In my recent treatment of safe spaces, I emphasized the dystopian nature of the social justice ideology in terms of its doublethink justification of safe space segregation. The parallels with Orwell's text do not end there in this cowardly new world of safe space infantilization. Now the Thought Police have taken the stage.

Just as The Party in 1984 had Thought Police to control the populace, college campuses have now begun to police language as a means of enforcing ideological conformity to the politically correct doublethink of the social justice movement. The tactics of peer pressure, social ostracism and authoritarian control have been financially incentivized and weaponized at colleges to censor free speech that does not abide by the left's prejudicial crusade against 'non-inclusivity' and 'insensitivity'.

Student Life and Paid Social Justice Advocates

Financially incentivized and weaponized? Yes, some campuses have actually initiated paid "Social Justice Advocate" positions for students to police other students' speech and behavior and report "bias incidents or claims" to staff members. After significant backlash, the University of Arizona position's title, but not its duties were changed.

How exactly does that make the situation any better? It doesn't. It was a superficial lip-service appeasement designed to buy time until the media cycle moved on. This was pretty much explicitly stated when the university representative said "It's best to use a title that isn't politically charged. It just sets off alarms." (Despite looking for ca. 10 minutes, I couldn't find what the new job title is, if anyone knows, please post it in the comments below!) Keep in mind these paid social justice advocates (and it really doesn't matter what they are called now, they are paid social justice advocates) are not just students wandering around campus, they are a part of Student Housing, meaning they are likely living among and studying with the students they are meant to "monitor for bias" and "educate". I find that chilling.

That the title was considered the problem and not the policing of student's language and behavior in keeping with the social justice movement's definition of bias is beyond reprehensible. This is just another example of the social justice movement's complete unwillingness to recognize its behavior is socially divisive and against a plurality of world views. The most recent report I could find indicates the university has already hired 4 students to fill the job. After that the story apparently dropped out of the media cycle, how unexpected.

On an relevant side note given my previous posts on safe spaces, the UofA also has a reserved "social justice wing" in its dorms, where:

The Social Justice Theme Community creates opportunities for students to learn about issues such as abelism, cisgenderism, classism, homophobia, racism, sexism, and more. Weaving together personal experience and information on discrimination, privilege and oppression, and social change, the community works to empower residents to be advocates for social justice in all that they do...Residents of Social Justice Theme Community are required to enroll in EDL 297A - Transitions Through Social Justice their fall semester of their first year at UA.

This is not signing up for a living space, it is registering for a complete lifestyle guided by social justice advocates. Given the concerns I raised in The Social Justice Movement is Its Own Worst Enemy, it is difficult (for me) to not view this as a dangerously misanthropic form of cult indoctrination.

Taxpayers are Paying for Ideological Conformity

A medley of Google searches reveals that there are countless paid social justice positions, scholarships and fellowships for students at colleges and universities throughout the United States. Rarely are the paid student positions termed 'social justice advocates' (and the UA example makes clear why, it has to be kept below the radar until it is too late to change it). More often they are things like 'multicultural coordinators', 'student life coordinators' etc, where the social justice component is baked into the job description and not the title. This is the case with an untold number of positions that require "a proven interest in social justice" or the commitment to "actively engage in learning and practicing principles of social justice and inclusion" etc., even if that job is a library clerk or a maintenance man.

Full spectrum ideological conformity at every level of many of these universities is apparently desired. From administration to faculty, from student body to staff, a movement that supposedly champions diversity and inclusiveness is making ideological conformity a prerequisite to get paid. The degree of hypocrisy is stupefying. As we can see, an immense amount of taxpayer money is being spent to promote the social justice movement despite its clear and prejudicial treatment of a large section of society.

Mandatory Social Justice Training or Making Thought Police Out of Everybody

Additionally, taxpayer money is being spent on mandatory "sensitivity training" for students which explains what forms of free speech are acceptable and which are not. That is if the students themselves are not being required to spend money to be trained in the SJW belief system of victimization through verbal microaggressions. Other universities are more honest in their left-leaning objectives by openly labeling their mandatory courses social justice training.

What do they hope to achieve? What I personally have seen come out of diversity training and sensitivity training is a reluctance to express oneself openly and the willingness to be offended by so-called microaggressions. Microaggression sensitivity - as far as I can tell - means being able to emotionally interpret anything (words, silence, actions, non-actions) as offensive, discriminatory, hateful and bigoted in any situation, anytime and anywhere for any reason.

If the social justice agenda is on the menu, it is certain microaggressions are a main course. When young impressionable minds are told microaggressions are real and that they can and will be victims of them, they see it everywhere. They become simultaneously infantilized and weaponized. Not only do students police themselves, they police those around them for the thoughtcrime of using a microaggression.

As I have pointed out before, this kind of thinking results in the perception of victimhood and a distrust of society. Personally, I have never met a social justice warrior who didn't think they were being actively victimized by somebody, somewhere for some reason. And who then is the safe authority figure for these self-styled victims? Those who indoctrinated them into that nonsense in the first place, of course.

Conclusion

Far from being a joke, the above discussion highlights just a few symptoms of how deeply misguided the totalitarian and authoritarian urge among social justice warriors has become on college campuses. The war of ideas is really heating up, and the social justice movement is putting its money (and our taxpayers' money) where its mouth is. The root of this radically intolerant ideology masquerading as tolerance and acceptance is to be found in the privileging of subjective truths over objective realities, which enables the complete discounting of logic and reason in favor of emotionally driven decision making. Can we afford to let it go unchallenged? I contend not.

Needless to say, it is difficult to reconcile the supposed desire for a plurality of voices with paid positions that require adherence to a certain ideology. Regardless of what social justice warriors may care to believe, real diversity is not about skin color, sex or gender, but about world views. Just because an organization has men and women of every ethnicity, sex and gender does not guarantee diversity, as is made blatantly obvious in the social justice safe space echo chamber. If real diversity and inclusivity is desired, the focus must be on what people think which would automatically entail a greater diversity in race, sex, gender, religious views, political views, etc. than any "diversity" program currently in place.

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