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Comment by rajacombinator | Hacker News Reader

A nice quote and it sounds true - certainly robber barons are preferable to sjws - but doesn’t tell the whole story. The sjw tyrant he’s describing forms the “useful idiot” phalanx of the ones pulling the strings. Those kind of people (sjw types) simply aren’t clever enough to orchestrate the kind of long term plots needed to take control. The ones in charge are fully aware of what they’re doing, and they exhibit a cold calculating efficiency that seems inhuman.

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He is not describing SJWs, which is a fairly modern concept and usually used idiotically by people who don't have the brain power to understand issue X. He's talking about those that might describe themselves as moral majority. People that get described as SJWs are usually arguing against oppression. By contrast, oppressors will happily force their morals on others (but not always themselves) and tell you that it's for your own good. Usually backed by some religious doctrine.

In my experience “SJWs” have their own religion and overwhelmingly seek out moderator positions on subreddits, forums, positions on the school paper’s editorial team, etc etc as their ideology fails when faced with the free flow of information. You can see this in just about any internet community, the only ones that are “left wing” are the ones that enforce strict moderation rules. Anything open course corrects right very fast.

The “Warrior” in SJW comes from their perpetual fight to ban, shadowban, moderate, de-rank, and delist opposing views.

You can deflect by suggesting these people are simply authoritarian, and not true social justice/left wing advocates. I would challenge you to investigate everything from reddit’s super mods to Wikipedia’s editor cartels. You’ll find they systematically infiltrate open communities and once in positions of power purge opposing views from leadership and begin to enforce ideological conformity. The people doing this are exclusively left wing soc jus types.

Outside of the internet I’ve seen this behavior in academia as well. It’s pretty amazing how downright fascist some of them will get when they think they’re in like company.

I think your understanding of the term "SJW" is out of date. SJW now refers to someone who forces their morals on other people and advocate silencing and censorship to achieve this. He is describing these people.

>usually used idiotically by people who don't have the brain power

Please don't sink to this level

>People that get described as SJWs are usually arguing against oppression

That might be your description but many also include the people going around to open source projects to change the genders of code comments while simultaneously accusing the project of being sexist at the same time. They might be against oppression but their approach is so misguided it's destructive.

The behavior you described is a) merely annoying and easy to curb and b) far from omnipresent. OPs quote was about censorship enforced by state. I don't see how this is even remotely same caliber.

I'm not aware of the meaning of the three letter acronym and I'm not planning to learn it. willfullingly ignorant if you will

SJWs protest free speech events, advocate for hate-speech bans, advocate for compelled speech patterns in Canada, prevent conservative speakers for giving lectures on college campuses, among a litany of other such behaviors. They are largely moral authoritarians.

Of course the Evangelical conservatives are no different, but this quote is absolutely applicable to the American left.

FYI, I vouched for this post that was dead.

For the record, I don’t personally agree with raja’s assessment of the situation, but I think it’s important to have an open discussion around these topics rather than just silencing a dissenting view via downvotes.

Please stop with this "SJW" nonsense

Despite some questionable uses of that word, I have to admit that it's a useful classifier for what has essentially become a consolidated political movement.

Everyone seems to know the ideology it's describing when they hear it, and I don't know of another term that does that.

On another tangent: "SJW" was originally coined by social justice warriors as a way to describe themselves. It only became an offensive word once people started lampooning it, but it's still a fair term to use given its history and original intent.

> It only became an offensive word once people started lampooning it

Yes, words only become slurs by being used as slurs, and many words that have become slurs were earlier terms preferred or accepted by the people it is now used as a source against.

The problem I have with it is it appears to be generally used to describe a wide group of people that don't really exist, at least not in the numbers that "SJW-haters" claim they do.

Rarely do I see people sincerely espousing what self proclaimed anti-SJWs claim they are. Rarer so do I see it in droves, as a generally promoted claim versus one person or a small group of people.

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