Why isn’t this a problem? I find this question genuinely fascinating. What is it about those ideas being expressed by someone foreign — someone who can plausibly (albeit stupidly) be cast as a victim — that causes otherwise exquisitely sensitive people to completely gloss over them? In quotidian American politics, the most inconsequential of sentiments are routinely cast as being a part of the “white, male, cisgendered hegemony.” But Osama bin Laden starts talking about the evils of homosexuality and fornication, about the fusing of church and state, and about “complete submission to His Law,” and it’s just . . . ignored.
This same trend has been on display at many of the anti-Israel protests, where I’ve seen quite a lot of people wearing T-shirts that read, “Queers for Palestine” or “LGBT for Hamas” or what you will. It’s utterly delusional — almost to the point of pride. This is your brain on intersectionality. How to fight back remains anyone’s guess.
I feel like I’ve seen this a lot lately: people peering into the void of wokeness and attempting to discern the core of it, the ruling principle. But I’m here to tell them to stop wasting their time. There’s nothing there beyond what I think of as “againstism.” The emotional fuel of it, as Nietzsche always said, is resentment. But intellectually, there’s nothing of substance there. The point is simply to be against anything perceived to be established, successful, dominant, or powerful — whiteness, heterosexuality, capitalism, America, the West, etc. It’s the perpetual rage of the spoiled adolescent who has never had to consider how much comfort and security he takes for granted even as he blindly flails against it. Why do we find Western libertines supporting Islamic terrorism? Because it’s also against everything they resent. Why do we find trust-fund brats advocating for Communism? Say it with me now: it’s also against everything they resent. What the hell does it mean when we see signs about “reproductive justice” at anti-Israel protests, or when a kid famous for refusing to go to school anymore leads a chant of “no climate justice on occupied land”? It just means that countless resentments can fit inside a pinhead. We’re against it all! The Coalition of the Oppressed is made up of multiple marriages of convenience with nothing in common but an enemy, marriages which can be annulled on a whim. Jews are favored against right-wing populists, but disfavored against Muslims, who in turn become villains when they protest against gender ideology in schools. That same gender ideology trumps the TERFs formerly known as feminists, who were in favor when battling against patriarchy. It’s an intersectional version of rock, paper, scissors, or maybe musical chairs, or perhaps Calvinball. If the Western white male capitalist didn’t exist, he’d have to be invented just to act as a centripetal force.