Vilification

  While not the article I intended to write, I was referenced this post by way of @TheRogue_Elf of a deleted scene in the Captain Marvel movie which I never watched, and read a number of really sneering comments in response to the poster’s opinion that such a scene does nothing to make the main protagonist likeable.

https://twitter.com/JoeySalads/status/1132845238521802753

As is often the case, my own perspective was somewhat different and more abstract than those people typically commenting upon the scene where the putative hero commits strong-arm robbery of a man’s motorcycle where women applauded her “standing up” to his ham-fisted come-on and lasciviousness.

Rather the reaction of the respondents that she represented a “strong woman”, which is to say a woman with super-human strength, “standing up” to a man who was being a jerk, and therefore embodying their fantasies of role-reversal strikes one for the light they invariably cast upon the objects of their collective derision.

In the eyes of such people, he deserved whatever came his way because of his ill mannered behavior, a just “comeuppance” for all the men in the world who were ever rude or crass or in some other manner displeased the fairer sex.

This reaction is no different than those antifa people whose mission in life is to punch “nazis”, to oppose fascists by turning themselves into violent mobs of vigilantes, because . . . well . . . those fascists deserve it . . . because fascists are violent mobs.  (Even if the antifa thugs don’t actually know the meaning of the word fascism and wouldn’t recognize a true fascist if they bit them on the arse.)

Naturally, the real Nazis, back about eighty to a hundred years ago, targeted communist Jews and capitalist Jews, because they were certain that they were conspiring to impoverish, corrupt, and undermine the German society, as evidenced by control of the media and banks and the unions . . . so, well, they deserved whatever they got.

Those Communists, in turn in a nation a little further east, had also blamed the people of wealth, particularly the landed gentry and aristocrats, and really anyone gaining affluence by supporting that system because those rich 1%ers could only have obtained their wealth by the ruthless exploitation of the masses.  (That’s commie speak for “they deserved whatever they got.)

Which is not significantly different from the empty rhetoric of more modern times here in the west that coming from their intellectual descendants who talk about McDonald’s exploiting those poor innocent workers by paying them the wages they agreed to accept because the CEO gets paid significantly more than them.

Right-wing speakers and politicians are getting pelted with milkshakes, and Burger King advertises in support of such attacks, because it’s totally not assault when they are out there spewing hateful things . . . they can’t name what those hateful things are . . . but they are assured that they are indeed hate mongers because they oppose policies like open borders and that’s racist, therefore they deserve what they get.

These are just a few examples of that sentiment people express every day in media, social media, and even personal conversations, a disdain for a group of people combined with not merely an indifference but a positive endorsement of bad things, unjust things, happening to people they deem worthy of such retaliatory measures because “those people” have been collectively classified as “bad people who deserve what they get.”

It is the process of vilification, where a group is labeled as bad, for one reason or another, by another group.  In sociologic terms this “other” becomes the out group, the “them” in a society torn in a war of “us” against “them”.  They do not become them until they are vilified, that is made villains.

A great song by the Rolling Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil”, plays upon upsetting this notion that those on the other side are, in point of fact, the very face of evil itself.  Of course, the antagonist of the song was the very face of evil, and the point of that song was not really to elicit sympathy as the title implied.

However, in the case of the “us” versus “them” process of vilification, the “them” are never the pure evil which they are made out to be, and the actions of “us” is not actually justified by calling one’s opponents names like “racist”, “sexist”, “misogynist”, “hater”, “homophobic”, “transphobic”, “nazi”, “fascist”, et cetera.

Once those names attach, the victim/criminal then feels justified in perpetrating evil on those “bad people” because they deserve it.  We see countless interviews with young millennials where they call someone one of those names, yet cannot ever justify the use of that name by pointing to a single thing the person has ever actually done or said to merit such a disparagement.

I say millennials, but that is merely the current iteration of an ancient practice of stirring up the “useful idiots”, more precisely an indoctrinated youth culture, to hurl violently against one’s political enemies motivated by mere rhetoric while maintaining a safe and secure intellectual distance of plausible deniability that your words have any connection to the violence they inspire.

The youth are always more easily herded into mobs against the outsider in their emotional desire to belong, to have purpose, to oppose “evil”, to make a “difference”, to “stand together”, and so forth.  Nothing is so predictably conformist as the youth seeking to prove his unique individuality by being just like every other member of his peer group.

Leftist groups appeal to the young based largely upon this frailty, young feminists, soy-bois, environmentalists, social justice warriors, antifa thugs, blacklivesmatter thugs, woke gender/ethnic/urban studies majors of all stripes will all, if you notice, have their youthful naivety, moral self-righteousness, and physical confrontation tendencies in common.  (Except for some aging leftist zealots thrown in the mix trying to recapture their own youthful foolishness.)

First, there must be identified the “bad guys who deserve what they get”.  Think about it.  Every leftist movement first begins not in support of some idea or cause, but in first and foremost identifying their enemy and defining their enemy’s behavior as bad.

To vilify those “bad people”, then requires a label.  It is not sufficient that a baker doesn’t want to bake a cake for a gay wedding because he does not believe in gay weddings, it must be “discrimination”, a bad label.  It is not that a company pays the common wages or less, it must be labeled “exploitation”.  It is not that a cad is pruriently rude towards Captain America, is must be “misogyny”.

Now that we have identified those bad people and labeled those bad people, those bad people must be recognized as an existential threat to the “normal” people.  After all, bad people exist, but existence alone does not justify action against them, they must be seen to be a mortal threat to the “normal” people.

Why the normal people?  Because those who would view themselves heroes can never be heroes by simply asserting their own interests, they must protect the helpless, the victims, the “normal” people from those villains which exist to prey upon their weakness.  What is the purpose of vilifying others but to view oneself as the hero protecting the weak from those villains.

To justify extraordinary action requires an extraordinary threat.  Snidely Whiplash must be seen to tie Nell Fenwick to the railroad tracks in order for Dudly Do-Right to save the day.  Thus, every single issue becomes an issue on steroids: a different opinion becomes “hate speech”, speech becomes violence, pollution becomes climate change armageddon, opposing illegal immigration becomes white supremacy, and so forth.

Painting opponents as dangerous extremists is just the middle step of vilification, because a villain must not be allowed to monologue, he may persuade those weak-willed normals with his deceptive words.  It is not an accident that certain political movements always seek to silence their opposition, because everyone knows those villains have a silver forked tongue.

Now that they are properly vilified, violence becomes justified in silencing them, from spreading their evil.  Eliminating the Electoral College or Constitutional rights becomes justified in opposing those bad people.  Any and all actions by the “heroes” becomes justified to stop the villain.

And it would never occur to them to once question whether they are really the heroes, or that their opponents are truly villains.