Imagine a world where everything you do, no matter how benign, no matter how innocently offered, is immediately offensive to someone. Imagine a world where negative feedback – harassment, hatred, abuse, invective – is not merely immediate, but conveyed from every corner of the world. This is a horrifying dystopia of opinion, a place where it is impossible not to give offense and where giving offense is the greatest crime a human being can commit.
You do not have to imagine this bleak future. It is our present, and it is the unintended consequence our modern entertainment and communications infrastructure.
In other words, it is the Internet's fault.
The Internet is, in fact, dominated by technological terrorists. The information age has given rise to a number of overt hackers and blackmailers – entities and individuals who threaten to "dox" or expose online the personal information of those whom they hate. But it is not these faceless hackers, these agitators in Guy Fawkes masks or hiding behind the names of various online "phreaking" groups, who are the real problem. No, far worse are the terrorist tactics of none other than the Social Justice Whiners. The influence of SJW groups (lib agitators who see injustice everywhere that only government force can correct) has increased dramatically in recent years. In years past, the most ludicrous of these groups' constant outrages were ignored and laughed at. These days, however, "social justice" activists have managed to redefine nearly everything as an offense or an affront. The greatest crimes in the SJW pantheon are those involving racism and sexism, labels social justice types are more than happy to slap on anyone who does not conform rigidly to their politically correct, hyper-feminist, hysterically overwrought list of what is acceptable behavior and thought.
Never was this more apparent than in the influence the Southern Poverty Law Center has enjoyed. The group has had the ear of prominent figures within the Department of Homeland Security and was instrumental in redefining virtually everyone that disagrees with Obama and the Democrats as a potential "domestic terrorist." Anyone who is not a far-left liberal is a hatemonger, according to the SPLC. Any group that does not support politically correct Democratic groups is likewise a hate group. Oh, sure the organization manages to sweep up a few wretched neo-Nazis and Klansmen along the way, but this is almost by accident or afterthought. Among the conservatives and even moderates the SPLC has wrongly labeled "hatemongers" and "extremists" are milquetoast political figure Ben Carson, political personalities Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, the Family Research Council, WND founder Joseph Farah, conspiracy dingbat Alex Jones and various political columnists ... including myself, Phil Elmore.
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But organized groups like the SPLC have, in recent years, been eclipsed by the power of the SJW mob online. Whenever a conservative speaks, there is an SJW – or, more accurately, an army of anonymous SJW agitators – to take offense, demand the conservative's job be taken and even publicly suggest that conservative's murder. Actors Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner recently found this out. The pair gave an interview in which they jokingly referred to the "Avengers" character Black Widow as a "slut" and a "whore." Let's be clear: In the comic books, Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johannson, was originally a Soviet-era assassin who used her feminine wiles (the Marvel.com website says she "romanced" various men) to trick both Tony Stark (Iron Man, played by Robert Downey Jr.) and Hawkeye (whom Renner plays) to steal their property and gain their assistance. The character is a Russian femme fatale who sleeps with men to gain their confidence – in other words, a slut and a whore.
Too late did Renner and Evans realize their mistake. The pair were forced to issue an immediate apology because they had dared utter – gasp – a "sexist" comment. The SJW outrage, however, was far from over. It seems there are a couple of harmless jokes in the new movie "Avengers: Age of Ultron" that can be interpreted, if you squint at them really hard, as misogynist. So great was the wailing and gnashing of teeth on micro-blogging site Twitter over these imagined offenses that director Joss Whedon deleted his Twitter account.
The ire and outrage of the social justice activists has pervaded every corner of social media and online news. In a recent review of the season finale of the Fox series "Gotham" (another comic-book tie in, this one from DC rather than Marvel), bedwetting lib Kyle Fowle managed to shoehorn in an anti-gamergate reference while panning the show. (His conclusion was that a mob character deserved a swift death for having "meninist tendencies" – that is, not being a feminist.)
Fowle is a piker, however, compared to social-justice terrorist Arthur Chu. Chu, moderately Internet-famous for a stint on "Jeopardy," is a bile-spewing SJW racist who accused a man's biracial children of being "shields" for their father's alleged hatreds. (That father is respected author Brad Torgersen.) Chu recently found himself at the center of yet another lib attack on freedom of speech: It seems he tweeted contact information for a "Gamergate" convention only moments before a bomb threat was called in to disrupt the event. Coincidence? One hopes.
Liberals' hatred for freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of action always expresses itself as terrorism. It is not enough that they disagree; they must force you to change your mind. If you refuse, you will be threatened. If you persist, your livelihood will be taken away. If you still will not submit, they may just have to murder you ... and they'll be more than happy to tell you so, publicly and by name.
As long as we continue to indulge SJW outrage rather than simply mocking it, we will live at their mercy. As Joss Whedon found out, even former liberal darlings are not immune to the depredations of these technological terrorists. When they finish with the conservatives, they will eat each other, until the last coward among them is left to scream self-righteously at no one.