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Charges of Micro-aggression are Examples of Micro-totalitarianism
In his NRO piece today, Thomas Sowell provides a brilliant and powerful response to the “micro-aggression” meme that is sweeping our nation’s college campuses. Sowell contends that answering a comment or idea with charges of “micro-aggression” is nothing more than an attempt to shut down discussion without having to provide a reasoned counter-argument. Worse, such charges imply that one’s opponent is guilty of a form of “verbal violence” that might justify actual violence in response.
The concept of “microaggression” is just one of many tactics used to stifle differences of opinion by declaring some opinions to be “hate speech,” instead of debating those differences in a marketplace of ideas. To accuse people of aggression for not marching in lockstep with political correctness is to set the stage for justifying real aggression against them.
Sowell makes a convincing case that those wielding these accusations are themselves guilty of “micro-totalitarianism.” His descriptive label vividly lays bare this shameful attempt at thought control – the left’s demonization of, and in some cases criminalization of, dissent.
Published in Culture, Education
A good insight from Tom Sowell, as usual. “Micro-totalitarianism” is a useful neologism.
Let’s use it.
Micro-totalitarianism is liberal fascism writ small.
Richard,
I’d read this earlier this morning. Great piece. Thom Sowell knows well about what he speaks. It is the perfect phrase to coin in response to them, Micro-totalitarianism. Their attempt to control campus speech is just that.
I’ve tried to make fun of prissy pc nonsense by coining the phrase micro-genocide. From ISIS to the Taliban and now the Mexican drug gangs we are seeing micro-genocides with video nearly every week. Meanwhile, the pc crowd wants to curl up in fetal position in their safe space. They need a nice cooler full of ice water dumped on them.
Regards,
Jim
I was thinking we should just add enough to the list of microagressions to make discourse of any kind impossible. Frankly, “good morning” can be offensive if you’re in a bad mood.
In 1989 I was starting law school at the University of Minnesota. There was some PC-based kerfuffle going on in the Scandinavian languages department which was receiving lots of coverage in “The Minnesota Daily” (campus newspaper). What I remember best was a story about the allegation that an older male professor had “said ‘good morning’ in a non-supportive tone” to one of the female professors.
People call this “fly-over country,” but we’re waaaaay out ahead of ya.
I thought the piece was oddly disjointed and unfocused for Sowell.
Also, microaggressions were so last year. SJWs no longer even bother to accuse people of “micro” anymore. Everything is macroaggression.
But this is just “thought police” by another name, and needs to be called out as such.
Of course, you can’t shame the left. Accuse them of being thought police, and they’ll stare and blink and wonder why that’s a bad thing.
No, microaggressions are more relevant than ever because the academic nonsense has begun to seep into university administrations — Napolitano’s recent diktat was the inspiration for Sowell’s column — and even corporate HR departments. Last year, my wife came home from work after a mandatory anti-harassment training session and asked if I had ever heard of microaggressions.
There’s nothing micro about their totalitarianism.
Bottomline: Microaggression just like all the Left’s claims to victimhood are weapons of control. Not employed to just, “…stifle differences of opinion…” but to attack and destroy their enemy… the free-thinker, the conservative, us.
Agree wholeheartedly. Sadly, this is why retaliation is necessary. Overwhelm the system with every complaint you can manage. You really can’t have a rational argument with people who think that every disagreement is, per se, a violation of the university’s rules.
Although I do wonder…If “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” is a microagression (actually on the University of California list), does that mean “I believe less qualified African-Americans should get the job” is OK? That seems wrong and exactly what the rules call for.
Is there anything smaller, anything less courageous, anything more infantile, than a man (or a woman) who charges another with a “micro-aggression”? Is there an elementary school playground monitor around to step in to adjudicate this dispute?
Can you imagine the scandal in Sartre’s own salon if some skiddish middle-brow hat-in-hand bureaucratic pseudo-bourgeois slinked in to whine about micro-aggressions? Can we really imagine Virginia Woolf coining so antiseptic a term?
Oh you Lilliputians. Oh you micro-last men.
Micro-Tyranny is the term we should use in public. A lot of people don’t even know what the world totalitarianism even means. Well over half the population I would guess.