The social justice left has come out in huge numbers following the conclusion of the 2016 presidential election to rally for President-Elect Donald Trump’s reelection in four years, 2020. The UK’s Mirror (source of the image above) reports that campaigners have shown up in places like New York, New York, Portland, Oregon, Maryland, and Oakland and Berkeley, as well as other areas of Southern California. Groups implicitly calling for Trump’s reelection have also spawned internationally, like in London, in the United Kingdom. Universities and colleges have also joined in the campaign.
While reelecting Trump is not their intention, it is certainly the effect of what they are doing; The social justice left is still oblivious to the fact that they are responsible for Trump winning the presidency, this year.
I have never been a fan of Trump. As a libertarian, I find some of his pledges for his first 100 days in office to be horrifying (whereas others are pretty darn good!), such as his backward plans for immigration and trade, and his apparent desire to pump even more money into the US military. But at the very least I can appreciate how the political Donald Trump came about in the first place. As Robby Soave writes at Reason:
I have warned that political correctness actually is a problem on college campuses, where the far-left has gained institutional power and used it to punish people for saying or thinking the wrong thing. And ever since Donald Trump became a serious threat to win the GOP presidential primaries, I have warned that a lot of people, both on campus and off it, were furious about political-correctness-run-amok—so furious that they would give power to any man who stood in opposition to it.
We have been having largely the same problem on South Africa’s university campuses, and right on cue following Trump’s triumph, our very own little trendy tyrants started bawling their eyes out. As I mentioned on Facebook shortly thereafter, the only satisfying thing for me about Trump’s victory is the glorious effect it has had on the social justice left, who ignorantly remain convinced that they are fighting a righteous cause by silencing anyone who dares challenge their theory or methods.
Here is one comment from a South African in reaction to the notion that their comrades in America got Trump elected:
“… it ain’t so hard to overlook the anti-Muslim, anti-immigration, etc. rhetoric, the excessive police brutality against African Americans, the racial profiling, overwhelming incarceration of African Americans… as the real source of racial polarization. Because SJWs, for bringing all this stuff to our attention are truly to blame for the polarization.If they’d just shut up and taken it, then perhaps Trump wouldn’t have won, right?”
Sweet, sweet SJW tears!
The individual in question, and many of their colleagues, do not realize the irony in the last sentence. Trump was elected because the social justice left engaged in deplatforming, shouting people down, and attributing any opposition they might encounter to some or other form of bigotry. But now they are apparently the victims!
This person also appears to believe it was the left – not libertarians – who have been relentlessly pointing out the problems associated with the police state. Police brutality, racial profiling, and incarceration are, in any case, not social justice issues. Social justice is fundamentally about social and wealth inequality. The social justice left has never been afraid to use the mechanisms of the State – often brutally – to enforce their own notions of right and wrong. This is happening right now in South Africa, where legislation is being pushed through Parliament which could see people spend three years in jail for ‘insulting’ or ‘ridiculing’ someone based on, among other things, their occupation, gender expression, or beliefs (beliefs – let that sink in!).
But while South Africa is still a long ways from rejecting political correctness, in the United States, about half of the voting population, did.
So, to the Trump supporters, you might see your boy stay in office four years longer if the social justice left keeps going on with what it’s doing (and, assuming Trump is going to be the anti-PC president we hope he will be).
To Trump’s opponents: If you sincerely want to protest your new president, you would be smart to reevaluate your tactics. Yelling about him or his supporters being ‘bigots’ by default, only helps get him reelected. Sincere and honest discourse and constructive engagement, on the other hand, might help repair the damage you’ve done to American society, and might just nudge the Democratic Party closer to sanity come 2020, when criminals and socialists can make way for people who understand reality.
* Martin van Staden is the Editor in Chief of Being Libertarian.
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