SJWs Always Lie: A Non-Review

I first became acquainted with Vox Day from an article about what a terrible person he is. I won’t waste anyone’s time be repeating the list of evils Vox has been accused of. In the popular imagination, Vox is an inverted Jesus Loves the Little Children:

Vox Day hates the little children
Little children of the world
Red and Yellow, Black and Brown
He will run them out of town
Vox Day hates the little children of the world

Now, White Supremacists are something of a hobby of mine (a side effect of growing up as an “ethnic” in the South), so I immediately started reading his blog Vox Popoli for los llulz.

A year later, I wrote a series of posts summarizing what I had learned about Vox Day and how to fight back against him. To my dismay, the only people who had anything positive to say about the series were Puppies of the Sad and Rabid variety. The essence of their response was “I cannot believe a SJW is capable of understanding us.”

Now bear in mind, the essence of my argument was that the best way to deal with Vox Day is to treat him and the Puppies with kindness and humility. Disagree with them, but on the level of vigorous intellectual debate, not back-room sniping. One thing that I have in common with Vox is the belief that the Truth – the big Truth – can withstand public scrutiny.

Perhaps because of this positive Puppy response, Vox was kind enough to send me a review copy of his latest book: SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police. In truth, I was going to buy it anyway – the First Law of Vox Day is that Vox Day is never boring. Except for maybe those soccer stories.

Now, I have posted a traditional review on Amazon (three stars, for those wondering), but I would also like to criticize it from a more unusual angle. My thesis here is that SJWs resembles nothing so much as a piece of PUA literature. We’re going to look at three reasons why.

First, SJWs is not what outsiders assume it is (thought that goes for pretty much for the literature of any movement). I think many on the Left will assume that it is nothing more than a polemic; a preaching to the Aryan Choir or else a rant about how Vox was not hugged enough as a child. The author of John Scalzi Is Not A Very Popular Author And I Myself Am Quite Popular: How SJWs Always Lie About Our Comparative Popularity Levels certainly seems to think this is the case.

Outsiders tend to be familiar with a movement’s external trappings, but not its internal logic. In the case of PUAs, people know only their most visible external attributes: “peacocking” outfits, “negging” women with insults or indeed, an obsession with sexual conquest.

But this is not the core of PUA literature or other Neo-Masculine movements. PUA literature starts out with the promise of seducing women, but quickly moves to indoctrinating the reader into a new system of thinking. Indeed, seasoned PUAs will insist that the new system of thinking is the whole point. You will never get better at attracting women until you adopt the correct mindset.

This is the second point of commonality with PUA literature. The mindset taught in SJWs includes many things that have nothing to do with the original goal. It is a book that purports to teach you how to respond to SJW attacks, but it is at the same time building support for a new system of thinking. A system of thinking in which peaceful racial coexistence is impossible and no one on the Left is capable of coherent logical thought.

That’s not to say that Vox is being dishonest, or even that he does this intentionally. For Vox, his system of thought is what allows him to stand up against the bullies of the Left. Nonetheless, potential readers should be warned that the worldview they will be encouraged to accept is one in which racial equality is as impossible as a square circle. Equality and Progress are given as antonyms.

Third, SJWs is primarily a series of Scripts. For PUA manuals, these Scripts are opening lines, moving from one phase to another, shifting venues, et al. In SJWs, the first Script is the anatomy of a SJW attack (Point and Shriek and so on) and the second Script is the proper response (Don’t Apologize and so on).

There is, of course, more to this book than the two Scripts, but as with PUA literature, it is mostly there either to explain and support the Scripts or to explain and support the Worldview. There are calls to arms and sections on how to SJW-proof an organization, but this is so much window dressing. What really matters are the Scripts and canned routines.

The breakdown of dialectic vs. rhetoric is a good one, although it does claim that Leftists are incapable of dialectic reason. Again, this may be somewhat justified. After a year of following Vox, I have not yet seen an opponent attack him with a dialectic argument, for whatever reason.

At the end of the day, SJWs Always Lie will likely do exactly what it set out to do. The culture wars within fandom will escalate, the disqualification arms race will heat up, and both sides will steadily lose the ability to see the other side as human beings. I will never say that both sides are the same, but they do have one thing in common: the constant dehumanization of the other side.

Vox Day suggests that the only way to combat the intellectual policing of the Left is for the Right to engage in intellectual policing. This is what we have come to, and why I find Vox’s posturing as a hero of free speech disingenuous. Apparently the Hugo SJWs are not the only ones willing to burn down the city to save it.

Because SJWs Always Lie is a PUA manual, I expect to see many mini-Voxes running around in the near future, using its Scripts and techniques. Might I offer a suggested counter-script?

1). Accept that your opponent is a human being.
2). Attack ideas, never attack individuals.
3). Address specific statements with credible evidence.

You don’t defeat an insurgency by spreading chaos and you don’t restore stability by attacking innocent civilians. If you want to end the culture war before it turns into an actual war, you must start by loving your enemies and treating them as you would want to be treated. Bottom line, full stop.