Here’s where I disagreed with the article, up until this point I was completely with you. This can become a full time job (and is) for some people. Part of the reason I left Twitter was this exact thing. The boundaries of what counts as racist, ablist or offence are subjective and forever evolving and changing. In many ways this looks like progress, in reality it’s retrogressive.
Liberalism has become an individual game of one-up-manship. Or One-Up-Person-Ship (as the former is now presumably offensive), in which offence on behalf of others is weaponised and used as a tool to enforce the social contract. What ensues is either an argument or an apology circle-jerk in which everyone promises to learn the error of their ways and become a better and more compassionate person. It’s facile and boring to watch and the internet is awash with it.
Discipline can only work if it’s coordinated and consistent. You can’t have discipline in a constantly changing and shifting environment. Because societal ideals are now debated online in real time between interest groups, there’s no time for people to adapt and therefore there can be no discipline.
Yes, other people’s views are sometimes unpleasant — but if you’re seeing facist oppression every time you leave your house, you’re going to miss the actual facists pervading through society. A constant and inconsistent policing of the social contract is pushing lots of people in the centre ground to the political right and that’s worrying. The blame can be shared equally between good clear messages coming from the right and the rise of intolerant tolerance in the liberal left. People are preaching tolerance, but any attempt to question the tolerant ideology is met with aggressive intolerance. Check out GEN as an example of this lefty-liberal intolerant echo-chamber. Read from a neutral or centre ground perspective and it sounds just as right wing as the Alt-Right.
This is why liberals can’t offer anything other than a tokenistic challenge to the existing narrative. This particularly true of young and passionate liberals. They’re too busy shooting each other down and arguing about the minutiae in their fictionalised utopian society to notice that they’re helping to build the dystopia they theoretically oppose.
