A social justice hate group.

What a rather controversial way to ring in the new year. This thread will help me develop a major enemy faction in my story.

As you know the term "social justice warrior" refers to to particular type of zealot who takes generally left leaning views to rather annoying or repulsive extremes.

Thankfully they aren't Black Panther Party material. So they aren't likely to parade around in rallies armed with rifles and shotguns, nevermind actually committing armed violence.

But what if there was a group of extremists willing to commit violence in the name of social justice?

First, who do they recruit and who are their targets?

^Footnote Also, I'll admit that even thought I consider myself left leaning, I'm not fond of the way some people go around spreading social justice. That and the novelty is why I've made this decision to have the antagonists be this particular brand of extremists.

edited 1st Jan '15 10:50:30 AM by Worlder

Well, luckily for you, there's no shortage of historical examples. "Social justice" is a recent term, the phenomenon is not. As it turns out, you're describing almost exactly the anarchist groups of the late 19th century. Instead of "raising awareness" by clicking Facebook, though, it was "propaganda of the deed" by blowing up the Czar. Look up the history of these groups; the Russians, as is their wont, provides the most wonderfully batshit examples. (See Nechayev's "catechism of the revolutionary".) Although the thought does occur that comparing the Black Hand to the SJW groups infesting Tumblr is like comparing a howitzer to a fart in a bag.

If there is a risk it's that they were overused as villains by mid-century.

edited 1st Jan '15 12:53:13 PM by SabresEdge

One could argue that the current crop of militant religious extremists are SJ Ws - they have their ideals of the "right world" and laundry list of "injustices committed against them" (from "US Foreign Policy" to "persisting in worshipping the wrong God" or "giving too many rights to the wrong sort of people") and are taking extreme measures to pursue their agenda of making over the world in their image.

Remember that someone's "terrorist" is someone else's "freedom fighter" and they certainly view themselves as heroes fighting for a noble cause rather than villains trying to destroy a good thing For the Evulz.

That's true whether they are Christian Extremists killing doctors and blowing up abortion clinics or Islamic Extremists blowing up buses full of infidels.

They are attacking what they see as "unjust" and contrary to their view of a perfect world.

Take a look at these guys.

To answer your questions: 1) College educated student radicals and 2) Politicians and police.

So you're say my enemy faction is a rehash of Communists and Anarchists? So much for novelty.

Ok let's get into more specific details. Social justice can be further subdivided based on gender, sexual orientation, race, etc.

I'm interested in gender.

Yes, I know about the Straw Feminist. But the characters listed on that page listed on that page don't exactly strike fear or disgust into my heart. They come across as either pitifully insane or resentful.

edited 1st Jan '15 3:38:41 PM by Worlder

The Golden Crysanthemums should give you a start point. Yes, this isn't really an original idea either, but at least you're only competing with Chris Roberts rather than Russian history. That's gotta be easier.

edited 1st Jan '15 3:41:00 PM by Night

Basically. You know history? It's big. Plan to do an idea and there's almost certainly some precedent for it somewhere.

That shouldn't stop you—as far back as the Book of Ecclesiastes, it was recognized that "the thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun"—but it does oblige you to look up those precedents, see how they unfolded, and learn the whys and wherefores, so that you know what elements you want to use.

I think should be somewhat thankful that this antagonist that I'm constructing never existed in real life. I can't say the same for my protagonist though. Evil Versus Evil.

If you're after examples then Animal Wrongs Groups is a good example in regards to some all for hurting others and defying the law to get their own way. Over Christmas I heard all about a anti Muslim, anti Islam race hate group promoting violence in Australia, let's see if I can come up with some news there.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/ADL-Australian-Defence-League/213679261984140

These guys I think, the Australian Defence League, think a white version of Malcolm X or the Black Panthers.

You could also look at having a Westboro stand in as well whose hatred of gays and soldiers extends to the point of picketing funerals, if you were to include something like the Patriot Guard (a non violent Badass Biker group who followed Phelps around and picket him, try to get him to leave the funeral alone and support the mourners) then that would rule.

Deep Green Resistance is another radical movement that advocates the use of violence/genocide to further their aims, and is tied into several radical leftist movements.

edited 1st Jan '15 7:44:44 PM by carbon-mantis

I find it curious that you are doing this for the novelty. This has been done before many many many many many MANY times, actually. Bioshock Infinite, Veronica Mars, Pokemon,

people loooove the Well-Intentioned Extremist concept so much they made an entire trope about it :P

Perhaps novelty isn't the word. Relevance perhaps?

KKK crime sprees aren't exactly on the headlines. Neither are the Panthers.

Middle Eastern terrorists are more of a menace for the Middle East at the moment. Also perhaps I might run into Too Soon if I try my hand.

That might well change with the Sydney siege, you should have heard of it, and today's revelation the gunman was preaching bloodshed to thousands. If the ADL were not making a call to arms before...we hear of "American blood must flow, American limbs must be cut off," changing it to Arab under the circumstances would make it very relevant.

You're interested in gender-based social justice hate groups, you say? There's this controversy with Trans-Exclusionary Feminism. The reasoning of insiders is that male-to-female trans* people are committing experiential appropriation which is sort of like cultural appropriation I guess, and female-to-male trans* people are making a grab for male privilege and abandoning solidarity with female-bodied women who suffer oppression for being female-bodied feminine women.

Such recruits would be cisgendered females for whom such righteous indignation and outrage gives them a voice that they feel they've been so deprived of, and a personal history of the worst oppression to their own gender experienced firsthand, and silencing around that, create such a need for validation that it creates a tunnel vision (and tunnel mission) with the language of social justice turned into a weapon to preserve their own privilege, which can't simply be checked when, naturally, all the mental and emotional effort to survive is going to healing a personal trauma with the help of a supportive (to insiders) group of like-minded idealists.

I'm also remembering a classmate of mine who was homophobic, but in a way that I could understand even though I didn't agree with it. I was crushing really hard on my (female) teacher from a previous school then, but my mother had friends who were lesbian and my sister had friends who were lesbian so I didn't feel all that oppressed—it was uncommon, but not immoral in my world. So, when this classmate (who didn't know my orientation) complained about the lesbians at her previous school, what I was able to understand from that was that her bubble of heteronormativity granted some sort of safe space to her from sexual objectification, that is spaces of Girls Only...and lesbians broke that safety, and therefore were just as bad as the cis-het dudebros conditioned to sexually objectify girls. I didn't argue because I thought that if (from the complaints I heard) she couldn't differentiate between an experimental little livewire who just wanted to piss off her parents and would disrespect people's personal boundaries to do it, and a loving couple who happen to both be female but aren't hurting anyone else just by having a relationship, then someone so silly wasn't worth arguing with if she lived in a world covered by blanket statements. Now I wouldn't have argued if she needed validation for the safety of her personal boundaries and sexual exploration, and was willing to kick down other girls who were growing into their sexuality...because I believe that would have done her more harm than it would do a lesbian any good.

Back to your thing, the premise is controversial, so the question of whether privilege in the guise of oppression can be a thing that exists and all the unfortunate implications of that can be...a challenge to handle with wisdom and grace. I look forward to what comes of it!

edited 2nd Jan '15 4:03:18 AM by Faemonic

The issues surrounding transsexuals and transgender activists and feminism are a bit more complicated than that, and I'm 1000% sure that someone who specifically wants to use ~social justice warriors~ (i.e. teenagers who get a bit carried away over mostly fundamentally good causes) as a villain will not be able to handle those issues well.

P.S. the Black Panthers spent a lot of their energy on providing food for poor black children. They also had links to violent crime and drug dealing, but the idea that they were some kind of mirror image of the KKK or whatever is nonsense.

You probably shouldn't be using SJ Ws as villains, but if you really want to... I'd say the thing that distinguishes them from previous activists is that they are a largely internet-based phenomenon. The worst aspects of that (apart from general ineffectiveness) is that they can swarm against anyone who is considered to be 'Problematic' — for example, a few days ago a transgender teenager committed suicide. Based on this kid's suicide note (queued to go up on Tumblr a few hours after the act) which basically said 'fuck you mum, fuck you dad!', thousands of shitlords have been harassing the parents to the extent that they're not going to hold a funeral because they're afraid it would be picketed. Some people have even been trying to get the father fired from his job.

Now, this is less a villainous organisation, and more an internet-fueled mob mentality. Anyone who isn't a 100% ideological clone of yourself is 100% evil. You could have a small group manipulating the mob behind the scenes, but... eh. It's been done, and normally it's an entirely reactionary plotline.

It's always complicated, of course. But where is the friction most likely to spark an explosive chain reaction that brings about every merciless change but justice?

Ah, yes I apologize if I suggested that they are as cruel as the KKK. But they are certainly not exactly nice people either. They do want to be see as tough and ready to fight, correct?

edited 2nd Jan '15 10:21:56 AM by Worlder

They would recruit misanthropic crazy people. More are made on the internet every day. There doesn't even have to be thousands of members, recruiting a dozen extremely threatening ideological terrorists would do the trick,since anonymity of the group can not only make it more fear-inducing, but set up a reveal later on in the story. In the story, if their primary target is "White America", they can recruit a majority of white members for the sake of conveying hypocrisy.

For one you could try the Scientologist method, luring members in under a helpful and righteous guise, and then have them be threatened, extorted or harmed for attempting to leave or abandon the ideals of the group.

Ultimately the target is up to you. I don't understand SJW views (Insane Troll Logic) but do understand that Well-Intentioned Extremist and Straw Feminist types have plenty of targets, and reasons why.

Who do you want the target to be?

Thinking it over

Groups

• Advertising companies (thank you Jean Kilbourne)
• Toy companies
• Toy stores
• Conservative PA Cs
• Law enforcement

People

• Comedians
• Artists
• Film directors
• Authors
• Men who hold a seat on the board of directors for a large corporation.

If bad publicity doesn't sway their targets, then vandalism and assault might do the trick. If that also fails, then the targets are terminated.

edited 2nd Jan '15 11:46:58 AM by Worlder

Systematic, calculated and sychornized bombing of many Wal-Marts?

I just rediscovered something that you may find helpful. It's a post on a sociology blog (outsider studying religion and culture trends) having to do with different personality sets, the "agreeable/authoritarian" type and the "misanthropic/non-conformist" type:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienceonreligion/2014/12/the-age-of-extreme-opinions/

Specifically, the blogger talks of how these are becoming polarized in modern culture due to the Internet.

What I find really especially interesting about this kind of trend is that the "independent non-conformists" (of which I have seen many, in fact, I mostly fit the stereotype with a few notable differences)... actually are becoming conformists, aren't they? I mean, when people gather, even on the Internet, and expect certain traits of each other even "edginess" - it kind of becomes less truly "edgy" and less truly "independent" doesn't it?

Us true rebels take some from Column A and some from Column B.

Anyway, just a little socialogical study/opinion that I thought you might find useful for getting into character mentality. Non-edgy "edgies."

edited 2nd Jan '15 2:55:52 PM by Shadsie

The problem with the premise is that "social justice warrior" as the original poster uses it is a deliberately misapplied term, calculated to obscure the fact that those to whom it's most often applied are highly ineffectual and have very little actual power to affect change. What little unifying ideology there is seems to be more passive-aggressive than destructive, and I would argue that as soon as a given "SJW" actually does something violent, they cease to fit the profile and instead become something else (violent green, straw feminist, anarchist, etc.) That various respondents to this thread have tried to liken them to everything from the Black Panthers to the Australian Defense League should tell you something about how slippery the definition of "SJW" is.

From a different perspective, there is a lot of literature on historical terrorist groups, which is what I'm pulling from. I'd advise reading them: any nutjob can grab the headlines by gunning down a swathe of people, but to actually accomplish political goals is very different. Successful groups usually combine terrorist tactics with actual politics, and the second part requires broad-based support of some kind. (See the Irish Republican Army and the African National Congress: regardless of your views on if they were the good guys or the bad guys, both qualify as terrorist organizations because both used terrorism as a tactic. Yet both combined terrorism with political bargaining and public support, and both achieved recognition from their opponents and a negotiated peace with their enemies. Contrast that with the 19th-century radicals, many of whom were deranged lone wolves—which does sum up many of the modern-day terrorists—who lacked the cohesion, political skill, and support to actually accomplish their strategic goals.)

So are you saying this group should have some public friendly face to it, be it a politician or pundit?

I was really considering the possibility of the antagonist owning a news media corporation used to spread propaganda as well as downplaying certain acts of violence towards its target groups.

edited 2nd Jan '15 9:33:47 PM by Worlder

Time for another Bunker Joke:

Hewel: Darf ich Ihnen Frau Hitler vorstellen? (What is a Social Justice Warrior's motto?)
Tornow: Sie'n Heldentod sterben wollen. ("Make war, not love!")
[everybody laughs]

Seriously though, a good idea for a motto for such an antagonist would be "Make war, not love" if said antagonist's SJW group were to be a more extremist type.

Perhaps I should tell you the name of this faction and ask if it is a good name.

The GlassBreakers

Their name comes from the fact that they seek to break the glass ceiling of society. Not just business and labor, but all of society.

edited 2nd Jan '15 10:08:16 PM by Worlder