“I have come to feel strongly that the greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be that I could make the speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever again to employ the term ‘social justice’.”
-Friedrich Hayek, wrote thus, in 1976, two years after winning the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Almost without exception, political parties, labour unions, universities and colleges, private foundations and public charities claim at least part of their mission to be the spreading of Social Justice far and wide. “Social Justice” is a term you hear almost every day. But seldom do they define what that term really means.
A UN report on Social Justice defines the term as, “Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth. Social justice is not possible without strong and coherent redistributive policies conceived and implemented by public agencies.”
“Strong” and “coherent” (pervasive) re-distributive (taking forcibly from one group to give it to another) policies conceived and implemented by “public agencies”(the State). This is simply Communism re-branded as a virtue. It is the same ideology that has killed over 100 million people, and devastated countries for generations.
The Gulags or Mao forcing his own citizens to cannibalism are actually just minor examples of the mayhem unleashed by this poisonous ideology. Our own encounter with “Socialism” has been extremely similar. Be it Nehru’s failed policies or Indira Gandhi’s draconian ‘Garibi Hatao’ tax policies, Sanjay Gandhi led forced vasectomy drive, suppression of fundamental rights, or any of her other so-called “reforms”. Be it the Communist regimes of West Bengal, Tripura or Kerala. If the horrors of Communist regimes are narrated, the readers may not be able to digest their food.
The UN report further goes on to insist that, “Present-day believers in an absolute truth identified with virtue and justice are neither willing nor desirable companions for the defenders of social justice.”
What it means is that if you believe truth and justice are concepts independent of and/or different from the agenda of the forces of “progress” as defined by the Left, you are an enemy of social justice, thus an enemy of the Left establishment and self-declared liberals and the elites who “know better” than a plebeian like you or me.
Anytime a modifier is added in front of a term that is inherently good, it becomes a perversion in itself. Justice is good. It means that if you do something, it’s either good or bad and you get what you deserve for it. Social Justice on the other hand, is, in fact, injustice. Social Justice demands that an individual belonging to a group deemed to be “privileged” is responsible for reparations in one manner or the other, in the name of Social Justice, to a group deemed to be “marginalized” irrespective of whether said individual or their ancestors were involved in the marginalization of the “marginalized” group or not. For example, in India Hindus are discriminated against for providing “equity” to Muslims as they are “marginalized” even though they were the ruling class for centuries, something a lot of modern-day Indian Muslims take a lot of pride in. And it were the Hindus who were actually victimized in so many ways and had their temples destroyed, desecrated and turned into mosques.
And even if somebody’s ancestors were responsible, how can they be asked to pay for the crimes they didn’t commit!
Social Justice is evil because it puts group identity above individual’s own identity. For example, in a conversation with “Liberals” and Leftists about sexism a man’s point of view will be disregarded completely unless he echoes the words of other leftist women, simply because he is a man. Or another example, in a talk about caste discrimination the opinions of a Brahmin or Kshatriya will be disregarded or devalued not on the basis of the merits of their arguments but because of their identity.
Words like Brahmanism, mansplaining, Islamophobe, Hindu-supremacist or male (or some other)-privilege get thrown around often when someone tries to debate a proponent of Social Justice in order to discredit them because of their group identity and an ‘ad-hominem’ argument is made, i.e. the moral character of the person is questioned and they are called evil for not supporting Social Justice.
This value that Social Justice puts on the collective identity rather than on individuals, is how murder in the name of the “collective good” is justified. The moral argument which follows is that the collective (society at large) is more important than the individual, thus the collective good is more important than a single or few individuals’ discomfort. And to achieve group justice, if an individual is in the way of “progress” then they have to be ‘removed’ since the group is more important than the individual.
This is how Communism ended up killing a 100 million people. The bottom-line is that if individuals are a hindrance then they need to be eliminated because if you are seeking the equality of outcome on a group level, as Social Justice does, and individuals are outliers then they must go. For Communism, and now Social Justice, individuals are either tools to the ideology or an obstacle to it.
Today Social Justice is a term used by leftists, “liberals” and elites in order to seem noble and caring. It disguises itself as a virtue and something to try and achieve, all the while being exactly what it claims to oppose, fight and eradicate- injustice! Social Justice is nothing more than irresponsible self-indulgence of self-righteous Leftists and elites who like to pretend to make things fair.
If there is anything worse than unfairness, it is make make-believe fairness. Social Justice takes individuals capable of independence and being self-sufficient who can take pride in their own achievements and turns them into dependents and mascots by telling them that they can’t do certain things because they are a victim of society and the society must compensate them.
This ideology believes that victimhood is some sort of currency and how important you and your opinions are is decided by how “oppressed” you are. This is called ‘intersectionality’. Simply put it is “Oppression Olympics”. To win you have to claim being victimized by as many ways as you can. And the one with the most pathetic self-esteem wins.
Their is also a whole hierarchy to various types of “oppressions”. For example, a lesbian woman is higher up the victimhood ladder than a gay man. And if you are an able-bodied heterosexual savarna Hindu man who likes joint family and is proud of Hinduism and don’t like Communism, then you are the worst kind of scum and deserve to die. It might sound comical, but it really isn’t and this all-pervasive mentality is all too visible.
You can imagine the depravity of a society where there is a race to be a “victim” and whining for handouts in exchange of being a victim. Social Justice destroys the social fabric by pitting women against men, homosexuals against heterosexuals, Muslims and Christians against Hindus, disabled against able-bodied, Dalits against Brahmins and so forth. And this is why Social Justice is pure, unadulterated evil, diabolical, vile and poisonous to the core. This must be fought against to uphold individual justice and individual expression. We are more than our group identity labels.
