One of the biggest issues plaguing most normal people in today’s society is that it seems as if most of the usual spaces where they go to discuss things and have fun, have been taken over by politically correct, moral busybodies. These people, oftentimes referred to as “Social Justice Warriors”, almost always seem to reiterate the same talking points centered around feminism, the patriarchy, oppression and progressivism. These people also seem to be in control of forums, chats, social media networks and discussion hubs. So why are they always in a position of power?

The Makings Of An Authoritarian

Well, there are a few factors for this. Typically people who can effectively moderate or operate a social platform must have a lot of time on their hands. This is something most normal people don’t have – when factoring in work, school, social life and other responsibilities. This means that the people who typically take on the task of being a full-time moderator have very few other responsibilities in life in order to devote themselves to monitoring and moderating others.

Second, positions of authority usually require someone who is good at following instructions. Most forums, websites or organizations have their own set rules, and people who are too lax with those rules find themselves ousted for being too lackadaisical. This in turn attracts people willing to not only put up with the hefty time requirements to moderate, but also accommodate the strict rules to moderate.

Third, people who appear to lack control in their own lives, or notable accomplishments outside of the virtual space, are inclined to carve out an identity of worth by exerting control and authority over others through forums or social media networks.

So with those standards in place, it’s pretty easy to subsume those factors into another larger component of the personality traits that distinctly separate SJWs from typical mods, janitors, administrators and webmasters: they want to control the behavior of others in order to feel more fulfilled.

Now that last point is the one that distinctly separates them from other people who dedicate their time to monitoring and moderating social hubs. The question, however, becomes: why do they want to control others?

SJW Ideology And Behaviorism

Well, here is where things get interesting. In the Frankfurt school of thought there are a lot of threads that lead back to critically examining and deconstructing social norms, usually the kind that constitutes most of Western society. This includes materialism, capitalism and traditional social norms.

So what does any of that have to do with SJWs? Well, remnants of that train of thought have been parroted often in Academia circles, most notably in those related to gender studies, something that Sargon of Akkad has been critiquing for years. Many people now refer to these practitioners as Cultural Marxists, since they practice social communism; attempting to strip away identity and individuality in place of homogenity.

The patriarchy, capitalistic oppression and class privilege are the tenets of their talking points, with a lot of their roots being in the classical German philosophies and third-wave feminism.

So what does this have to do with SJWs taking over forums?

Well, this applies to what they learn in the classroom and then take back into their social lives (or lack thereof). Oftentimes these people are marred in their own personal lives, or potentially suffer from various disorders, and use the philosophy of Cultural Marxism as a way to explain away their own inadequacies in life, whether it’s financial instability, poor relationship choices, or social awkwardness.

Some of them also seem to suffer from borderline personality disorder, which is described in a journal report by Leslie C. Moerey from the Texas A&M University and Mary C. Zanarini from the Harvard Medical School as having recurrent suicidal behavior, impulsive or self-damaging addictions such as binge eating, sex, or substance abuse, as well as emotional instability with episodic anxiety or unpredictable mood swings that last from hours to days. One of the more common traits is a pattern of extreme idealized or devalued views.

Can you think of any emotionally erratic SJWs? Any obese SJWs? Any SJWs with unstable self-identity issues? Any SJWs with extreme idealizations or devaluations of societal norms? Any suicidal SJWs? Any of them with all of these traits?

They use the SJW philosophy as a crutch, a way to paint themselves as a victim while easily painting others as the villain. And if they can’t exert their authority over the villain, they censor them… which is exactly what Twitter did to Milo, as reported by The Blaze.

This also ties into another psychological trait some of them seem to foster, such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder, where Psychiatric Times explains it as someone having a strong sense of self to the point of believing they are “special” and require certain kinds of attention. These are people who lack empathy, are willing to use, abuse and exploit others for personal gain, and are quick to become envious.

Know anyone in the SJW circles like that?

Finally, there’s the Histrionic Personality Disorder, explained by the Psych Central as people with rapidly shifting or “shallow expression of emotions” and someone who constantly uses their physical appearance to draw attention to theirself, as well as considering relationships to be more intimate than they actually are.

Literally who could you think of that might fit those above traits while adopting SJW mindsets?

Establishing Toxic Oppression

After using Gender Studies philosophies to gain a bearing on what’s “problematic” in the world, their righteous crusade usually starts with censuring people for using “problematic” language that they feel is used to oppress minorities or inhibit less privileged groups. For example, user Al_Simmons uses this tactic to convince others in a Reddit post that using certain language is “oppressive”….

“Using the word “faggot” is like calling someone a “nigger”, it carries oppression behind it. Sure 4chan uses it like a casual phrase, but it’s still not right. “but it’s just a common word used online” etc. Well in certain circumstances, gays were called “faggots” and were maimed/bashed/murdered. Why should that word be acceptable? I see it so commonly everywhere.”

It doesn’t matter what the context is, or how the word is used. In the minds of those often called SJWs, they apply absolute weight to the terminology they define as “offensive”. They can also redefine terms to become offensive in order to maintain control over language and tone policing.

In fact, Peter Goffin from Rabble.ca wrote a piece explaining how using “oppressive” language contributes to oppressing minorities and the less privileged, stating…

“It’s important that when you hear oppressive language that you explain why it is offensive and continuing oppression. It’s a form of verbal violence that exposes someone’s privileged view of the world. When people use this kind of language, they aren’t just harming an individual, but contributing to a history of subjugation and oppression that has spanned generations. Every struggle of a marginalized group has a history, a background of accepted and overt discrimination and violence. By using oppressive language, people are adding to that collective experience.”

It all goes back to the same jargon and sophistry being taught in the classroom… once again, mostly in relation to Gender Studies. And in some cases, it’s not necessarily learned in the classroom but learned from friends or family, or from a group of like-minded people.

How SJWs Gain Power

Now we already established that you need a lot of time on your hands to do moderation work. Whether that’s schmoozing with the owners of a site, network or organization, or spending a lot of time among the community. Therefore, it’s quite obvious that people who can afford to spend that amount of time time socializing have to forfeit other responsibilities, thus they either come from a privileged household (e.g., upper class, well to do households, etc.,) or someone else is taking care of them (e.g., unable to hold a job, living with parents, etc.,).

So how do people with Gender Studies under their belt end up having so much time on their hands where they attempt to become moderators and administrators? Well, there are several reasons. 1) Some people who have Gender Studies degrees are unable to find work, thus giving them lots of idle time on their hands. 2) People who hang out with those with Gender Studies knowledge already have a lot of time on their hands and are looking to latch onto something vicariously, which may include the philosophy of an SJW, since it does ultimately preach inclusiveness.

Now according to UCI, they state that Gender Studies will help with reasoning, critical thinking, and knowledge about pop-culture and historical events. Some people who majored in the field reiterate what the UCI states on its page, but even in a blog post – like the one from XO Jane – there’s the uneasy admission that finding suitable work with a Gender Studies skillset is not easy. However, in the blog she resolves to console herself by saying the knowledge was worth it in the end…

“What so many of the swipes aimed at “useless” degrees miss is that a college education is not only supposed to be job training; qualities like critical thinking, writing, communicating with people, and being able to problem-solve in the workplace and daily life are also important. To think of a degree as only a means to an end on either side — as only good for getting a job, or as only a means for “finding yourself” as New Agers like to say — reduces its value significantly.”

As noted by Forbes, critical thinking in a liberal arts field hasn’t stopped it from churning out graduates with a 9.4% unemployment rate, making it on the list as one of the top 10 worst college majors.

Essentially, these people have to go somewhere or put their knowledge to use somehow. What better way than in the human networking field? Here is where the typical SJW applies to a job working as a public relations officer for a company, which usually includes monitoring social media feeds, moderating the forums and garnering feedback from users to relay to the company.

These jobs are somewhat easy to abuse because they apply their ideology in how they convey customer feedback to the company. Just like for instance with the game Mighty No. 9… a self-admitted feminist and SJW, Dina Abou Karem, acknowledged in leaked chat logs that she joined the project as the public relations rep with the intent of injecting feminist ideology into it, saying…

“You all have no fucking idea how sexist my employer is and what I had to do to get them to 1) change no.2 into a girl 2) make Beck’s rival Ray into a black woman presenting androgynous 3) add another big character as female which I can’t tell you about because they have not been revealed yet. “Oh [Mighty No 9] still has the trademark japanese underlying sexism. […] I was just gonna keep my head down and not say anything SJW-ey when I first got the job but after they tried to get me fired/kill myself I went full feminist and it kinda worked haha.”

Here we observe Dina not only acknowledging a feminist slant in how she views the project, but also acknowledging that she wanted to use her ideology to influence the outcome of a project that would affect others.

We saw a similar thing happen with Alison Rapp, a former public relations employee for Nintendo. However, some of her more extreme views and a rather risque moonlighting job ended up resulting in her getting nixed from the company, as reported by Game Skinny.

The same applied to Nich Maragos, a former English major who eventually became a games journalist, who eventually ended up working in localization for various video game publishers. During the Fire Emblem Fates fiasco, Maragos revealed his true intentions of trying to subvert heteronormative culture in games, adopting typical SJW talking points.

Not Every SJW Is A Gender Studies Major

As the example above notes, Maragos wasn’t a Gender Studies major, he minored in computer science and Japanese linguistics. However, he was very much introduced to the SJW mindset while working in video games journalism.

For those of you who don’t know, video game journalism is a hotbed for SJWs. Many academics who couldn’t cut it in the STEM fields resolved themselves to writing fields. Writing books is hard work but journalism these days is little more than blogging. However, when they couldn’t cut it at larger outlets, they settled with video games. This was evident with the academics attempting to subvert hardcore gaming by killing off the term “gamer”.

This very topic was discussed in a Google Group featuring members from the Critical Distance group discussing gamer culture and how to make it more “progressive” by removing it from the more hardcore elements. Alan Williamson, from Critical Distance, received support from those within the Google Group for wanting to distance himself from the term gamer. One of the members, an academic named Dan Golding, explained…

“I didn’t ever like the term ‘gamer’, but it wasn’t until I read this scholarly article that I stopped using it altogether”

Dan Golding was friends with Leigh Alexander, the same Leigh Alexander who was the former managing editor at GamaSutra… the same Leigh Alexander and Dan Golding who contributed to the “Gamers are Dead” articles.

That kind of ideology was easily spread through most major games journalism ranks thanks to private groups like the GameJournoPros, where members like Leigh Alexander and influencers like former IGF chairman Brandon Boyer helped to continue to spread the standard SJW talking points they picked up from people like Dan Golding.

Given that Anita Sarkeesian and Jonathan McIntosh were on the advisory board for Silverstring Media, and Silverstring Media had Zoya Street working for them, there was literally a direct connection that Zoya made from the ideological academic circles to the video game journalism ring. It also helped that Zoya worked with subversive critical theory gaming outlets like Critical Distance.

Spreading The SJW Ideology To Forums/Social Media

In the case of games journalism… it was easy for the SJW mindset to spread from the academic circles to the GameJournoPros, and then from the GameJournoPros to the actual gaming communities.

Classic gaming culture was rebuffed by the SJW ideology, and when the journalists began utilizing this ideology through their writing, they had it reinforced by silencing readers and dissenters who spoke out against them in the comment sections.

We saw this take place with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, who proceeded to not only come to the defense of Anita Sarkeesian, but also censure the gaming community about its habits in how women are treated, and then censor their own community from offering any rebuttals.

We saw the same tactic applied to other sites like Polygon, Destructoid, Gamespot, Engadget and Kotaku. Unsurprisingly enough, each of those sites had journalists who were part of the GameJournoPros. Many of the same talking points, many of the same ideological references, many of the same measures to silence dissent.

In fact, some users spotted the moderators chastising users for speaking ill of feminism and Social Justice Warriors. A Gamespot moderator wrote…

“Everyone, please be aware that discussion of this article is fine, but rants against “SJWs” or anti-feminist comments or the vilification of any other real or imagined social group whom you blame for something you don’t like will be deleted.”

We saw this also apply to the forums on Blade & Soul when gamers were angered that localizers had censored content in order to make it less “problematic”. The Blade & Soul forum moderators began censoring topics discussing the censorship of the game. This also happened on the PSO World forums, where a moderator attempted to censor people from attacking Social Justice Warriors, with his reasoning being that SJWs are marginalized.

So not everyone who is a games journalist or Gender Studies major is an SJW, and likewise not every SJW is a games journalist or a Gender Studies major. Sometimes there are people simply looking to “belong” who latch onto the beliefs because it sounds good on paper, and they decide to follow along because it seems like the right thing to do, sort like ex-football player Chris Kluwe.

It’s Not Just Video Games

The thing is, it’s not just gaming. We saw this happening with comic books, tabletop gaming and even in the coding field. For instance, GitHub was part of an SJW cleansing, where they were infiltrated from the inside and inculcated with “progressive” ideologies, resulting in a lot of people losing their jobs, a lot of repositories being shut down, and a lot of disgruntlement all the way around, as reported by Business Insider.

Beyond the forums, we also saw this happen on sites like IMZY, as well as established social media networks like Twitter, where they’ve been aggressively enforcing selective shadowbanning and throttling. It’s something that has pervaded amongst many of the top subs on Reddit, which was revealed by leaked moderator chat logs where they admitted to censoring topics that they didn’t like.

But Why Do SJWs Resort To Censorship?

So why do SJWs resort to censorship? Easiest question to answer: Because they don’t trust that their beliefs can hold up to scrutiny.

Some of them will repeat the standard talking points before blocking, muting or censoring someone; but if the standard talking points aren’t swaying the masses, then they have to resort to censorship to protect their feelings.

The often repeated phrase “Facts over feels” isn’t just a meme, it’s the truth. But this goes back to more deep-seated issues in people who adopt the SJW mentality, oftentimes coming from broken homes, parental neglect, or sexual abuse suffered from when they were younger.

The reason they can’t argue the facts and must resort to censorship is because they likely don’t actually believe what they’re saying. It’s a safety mechanism to hide behind; they would rather relish in the comfort of others who give them attention and authority. Hence, they can hide away in a safe space where those who are like-minded can echo platitudes amongst one another.

We oftentimes see where SJWs will be quick to boot someone out of the club if they don’t virtue signal enough, or don’t moral grandstand in the right way, or don’t condemn a certain person, act or political leaning.

In a Medium post, Ryan Smith, a game journalist who was a former member of the GameJournoPros, described this sort of behavior as a form of “groupthink”.

Another perfectly salient example of this happening in the public sphere — where users are banned from the forum for having the wrong opinion, liking the wrong item, or offering to think critically about a situation — is none other than NeoGaf.

TL;DR: SJWs with Gender Studies degrees couldn’t find work doing anything meaningful, so they end up preaching their dogma on forums after becoming moderators and censoring people who disagree with them.