I first started seriously paying attention to politics, culture, and current events in the mid-2010s while I was in high school—especially when Bernie Sanders first came onto the scene as a 2016 presidential candidate. My worldview was incomplete, to say the least, and while I’m happy to say it’s more cohesive now, it probably still is incomplete. At the same time, I was immersed in the YouTube space, and at a certain point, I came across a video criticizing modern feminism—or maybe it was criticizing a specific self-identified feminist; I honestly can’t remember which, nor is it relevant. This was my first exposure to “anti-SJW” content, and while my worldview and values have remained largely consistent since then, I found some of that content to be good food for thought, and useful for building on and refining those values. It should be noted that this article is purely based on my own subjective viewpoint based on the content I’ve consumed and the discourse I was exposed to, so take everything that follows with a fat grain of salt.
For the sake of clarity, I’ll define terms here. You may have heard the term “anti-SJW” thrown around in the media—and especially in online media—in recent years as a synonym for right-wing populists who are especially concerned with recent changes in American culture. These modern-day anti-SJWs, by my limited experience with them and based on the content I’ve seen them produce, are largely cultural authoritarians and usually also some brand of bigot. But when I first exposed myself to their content1, the term meant something very different.
“Anti-SJWs” have always been, well, an anti-movement—specifically, it was a movement that arose in response to “SJWs,” or “social justice warriors.” Today, whenever anyone uses the term at all, “SJW” usually just means “anyone who doesn’t hold right-wing populist cultural viewpoints.” But in 2015, the term had a much more specific connotation—and because of that, the connotation for “anti-SJW” was also different. “SJW” was an ironic term for any progressive or liberal who would talk a big game about social justice but are known primarily for patterns of behavior, activism, and belief that amounted to acting as cultural hall monitors—even when it seemed to work against their own stated goals and values. Said patterns varied from person to person and from organization to organization, of course, but common tropes included social/political purity testing, overreacting to things that don’t really matter, and responding to criticism by trying to tar the critics’ reputation rather than listening to it and being straightforward in their response—all while under the impression that this somehow makes a real difference in society.2
Anti-SJWs, meanwhile, were simply the people criticizing and making fun of SJW-esque behavior. They took on the role of the adults in the room who were tolerant of differences of opinion, willing to hash out those differences through civil discussion, and open to forgiving people for past mistakes; in other words, they were, for the most part, normal people. As a result, the anti-SJW scene of the mid-2010s was far more ideologically diverse than it is today, and provided a platform for many on the internet to be honest even with their “edgier” beliefs, and express themselves in a way that they felt they couldn’t anywhere else.
Largely because of social media algorithms, though, this was a double-edged sword. Anti-SJWs’ main schtick was criticizing liberal activists and organizations who they thought behaved in SJW-esque ways; because of this, some people—critics and audience members, rightly or wrongly—saw their content as promoting right-wing agendas. This included some who interpreted any criticism of feminist or Black Lives Matter activists as either an endorsement of, or a denial of the existence of, racism and sexism in society. For the critics, this was simply a reason to dismiss the anti-SJW scene as a mere collection of bigots and useful idiots; for actual bigots, this provided an opportunity to use social media dynamics to parasitize on the original anti-SJW scene. Even if one anti-SJW content creator posted a nuanced, contextualized video on YouTube criticizing a particular individual or organization, a viewer who came across that video had the potential to fall down a rabbit hole leading to content that was, to say the least, less savory. This isn’t the fault of that particular anti-SJW content creator, but the result of social media dynamics that promote engagement at all costs.
As a result, the most successful anti-SJWs in the online ecosystem were not like the hypothetical content creator I outlined above; rather, they were the ones that made the most engaging content with the most consistency. Those anti-SJWs that were actually principled in their criticisms mostly either faded into irrelevance or lost their “anti-SJW” card, or both, as the original SJWs that they were criticizing also faded into irrelevance. Thus, the ones that were left were mainly the ones that had their own agendas, and were promoting those agendas by including an ever-expanding list of things and people they didn’t like under the SJW label. Ironically, in so doing, they became SJWs themselves—overreacting to things that don’t really matter, calling their critics “SJWs” where the label in 2016 would not have applied, and thinking that this somehow makes society better.
That’s basically where we are now. So why the hell did I write this spiel? Because it illustrates the danger of “movements” whose principles are solely defined by reacting to something else—that is, the danger of gazing too long into the abyss and becoming the monster you oppose. The anti-SJW movement, whatever the principles and beliefs of individual creators within it, didn’t really have a common ethos beyond being…well, anti-SJW, whatever the term “SJW” meant. As a result, as the definition of “SJW” changed, the definition of “anti-SJW” changed, too, and once “SJW” was expanded to apply to pretty much anything vaguely progressive or liberal, the direction the anti-SJW movement would head was entirely predictable. Being simply “anti” something—whether that something is racism, fascism, capitalism, or whatever else—is not enough by itself. For better or worse, being for something—and basing your beliefs on that—is what counts for so much more of movements’ power to make real change. Anything less, and the best your movement can hope for is to morph into something that you never wanted it to become.
As opposed to “being exposed” to said content, which implies a lack of agency in people who consume content online. YouTube algorithms definitely incentivize people to watch certain content, but that doesn’t absolve me or anyone else from responsibility for what they watch.
A good example of this, I would argue, is when there was a controversy over a NASA scientist wearing a pinup shirt, and whether or not this constituted misogyny. You can have your own opinion on whether the shirt was misogynistic or not, but one thing that I think is hard to question is that there are far bigger issues affecting women, both domestically and globally, than whether some guy at NASA should’ve worn a particular shirt or not.