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The Crowd's Dangerous Derangement
We are experiencing a great crowd derangement. Invisible tripwires have been laid across our culture, waiting for unsuspecting victims to stumble into them. Some walk blindly into these cultural minefields, while others march deliberately into the no-man's land, seemingly eager for the explosion. After each detonation, the world briefly erupts in dispute before moving on, accepting another casualty of our improvisatory value system.
Douglas Murray's "The Madness of Crowds" has become a cultural touchstone since its 2019 publication, sparking intense debate across political lines. The book has been praised by figures ranging from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Sullivan, while simultaneously drawing fierce criticism from progressive publications. Its examination of identity politics has made it required reading in certain academic and political circles, with its warnings about the dangers of group-based thinking resonating particularly strongly in our increasingly polarized society.
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The Gay Paradox: From Equality to Something More
The tripwires of our cultural minefield have become increasingly clear. Homosexuality was the first to emerge. After winning tremendous victories for equality, the movement morphed and expanded in unexpected ways. What began as GLB became LGB, then rapidly added T, Q, and more letters. In victory, the movement began behaving like its former opponents once did. Gay marriage transformed from widely opposed to a foundational liberal value almost overnight, with disagreement now placing one beyond acceptable society.
This shift created curious contradictions. When people come out as gay, they're celebrated for reaching their natural end-point, but if someone who identified as gay later identifies as straight, they face ostracism and suspicion. A straight person becoming gay is seen as settling into their true self, while a gay person becoming straight is viewed with permanent doubt. Our culture has shifted from strongly favoring straightness to mildly favoring gayness.
Screenwriter Russell T. Davies recognized this when he created "Bob and Rose" (2001) about a gay man falling in love with a woman, noting that gay men who went straight often received more resentment from friends than straight men who came out as gay. This direction of traffic remains largely unaddressed because many gay people find the suggestion that sexuality might be fluid threatening - it echoes the dreaded phrase "it's only a phase."
The "born this way" theory has gained cultural acceptance despite inconclusive scientific evidence. While fascinating work in epigenetics has sought to locate genetic variations associated with homosexuality, the "gay gene" remains elusive. This search itself is politically charged - religious conservatives prefer it not be found, while many gay people hope for biological validation. The potential consequences of such a discovery raise troubling questions about genetic editing and selection.
Research into evolutionary aspects of homosexuality has largely disappeared from academic discourse, with scientists reluctant to pursue questions in such politically sensitive territory. As one researcher studying homosexuality in sheep discovered when facing massive backlash, the waters around this subject are now "deep and perilous."
A profound ideological divide exists within gay identity itself. One camp believes gays should demonstrate they're "just like everybody else" - pursuing monogamy, marriage, picket fences and children. The opposing "queer" perspective rejects assimilation, viewing same-sex attraction as merely the first step in a radical journey that should challenge societal norms rather than conform to them.
This tension has persisted from early gay liberation movements through AIDS activism and continues in today's Pride marches, where calls for equality mingle with exhibitionism that many gays themselves find counterproductive. As Andrew Sullivan noted, gay rights demonstrations are "always undermined by irony, or exhibitionism, or irresponsibility" - a stark contrast to the moral clarity of Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights movement.
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The Marxist Foundations of Identity Politics
The social justice ideology driving modern identity politics has clear Marxist foundations. Just as traditional Marxism positioned capitalism at the top of an oppression pyramid with workers at the bottom, today's version places white, heterosexual males at the top oppressing minorities below. This ideology emerged from academia, where studies have shown significant percentages of professors in social sciences identify as "Marxist" (18%), "activist" (21%), or "radical" (24%).
The intellectual framework draws heavily from thinkers like Michel Foucault, who viewed all human interactions through the prism of "power," Antonio Gramsci's notion of culture as a "hegemonic force," and the deconstructionist approaches of French literary theory. Through specialized academic departments like "queer studies," "women's studies," and "black studies," these theories worked to dismantle fixed certainties, including biological ones. Judith Butler's influential work argued gender was merely a "social construct" and "reiterated social performance" rather than biological reality, while similar arguments were made about race.
In 1988, Peggy McIntosh published "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," which listed fifty claimed "daily effects of white privilege" and introduced the concept of "interlocking oppressions" - essentially bringing together various grievance studies departments. Though simplistic, this framework called for "raising consciousness" about privilege and redistributing power along different lines.
Meanwhile, post-Marxist thinkers like Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe recognized in their widely-cited 1985 work "Hegemony and Socialist Strategy" that traditional Marxism's focus on class struggle needed modification to incorporate "new political subjects" including women, racial, and sexual minorities. They acknowledged that capitalism hadn't collapsed as predicted but argued these new social movements could be useful for advancing socialist struggle, despite the contradictions and complexities this might introduce.
The practitioners of intersectionality have proven remarkably comfortable inhabiting an ideological space filled with contradictions. Unlike scientists who must communicate complex ideas clearly, social justice theorists employ deliberately obstructive writing styles. Judith Butler's famously impenetrable prose serves as camouflage - "Prose this bad can only occur when the author is trying to hide something."
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Women: Equal, Better, or Different?
Women are caught in a paradoxical position of being simultaneously viewed as exactly the same as men and yet somehow better. This contradiction manifests in figures like Christine Lagarde, who frequently claimed that "if it had been Lehman Sisters rather than Lehman Brothers, the world might well look a lot different today." Following the 2008 financial crisis, public figures like TV host Fern Britton received applause for suggesting women would have managed money better through "old-fashioned house-keeping," while Liberal Democrat Lynne Featherstone blamed men for "the mess the world is in." This contradictory thinking-that women are equal to men in capability yet superior in judgment-has become deeply embedded in society despite being poorly thought through.
Hollywood's contradictory sexual politics reveals our society's confusion about gender roles. In 2011, at the Independent Spirit Awards, Paul Rudd groped Eva Mendes's breast while Rosario Dawson grabbed Rudd's crotch in what was presented as comedic "equal opportunity" sexual harassment. The entertainment industry operated under different standards, exemplified by Roman Polanski being celebrated despite fleeing child rape charges. This confusion between libertinism and prudery continued with Drew Barrymore's 1995 flashing of David Letterman being fondly remembered even in 2018, and Jane Fonda sexually harassing Stephen Colbert in 2007 being described as "awesome" by media. Only after the 2017 MeToo movement did attitudes suddenly shift, revealing the inconsistency in how society views sexual boundaries.
Actress Mayim Bialik's contradictory behavior exemplifies women's mixed messages about sexuality. After flashing Piers Morgan on television to audience applause, she later claimed modesty protected her from harassment. This inconsistency reflects broader cultural confusion where women simultaneously use their bodies for attention while demanding respect. The marketplace reveals this tension through products like fake nipples advertised as "weapons of mass destruction" and "camel toe underwear" designed to enhance sexual features. When Jordan Peterson questioned workplace makeup norms as sexually provocative, he faced intense backlash despite merely pointing out uncomfortable truths about sexual signaling.
Modern feminist rhetoric has taken a hostile turn, with slogans like "Men are trash" becoming commonplace. The anti-male lexicon has expanded to include concepts like "male privilege," "mansplaining," "the patriarchy," and "toxic masculinity"-all of which have moved from academic fringes into mainstream discourse. The American Psychological Association even released guidelines claiming traditional masculinity traits like stoicism, competitiveness, and risk-taking are harmful, without addressing whether these traits might sometimes be beneficial or how men should selectively suppress them.
The fundamental confusion in gender relations stems from a remarkable reversal: while gay activists successfully argued homosexuality was "hardware" (innate, unchangeable), feminist theory simultaneously pushed in the opposite direction, arguing that biological sex-the most basic hardware of human existence-was merely "software" or "reiterated social performances." This attempt to redefine sex as non-biological has undermined feminism itself while causing immense pain for both men and women.
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The Digital Acceleration of Madness
Our current societal confusion is accelerated by technology that propels us in wrong directions at exponential speeds. Like James Thurber's 1913 story of an entire Ohio town fleeing a nonexistent dam break, social media creates daily stampedes of moral panic and public shaming. These digital witch hunts reward bullies and serve social media business models, while participants rarely question why they're running or where they're headed.
We've dramatically underestimated the internet's long-term impact on society. Social media has erased the distinction between public and private language, becoming an effective tool for embedding new dogmas while crushing dissenting opinions precisely when they're most needed. The communications revolution may ultimately make the printing press seem like a mere footnote in history.
We're struggling to navigate a world where any statement might be broadcast globally and preserved eternally, forcing us to speak and act as though always before a universal audience, knowing any mistake will be accessible everywhere, forever. This environment makes sustaining principles in public nearly impossible, as any principle that doesn't work identically for everyone will immediately face criticism from those disadvantaged by it.
The political atmosphere in Silicon Valley leans dramatically leftward, with social justice activism being the default setting for employees at major tech companies. These companies screen applicants through ideological tests, particularly around diversity issues. Despite this virtue signaling, their own workforces fail to reflect their stated values - Google's staff is only 4% Hispanic and 2% African-American, while Asians (35%) are significantly overrepresented compared to the US population.
The tech industry has embedded social justice ideology at such a fundamental level that it creates a new layer of societal distortion. Google's search algorithms demonstrate this through biased results that don't reflect historical reality or user intent. Searches for "European Art" prioritize black subjects far beyond their historical prevalence, while "Western people art" returns primarily images of black and Native American subjects. Search results show clear ideological manipulation: "White men" returns crime photos and anti-white messaging, while "Black men" shows only positive portraits. This pattern reveals deliberate human intervention beyond mere "fairness" algorithms, targeting specific demographic searches with politically motivated results.
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Race: From Color-Blindness to Color-Obsession
When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of his dream that people would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," he offered the most eloquent defense of how human beings should treat each other. Yet today, an insidious current has developed that rejects King's vision, insisting instead that skin color is everything. While white supremacism faces universal condemnation, the greatest backsliding on King's dream comes from those who believe themselves to be anti-racists, who have turned race from one important issue into something more important than anything else.
Black studies emerged in American universities in the 1960s as a way to de-stigmatize black history and educate people about crucial aspects of black culture and literature. However, just as racial equality was improving, a newly fervent rhetoric entered the discipline. Like feminism's shift from celebrating women to vilifying men, portions of black studies began attacking non-black people. This led to the development of "whiteness studies," now taught at Ivy League universities and institutions worldwide. Unlike other identity studies that celebrate their subjects, whiteness studies explicitly aims to "problematize whiteness" and presumes "a certain condition of racism connected to white supremacy."
Entertainment has become a battleground for race obsession. When Netflix released "Altered Carbon," Time magazine immediately criticized the casting of Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman as a character who had previously inhabited an Asian body, calling it "retrograde" and "problematic" despite being faithful to the source material.
What's maddening is that the desirable destination of color-blind casting had nearly been reached. For decades, actors like Adrian Lester played roles like Henry V at the Royal Shakespeare Company without controversy. Similarly, Black opera singers like Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman performed roles by Strauss, Verdi, and Wagner without racial objection. But today, racial characteristics have become paramount in casting decisions, superseding talent and ability.
The regression in casting practices is alarming. In 2018, Sierra Boggess withdrew from performing as Maria in West Side Story at the BBC Proms after social media outrage over a white woman playing a Puerto Rican character. Despite the fictional nature of the role and its creation by Jewish composers, Boggess capitulated, apologizing for "denying Latinas the opportunity" and pledging to be "a voice for change."
The logical solution to racial division would be blurring boundaries by sharing cultural elements across groups. But this ambition was preemptively crushed by the concept of "cultural appropriation" - originating in post-colonial studies and spreading from campus to society. Portland, Oregon has become the testing ground for this madness, where a woman's "Saffron Colonial" bistro faced mob protests until she changed the name, and a non-Mexican couple received death threats for selling burritos from their food truck.
We're attempting to run contradictory social programs simultaneously. One celebrates accessing and appreciating elements from every culture, while another polices cultural boundaries with ever-shifting rules determined by whoever shouts loudest. We recognize race and culture aren't identical, yet treat "appropriating" someone's culture as racist aggression.
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The Forgiveness Crisis
Social media has created problems we've barely begun to understand, particularly the collapse of barriers between private and public language. The most profound issue is that our technology seems capable of causing catastrophes without providing mechanisms to heal them - it can wound but not remedy. The phenomenon of "public shaming" exemplifies this troubling dynamic.
The Quinn Norton case demonstrates how swiftly reputations can be destroyed by social media. Hired by The New York Times, Norton was fired just seven hours later when old tweets surfaced showing her using slurs in what she later explained was "context collapse" - private language meant for specific communities becoming public without its original context. The mob gravitates toward the most appalling version of someone's life, with no regulatory body to appeal to when millions have participated in your public shaming.
The internet never forgets, creating a world where non-crimes have permanent consequences with no court of appeal. This is especially troubling when social norms and acceptable language constantly shift. Studies show increased anxiety and depression among young people - a reasonable response to a world whose complexities have multiplied while providing no mechanisms for redemption.
Hannah Arendt observed that human actions have unbounded consequences in a "web of relationships" where "every action touches off not only a reaction but a chain reaction." While we cannot undo what we've done, forgiveness is the essential tool that prevents us from being "confined to one single deed from which we could never recover." Without forgiveness, we remain "victims of consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer's apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell."
Historical forgiveness once relied on forgetting - memories faded, details blurred, and eventually both victims and perpetrators died. But the internet prevents this natural process, making the past perpetually present. Even settled matters can be unsettled, as when Manchester University students painted over Kipling's "If" because of his colonial views. We judge historical figures harshly, forgetting that they didn't know how history would unfold.
We've created a world where forgiveness has become nearly impossible. Nietzsche foresaw people inheriting concepts of guilt, sin and shame without the redemption mechanisms Christianity offered. Today, we face consequences we never imagined, with no means of redemption. We don't know who can offer forgiveness, who can accept it, or whether it's even desirable compared to endless cycles of denunciation.
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The Transgender Tipping Point
Every era performs acts that future generations find morally stupefying. It's worth wondering what our blind spots might be - what practices might our descendants condemn as we now condemn the slave trade or child chimney sweeps? The treatment of transgender individuals may be one such area, where kindness and medical intervention sometimes lead to tragic outcomes.
Gender ambiguity isn't new or strange - most cultures throughout history have acknowledged and accommodated it. From Ovid's Tiresias to India's Hijras, Thailand's Kathoey to Samoa's fa'afafine, societies have recognized people who exist between or cross gender boundaries. Even regions hostile to homosexuality often permit some category of gender-crossing, like Afghanistan's Bacha posh or Iran's state-sanctioned sex-change operations.
Intersex conditions are relatively common, with approximately one in 2,000 American children born with indeterminate sexual organs and one in 300 requiring specialist referral. For decades, Johns Hopkins University followed a model of examining such children, determining which sex was more prevalent or easier to fit them into, and treating them with surgery and hormones. This approach has been challenged in recent years, particularly by bioethicist Alice Dreger who advocated against early surgery (often done to satisfy parents) and for greater public understanding.
The trans spectrum ranges from provable biological conditions (intersex) to those with no physical evidence beyond personal testimony. While intersex is biologically verifiable, trans may eventually prove to have psychological or biological markers, but currently we have limited understanding of which field it might fall under. This creates a complex terrain where the line between "hardware" issues and "software" issues remains unclear.
The lack of conclusive biological evidence has led some to view transgender identity as delusional, even as society increasingly accepts trans people's self-identification. The year 2015 marked a watershed moment when Caitlyn Jenner came out as transgender, appearing on the cover of Vanity Fair with the headline "Call me Caitlyn." This followed TIME magazine's 2014 cover featuring Laverne Cox, declaring transgender rights "America's Next Civil Rights Frontier."
The rapid acceptance of trans rights may stem from the perception that it's the new civil rights frontier, with people fearing being on the "wrong side of history." While there are similarities to gay rights-both involve self-identification-there's a crucial difference: transitioning involves permanent, irreversible changes. Those urging caution aren't necessarily denying trans existence but expressing concern about life-altering decisions, particularly for children experiencing what might be a phase.
The collision between feminism and trans rights has created one of the most explosive fault lines in the intersectional alliance. Women who have been at the forefront of feminist causes find themselves accused of bigotry when questioning whether biological males can truly become women. Julie Bindel faced decades of harassment after questioning whether "a surgically constructed vagina and hormonally grown breasts make you a woman." The conflict reveals a fundamental contradiction: trans campaigners arguing that gender is hardware must simultaneously convince others that womanhood is merely software-something lifelong feminists refuse to concede.
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Finding a Way Forward
The social justice movement portrays our societies as fundamentally racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic, claiming these oppressions are interlocked and must be collectively dismantled. Yet rather than producing harmony, these intersecting grievances "grind hideously and noisily both against each other and within themselves," increasing friction rather than reducing it. Fighting for these causes has become a form of moral currency-a way to demonstrate personal virtue in a new secular religion.
Contrary to the social justice framework, the various identity categories don't harmoniously intersect but actively contradict each other. The metaphorical "oppression matrix" isn't a solvable Rubik's cube but a collection of incompatible demands. When gay magazine Advocate claimed "Gay is the new black," black Americans objected. When philosopher Rebecca Tuvel questioned why transgender identity is accepted while transracial identity is rejected, she faced fierce backlash and professional consequences.
As a culture we've entered an area mined with impossibility problems. From demands that women be sexy without being sexualized, to fighting racism by becoming racist, contradictory demands proliferate. The "big fat queer fem" who complains about ridicule while choosing to be ridiculous; the insistence "You must understand me" paired with "You cannot understand me." The hierarchy of oppression creates unsolvable equations, as when transgender model Laith Ashley attempts to calculate his privilege: gaining male privilege, losing points for being a person of color, gaining points for being fair-skinned, then losing points for being attractive.
Perhaps we could exit this maze by noting that many "victim groups" aren't oppressed or are even advantaged. Studies show gay men and lesbian women consistently earn more than heterosexual counterparts. Asian men in America out-earn all other racial groups, including whites. Most British people believe women are paid less than men for the same job - a practice illegal since 1970 in the UK and 1963 in the US - when the actual "gender pay gap" reflects differences in career choices across lifespans.
When critics condemn our societies as racist, sexist or transphobic, we must ask: "Compared to what?" What alternative system has worked better? This questioning doesn't deny room for improvement but challenges those who act as judge and executioner of Western civilization. Many criticisms rely on imagining a prelapsarian age of virtue, following Rousseau's belief that "the first movements of human nature are always right."
The proliferation of victimhood claims may paradoxically indicate not an excess of oppression but its scarcity. In Roosevelt's generation, "when everyone was a victim at one point or another, no one won sympathy by wearing victimhood as a badge." Today, victimhood has become something eagerly sought after - a winning position in the "oppression race of life." This stems from the mistaken judgment that oppressed people are inherently better, purer or more decent than others.
When Ezra Klein explained his generous interpretation of hashtags like "KillAllMen" and derogatory comments about white people, he revealed how politically aligned people readily excuse extreme statements from their own tribe while interpreting opponents' remarks in the most negative light possible. If people could extend this spirit of generosity more broadly - even to those on opposing sides - perhaps some of the current polarization might diminish.
Identity politics seeks to politicize every human interaction, interpreting all relationships through power dynamics and encouraging people to locate themselves and others within an oppression hierarchy. While this provides a sense of meaning in an era without clear purpose, politics is one of the unhappiest sources of personal meaning. When disagreements become tied to personal identity and meaning, amicability fades and truth becomes harder to reach.
True meaning comes from love of people and places, friends, family, culture and wonder - not from wasting life on identity politics and social justice in its current manifestation. While we should strive for a society where personal characteristics don't hold people back, minimizing difference isn't the same as pretending difference doesn't exist. Assuming that sex, sexuality and skin color mean nothing would be ridiculous, but assuming they mean everything will be fatal.
