The social justice narrative describes a political-economic elite dominated by white males persecuting anybody who doesn’t fit into their culture, like blacks, women, and gays. The anti-social-justice narrative describes an intellectual-cultural elite dominated by social justice activists persecuting anybody who doesn’t fit into their culture, like men, theists, and conservatives. Both are relatively plausible; Congress and millionaires are 80% – 90% white; journalists and the Ivy League are 80% – 90% leftist.

The narratives share a surprising number of other similarities. Both, for example, identify their enemy with the spirit of a discredited mid-twentieth century genocidal philosophy of government; fascists on the one side, communists on the other. Both believe they’re fighting a war for their very right to exist, despite the lack of any plausible path to reinstituting slavery or transitioning to a Stalinist dictatorship. Both operate through explosions of outrage at salient media examples of their out-group persecuting their in-group.

They have even converged on the same excuse for what their enemies call “politicizing” previously neutral territory – that what their enemies call “politicizing” is actually trying to restore balance to a field the other side has already successfully politicized.

It’s a long post, as a lot of Scott Alexander’s deeper posts tend to be. But it’s worth your time reading the whole thing even if you don’t agree with his comclusions. He touches on that pizza parlour refusing to cater for gay weddings, the case of Curtis Yarvin aka Mencius Moldbug being disinvited from a tech conference, and the ongoing car crash of the Sad Puppies Hugo Awards affair, which also gets a lot of mentions in the very long (and largely civil) comment thread that follows.

One commenter, Rachel made a very good point comparing the fate of Tim Hunt, the 72-year old Nobel laureate forced to resign after a bad example of casual sexism, and Irene Gallo, the Tor Books editor accused of slandering a significant proportion of the publishing house’s authors and readership.

I was thinking about the symmetry between Irene Gallo and Tim Hunt. Everyone I’ve seen (including my own lizard brain) supports precisely one of them and condemns the other.

But trying to think about it objectively, the situations are pretty similar. They made an inaccurate sweeping generalisation about a group, in a way that’s not directly relevant to their job, but which slandered a lot of people they work with/for. They should probably either both be fired, or both be let alone to express their private opinions.

I find myself in complete agreement with that statement, though I’ve encountered very few others who have expressed that opinion in public. Which suggests that for many the overriding principle is not consistency, but loyalty to the tribe.