How To Tell if Ideological Influencers Really Care About Disadvantage

"...And do black lives still matter? Or are we now supposed to dump that and concentrate on the 'Not all men but most men and we don't know which men so we have to fear all men and we'd better not say the actual words but that includes black men' campaign?"

Photo by Bob Leggitt.

Judging someone's character and motivations is sometimes more a matter of what you don't see than what you do. Ideological influencers claim to stand for the disadvantaged, but I've discovered a quick way to get a sense of whether they're really there to do that, or merely to use the concept of victimhood for personal gain.

The method entails searching for two keywords, relating to groups that have a very high incidence of disadvantage, and so should, theoretically, figure in the campaigning of someone who claims to be fighting disadvantage. The two keywords are:

Hidden Twitter: Suspensions and the Ideological U-Turn

"We're evidently seeing a new level of pretence somewhere along the line. It's a personality flatpack."

Photo by Akshar Dave on Unsplash.

Would you change who you are in order to win digital applause on Twitter? I don't mean be a bit more like this, or a bit more like that. I mean completely U-turn on your core self-definition, and effectively become the person you've been passionately opposing for the past five years.

Some people do. And it might be a lot more people than you think.

Why We Should Celebrate Cancel Culture

"They'd never come to your aid if the roles were reversed. They'd be the first to dance the dance of self-righteousness, on the grave of your career."

Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash.

We're becoming very familiar with the spectacle of celebrities popping up in media interviews with complaints about “cancel culture”, like it's the most catastrophic problem we face in the modern world. To them, in their bubbles of privilege, it probably is.

We're talking about people who have everything they want. People who can earn a year's luxury living expenses by making a 90 second TV commercial. And when given an opportunity to talk about current problems, they don't use it to express their disgust that they can't walk through their nearest city at night without finding people literally trying to sleep on the icy cold pavement. They use it to express their disgust that the huge privilege they enjoy could risk being reduced, if they are stupid enough to say something people find grossly offensive.