it is the liberal left. The social context and ramifications of their talking points and opinions are prefigured in a way that is difficult to subvert and impossible to reason with. They speak in code without knowledge of who benefits and who loses from the encryption.

This popular right has equated sincere belief in equality and prosperity with paying lip-service to it. Every day we hear their outrage and consternation with those who highlight injustice and systemic oppression simply because the words privilege and solidarity taste sour in their mouths. More fundamentally, those people on this right really do believe in the triumph of equality and prosperity over systemic injustice, but are forced to act, think and speak in a dominated tongue.

The way discourse over these issues is prefigured makes the iterability/transmissibility of a message far more important than the truth of its content, and concomitantly adaptive internet search algorithms and content curation make it the easiest it has ever been to vindicate your worldview with facts. This is a political discourse that has more in common with advertising than with any prior political order. This feeds back into itself, creating a more perverse side effect.

Our attention is adaptively curated to maximise our interest and mouse-clicks through algorithms designed to maximise exposure, advertising has changed from a media parasite to a symbiote. This means that political worldviews are insulated from each-other to exactly the same extent that they are evinced through public resources. A brief analysis of key terms in debate with this popular right shows that its imaginative background is illogical, held together more by affect than argumentation.

SJWs are gay white knights who want to have sex with women, but are also cucks that want to have sex with women they've protected by watching them have sex with an alpha who's better than them. Transgender rights activists are attempting to subvert freedom of speech by forcing us to use certain words, but all they want is attention and recognition. Those who side with either collection of ideas are just virtue signalling, despite their penetration of and influence over all levels of political activity. There are horrible postmodernists believing in the relativism of everything, destroying society's moral norms while absolutising them, appealing to our commonalities with the outdated ideologies of Marxism and state socialism.

Everything in political discourse has turned into a signal of consumer identity. Politics nevertheless affects a common reality to which no agent can access and no group can establish. Reality has been customised for the consumer.

To do progressive politics at this point is also to manage attention through the creation of viral content and volunteer cascades, this was why Corbyn and Sanders achieved the impossible.

This is a political discourse that has more in common with advertising than with any prior political order. — fdrake

Everything in political discourse has turned into a signal of consumer identity. Politics nevertheless affects a common reality to which no agent can access and no group can establish. Reality has been customised for the consumer. — fdrake

Yes, for the same reason people buy branded products of a lower value/price ratio than alternatives, the right buy low-value branded right-wing tropes (about SJWs or professors or whoever).They want to be sold the stereotypes because they're comforting, and now they've got their very own media that's only too happy to sell them to them in huge quantities (along with brain pills and gold apparently). It happens on the left too, but I don't see the same degree of delusion (as is apparent in this discussion) particularly regarding science, intellectuals and anything to do with social justice, which to those selling this anti-intellectual poison reduces down to nothing more sophisticated than the frightening prospect of other people feasting on their precious tax dollars.

It happens on the left too, but I don't see the same degree of delusion (as is apparent in this discussion) particularly regarding science, intellectuals and anything to do with social justice, which to those selling this anti-intellectual poison reduces down to nothing more sophisticated than the frightening prospect of other people feasting on their tax dollars. — Baden

I absolutely agree with this, though I have a caveat. We could pretty easily have an exchange like this, lamenting the right's irrationalities and anti-science attitudes, but politically what such a dialogue would be is two left cultists talking to each other. In our safe spaces or in good company sure, we could talk like this, but we shouldn't expect to convince anyone of anything without a huge emphasis on optics.

The prevalence of snake oil changes the contours of persuasion, we have to try and redeem certain features of commonality far more than we need to mock the ridiculousness of our opponents.

The prevalence of snake oil changes the contours of persuasion, we have to try and redeem certain features of commonality far more than we need to mock the ridiculousness of our opponents. — fdrake

I tend to agree and I'm happy to leave that (mostly) to the comedians. The reason I came into the conversation really was less to be on the offensive than to push back against the predictable recycling of the anti-SJW/lefty professor theme, which I find creeping outwards from the right, which pushes it relentlessly, and into acceptance in moderate circles (in the US. anyway).

Keep in mind, again, that I am not attempting to suggest that the article is correct. I did not read something, and believe it, I believed to have noticed something based on my first person interactions, and suggested this. I then just made a google search to demonstrate that I didn't seem to be the only one that noticed something.

I feel like some implicit accusations are being made towards imagined positioned I may hold, and ulterior motives for suggesting what I have, and the level of disgust and indignation is based in solely paranoia, I assure you.

As for disagreement that this is a genuine thing that is happening, or I am mistaken, that is perfectly fine, totally could be, but the implicit insinuations of political motivations for suggesting so are not worry of response.

I think we had much the same goal, it's very much 'on the offensive' to try and manipulate the Overton window. The real 'alt-right' has always done this, and uses free speech and our consumer ideology of the marketplace of ideas to spread. The difference between this alt-right and our popular right friends is that the alt-right knows it speaks in code.