Peter Boghossian: "Welcome To Culture War 2.0"

Obviously I'm in the vicinity of Boghossian on this stuff.

   There are details with which I'd quibble, though I'm not sure he's wrong. Does the progressive left--the NPCs / SJWs / illiberal left...whatever we call them--reject the correspondence theory of truth? Well, they sort of reject realism, and the relationship between realism and CTT is tight enough to make his way of putting it reasonable. Not sure disagreement on that score wouldn't be quibbling. 

   I hesitate to identify the other side mainly with "intersectionality." Intersectionality seems to me to constitute a rather minor plank in their platform. And it's a plank that doesn't fit very tightly into the platform. There's no doubt in my mind that they themselves will jettison it at some point. In five or ten years the wokest among them will proclaim that this or that pet oppression is first among equals; it will become chic to say that feminism is fundamental, or that racism is the foremost of all the -isms, and intersectionality will become passe. When your view makes no sense, it's all about the fads and fashions. And really: there's absolutely no reason to think that someone who's concerned about racial discrimination should pretend that being overweight is just as tough as being black, nor that you can't address race without addressing weight. Anyway, there's no good name for the crazy left--I myself prefer 'neo-PC' (which also has the advantage of being abbreviated NPC). But that's a barely-consequential terminological matter.

   As for Boghossian's more substantive point: I absolutely agree and have said so many times, for a long time, and I've believed it since the paleo-PC outburst of the late '80s: the PC left is less-liberal than most of the American right. The American right, including the religious right, doesn't reject liberalism broadly construed, and doesn't reject realism nor reason. Political correctness and the anti-liberal left are extremely radical. Their philosophical views are cracked, and their political views are on a fairly short and direct road to tyranny/totalitarianism. Which is why it drives me crazy that liberals flock to the PC left whenever it rises (awakes?) from its grave to...I dunno, stalk the land and feed on the flesh of the living or whatever. I'm not interested in making this into a working metaphor.

   Anyway, the point is: those guys are really, really crazy.