Most "cancel culture" stories are brutal and alarming. It seems no one is safe from the threat of a mob intent on taking a person down: not acclaimed editors, not professors, not poets nor promising politicians nor regular college kids. It's my hope this story will provide encouragement that it's possible to withstand the mob. But you might have to learn how to fight fire with fire.
My husband and I co-founded a non-profit organization in 2010. At the time, we knew nothing about the woke ideology called Critical Theory (or sometimes "critical social justice"). Our motivation was to address disparities in mental health care. We had learned that lay people (without clinical training) made up the majority of trauma care providers working with vulnerable populations such as refugees and human trafficking survivors around the world. We wanted to help equip those lay care providers with good resources for increasing mental and emotional resilience in their communities.
We hired clinically-trained mental health professionals to develop our curriculum, oversee Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning, and run the international training program. The organization saw great success in our first seven years. We received accolades from all the right people in academia and the non-profit world, and we partnered with international and grass-roots organizations working with survivors of trauma in more than 50 countries.
Then a few years ago, we became aware of a gradual but marked shift in tone among our program team.
My husband, who serves as Executive Director, felt he was always on trial with his own staff. These were people we respected and admired who had done great work with the organization for years. My husband had once related to these people with familiarity and ease. Now, he couldn't fathom team members' hypercritical posture towards "norms" or understand their impenetrable rhetoric.
As a volunteer for the organization, I was often around the staff and became accustomed to their phraseology. It included frequent use of terms like "systems of power and oppression," "hegemony," "marginalized identities," "intersections," "centering," "deconstruct," "knowledges," and "normativity." I didn't understand the ideology behind it, so I started what turned into a deep-dive research project.
Meanwhile, the open letters began. The letters were always directed to everyone in the organization from the graphic designer to the governing board, always asserted vaguely that the organization was "causing harm," and always ended with demands. We were alarmed and confused.
We initiated all-organization sessions, sometimes moderated by our board chair, sometimes with a third-party professional mediator, trying to discern what was happening and what was needed. I later came to understand these meetings were essentially "struggle sessions," as in the Maoist tradition.
But even at the time, it soon became apparent there were no specific actions or incidents that could be deemed harmful. The accusations remained vague and abstract, demanding as means of atonement that the organization examine "systems" in order to protect "vulnerable identities."
Still attempting to uncover any real abuses that could be occurring, my husband met individually with team members to assess whether anyone had experienced mistreatment. No team member could identify any incident that would require further inquiry.
What also became apparent was the accusers didn't want to resolve any real or imagined harm. They wanted control of the organization. Not understanding board governance, they demanded that the head of the program staff replace the Executive Director as a voting member of the board. They reasoned that because the Executive Director was straight, white, male, and Christian, he was unqualified to lead an organization addressing trauma.
That's when I learned to fight.
Counter-Revolution
At this point, I'd been doing my homework for a while and understood these assaults to be the fruit of a social justice ideology derived from Critical Theory. I had discovered Neil Shenvi's blog, with thorough reviews of Theory's original source documents. I also found James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose's Cynical Theories, and Lindsay's blog, New Discourses, full of resources for understanding Theory and tactics for exposing its inconsistencies. I knew what we were facing was an attempted subversion of the organization through threatening ultimatums, character smearing, and forced transfer of power.
We were committed on principle to seeing the conflict to its end, so rather than fire the subversive lot, we aimed to expose their holy texts as deficient. We hoped they would recognize that adhering to Theory is indistinguishable from cultish zeal. I wrote position papers on how Critical Theory compromised our mission by conflicting with a number of our organizational commitments — including being evidence-based, valuing the individual, practicing cultural humility, and allowing for true diversity. These papers were distributed to team members as required reading ahead of scheduled "struggle sessions."
I also learned to fight fire with fire by using their woke moral code against them. When a staff member said I couldn't speak to a topic because I'm straight, I told her it was wrong to assume about my sexuality just because I'm married to a man. She immediately groveled.
Incredibly, when staff members were forced to concede some of their demands were contrary to the best mental health research, they persisted, claiming "deep personal conviction" as their justification. These were professionals with clinical training and advanced degrees from respected institutions. It was disheartening. At this point it was evident there was no good-faith dialogue to be had. We were dealing with ideological devotion rather than a commitment to seeking truth.
After some months, when it was clear to them we wouldn't budge, the ones making demands left "on moral grounds," with parting emails accusing us of multiple phobias and labeling the organization "white supremacist." Never mind that we've always partnered with people of every ethnicity, creed, and identity. In refusing their terms, we had forfeited our right to be regarded as decent human beings. In truth, it was the most dehumanizing experience of my life. I already stood accused due to my immutable traits — white, straight, cisgendered, Christian. By not acquiescing to their moral code and demands, I was anathema.
No Pain, No Gain
Having survived an attempted power grab and character assassination by a Woke mob, I'll attest: it's painful. It especially hurts if the mob includes people you once trusted. But if you care more about maintaining your integrity than what people think or say about you, you'll emerge with your dignity intact.
Don't apologize or defend yourself against vague accusations of "harm." An apology when you've done nothing wrong is a lie. It will only further convince your accusers their delusions are reality. They don't want dialogue; they want compliance. Nor will you defeat them in logical debate: Theory rejects objective truth.
Instead, attempt to show the inconsistencies between their demands and what they claim to care about (e.g., the poor). It will require some research on your part to prove you really do understand Theory, and you repudiate it as insufficient to the work of bettering the world. You'll acquire a thick skin, as you will be called nasty names.
If you don't fight this nonsense now, wherever it's showing up in your community, soon there will be nothing good, true, or beautiful to defend. We will be ruled by lies and power while being told we're progressing toward truth and justice. We're in an open war, ideologically speaking. There is no "safe" any more for people of good conscience. Choose which kind of "unsafe" you can abide. Fighting lies is always preferable to being ruled by them. I believe the truth will prevail.
About the Author:
Grace Daniel is a co-founder of a non-profit organization providing training internationally for lay people in mental health care.
Reader Comments
Unlike ridiculous, cowardly stunts by miserable losers in life like 'taking a knee' at some football game, beating up a defenseless statue(if you're so damn 'oppressed' why do you attack 'symbols' of your 'oppression' rather than your actual 'oppressors'), burning down an auto parts store, looting a shoe store or murdering innocent people, in some cases from your own 'oppressed' 'group'.....
(from my nothing-for-sale-no-advertising site, [Link] )
"Truly oppressed people do truly desperate things like immolate themselves..."(or IF armed with weapons like guns, rise up against their oppressors-the Left always wants to take your guns away), "....or more often less conspicuous suicides such as jumping off a building, which sometimes isn’t tall enough, and not as some political ‘protest’ spectacle before Western cameras but in utter hopelessness in their isolated village, one of whom I knew personally. Other Tibetan friends, upon glimpsing my passport with the words “United States of America”, burst into uncontrolled wailing, tears pouring in anguish because they knew they were in a situation of genuine tyranny where they could never know the dignity and hope of our American relative-to-elsewhere freedom.”
" ‘Red Guard/Rainbow Guard’. Communist China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution with its ‘struggle sessions’ and denunciation of the ‘Four Olds’, old ideas, old customs, old culture and old habits, shares a great deal with today’s ideologically coward American Progressivism, viz. a profound intolerance of views divergent from a condescending, fanatically zealous opinion of proper thinking and conduct, while in the case of American Progressives sanctimoniously preaching ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity’ , (at least the Red Guard weren’t the epitome of shameless hypocrisy),....."
"Globalist Communism/Socialism is an evil force as it is a Godless system where adults are treated as children. The hallmark of adulthood, both individually and for a society, is the maturity to dutifully and civilly handle natural, intrinsic freedom such that an individual or society can take care of and be directly responsible for him/itself as able, and via compassion care for those unable as well. Mature adults and societies are responsible and compassionate; immature ones are not. Freedom is walking the tightrope of life without a net, taking responsibility and accepting the consequences thereof. Relinquishing our responsibility to government, an employer, business, institution or any ‘authority’ deprives us of our adulthood, our humanity, turning us into child-things. There is neither freedom, nor maturity, nor civilization under Communism/Socialism; Big Brother ‘cares’ for you and your ‘group’ , at your expense…forever."
Thank you.
I applaud this article's author, Grace Daniel, and her husband for standing up to this 'critical theory' insanity.......I swear, after my years in China (& Tibet) which were in many ways a real 'trip'(luggage packing tip for a visit to China, leave the LSD and other psychedelics at home, not necessary), I feel like instead of coming back to America I've stepped into a Fellini movie....on LSD.
I quickly learned to scroll to the bottom of the comments and check out those comments with negative point totals, which required extra clicks.
Now I'm confident that some of those were government paid trolls, but the scary part was the huge percentage (easily over 40%, I'd guess) who went along - simply because, to them, it somehow felt easier to do - with what they surely perceived as ANONYMOUS! downvoting!
I am confident when I say that this battle for uncompromised and open minds of those true Americans who might remain, is almost surely lost. I fear we must go to places like South America, Central America, etc. and try to awaken folks there before the malevolents' cleanup teams there show up.
Sad.
RC
South America......? Great, then I can be in a Fellini movie, ...on ayahausca, ha!
But Communist 'liberators' have been crawling around Latin America for years....anyway.....I've got a couple photos on my site of a sort of 'gate'/'doorway' in Tibet maybe not unlike Aramu Muru near Lake Titicaca. We could go through one of these and see what movie is on the 'other' side....
One of my earliest memories in life, I was 4 years old, was Dallas ’63. I grew up believing in the Democratic Party of Pres. Kennedy, which is now some kind of grotesque monster. Having lived in western China and coming back to the U.S. and now hearing all this talk of ‘oppression’ (& ‘Socialism’), here in the U.S., leaves me worried beyond words for our nation, which I was already worried about before I went to China.
G'night, time for bed....
At that time, we lived in the Mojave Desert in CA. My big brother and sister were off at first and third grade, I'd guess. I remember my little baby sister crying because my Mum was crying and I ran out to the living room
*Example: All in my family - not only my older siblings but indeed, my parents, et al., have long been aware that if they wished to know any facts from what was my youth, simply ask. They're still there. For example, what type of car our family used when we lived in the 'desert' when I was age three though six? They've for now half a century known to simply call and ask me. I still remember the vast expanse across 'our' desert than ran flat as a table out to the mountains that our front porch looked out upon, the road that went off to the left (it was heading East as I seem to recall) which went to where my older siblings would get picked up for school; our only other neighbor a half mile 'behind' our house (from that viewpoint) and how I was almost killed in their hogpen. (My big brother's friend's idea.) {When 'Life' cereal came out with those commercials where 'Let Mikey try it; Mikey will eat anything', well, EVERYONE would turn away from the TV and just look at me and I frankly wondered who TF had stolen my early life story.
RC
Whatever branch at the PTB came up with this horseshit gave some cynical malevolent thought to that naming.
R.C.
The Conscious Resistance Network presents: The Pyramid of Power Ep. 1 – Big Education [Link]
HFL: Infra: Leave it up to us to screw up the King's English. (I've gotta guess that they needed that extra syllable and that they were rightly confident that few if any would notice the difference.)
RC
Perhaps, they're quoting The Drifters....[Link]
Drew Brees ? Thanks. RC
(I doubt I'll be able to get it within edit time, but I love Conrad's (Marlow's) quote about lies and mortality.) RC
Fighter;
They'd say I was insane
to hold my hand in fire
The Serpentine eyes the terrain
Burning with desire
But I'm not to be blamed
I dreamed of being a fighter
As in wrath and ruin and pain
They'd burn us all
The liar's.
We dreamed of being a fighter
Dreams of being in land of rain
Visions of the fire
Visions of the end of days
We dreamed of being a fighter
Dreams of being in land of pain
Visions of the fire
Visions of the souls ablaze.