Ryan Holiday is one of my favourite readers, and I seek his advice on mentorship, reading, careers, self-development and so on. However, that doesn’t mean I agree with everything he says. I logged into Medium and came across this article, where he basically argues humans need to accept more personal responsibility for feeling offended by the media. Basically, if you let something offend you, it is your fault.
While I admire Holiday I realize he is imperfect. He incorrectly predicted that Trump would not be president, arguing that all of the Trump supporters were just a loud minority. Maybe he was right, but low voter turnout gave that minority more power and look where America is now.
Now, Holiday actually ends up parroting a lot of right-wing talking points I’ve discussed previously. As a preface, I recommend reading those articles first. I am not saying that Holiday is a right-wing bigot, I am only saying that a lot of his arguments unintentionally parallel those used by groups such as the alt-right and their sympathizers. While Holiday’s article present examples of sensitivity that are not race related, the comments reveal a slew of people who are applying his comments to “snowflakes” and “social justice warriors.” These terms are typically used in the realm of politics and race; the rallying cry to successfully derail any progressive conversations.
Holiday described “social justice warrior” as someone who creates an issue where there is none. Maybe that is what it originally meant, now someone who comments on any well documented form of racism is a sjw. Everything is relative. I remember listening to a podcast where the male speaker warned a listener about the racism in Arizona, while also saying he is not a social justice warrior. However, some people would still call him one because he spoke out against racism. Nowadays, people can only accept something as racist, discriminatory or offensive if it includes explicit racial slurs of lynchings.
Holiday has criticized the notion that freedom of speech means that people shouldn’t face consequences for what they say, or that everyone must agree with what you say. The anti-liberal meme above embraces the idea that disagreement is a threat to freedom of speech. As I’ve also discussed before, it seems like many members of the right-wing lost track of the term’s legal dimension, and now frame any disagreement with their ideas an attack on their rights. Holiday explicitly criticizes this view in his latest book, Conspiracy, which I was happy to see.
I didn’t have to look long and hard to find the anti-liberal memes posted above, and I used them because they help summarize the right-wing view. The things that liberals “cry” about include police brutality (which disproportionately affects minorities), racist Hollywood practices (which right-wing people care about when a role gets “blackwashed”) and a host of other issues that are supposedly not valid.
Now, people want to argue that the issue can’t bother us unless we let it. Fair enough point, I can see the purpose behind it. However, does the fact that I don’t get passionate about an issue or “triggered” mean I shouldn’t care. Should we just ignore all racist comments and people? Ignore racist cops and presidents? Ignoring the issue doesn’t make it go away. People like to use the analogy of a cut, saying that if we keep picking at it, it won’t heal. However, the people who routinely use terms like social justice warrior believe there is no cut.