A Few Words on False Equalizing

About 5 years or so ago, yours truly observed a young woman present the goofy and ridiculous claim in a message board at Myspace (back when Myspace still had message boards) that people who were deriding and criticizing the yuppie subculture (aka the subculture of trendy, mainstream comformists: a subculture enamored of status symbols and affluent , new- rich lifestyles and the gossip about and mystification of celebrities) were somehow allegedly guilty of “racism” for putting down the lifestyle of the yuppies !

Such a disgusting, namby-pamby pusillanimous claim is by no means a fluke (nor anomaly) in the current era of relativism (the goofy ideology which betrays and undermines from within ostensibly progressive causes) . The claim that alleged that somehow denouncing the lifestyle of the trendy, shallow yuppies was somehow tantamount, to some sort of “racism”, is characteristic of a seductive and misleading pattern of thought known as *false equalizing* . Such false equalizing is a pusillanimous pattern of thought which lazily presumes that the agenda of any group is somehow equal to that of any other group . In the case of the person who made the outrageous and insipid claim that people who were harshly (and rightly) criticizing the lifestyle of the yuppies were somehow supposedly engaged in “racism” , an insipid equivocation was made between (A) a social subculture (the yuppies) and (Z). the quite *separate* context of an actual ethnic race .

Yet such a worse than stupid equivocation is symptomatic of a larger problem.

That larger problem is a mentally lazy, mentally dishonest pattern of thought of false equalizing which presumes that the agenda of any group of people somehow has an ad hoc equality with the agenda of any other group of people and/or that the agenda of any group of people somehow must be given some namby-pamby , ad hoc respect (regardless of whether it is a virtuous agenda, or whether, *instead* it is a murky, crass sort of agenda).

In the case of the person who defended the yuppies and made the ridiculous claim that harshly criticizing the yuppies is somehow tantamount to racism , the agenda of a NON-racial group : the trendy, conformist subculture of the yuppies (an agenda which does *NOT* count for anything good) was treated *as if* it were somehow equal to the agenda of racial groups such African Americans who have struggled for civil rights: the latter being a group which has a noble agenda: an agenda that, indeed, DOES count for something good .

Yet with the insipid pattern of thought called false equalizing (a pattern of thought that is central to adamant relativism /postmodernism), any agenda of any group is wrongly treated AS IF it were supposedly equal to any other group, so that the agendas of superfluous, trendy subcultural groups such as yuppies and hipsters (agendas which do *not* count for anything important) is treated by the advocates of the postmodernist memes of tolerance and acceptance, *as if* they were somehow equal to the noble, humanitarian agenda of groups of people such as African Americans and other racial minorities, women who seek equal pay for equal work, the poor, the handicapped , transgendered people and so on who manifest agendas which DO count for something important!

It is quite a repulsive farce when people who promote the meme of respect for mere opinions (including the crass opinions of those who support the lifestyle of yuppies and similar trendy subcultures) say, for example , claim that somehow that harshly criticizing the lifestyles of the yuppies is somehow supposedly in any way similar to criticizing oppressed racial minorities and the poor , when it is the venal ostentatious yuppies which have often treated the poor / oppressed minority with an attitude of contempt and marginalized them!

Yet with the postmodernist attitude of tolerance and acceptance (such was manifested by the lateral thinking /goofy equivocation of the person who in the myspace message board claimed that denouncing the often affluent and always trendy yuppies was supposedly racism) seeks to mentally betray the agenda of groups which have a noble, humanitarian agenda , by claiming that the agenda of trendy , superficial groups (such as the yuppies) is somehow similar to the quite different groups that have an important agenda .

Much of such mealy mouthed relativism / postmodernist MTV era tendency towards *false equalizing* is made manifest in the weirdly popular talk that often infiltrates a number of progressive movements in the present era …which recommends not being us versus them (AS IF there were something wrong with talking an us versus them approach) . Of course , there certainly is nothing at all wrong with taking an us versus them approach . The students in the White Rose movement , as well as the French resistance, took an unhesitatingly us versus them approach against the Nazis . The abolitionists took an us versus them approach against the advocates of chattel slavery .

The suffragettes took an us versus them approach against male chauvanists . The us versus them approach is what justice demands!

Often that goofy tendency of thought towards false equalizing also infiltrates progressive movements (turning them into postmodernist NEO-progressive movements, which betray the ideals they are supposed to support with a mood of ambivalence and ambiguity) by more understated, latent, mealy- mouthed rhetoric about finding a balance, or middle ground .

Such false equalizing also creeps into progressive circles with mealy mouthed talk about so-called “gray areas”, or so-called “shades of gray “.

Making a systematic effort to expose and denounce such false equalizing is long overdue!

So-called shades of gray are NO substitute for accuracy and truth.

Balance is NO substitute for resolution and integrity.

- tree, Crimethinc Tribe

Similar Posts:

• Who You Claim: Performing Gang Identity in School and on the Streets [review]
• Can You Use the Master’s Tools to Dismantle the House in Revolutionary Moments?
• Oppression, Justice & Power: Racial Struggles Within the American Educational System
• Gentrification and the White Left
• On Being An Ally