Drama in a liberal moms Facebook group as Bari Weiss job posting is deemed hate speech

Brutal pressure for social conformity used to come from the conservative side of society. Not anymore.

There is something about Facebook mommy group wars that is so 2017. Back then, it was still shocking that politics had gotten so vitriolic, it would cause otherwise nice moms to banish other moms for having opinions. Now, we expect it. The banishments spread from mommy groups in blue states to large media platforms and corporations across the world. Trump’s election was hard enough on civil discourse, but COVID and its ensuing mandates really pushed people into ideological camps whose boundaries were rigidly enforced.

I came across yet another example of this a few days ago. A Facebook group of mothers in possibly the bluest of all blue cities in America was not pleased when one of its members shared a Tweet by apostate Bari Weiss, in which she said she was looking to hire a researcher. According to a former member, the group, located in Massachusetts, went from being supportive and community minded a few years ago, to the kind of place where even mild dissent is immediately quashed. The Bari Weiss post was reported “by multiple members” for violation of the group’s “no hate speech” policy.

The hostility on display toward the woman who posted the job did not look to me like righteous indignation arising from a noble cause. Quite the opposite, in fact. It sounded much more like the cold fury of a dominant female whose status is being challenged by an upstart. In this particular dust-up, the women responding angrily to the Bari Weiss job post are the modern day equivalent of the scary queen bee clique of every 1980’s teen movie, full of rage that someone had the temerity to challenge their dominance.

One woman commented: “Are you trying to get booted from another…group by announcing your support for this person whom I have never heard of but apparently has caused a lot of harm to marginalised groups? Is the strong reaction to your post surprising in any way? Are you trying to provoke people here?”

To which another irate mom replied “Breaking news: shit stirrer finds another shit stirrer inspiring.”

Do you hear that tone? Do you hear the implied threat of the social punishment that will come if you step out of line? What they are basically saying is: Dare to challenge us and no one, I mean no one, will want to hang out with you. Do I make myself clear, loser?

The weird thing is, this enormous pressure for social conformity used to come from the conservative side of society. Not anymore.  The reason this kind of squabble is still important years after the rise of social just warrior, is that it illustrates just how much the cultural left has become the conformist hegemony brutally policing any deviation from its religious beliefs.

In 1950’s Arkansas, the girl screaming at her black fellow student who was simply trying to enter school, was a cultural conservative. Today’s equivalent young woman, standing and screaming and trying to block someone she does not agree with, is a cultural liberal. 

This is the biggest blindspot for the cultural left right now. It is so enamoured of its self image as a heroic outsider who speaks truth to power, as a defender of the little people, that it is incapable of recognising how far it has moved away from that ideal. It is deliberately and wilfully pretending to be those things even while its adherents have shifted — seemingly en masse — to support corporate, capitalist, monopoly interests and party politics defined by big money. The social justice element is just a fig leaf — a reality that dare not speak its name.