Why Social Justice Fundamentalism Is Doomed

Unlike the Civil Rights Movement, which chose sympathetic figures like Rosa Parks, SJFs have lionized individuals whose actions repel most Americans.

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Social Justice Fundamentalism (SJF) is doomed.

How can we say this so confidently? And why do we believe that SJF ideology will meet its demise relatively quickly now that the tide is beginning to turn?

For one thing, in their zeal to oppose the out-group that they deem responsible for all oppression, many SJFs have adopted an anything-goes mentality. Threats and violence are justified, they claim, as long as they target the “correct” people. This creates truly terrible brand ambassadors. For example, SJFs have lionized Luigi Mangione, the man suspected of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson with one post on X garnering over 36,000 likes that compared him to Nelson Mandela, stating, “They called Nelson Mandela a ‘terrorist’ too, Luigi. You’re in good company.” Similarly, many SJFs leaped to defend Christian Cooper, the black man a white woman reported to the police in 2020, even after evidence emerged that he had threatened her and her dog. Furthermore, following Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israeli civilians, a survey showed that 51 percent of respondents aged 18-24 believed that “the Hamas killing of 1200 Israeli civilians in Israel can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians.”

Contrast this with the Civil Rights Movement. When Martin Luther King Jr. and his allies opposed the Montgomery Bus Boycott, they chose Rosa Parks as a brand ambassador. Why? It wasn’t because Parks was the first black person to refuse to sit in the back of the bus. It was because she was a woman of noble character with a flawless background. Civil rights protestors, aware of the uphill battle they faced against a prejudiced nation, needed an ambassador whose plight would evoke sympathy in the hearts of fellow Americans. If a woman like this could be arrested under Jim Crow, the nation must be encouraged to reconsider the justice of segregation.

But there’s nothing sympathetic about Mangione or Cooper. There is nothing sympathetic about killing a husband and father in cold blood, simply because he was the CEO of an unpopular company; or about a man telling a woman out walking her dog that he would do “something” to her and her dog that “she was not going to like.” There is nothing sympathetic about the brutal rapes and murders of teenaged civilians that characterized Hamas’ October 7 attack. When SJFs prop up these characters and act as if their threats and violence are heroic, they lose the goodwill of most decent Americans. There’s a reason that the far-left’s rabid anti-Semitism in the wake of Hamas’ attack turned so many Democrats and progressives away from SJF.