About ten years ago, someone asked me why I was so strident in my opposition to “political correctness,” or what I have often described as “totalitarian humanism,” and which is now more commonly called “wokeness.” My response is that there are three basic reasons:

1) Anarchism is the political tradition with which I most closely identify, and which should be in the vanguard of the opposition to authoritarianism of any kind but, ironically,  PC culture is the most deeply entrenched in anarchist subcultures, which were once described as a Plato’s forms version of totalitarian humanism; 2) PC is a rising force in the general society and one which resembles authoritarian and totalitarian movements of the past, from theocracy to fascism to communism; 3) Worst of all, PC is being co-opted by the state and the rising sectors of the capitalist class as their latest self-legitimating ideology (now that nationalism, racism, religion, bourgeois conservatism, royalism, etc. are minority viewpoints or have gone out of style altogether) and utilized as an instrument of institutionalized repression. The failure of so many anarchists and libertarians to recognize this, with many even embracing it, often stridently or fanatically so, is the greatest contemporary failure of “anti-authoritarian” movements.

By Samantha Jones, New Discourses

I have a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies, but I’m not woke anymore. I write under a pseudonym because, if my colleagues were to find out about my criticisms of this field, I would be unable to find any employment in academia. That someone who critiques the axioms of a field of study feels compelled to write under an assumed name tells you everything you need to know about the authoritarianism underpinning this ideology. I no longer believe that the fundamental ideas of Women’s Studies, and of Critical Social Justice more generally, describe reality; they are at best partial explanations—hyperbolic ideology, not fact-based analysis. I have seen this ideology up close and seen how it consumes and even destroys people, while dehumanizing anyone who dissents.

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