A cute story about human compassion for animals has been making its way around the globe. During a wildfire in California, a man – since identified as Caleb Wadnad – was caught on camera rescuing a bunny from the blazes. Sweet, right? Wrong! According to GQ columnist and editor-in-chief of the e-zine Very Smart Brothas Damon Young, this cuddly act of heroics manages to “synopsize everything problematic about white people on both a macro and micro level in 30 seconds.”
Yes, you read that right. Rescuing animals from wildfires is now an expression of white supremacy. Apparently, it illustrates how white folks care more about bunnies than black people. A truly “woke” individual, it seems, would have let that bunny burn.
Young takes it all the way to absurdity by proclaiming:
“I do know that colonialism and aggressive industrialism have had an adverse effect on our environment. And I also know that this is a byproduct of manifest destiny—an existential edict ingrained in white people where they believe everything belongs to them.”
If this strikes you as absurd beyond belief, you are not alone. How is it that social justice warriors so easily end up blaming everything on white people or some other declared enemy of civil society?
It all goes back to some neo-Marxist intellectuals after World War II. The Frankfurt school sowed the poisonous seeds in American universities, which then laid the foundation for the later invasion of the French Postmodernists. Whenever you hear the terms “equity,” “social justice” or “intersectionality,” it traces back to these hard-left thinkers.
These intellectuals have cracked the code of how to raise an effective army of mediocre non-thinkers to spread their ideas. The formula is so simple that an average person can fully master it within one day. It goes like this: whenever there is something wrong happening in the world, blame a) white people, b) men, c) Christians, d) heterosexuals, f) capitalism. If possible, go with some combination of these. Use fancy, intellectual-sounding words like “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” “misogyny,” “transphobia” and “imperialism.” That’s it; you’re good to go.
Damon Young, Ph.D. (Social Justice)
Never mind a careful analysis of complex issues with multidimensional chains of causality. No need for evidence, intelligence, and hard-gained knowledge. All you need to get a Ph.D. in social justice is to master this simpleton’s formula.
The question is not why so many people use this intellectual fraud, but rather why it works so well. Herein lies the genius of the intellectuals who invented this method. It is specifically designed to work well on highly caring and conscientious people. The less true the allegations are, the more likely they will work. Why? People who are sufficiently compassionate to save a bunny in dire straits don’t like to be accused of being racist bigots.
Damon Young says this behavior may be the whitest thing he has ever seen. Strangely, he may be right about that. The social justice formula seems to work particularly well on whites.
This should be cause for concern for everyone. In the short run, social justice warriors are having a field day with their formula. However, history has shown that if you silence and oppress the moderate center, rage builds up and fuels the flanks. Precisely this happened in the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. The center proved inept at handling the threat of communism, and this energized the equally radical National Socialism’s rise to power with devastating consequences.
We are fortunately still a far cry from the Weimar Republic, but if you stomp out the bunny-saving moderate center, it will be replaced by something harsher. One popular meme falsely attributed to Mahatma Gandhi says: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” By that standard, Caleb Wadnad’s actions exemplify some of what makes America great. Maybe that’s worth pondering.
