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Comment by zweep | Hacker News Reader

Jeez... it almost seems like social justice warriors could be a false flag operation by virulent racists, with how effectively they can turn sensible moderates against everything that they stand for.

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This kind of activism is definitely counterproductive -- but a 'sensible moderate' worthy of the adjective would be aware that there is nastiness and idiocy to be found among the advocates of every position on every issue, and so changing your mind about substantive questions on that basis is just handing your brain over to whoever can dredge up the most egregious examples and bring them to your attention the most efficiently.

I would expect 4chan to do exactly this. Thing is, the only way they can succeed is if people take it seriously and keep the spiral going.

>Thing is, the only way they can succeed is if people take it seriously and keep the spiral going.

Why would that stop anything? I spent half an hour over Christmas explaining to an aunt why the circle game [0] wasn't a white supremacist thing. All because the media chose to fall for the most inept trap ever planned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture#White_power_symbol

https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/circle-game/

The very term "social justice warrior" is an invention of the reactionary right, though. Flinging it around as an invective like this is exactly the same psychology at work as calling moderate-but-mildly-clueless knitters racists. You're defining an out group and shunning them.

This only gets better when people start to talk about specifics and be (to use your word) sensible about things. Drawing up battle lines trying to make the people you don't like take a stand with the SJWs is making things worse.

> The very term "social justice warrior" is an invention of the reactionary right.

No, it wasn't. It was invented by the Left, unironically. They would call themselves Social Justice Warriors. Many leftists still proudly maintain that they "fight for social justice". Same energy. It was only later that the term was used derisively by the right, putting the term in ironic quotation marks.

It is exactly the same as "fake news"; originally used by someone in the lefty media (CNN?) to deride Fox News, but popularised by Trump against CNN. Or did you think Trump came up with that all by himself?

> It is exactly the same as "fake news"; originally used by someone in the lefty media (CNN?) to deride Fox News, but popularised by Trump against CNN. Or did you think Trump came up with that all by himself?

This is pure bullshit. "Fake news" was first used to describe completely fictional news outlets writing about fictional people and fictional events, mainly designed to go viral on facebook for ad revenue.

For example, Paul Horner[1]:

> His stories had an "enormous impact" on the 2016 U.S. presidential election according to CBS News;[17] they consistently appeared in Google's top news search results, were shared widely on Facebook and were taken seriously and shared by third parties such as Trump presidential campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Eric Trump, ABC News and Fox News.[18] Horner later claimed that his work during this period was intended "to make Trump's supporters look like idiots for sharing my stories".[19]

> In December 2016, while speaking on Anderson Cooper 360°, Horner said that all news is fake news and called CNN "fake news", which was one month before Donald Trump leveled the same criticism at that network.[23]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Horner#2016_U.S._presiden...

"Fake news" was first used in the 17th century. Today, it is a term deployed by President Trump against news outlets he doesn't like. But he didn't invent the term. He heard it from someone using it against news outlets he does like.

'SJW' was invented by the left and used in a positive context, the cynical populist interpretation happened sometime after 2010.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/10...

How is that inconsistent with what I wrote? Words change. The definition used upthread was clearly perjorative and used within the (new! that's literally what the article was about!) Oxford definition described by the coverage you linked to. And it's an insult, and an invention of the reactionary right.

It's inconsistent with you said because you said 'SJW' was an invention of the right, it's wasn't, it was an invention of the left.

Good grief. The current pervasive use of "SJW" as a derogation, as used by zweep above in the comment to which I directly replied, is an invention of the right. Better?

What you said was: "The very term "social justice warrior" is an invention of the reactionary right, though."

This is not correct, and not what you are saying now.

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