Millions of people around the world disagree with our campaigns. Some completely reject our aims; others favour a negotiated, watered down version, or are unhappy with our methods. Many more misunderstand us or don’t identify with the groups we represent, or simply fear change (a natural and sensible caution.)

We need to live with these people. Unless we intend to execute the lot of them, we will need to negotiate and compromise, persuade them.

Hostility and confrontation will only make sceptics more resistant to our suggestions. Wilfully browbeating anyone who interrogates our positions will damage them, our relationships with them, and the credibility of our campaigns. It will drive them into the arms of our opponents. 

I am reminded of the BLM activist who refused, on National TV, to condemn the rioting and looting that accompanied the protests after the death of George Floyd, because looting was less important than social justice.  (Mentioned in Jon Sopel’s UnPresidented, 2020, London: BBC Books.) This played perfectly into the narratives of the reactionary far right, who want to dismiss us all as nothing but violent thieves who threaten the very fabric of American society (e.g. property.) And there is a vindictive envy in the comment, that expresses hatred of a large portion, possibly the majority, of the ordinary American (potentially) voting public. Good luck winning public support with that attitude!

Activists force themselves to ceaseless battle. 

From Marxism, they have learned that society’s elites will fight hard to preserve their privileges, so only through a total over-throw of the old order can change be brought about. Activists seek out confrontation and refuse to compromise or negotiate. They think it’s weakness to shy away from conflict, no matter how exhausted they are. 

It’s a very unforgiving mind-set, as much for the activists themselves as for their targets. I wonder, as these campaigns originate in the United States, if the attitude has its roots in the ardent, self-sacrificing crusader-evangelism of American Christianity: “Fighting the good fight.”

In Whites: on Race and Other Falsehoods (2020, 4^th Estate) Otegha Uwagba says, “After George Floyd is killed, I am determined not to prioritise white comfort over truth.” She is recasting her natural conflict-avoidance as a form of oppressive conditioning. This is unfair on both herself and her society. Tact does not arise from a desire to make white people happy, but because no one likes a punch on the nose. Ms Uwagba is implying that, in a truly equal society, everyone would be at each other’s throats all the time. Presumably in a happy, carefree way. It’s a strange vision of utopia.

In fact, we don’t need to be trained to dislike blazing rows. We are social animals and our success as a species must surely come from our ability to communicate and cooperate, to overcome inevitable tensions and competition. These are necessary parts of any fruitful relationships. 

Of course, We can have passionate arguments with people we are close to, because they have invested in the connection and are willing to listen and forgive us afterwards. And we can usually trust them not to murder us! But even here, a lack of consideration for our friends’ feelings will degrade the relationship in the end. We need to feel cared for. 

Social Justice activists are dismissive of people who say, “why does everything have to be about race?” For people of colour, they claim, racial discrimination permeates every aspect of their lives. Only white people have the privilege of ignoring those issues.

They seem to despair of anyone ever being able to understand each other or forming healthy relationships across the racial lines they have identified. They see racial divisions as insurmountable. It’s a surprisingly defeatist attitude for such an assertive and dynamic creed. On a BBC 3 documentary, recently, I saw a young black man, in some distress, saying, “White people have no idea what it’s like to be black in Britain today. No idea.” To which I wanted to say, with sympathy and kindness, “All white people? How do you know this? Give us a chance, Honey, some of us might be more empathetic than you think.”

Instead, activists pursue conflict and try to win arguments, even though no one is ever persuaded to change sides by force of logic or rhetoric (or, indeed, by passion. Racism is illogical and emotional. As long as the Klansmen refuse to admit you are right, they win.) 

I’m not sure winning is even the point of Social Justice activism. Their thoughts on what to do with victory seem vaguer than a U.S. military exit strategy. Perhaps they both rely on the same foundational trope of western cultural narrative: destruction of your enemies automatically brings resolution. This message is reinforced by countless Hollywood westerns and revenge thrillers. 

Activists don’t seem to go into how we would practically build a functional, fairer society. Who needs to do what? I suspect their campaigns have been infected by the ego-centrism of the internet and social media. A good day’s work seems to involve staying true to yourself speaking your truth in the face of opposition. You don’t have to actually convince anyone, you are simply reinforcing your own identity by expressing yourself. 

So, it can seem, sometimes, as if Critical Race Theorists and the Far-Right are collaborating to divide society, as, by forcing everyone to take an extreme position, they can each recruit more fence-sitting humanists into their constituencies, and increase their personal power and influence. 

The divisive nature of the theory can be seen in Otegha Uwagba’s Whites: on Race and Other Falsehoods, when she takes fright at some clumsy and annoying, but relatively innocuous comments made to her by self-satisfied white progressives. (2020, London: 4^th Estate, pp42-47) They included somebody simply using the adjective “Aryan” to describe a Scandinavian beauty architype. Ms Uwagba later describes some genuinely troubling statements made by white people. However, these initial offenses make her seem hypersensitive. It is no wonder that her panic-stricken white friends, desperate not to offend, keep putting their feet in it. People are idiots and are continually upsetting, and coming into conflict with each other. It is naïve to assume that these tensions are generated by racist assumptions and that white people don’t experience such slights. They do. All the time. That’s life. That’s human beings. 

More worryingly, the following day Ms Uwagba went “to a Black friend’s birthday party, and I am pathetically grateful for its timing, and to be surrounded by other Black people, Black joy, Black children, Black food. It feels almost baptismal, like I am being washed clean of what happened the night before.” (p47) The author feels perfectly justified in revelling in a segregationist mindset, even to the extent of describing contact with white people as soiling, because she accepts the generalities of Ms DiAngelo’s brand of Critical Race theory. Her attitude is the result of discrimination by white people. It is their fault. They started it and Otegha Uwagba can’t be expected to resist her own social conditioning. (But, if so, why should white people?)

This attitude is also displayed when Ms Uwagba discusses what she’s learnt from talking to white people about race. This short, bullet-pointed list begins, “white people are generally happy to acknowledge racism, just as long as they don’t feel that they themselves are being accused of it.”

Once again, we have an acceptance of racial division, and the dismissing and condemnation of individuals based on assumptions about their racial characteristics, although Ms Uwagba implies white inadequacy is conditioned rather than innate.

To repeat myself: perhaps the true division in society is between the partisan racial extremists of either sort, the racists, and the moderates who are trying to reach out to each other, find common ground. 

David Olusoga reported, recently (in The Observer, I think) on how the council in Newcastle (I think) was proposing to add plaques to its Boer War memorial, to explain the colonial context and history of that conflict. This is the very solution to the statue-wars that some conservative commentators had suggest, as an alternative to removing and/or destroying embarrassing celebrations of past colonial crimes. Of course, this proposal is now being attacked by the conservative press as another example of the left’s attempt to destroy British culture and Heritage.

I suppose such a push-back was inevitable, but the right has been able to absorb this perfectly reasonable suggestion into their narrative of the culture wars with ease, because the radical left has collaborated with them in creating a landscape of conflict in the first place. The left were the people who conceived of society as being made up of alienated and unequal tribes who were at each other’s throats. If you emphasise our differences and turn resentment and revenge into virtues, you will create an environment of hostility and entrenched prejudice. How, then, will you persuade the privileged elites and majorities to relinquish power and foster hostility? By telling all white people they are privileged and racist, you are enacting a massive recruitment drive for the real racist organisations and attitudes.  

By saying unfair and intemperate things, activists are allowing themselves to be weaponised by their enemies. In paranoid moments, I wonder if they are government agents, paid to discredit us. 

It is deeply important that we always remind people we are the good guys and we know our opponents are too, at heart. We will not change the world by destroying those who oppose us, but by persuading them. The activists seem to completely forget this in an internet scramble to express themselves and be heard. 

In more thoughtful moments, I think these extremists are dupes: unpaid agents of the status quo, unaware of their complicity. Modern thinking is so saturated with consumerist individualism that it has infected even the radical left. They operate in the same intellectual framework. Behind their individual grievances and causes, their aspirations are almost identical to the capitalists’: the satisfaction of individual self-realisation and self-expression. Society, for them, is no longer what you are, it is the frame within which the individual grows. Community is the particular patch of an atomised society where you decide to root yourself because you hope it is the most likely to nourish your growth. It serves you as an individual and is home to your allies who are subordinate to you, more important for their number and power in the fight against others, than for any shared communion. 

Outside our communities, we see our world as a series of faceless and inhuman systems, against which we set ourselves by courageously speaking our personal truth. This an exercise in lonely alienation. But we have been prepared to see the world in these terms by an internet, and even by governments, that provide us with what (they say) we need, through inexplicable means and algorithms, requiring no understanding or involvement from us and by contributing only other our money and our acquiescence.  

In this way of thinking, to live well is to develop the solitary self. And developing, broadening, deepening the self is expansionist, imperialist. It means gaining something – experience, knowledge, political, philosophical and ethical theory, technological capacity and expertise: these are all forms of product, just as artefacts, fashion items, gadgets are. They all help to establish who you are. 

Gaining all of these is consumption and is increasingly monetised: you pay money to get them. You literally buy the t-shirt, put your money where your mouth is, text to contribute, giving over responsibility for what is actually to be done to other people. 

Modern activism is so vigorous because it is entirely compatible with modern markets. It surfs the crest of the tsunami of increasingly voracious capitalism as the forces that oppose it – collective identity and collaborative thinking; physical, real-world community; socialism; a sense of belonging – all dwindle. Activists are consumers. No wonder they unwittingly serve the markets. 

Stroud’s statue-gate is a very minor issue, and the local activists’ request is moderate. They seem motivated by a good-hearted desire to join a just struggle and make the world a better place (and, perhaps, to be recognised as doing so.)  I wonder why Ms Baillie has bothered to get involved. Her status as an MP gives her much greater clout than the private citizens she is attacking, and her criticisms are kind of personal. 

Perhaps she hopes her message will play well with her core support in this conservative constituency, who are probably alarmed by the extreme views of some Critical Race theorists. 

These wild statements are unrepresentative of the beliefs of most of the movement but, inevitably, they are the ones picked up by the press, where they justify and further radicalise right-wing opinion, and alienate many who might have been our allies. Most importantly, they allow conservatives to dismiss all efforts to improve our world as “wokery gone mad”, driven by a self-righteous and misanthropic desire for attention. 

A perfect example of such a strategic error is described in Jon Sopel’s UnPresidented (2021, BBC Books) when an American Black Lives Matter activist refuses to condemn looting that followed the death of George Floyd, because it is more important to combat social injustice than theft. 

No doubt the activist was relishing the pressure that might now be put on the government by property-owning Americans. Perhaps they liked the dashing figure they cut by refusing to bow to conventional morality. However, the looting and their response to it was a gift to Donald Trump and his far-right allies.  They could immediately dismiss all those who strive for justice and equality as opportunistic thieves and looters, persuading those that should be our allies that it is safer to allow them to maintain their monopoly on privilege and power. It always seems easier and safer to leave things as they are. 

We’ve previously discussed the horrible trolling of historians simply for researching the links between National Trust properties and slavery. (At the request of, and in collaboration with, that organisation.) Recent months have seen the rise of other right-wing warriors willing to engage in full-blooded culture wars. Siobhan Baillie, the conservative MP for Stroud, a market town in Gloucestershire, has attacked activists calling for the removal of an 18^th century statue of a black boy that stands above a clock on a listed building. (see bbc.co.uk/news: Racism Debate MP Says Controversial Statue Should Stay, 19/08/23)

The statue is clearly a racist, colonial stereotype of a slave boy, and the organisation Stroud Against Racism wants it put in a museum, because it is offensive to people of colour, such as Dan Guthrie, a local artist, who “plucked up the courage to complain” after Black Lives Matters activists threw the statue of the slaver Edward Colston in the harbour at Bristol. (The Guardian, Is Time Up for the ‘Blackboy’ Clock? Racism Row Divides Cotswold Town, 15/08/21)   

This statue seems relatively inoffensive. It is small and above eye-level, and probably not noticed by most people. Nobody now holds the attitudes embodied in it, so it is a relic of an embarrassing bygone age.

But it is also a piece of Stroud’s history, and to remove and sequester it in a museum would be to erode that history as a publicly owned property. That would be a pity. In a grumpy and unfairly critical mood I might wonder if Mr Guthrie truly needed to “pluck up courage” to complain to the council, or if his grievance only occurred to him after the publicity surrounding Edward Colston’s demise. He is, after all, a successful artist with a string of works that address “aspects of Black Britishness”, according to his website: not the sort to be intimidated by local council officers. I might wonder, also, if his supporters, in this affluent and overwhelmingly white town, are furiously virtue-signalling to dodge responsibility for, or complicity in, their racist heritage. 

HOWEVER, once Mr Guthrie and others had claimed to be upset by it, it is difficult to support fighting to retain this figure, and the activists do not want it destroyed, merely moved out of public sight – a reasonable request. 

Defenders of the statue’s current position need to ask what they are fighting for. Are they celebrating Britain’s colonial, slave-trading past? Are they standing up for their right to upset people and make them feel unwelcome and thus denied their British identity?

Being noticeably different and sometimes singled out is a burden that minority groups have to live with. It is unfair and tiresome and upsetting, but life isn’t fair. Yet the same could be said of Britain’s imperial history: while we are personally innocent, we must live with the burden of our colonial heritage. Whenever a member of a minority group voices an objection to some aspect of our heritage, history or culture, it is difficult for us to defend it, morally, no matter how precious or beneficial to our lives or sense of identity, no matter how much you suspect the objectors are destructive, self-righteous busy-bodies. That is our cross to bear. It’s like the wind turbines you see in areas of natural beauty. They look terribly out of place, all angular and mechanical and man-made, disrupting the landscape, but, in the wake of our wanton destruction of our own atmosphere and climate, what else can we do?

Social Justice activists can be alarmingly fierce in defence of their monopolies on righteous grievance, as Robin DiAngelo’s reference to Emmett Till demonstrates. 

The problem is that feminists, Critical Race theorists, trans activists, women in tears at diversity training events, even incels and the alt-right, are all vying for control of the same territory: that of wounded individualism. All are basing their assumptions on our societies’ most fundamental principles: the preciousness of the self and the supreme virtue of eudemonic self-realisation. All believe their inalienable rights, derived from these principles, are being denied.

Activists are highlighting unconscious bias leading to systemic discrimination. They point out how marginalised people can be relentlessly undermined by apparently small things which add up to serious psychological destruction. However, because their focus is on “micro-aggressions”, rather than acts of terrible violence, they can be accused of being over-sensitive flowers who cannot deal with the inevitable frictions we all face in dealing with other people. 

No one has time to attend to all human rights campaigns, and the fact that there are so many might suggest to our potential supporters that there is nothing unique about our troubles. Our messages could be lost in the cacophony of other complaints unless we establish a monopoly of suffering, or at least dominate a hierarchy. 

So, if a white woman accused of racism bursts into tears, Critical Race theorists fear she is muscling in on their territory of grievance. She is trying to position herself as the oppressed, and the Racial Justice activists as the domineering bullies. Ruby Hamad quotes a panellist of colour at the Sydney Writers’ Symposium, who encountered such an objection: “yet again, a good convo was derailed, white people centred themselves, and a POC panel was told to police it’s [sic] tone to make their message palatable to a white audience. (The Guardian, 07/05/2018) 

I assume the convo had been good, up to this point, because nobody had challenged the activist’s argument; the reason it was no longer good was that somebody was interrogating her position, even though such activism works by speaking out in the face of opposition: “speaking truth to power”. 

Social Justice activists feel these challenges must be emphatically crushed because they are vulnerable to them. This is presumably why Robin DiAngelo resorts to such an extreme and traumatic example as a racist lynching. She needs to establish people of colour as having suffered more than the women who question her, especially if they are being comforted by black men, her core constituency. Her ingenious solution is to use their very blackness to defeat them, which sounds to me very like a traditional white woman’s put down of her social inferiors. 

But all these shenanigans weaken and discredit the social justice movements. Rather than building consensus, they divide groups that should be working together. Attacking each other seems hypocritical. It seems selfish to dismiss any form of inequality other than the one you suffer from. Games of indignation top trumps, involving activists literally saying, “You think it’s hard being a woman? Try being a Black woman…” look embarrassingly childish – playground politics. It sounds pathetic and inappropriate to label tiresome and persistent slights as “trauma” and “pain”, words that are meant for grievous physical harm.  

All this is a gift to the far-right. It justifies claims of “Wokery Gone Mad” that are then used to undermine much more serious and constructive attempts to redress society’s inequalities. 

Racial Justice activists feel particularly threatened by liberal humanism because that doctrine challenges their monopoly on moral outrage. Humanists claim they should be judged on their own merits, rather than as faceless units in statistical injustices. As they aren’t, personally, race-haters, there is no argument to be had. They can go back to sleep. 

How can activists respond to this argument, when the egalitarian principle, that every individual has equal merit and worth, underpins their own grievance?  Their right to be heard relies on everyone accepting that principle. But if they admit the humanists’ point, Critical Race theory loses all traction. It is hard to create consensus for change if you attack institutions but excuse the people working for those institutions. Coercive accusations of complicity have proved to be the most effective weapon in the Social Justice arsenal. Without it, it could be reduced from a “mass movement” to just another protest group. 

So, to rebuff the humanists, Critical Race theorists must present their most vigorous and inventive arguments. A good example of this is what they call “white tears.” I first encountered this terrifying concept in the work of Ruby Hamad, an Australian journalist who has written a book called White Tears Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Colour (2020, London: Trapeze.)

The idea is that when women feel attacked and mistreated, it is socially acceptable for them to burst into tears. They are demonstrating that they are subordinate members of society and are appealing for support and protection from the more powerful members because they are being oppressed and bullied.

This is particularly difficult for Critical Race Activists to deal with, because their practice relies on establishing a monopoly on grievance and dismissing everybody else as privileged. (Hence the condemnation of feminism, with its own, equally justifiable, grievances.) By appealing to our egalitarian concern for the individual, tearful women are turning the tables on the activists by claiming they are the ones being wronged. 

To neutralise this challenge, Racial Justice warriors claim white tears are an attempt to silence them and deny their truth, so crying is a form of racism! This leads to the strange situation where activists can call somebody a racist bitch, and then claim to be the victims of racist oppression when they cry. 

This seems to be a justification of all trolling.  It is no different from a neo-Nazi claiming their first amendment right to freedom of speech to spout their hate-filled poison. 

But Robin DiAngelo takes it even further. In White Fragility, she acknowledges that white tears are such a powerful liberal humanist tool that Black men sometimes leap to the defence of the weeper. They do this, she claims, because of the memory of Emmett Till, murdered by a lynch mob in 1955 for offending a white woman! In other words, these Black men don’t think Ms DiAngelo is being unreasonable and are liberated and confident enough to tell her so. They are enslaved uncle Toms who are so cowed by the threat of white women’s enacted distress that they will say anything to make it go away!

Ms. DiAngelo is supposed to be advocating for oppressed black folk, yet she dismisses these Black men in the most belittling and racist manner for daring to disagree with her, for not toeing the party line on race that she has imposed on them. A Critical Race theorist again uses the assumptions and practices of racism to condemn racism.