The Social Justice Illusion

Unfortunately for our civilization, humans fear exclusion more than they fear being wrong. So when a slogan offers safety, people cling to it.

“Free Palestine” becomes not a political position to wrestle with in all its complexity, but a passcode into the tribe. Say the words, raise the banner, and you are included. Question the slogan, or even suggest nuance, and you risk exile.

This is why contradictions and hypocrisies don’t matter in these circles. People who shout about liberation may ignore the oppression of women, the persecution of gays, or the violence and contempt for humanity within their chosen cause.

Whether their claims are coherent, or even clearly defined, is irrelevant. Justice is not the currency. Belonging is.

They will condemn injustice in one breath and excuse it in the next, and call themselves righteous for doing so.

And so arguments that collapse under the lightest pressure are treated as sacred truths, because the cause itself is nothing but a camouflage. It’s the need to belong in its most cowardly and dangerous form. It is safer to be admired for a shallow stance than to be despised for a difficult truth.

But it will never be a virtue to repeat what you dare not question. It is hypocrisy at scale, the fear of exclusion, weaponized as morality.