Kevin McElroy
1 min readNov 24, 2020

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This is a bold condemnation of a powerful social trend - one that's being adopted and nodded along with by major corporations (always bastions of social justice, y'know), higher ed, and even influential members of the political class. It's rare that all 3 of these groups are in lock-step, and it signals a glaring irony when people who prop up this theory paint themselves as a stifled underclass.

I too oppose critical theory for the reason you describe here:

"I am criticizing social justice theory because it doesn’t accurately correspond to reality and that it undermines the project to work towards universal human sibling-hood and nurturing the potential for all people on the planet to become a smarter and more compassionate people."

I'm not a progressive per se, but I oppose unequitable practices. The work to undo these practices is always ongoing, but it has never been undertaken earnestly by people interested in cementing a social hierarchy, upwards or downwards. The work being done by these critical theorists is not focused at all on facts or data, as you point out - which means this work is unlikely to produce better outcomes.

In fact, I can't think of a better way to undermine a movement than to have its practitioners firmly believe that accurate facts and evidence might be their enemy. In this way, progressivism is quickly becoming an opposition controlled by itself.

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