{I recently devoted several posts to “cultural Marxism,” “the Frankfurt School,” and “critical theory,” trying to understand why they have become flashpoints in today’s culture wars. I now want to look at the equally incendiary phrase “Social Justice Warriors,” hoping to discover why it is commonly deployed as a term of opprobrium.}
“When I hear the words ‘social justice,’ I reach for my gun.” *
What do Cultural Marxists, critical theorists, postmodernists, and deconstructionists have in common, aside from the fact that they are rarely found anywhere other than on college campuses? The answer is, they all pursue an elusive grail they call “social justice,” for which pursuit they have earned the appellation “Social Justice Warriors” (aka “SJWs”) as testament to their fierce and unfailing dedication to the cause.
SJWs have their critics, though, as the following random sampling of news headlines, YouTube videos, and Fox News tidbits indicates:
Wall Street Journal: “Social-Justice Warriors Won’t Listen, but You Should”
Observer: “The Totalitarian Doctrine of ‘Social Justice Warriors’”
Rod Dreher, The American Conservative: “COVID Will Not Kill Social Justice Warriors”
Rod Dreher, The American Conservative: “SJWs As Bourgeois Bolshies”
Law and Liberty: “The War on Satire, Brought to You by Social Justice Warriors”
Jordan Peterson (YouTube): “The Unconscious Mind of the SJW”
Jordan Peterson (YouTube): “How to Keep the SJWs at Bay”
Fox News: “Bill Maher Scolds Social Justice Warriors”
Fox News: “William Shatner: Social Justice Warriors Stand for Inequality”
For the most part, it is political and social conservatives who disapprove of “Social Justice Warriors”. This may come as a surprise; you would think conservatives, of all people, would be supportive of ideological zealotry, since it was conservative icon Barry Goldwater who declared that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Attendees at the 1964 Republican national convention, most of them conservatives by anyone’s estimate, cheered wildly for Goldwater’s defiant stance. Is "pursuit of justice" so very different from "pursuit of social justice"?
Apparently it is; to begin with, a lot depends on the red wheelbarrow your definition of “social justice”. Critics say that the phrase itself is impossibly vague and therefore meaningless, but SJWs retort that “social justice” is no less meaningful than “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Wikipedia does its Wiki-best to clarify the matter:
Social justice is a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society, as measured by the distribution of wealth, opportunities for personal activity, and social privileges. 1
As straightforward as that definition may seem, it puts us in hotly contested territory: redistribution of wealth is a deal-breaker for conservatives, who also consider “social privileges” to be a fanciful invention of Cultural Marxists.
Perhaps we should ask Wikipedia about “Social Justice Warrior” instead:
Social justice warrior (SJW) is a pejorative term for an individual who promotes socially progressive views, including feminism, civil rights, and multiculturalism. The accusation that somebody is an SJW implies that they are pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction and engaging in disingenuous arguments.
"Social Justice Warrior" is pejorative in the same sense that "compassionate conservative" is an oxymoron, which is to say, only people seeking to disparage political foes see it that way. Those who employ "SJW" in this fashion are adding an ad hominem charge of insincerity to whatever legitimate disagreements they might have about “social justice”. According to this pejorative view, SJWs can be dismissed out of hand without engaging their arguments, since their arguments are merely a cover for their pursuit of “personal validation,” whatever that means.
We can only wonder: are all SJWs guilty as charged of bad faith? Do any of them believe their own rhetoric or care about the issues? Can one be a Social Justice Advocate rather than a Social Justice Warrior, and would that be any better? Why are the motives of SJWs suspect but not the motives of their detractors?
Given how fraught the term is these days, it is easy to forget that the modern concept of “social justice” is associated with Catholicism; the Catholic Church, in response to the pressures of modernity, has felt it necessary over the past two centuries to spell out (as much as possible) its views on what constitute morally defensible social structures and morally defensible social relationships. Contemporary Catholic “social thought” is by no means identical to any single “social justice” agenda, but there is a striking family resemblance. Dorothy Day, for example, would certainly have qualified as an SJW had the term existed in her day.
What, then, does the Catholic Church mean by “social justice”? The staunch Catholics at the University of Notre Dame's “Center for Social Concerns” are happy to provide particulars. While the Center’s broad statement of principles unavoidably includes some theistic language (remember, they're Catholics!) the principles themselves align closely with secular notions of “social justice”. For convenience, I have emboldened the basic principles in the following text:
It is important to see the principles as intimately connected yet standing on their own. The foundational principle is the common good based on the understanding in Catholic social thought that persons are created as social beings, always in interrelationship and interdependence with others. Catholic social thought also promotes the dignity of every human being, as each is made in the image and likeness of God, but this dignity always needs to be seen in relationship to the promotion of the common good.
Human dignity grounds and is protected by a spectrum of human rights and corresponding duties. This principle of the correlation of rights and duties promotes just living conditions for all as well as the dignity of work and the rights of workers. Many persons, though, are marginalized in our society and all are called to make an option for the poor, keeping those who are economically poor in the forefront of our minds in all decision-making.
As stewards of God’s creation, both in terms of people and the earth, we need to face the environmental concerns of our day, which disproportionately affect the economically poor. In response to how decisions are made to address the challenges in each of the spheres of society, the principle of subsidiarity calls for action at the lowest level possible. 2
The devil is always in the details, but I suspect that most people would find the basic tenets outlined above to be unobjectionable. Critics of “social justice” (as currently promulgated) must detect in it something nefarious that the rest of us do not; those critics deserve a chance to be heard, and my next post will provide them that chance.
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*Possibly apocryphal, usually attributed to the ghost of Hanns Johst (not to be confused with the ghost of Tom Joad).
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior
2 https://socialconcerns.nd.edu/content/introduction-principles-catholic-social-thought
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