What a weird time to be alive. As the internet continues to connect millions of people with differing backgrounds, one would think that tolerance of free speech would also become more entrenched. However, with the advent of safe spaces and their social justice warrior defenders, that’s not the case. Students should beware: deep behind their convictions of social justice rests an authoritarian mind that wishes to silence anyone who might have a different view.
Safe spaces are ultimately about silencing the opposition. While they are disguised as caring about others’ views, they do just the opposite. They teach one to run away in ignorance versus debating ideas. Instead of cultivating open minds, safe spaces lead to authoritarian entrapment with like-minded individuals affirming each other’s feelings.
What’s the most interesting factor about social justice warriors is just how quickly they won’t defend a minority if they don’t have underlying progressive views. Normally, social justice warriors care extensively about minorities, but as Milo Yiannopoulos and Blaire White prove, that’s only if said minority is a progressive.
Milo Yiannopoulos is a gay conservative who speaks out on such authoritarian regimes as social justice warriors and third wave feminism. His “Dangerous F—-t Tour” has taken him to college campuses across the U.S., where he has been completely silenced, and even threatened, by these social justice warriors. Whenever someone has a different worldview than them, that is grounds for being suppressed.
Blaire White is a conservative transgender YouTuber who frequently speaks out against the same group of people. Blaire has been ridiculed for standing up for men, speaking out against infinite genders, among other heated topics.
Speaking out for what she believes to be right led to attempts to doxx (the process of leaking information online about a person and their family, personal information, etc. to the masses) her. In the progressives’ world of paradoxes, they claim they want safe spaces, yet leak private information that could threaten someone’s safety in a real way because they hold different opinions.
As Milo and Blaire show us, the social justice warriors having an underlying desire to help minorities is an illusion to help propagate support, namely from those already apathetic about politics. But once one digs a little more into the narrative, you see they only defend fellow progressives, and their biggest antagonist is free speech and free thinking individuals. These ideas are naturally incubated in safe spaces, and will lead us down a dangerous path.
The biggest problem I have with education is the underlying appeal to obedience and conformity, and as a result, political, philosophical or intellectual apathy. Too often in school you learn how to take tests, not how to educate yourself and the people around you. Safe spaces and the social justice warriors spawned from this kind of apathy, and now they wish to control speech as the means to reach their end — a dull, authoritarian allegiance, where freedom is squandered and thinking differently is a crime. Tread lightly.
Doug Brandt, YSU Student