Microaggression, Privilege Interrogation and White Fragility are devices of a emergent cult whose target is the human psyche
Misanthropy comes in many forms. Some who suffer abuse want revenge against the world. For others, this animosity is channeled into an idiosyncratic hatred of specific targets such as women or gays. For still others misanthropy is born out of dissonance between an idealized notion of humanity and observed reality. This form, not at all idiosyncratic but no less pathological, progresses to a merciless view, a hatred not only of one’s own weakness but that of humanity itself. Every political purge, religious inquisition and totalizing tyranny in history has manifested this misanthropy and progressed to sadistic brutality. Each has proceeded from a vision of human perfectibility and ended in the punishing of humanity for its failure to live up to the fantasy. With the increasing illegitimacy of institutions and the fragmentation and diffusion of information as its backdrop, an ascendant cadre of professional activists and hired consultants have exploded into social and institutional prominence, spear-heading a resurgent effort to perfect the world by perfecting mankind. They purport to be progressive but wield weaponized methodologies which are misanthropic to their core. With no more ability to bring about their idealized vision than those who have tried before, their aim is a regime of perpetual mortification of the mind, to bend it to their awe or break it all to pieces.
Adherents of the misanthropy gospel see people as marked compartments, not unlike evidence lockers. This is an indicator of their goals. Microaggressions, privilege interrogation and especially the attribution of white fragility are instruments in a sustained attack on the ego, rooted in a profound contempt of humanity for its complexity, its frailty, its moral imperfection. Where Marxists see stratifications built into the material structure of society as the barrier to human freedom, the misanthropes see the human psyche itself as the oppressive superstructure that must be broken down. As the Cathars believed the material world an illusion created by the devil, as Gnostics saw earthly existence as an intolerably abject condition, so do these practitioners see the integrated individual as the illusion which must be destroyed.
As misanthropy develops its operations become increasingly characterized by sadism, man’s darkest pathology. In a memo later referred to by the FBI as a “Manifesto of Sadism”, prolific rapist and murderer James M Debardeleben lays out in chilling, dispassionate detail its motivational structure. “The wish to inflict pain on others”, Debardeleben writes, “is not the essence of sadism. The central impulse to have complete mastery over another person…to become her God…The most radical aim is to make her suffer. Since there is no greater power over another person…To force her to undergo suffering without her being able to defend herself. The pleasure in the complete domination of another person is the very essence of the sadistic drive”. The goal then is not to inflict pain but to dictate the response. Mirroring the damaged ego and effectively taking its place as paragon of weakness, the victim must be broken down, piece by piece, to affirm the power of the sadist. In the context of ideologically rooted misanthropy, sadistic rituals function as a form of morality play. The demonstration of power proves the victor’s moral rectitude and the unconscionable corruption of the vanquished. While cloaked in sanitized jargon this dynamic is built into the misanthropy gospel. Microaggressions, privilege interrogation and white fragility are escalations which in operation each build on the last and exemplify the sadistic trajectory, documented in psychology, of dread, dependency and degradation.
The modern origin point of this discursive framing is the term “microaggression”, popularized by psychology professor Derald Wing Sue about a decade ago. Over time a slew of academic jargon has been operationalized and transformed into a cross between a business model and a crusade. To many well-intentioned progressives, these terms and concepts underlying them are intended to create a more equitable society, but they have read the label not the ingredients. These are devices in a rhetorical toolbox whose purpose is not to make claims but to dictate terms in which claims are debated and engineer the results.
Microaggression theory in operation requires absolute belief in the assumptions undergirding it. This begins with an investment in linguistic misapplication. An aggressive act necessarily is one which is intended but this is of no relevance because a foundational assumption of the theory is inference has more credibility than intent. This is predicated on the concept of Standpoint Epistemology, the idea one’s vantage point is not merely an angle on reality but a keystone for determining the truth. This leads to a hierarchy of competing subjectivities which allow for inference to not just trump intent but to retroactively engineer it. Yet subjective experience in and of itself cannot teach us what something is or how it functions. From an angle one can view a mountain from a different vantage than another but this cannot be used to determine if the mountain exists. If someone claims to have experienced a microaggression, their experience cannot be categorized as false per say but neither can it be classified as intrinsically correct. Personal experiences are real and salient but not determinative of the full truth, something which can only be approached through exhaustive examination of evidence.
Microaggression theory is, in the end, an ontological doctrine founded on baseless assumptions, but it is merely intended to be a means to an end. Taken to its logical conclusion, the goal is to cleanse all human interaction of anything that could be deemed off putting by anyone. This is a difficult proposition when it is believed on faith that every inference to that effect is correct. The only way this can then be achieved is by cleansing the human psyche of every possible trace of contagion. Successfully resolving such an undertaking is impossible because it can never be verified and can consequently never end. Its function is as a psychological control mechanism, to induce dread and eventually dependency.
Privilege interrogation is an assault on the integrated psyche reminiscent of the auditing method employed by the Church of Scientology, a comprehensive conditioning process whereby an approved figure takes an initiate through their past with the aim of removing internalized obstacles to becoming “clear”. It is easy to see why some eagerly undergo such a process, beginning with the appeal of someone else taking responsibility for guiding. They may be weighed down by psychic wounds or find comfort in the prospect of being cleansed of an incorporeal malignancy. Through accepting that one has been the beneficiary of undeserved favor and an unwitting cause of oppression, privilege auditing offers a version of going clear. Yet what these processes invariably do is give free rein to the auditor to fully rearrange the subject’s entire mental relation to the world and to themselves. They necessitate a complete embrace of dependency. The hysterical spectacle of white progressives exorcising their privilege on the street exemplifies what they hope to achieve from going clear. Ultimately reprieve is not on offer because to the misanthropes the problem is you. You are a carrier of oppressive forces and while this is now accepted it cannot be assuaged as it has already done its damage. You remain a living crime against your fellow citizens and must be condemned.
Fire is a recurring motif in purges. The goal of ritual burning is not only to stamp out the contagion but to disassemble the integrated form deemed incurably defective. The war on the consolidated psyche is a psychological form of ritual burning. In the Spanish inquisition, condemned heretics were forced to conduct a parade in the robe of a penitent, confessing their crime to the gathered crowd and begging forgiveness. Yet after this extended process, their body was still to be consigned to the flames. There is never a point in this process of purification where it is deemed sufficient; the fire must burn until it is extinguished.
A twisted pillar of this ideological facade is the belief that structural problems should be understood primarily not in material but in personalized terms, as the interaction between dominant discourses (meaning, predominant social narratives) and cognitive processes. This is chiefly why the misanthropy gospel directs people to look inward rather than out. The belief our minds are the seat of structural oppression, that dominant discourses control them beyond our capacity to identify or correct it ourselves is little distinguishable from Brigadier General Jack D Ripper’s obsession with the vulnerability of our precious bodily fluids in Dr Strangelove. Yet as with privilege auditing it has an undeniable appeal. The comfort of believing seemingly intractable social ills can be identified and corrected in oneself has opened many to the most pernicious scheme in the playbook. Once pacified by the dread of being an aggressor and dependent on others to refashion their view of themselves, they are open to any charge that may be laid against them. They are primed for degradation.
It is in the psychological realm which a sadist can attain the most comprehensive level of control. Psychological sadism is often waged as a game in which a victim is placed within an emotional maze they can never escape; the inevitable failure proves the genius of the design. White Fragility, the brainchild of corporate diversity trainer and bestselling author Robin DiAngelo, is the apotheosis of the merciless operative logic of microaggression and privilege interrogation, the degradation that follows dread and dependency. The heavy media focus on this woman, though excessive to some, is proportional to her sudden elevation. She has become locus and instrument of a perfect shit storm, a figure whose explosion into prominence embodies many instruments of American societal decay: delusional confidence, narcissism as collective pathology, greed as virtue, moral rectitude as personal brand, emotional cudgeling and manipulative rhetoric in place of reason and the ever escalating corporate dominance over the lives of employees.
White fragility operates with topsy-turvy, derangement inducing logic. Whiteness in DiAngelo’s parlance is a definitive, immutable category, somehow all-encompassing and opaque, but adding up to nothing more than unreconstructed human nature, contemptible in its flaws, recidivist, incorrigible. Pairing it with the term fragility is fitting as there is there nothing worse to a misanthrope than weakness. White fragility is a term of condemnation of a healthy ego, or at least one whose health has not been conferred by the proper authorities. By contrast, her basic definition of resilience is to bear endless abuse with ready obeisance. Ironically, those most open to her message are her chief targets. “White tears”, a stock phrase used by misanthropes to dismiss the validity of emotion, is clearly not meant to refer to burly construction workers but to educated women. That they would use “tears” cynically to describe a play for power and attention would be strange until one realizes they themselves deploy emotions this way. Any crackup is a power grab, any act of will an indictment on the ego. It is unsurprising DiAngelo set her sights on members of her own gender and class. Such is typical of predators whose common MO is to target victims of opportunity.
The deployment of White fragility is at its most pernicious in the oft compulsory corporate seminars she is handsomely paid to head up, usually supported by adjunct inquisitors. These struggle sessions are a managed acceleration, the goal being to facilitate a display of abject, anguished subjection. It is the essence of sadism as defined by Debardeleben, the provocation of suffering as the greatest proof of potency, synonymous in ideological misanthropy with the belief one is remaking the world through moral force. Some have compared White Fragility to Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, yet DiAngelo’s persona is more reminiscent of a Ted Talk version of Madame Mao, a star performer invested with royal authority by the boss. She embodies both the frightful apogee of feminine tyranny and the deadening drudgery of the HR department. Conference starts in 10 minutes, you will receive your printout. All will love me and despair. Like microaggression theory, white fragility is a foolproof mechanism which exists to rig the conclusion of the fight. You felt bad? You engineered that intentionally, even if you don’t realize it. You think I’m wrong? That’s because you’re bad and too weak to accept the truth. Heads I win, tails you lose. Progressively, with her job and social reputation on the line, the resistant subject is psychologically disarticulated in a room full of her peers. Degradation, the final stage of the trajectory, has been achieved.
The core of these methodologies is not merely pernicious but plainly incorrect. To utterly cleanse our psyche of contagion is neither possible nor desirable because it necessarily involves the destruction of our individual ego and the condemnation of our shared humanity to the flames, a disintegration from which no reconstitution is possible. To convince a large section of the populace that the reason the food tastes like garbage is because they cannot handle it is an impressive accomplishment, but eating garbage has real consequences. This trajectory must be abandoned. Our myriad problems as a society will require looking outside ourselves and being willing to take significant action to deal with material deprivation and institutional corruption. But when it comes to racism as a personal pathology, the first step is to accept our own psyche, imperfect as it is. At that point we can begin to accept each other.
