The New Crucible
The new racism, under the guise of "anti-racism" is destroying black and white people's lives. And they're getting away with it.
We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!
“The Crucible”, Arthur Miller
Say you’re racist! You’re white! You need to realise that all white people are racist!
“Jane Doe” recounting how her basketball coach demanded confession of her alleged racism. (Megyn Kelly Podcast Episode 65)
John McWorther’s new book “The Elect”, released in increments on Substack, starts with recounting three examples of completely innocent individuals being accused of racism and losing their careers, wealth, social statuses and relationships as a result, despite no evidence of their wrongdoing.
Wilfred Reilly, professor of political science at Kentucky State University and author of “Hate Crime Hoax” has investigated 346 hate-crime allegations and concluded that over two-thirds are fake.
The website FakeHateCrimes.org has, to date, over 400 examples of alleged hate crimes in the US which turned out to be fabricated.
In the majority of these cases, one or more white people were accused of bigotry against a person of colour, and despite no evidence of the assault having taken place, the accused was convicted by society. No trial, no jury, no defence - immediate judgement.
Case in point: Emmanuel Cafferty, a middle-aged truck driver of Mexican descent, had his arm dangling out of his truck window, when another driver took a picture of his hand supposedly doing the “OK” sign (the thumb and forefinger making a circle), which is claimed to be a symbol of white supremacy. Within hours, Cafferty was suspended and two days later, lost his job.
Cafferty told the reporter Yascha Mounk that he pleaded with the people carrying out the investigation (all white) to give him a chance, hopelessly trying to convince them that he is not racist:
I got so desperate, I was showing them the color [sic] of my skin. I was saying, ‘Look at me. Look at the color [sic] of my skin’
(Read Yascha Mounk’s excellent piece “Stop Firing The Innocent”, with many more egregious examples)
To no avail. Cafferty lost his job - the first one he had where he didn’t need to live pay check to pay check - and his mental health deteriorated.
Cafferty’s case, although painfully tragic, is not unique. Innocent people having the epithet of racism thrown at them by bad actors, end up losing their livelihoods without the right to appeal or defend themselves. This leftist mutation of McCarthyism is far too prevalent and inordinately unjust to be allowed to carry on.
McCarthyism is an apt analogy. As most readers will know, Arthur Miller wrote his masterpiece “The Crucible” in 1953, as Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Committee on Un-American Activities was conducting show trials of alleged communists and their associates in what was best described as “Kangaroo courts”, after Miller himself had been summoned to testify.
The play tells the story of a young girl, Abigail, who is infatuated with John Proctor, a married man with whom she once had an affair. After Proctor tells Abigail that he’d rather cut off his hand than reach for her again, the young girl’s jealousy and vengeance are expressed as pronouncements of witchcraft against anyone standing, a charge punishable by death in theocratic Salem. Soon, she is joined by all the young girls of the town, each with their own grievances against someone. No one dares go against Abigail and her band of accusers, for the fear of being accused of witchcraft, and within days, several dozen residents are hanged without trial.
It’s trivially easy to draw comparisons with today’s cultural climate - all the elements are there:
The unforgivable sin (Communism/racism/transphobia/islamophobia/sexism etc).
Mass pressure
Accusation is evidence of guilt
Harassment & blacklisting used to instil conformity with prevailing political beliefs.
Show trials.
Societal stigmatisation of the accused.
The accused’s loss of career, income, relationships and future prospects.
But there’s one additional component in today’s witch hunt which was not present under Senator McCarthy’s hearing; the mass relishing in the destruction of a person’s life.
The American social psychologist Leon Festinger (1919-1989) coined the term deindividuation, which explains how the behaviour of individuals, when part of a crowd, reduces or even eliminates personal responsibility and strengthens adherence to group norms. This follows in the footsteps of French social psychologist Gustav Le Bon (1841-1931), who observed:
…that being in a crowd allowed individuals to act on impulses that would normally be controlled or self-censored.
Le Bon argued that such undesirable behaviours can arise through three mechanisms. First, anonymity prevents people from being isolated or identified, which leads to a feeling of being untouchable and to a loss of a sense of personal responsibility. Le Bon further argued that such loss of control leads to contagion, in which a lack of responsibility spreads throughout the crowd and everyone begins to think and act in the same manner. Finally, people in crowds become more suggestible.
Karen M. Douglas, Professor of Social Psychology, University of Kent.
Le Bon was writing in the early 20th century, long before the advent of social media, which has aggressively exasperated the three mechanisms of deindividuation.
Deindividuation is not only a reflection of internal processes, but can also be applied to external concepts. The individual being targeted - the accused - is not seen as a person, but a persona. He/she is reduced to the lowest possible attribute, that of which he/she is accused of, and becomes solely that thing - racist, sexist, fascist, transphobe etc. There are no nuances, subtleties or degrees - the accused is an -ist/-phobe, and that’s all he or she is (and will ever be).
Once an allegation has been cast, the group is activated and contagion occurs rapidly. This leads to The Group calling for the total annihilation of the accused, despite the fact that members of The Group itself have not seen any evidence of the supposed crime, not incurred any personal losses or grief and not having any personal relationships with the “victim”.
In fact, more often than not, there is no victim, and by definition, no crime. A generic tweet (such as the one from Darren Grimes being commented on below) is wilfully mis-interpreted and skewed in the worst possible light, and spread like a virus across group members, who chime in with their own denunciations.
And once the desired effect has taken place - such as the accused losing his/her job, being cast out and wholly discredited, the group rejoices and celebrates their victories in glee. A pertinent example of this process is of George Eaton, the senior editor of The New Statesman, posting a picture of himself guzzling champagne in jubilation after his now-discredited article about the late Sir Roger Scruton caused the Conservative philosopher to lose his unpaid role as Government Advisor.
Eaton, just like the rest of this mob, didn’t care that he lied and intentionally misrepresented Sir Roger’s views, since the ends justify the means. He didn’t care that his fabrications could’ve had far more severe effects, and the world’s most prominent conservative philosopher may have lost much more than a voluntary position with the government. Scruton’s persona was simply, as Eaton put it in his post, reduced to “right-wing racist and homophobe”. That was all he was. And as such, he needed destroying, and any lies which contribute to that effect were justified. Or, as one of the most prominent figures of this movement, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez recently put it:
“There's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”
This is just one example of incidents which are too many to count, and countless new ones appear every day. A person asserts a charge and The Group immediately convicts the accused without trial, not ever considering the truth of the accusation, or the consequences for the person being accused and, by default, convicted.
There’s no thought on whether the accused may have children to feed, relationships which may be destroyed, spent a lifetime in a company from which they are dishonourably discharged (such as was the case with Donald McNeil, who spent 45 years with The New York Times, only to be fired for referring to the “n-word”. Of course, almost all his accusers were white themselves).
We are willingly allowing children - including the adults whose cognitive capabilities are at children’s levels - hold us hostages not only for benign views we hold, but for malignant views we don’t hold.
We have given up our liberties for the mere fear of being accused of witchcraft, and we’re now even praising those who argue for more freedoms to be eradicated for this cause. Shame on us that we allow this to happen.
Unless the adults in the room stop capitulating and start demanding an honest conversation, we will keep seeing the lives of our colleagues, neighbours and family members destroyed for imaginary crimes, the thought that our silence will protect us is nothing but a dangerous delusion. It’s time to put an end to this.