So, personally, I think the sea change happened around six years ago, when criticism of this behavior started going mainstream.
In a society where 100% of the population is racist, nobody criticizes racism.
In a society where 0% of the population is racist - and, well, see, here's the thing: I can't actually say nobody will criticize racism, particularly if that society had racists in the past. But I'd guess to actually achieve 0% racism, racism has to be irrelevant to society, so I'm going to kind of handwave here and say that, for our purposes, a society with no racists doesn't criticize racism.
So the peak criticism of racism does not happen when there are the most racists, 100%, nor when there are the least. Where exactly would we expect criticism of racism to peak?
Naively we might say when 50% of society is racist. But I don't think this is right, because if 5% of society is racist, that gives society enough racists for criticism of racism to make sense, while being close to maximizing the number of people who -want- to criticize racism.
That is - the preponderance of criticism of an ideology must be inversely proportional to the actual popularity of that ideology, but temporally proximal to peak popularity. (Eventually people move on to something else to criticize.) So, looking around, it appears to me that we're not just post-peak-social-justice, but also post-peak-criticism-of-social-justice. Queue up the next thing everybody gets mad about.
Also- interesting what you said about the epithet ‘right wing reactionary.’ I’m not a right wing reactionary. I have always been left of left- which *left* me feeling lost and confused when people started calling me a right wing reactionary. It’s just another way of saying ‘shut up, I’m not prepared to listen to what you have to say because I never listen to anyone I don’t already agree with.’
A Sea Change on the Left?
So, personally, I think the sea change happened around six years ago, when criticism of this behavior started going mainstream.
In a society where 100% of the population is racist, nobody criticizes racism.
In a society where 0% of the population is racist - and, well, see, here's the thing: I can't actually say nobody will criticize racism, particularly if that society had racists in the past. But I'd guess to actually achieve 0% racism, racism has to be irrelevant to society, so I'm going to kind of handwave here and say that, for our purposes, a society with no racists doesn't criticize racism.
So the peak criticism of racism does not happen when there are the most racists, 100%, nor when there are the least. Where exactly would we expect criticism of racism to peak?
Naively we might say when 50% of society is racist. But I don't think this is right, because if 5% of society is racist, that gives society enough racists for criticism of racism to make sense, while being close to maximizing the number of people who -want- to criticize racism.
That is - the preponderance of criticism of an ideology must be inversely proportional to the actual popularity of that ideology, but temporally proximal to peak popularity. (Eventually people move on to something else to criticize.) So, looking around, it appears to me that we're not just post-peak-social-justice, but also post-peak-criticism-of-social-justice. Queue up the next thing everybody gets mad about.
Also- interesting what you said about the epithet ‘right wing reactionary.’ I’m not a right wing reactionary. I have always been left of left- which *left* me feeling lost and confused when people started calling me a right wing reactionary. It’s just another way of saying ‘shut up, I’m not prepared to listen to what you have to say because I never listen to anyone I don’t already agree with.’
Kier you’re a fucking legend mate. Good on you.