I’m traveling this week and so sharing some older pieces and Twitter threads I’ve written. Regular content will resume shortly.
The correct referent here is not social justice movements now widely agreed to be on the 'right side of history' but movements that *claimed* the mantle of social justice, which includes a much wider range of causes, many of which we now recoil from.
So the divide on this question among people who see themselves as progressives is: Is the trans movement the latest in a line-up of genuine liberation movements (civil rights, women's rights, gay rights) or more like deeply misguided causes progressives championed (recovered memories, eugenics, thought reform, etc.)?
You could say: time will tell! But it's hard to imagine that sterilizing gay kids, removing women's hard-won rights, and subverting core liberal-democratic principles and processes is going to end up in the Right Side of History column.
I immediately thought of eugenics when I read this. Apparently, it was a "progressive" cause at the time, "backed by science", and touted by rich philanthropists. But, like so many atrocities, we hide what we're ashamed of, more concerned with the appearance it gives for us to be associated with such things than applying any meaningful analysis of what happened so we might prevent it from happening in the future.
This is an insane take in that tweet. The communist movement did all sorts of terrible things claiming to be doing so for social justice. To the point where in some post-communist countries there is a saying that the difference between “justice” and “social justice” is similar to the difference between “a chair” and “an electric chair”. I remember hearing that saying from my grandfather in the 1980s. Truly idiotic statement coming most likely from someone who thinks that the whole history of the world happened in America.