Half-baked and a half-century late
The binary thinking of social justice warriors on colonialism
The ideas of social justice warriors with respect to race are a half-century late and half-baked. Why do I say this? Because, in the period 1966 to 1972, the black power movement and the student anti-war movement had exposed and delegitimated the false pretentions to democracy of the U.S. government and American public discourse by naming colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism as forces shaping the nation and the world. And when they did so, they did not exhibit the superficiality of the later social justice warriors. They did not call for the discrediting and erasing of individual figures who played pivotal roles in the historic unfolding of these dynamics. Nor did they call for the cancelation of individuals for speaking in a form that violated a new totalitarian linguistic orthodoxy. Rather, they envisioned a political, economic, and cultural transformation and post-imperialist restructuring, creating a new world order of “peace and love.” To this end, they proposed solidarity with the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements of the Third World, which were engaged in the construction of an alternative world order, and which today have reached an advanced stage.
That fertile period of creative critical consciousness of 1966 to 1972 was a product of exceptional leadership, most notably A. Philip Randolph, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose speeches and writings do not find influence in the discourse of the social justice warriors today. The period of critical consciousness was tied to effective political practice, which included major civil rights reforms in law and society, as well as the end of imperialist war in Vietnam. It formulated an expanded and deepened meaning of democracy, put forth as the fulfillment of the promise of the American Revolution, a conception of democracy that included: equal opportunity for all, build on a foundation of equal education; the development of black urban communities, based in black community control of the local economy, education, law enforcement, and culture; and a post-imperialist foreign policy of North-South cooperation, based in respect for the rights of all nations to sovereign control over their economies and natural resources.
After a period of stagnation from 1972 to 1983—marked nonetheless by major advances in the number and visibility of black elected officials—the spirit of the civil rights/black power/anti-war movement was revitalized by the presidential campaigns of Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. This was the last breath of the movement, which soon would be remembered only in the most general terms by a nation lacking in historical consciousness. There emerged, beginning in the 1990s, a new generation of what Robert Woodson calls “race hustlers,” who knew nothing of true leadership and who offered “identity politics,” thus taking a key step toward the toxification of the Left.
In today’s commentary, I reflect on a July 26, 2024, interview by Derek Thompson of Greg Lukianoff, the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE); and on a book published in 2018 by Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, entitled The Coddling of the American Mind. They maintain that many university students have learned to think in distorted ways, which increases their likelihood of feeling fragile, anxious, and easily hurt. They name nine cognitive disorders that have been identified by cognitive behavioral therapy and that today are rampant on college campuses, namely, emotional thinking, catastrophizing, overgeneralizing, and dichotomous (binary) thinking as well as assuming you know what others are thinking, assigning negative traits to yourself, negative filtering, discounting positives, and blaming. They put forth six explanatory factors in the emergence of these cognitive disorders: political polarization in the nation; rising levels of teen anxiety and depression; overprotecting parents; decline of free play time among children; growth of campus bureaucracy and the expansion of its protective mission; and an increasing passion for social justice, or at least what the students think is social justice. They assert that the phenomenon began to be expressed in 2013, and it now appears to have passed its peak, although it continues in institutionalized forms.
Lukianoff and Haidt, therefore, provide a psychological explanation for modes of thought that, analyzed from a perspective rooted in historical and political consciousness, can be seen to be superficial and politically immature, and thus dysfunctional for public discourse and for the further development of a democratic republic.
I would like to focus on one of these cognitive disorders, which I view as especially significant in its negative consequences, namely, binary thinking (also known as dichotomous thinking, black-and-white thinking, and all-or-nothing thinking). Lukianoff and Haidt maintain that binary thinking involves the utilization by the mind of a schema of two categories, victim and oppressor, and fitting everyone into one category or the other. Moreover, since the oppressor, it is assumed, has unjustifiable privilege and power, the categorization is a moral one, giving rise to the view that life is seen as a battle between good people and evil people.
I find binary thinking especially problematic because it blocks from consciousness an important phenomenon in human history, which I call the dialectic of domination and development. This conceptual invention of mine refers to a fundamental historical fact: the great economic, scientific, and moral advances in human history have been constructed on a foundation of conquest and domination. This happened because conquest provided the conquering power with the economic and human resources that enabled the development of a class liberated from food gathering or food production, allowing it to advance in commerce, science, technology, philosophy, literature, and art. In previous commentaries, I have reviewed the conquests and empires in human history that have exemplified the phenomenon, including the Assyrian Empire (fourteenth to the seventh centuries B.C.E.), the Babylonian Empire (seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E.), and the Persian Empire (sixth century B.C.E.), all of which constructed economic and cultural centers. Similarly, the territories of Alexander the Great included Greece, Persia, Egypt, Afghanistan, and India; Alexander was a brilliant statesman who combined the scientific orientation of the Greeks with the beauty and grace of the Eastern philosophies.
“Conquest in human history: On the dialectic of domination and development,” April 4, 2023
The Islamic/Arab Conquests of the period 622 to 675 included the Byzantine, Persian, and Egyptian empires, and by 695 included parts of Spain to the West and India to the East. The Arab conquests did not destroy the advances previously attained by the now-conquered empires, but appropriated their advances, forging a transcultural scientifically and culturally advanced integration. From 800 to 1500, the Islamic Civilization led the world in the territorial extension of its governments, in moral norms, in humanitarian legislation, in religious toleration, in literature, science, medicine, architecture, and philosophy. Its culture was widely dispersed and integrated: sovereign caliphs, merchants, and doctors could be philosophers. The Ottoman Empire of the sixteenth century was the last great Islamic empire in terms of territorial expansion and economic and scientific advancement.
“Islamic conquests: The dialectic of domination and development continues,” April 7, 2023
The modern conquest of vast regions of the Americas, Asia, and Africa from 1492 to 1914 by seven European nation-states was the most advanced conquest in human history, made possible by the centralization of the European nation-states and accumulated technological advances in navigation and military arms. The European conquests were more penetrating than the previous empires, in that they transformed the economies of the conquered regions, converting them into suppliers of precious metals and raw materials that would feed in an unprecedented form the economic development of the conquering nations. This provided the basis for modernization and stunning advances in industrial and agricultural production and in science and culture. By the dawn of World War I, the capitalist world-economy and the modern world-system had been established.
“The Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the Americas, 16th century: The origins of the modernization of Northwestern Europe,” May 25, 2021
“The European conquest of Africa and Asia, 1750-1914: History must be understood, not ignored,” May 28, 2021
With respect to modern European colonial domination of the world, it was also the case that the capacity of the conquered for resistance was more advanced than in previous historical epochs. This resistance was a reaction to the fundamental downside of European colonialism, which, by destroying or disrupting the economy of the conquered regions, left vast regions in conditions of underdevelopment. The capacity of the colonized for effective resistance, which included the selective appropriation of the conceptualizations and techniques of the colonizer, was expressed in Haiti at the end of the eighteenth century, Latin America during the nineteenth century, and Asia and Africa during the twentieth century. Once they attained independence, anti-colonial movements began a unified struggle for true sovereignty, seeking to construct an alternative world order that respects the sovereignty of all nations and builds a world of peace and prosperity on a foundation of mutually beneficial trade, constructed step-by-step.
During more than two centuries of heroic and intelligent resistance, the leaders of the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements did not exhibit the cognitive disorder of binary thinking. To be sure, they made a fundamental categorical distinction between the colonizer and the colonized, necessary for an analysis that accurately describes their reality of a colonial situation. But these were political and analytical, not moral, categories. They did not and do not define the colonizer as the essence of evil. As they creatively imagined the possibilities for their emancipation, they understood that it would not be possible to send the colonizer away and return to pre-colonial tradition. So, they creatively imagined possible emancipatory roads for the future, built from the colonial situation, which led them to appreciate that there were certain dimensions of the world of the colonizer, pertaining to science, technology, and political philosophy, that could and must be appropriated in order to move toward emancipation.
There are powerful examples of the phenomenon of such dialectical thinking in the anti-colonial movements of the world. Toussaint appropriated the essential concepts of the French Revolution, and he sought to develop newly independent Haiti by utilizing the productive agricultural systems that the French settlers had imposed. The Communist Party of China emerged from a pro-Western intellectual movement that critiqued the Chinese feudal order. Ho Chi Minh developed his most pivotal ideas through dialogue with French socialists in Paris, and the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence began by quoting the American Declaration of Independence. Fidel expressed admiration for American technology and led his people toward the creation of a nation of men and women of science. Today, the emerging economies of the Global South appropriate from the technologies of the West and the principles formulated by the Western powers in order to forge a more just and sustainable world order. Said emerging powers come from all regions of the world, including Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and they have the cooperation of nations from Eastern Europe. They represent diverse civilizations, including China, the Islamic World, and the indigenous populations of America.
The anti-colonial movements of the colonized that have been the most successful were those that did not and have not indulged in a moral denunciation of the West for its colonialism, seeking to avoid all things Western. Rather, they appreciated the positive aspects of the West, and appropriated from them in order to construct their own emancipation.
Thus, the colonized have been compelled by their colonial situation to think dialectically and to forge dialectical thinking in political practice. In their political theory and practice, colonialism comes first as the destroyer of the old order. Then comes its negation, resistance to colonialism. And finally comes emancipation, based on synthesis, currently unfolding with a force that shows to humanity the necessary road for world peace and prosperity.
The synthetic resistance of the neocolonized is visible for all to see; they make no secret about it. But Western leaders and intellectuals do not understand it, because they have not looked carefully. Therefore, the current political maturity of the resistance of the neocolonized is to a certain extent unknown in the West, and certainly on the college campuses of the United States. But if it were to be known, it would be evident that the neocolonized peoples and movements have repeatedly affirmed that there were some good things about colonialism, including the modernizing potentiality of its science and technology, and its modern political philosophies.
In their continuously evolving worldwide resistance to the neocolonial world order, the neocolonized peoples of the planet are affirming the need for dialectical thinking, not moralistic binary thinking that defines colonialism and all associated with it as the essence of evil.
When I was an undergraduate student in the late 1960s, I had not yet learned to think dialectically. In dialoguing at that time with a graduate student from Africa concerning the African anti-colonial struggle, he maintained that there are good things about colonialism. I did not have sufficient maturity to appreciate and understand what he was saying. I thought that perhaps he was an African “Uncle Tom,” a colonialist lackey. But to my credit, I wasn’t sure about this negative evaluation of him; it was merely a suspicion, and the conversation continued without accusation and with mutual respect. And I never forgot what he said. I continued the conversation for years with others who pertain to the world of the colonized. Until finally, I arrived to appreciate dialectical reasoning as a more advanced and politically intelligent understanding, far better than moral indignation.
Accordingly, we need to arrive collectively to a dialectical thinking that understands the worldwide process from colonialism to resistance to emancipatory synthesis. And to appreciate that there was a good side of colonialism, in that it unleashes the human potential for modernization, economic productivity, and scientific and technological development, and it enables advances in the theory and practice of democracy, thus providing the foundation for a common future for humanity of freedom, peace, and prosperity.
We are not speaking here of Western science, economy, and political philosophy in their initial forms. We are speaking here of a modern Western science and technology transformed to serve the needs of the national economies and the peoples, not the profits of the few. A Western concept of democracy transformed to include the social and economic rights of all citizens and the sovereign rights of all nations, so that they can develop the productivity of their nations. We are speaking of colonial structures transformed from the colonial situation by the colonized and for the colonized, for the common good of humanity.
In this worldwide process of emancipation based in dialectical imagination, the social justice warriors with their cognitive disorders are a major obstacle, because the ongoing process of worldwide transition to a post-imperialist world order would be greatly enhanced and accelerated by the cooperative participation of the United States, taking into consideration the large size and relatively advanced character of its economy. The social justice warriors must be critiqued and delegitimated, and their erroneous concepts and cognitive distortions sent to the dustbin of history, so that the American republic can renew and reformulate its promise of democracy in cooperation with the peoples of the earth.
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