Social Injustice Warrior

Nathalie Martinek, PhD at the site Hacking Narcissism was in the comment section of the Communal Narcissism link I put up October 1. She looked interesting, so I followed her link to Introducing the Social Injustice Warrior. She has set herself the specialty of various types of narcissism and has thought a great deal about the topic.  It will take a while, as the internal links to her other discussions* are each good-sized posts in themselves, but I think it will reward your effort. 

Before 2011, the term social justice warrior was used as a compliment to describe someone who genuinely cared about the disadvantaged and wanted to advocate for change. Since then, the term became more of an insult.

According to Know Your Meme, a social justice warrior is:

a pejorative label applied to bloggers, activists and commentators who are prone to engage in lengthy and hostile debates against others on a range of issues concerning social injustice, identity politics and political correctness. In contrast to the social justice blogosphere at large, the stereotype of a social justice warrior is distinguished by the use of overzealous and self-righteous rhetorics [sic], as well as appealing to emotions over logic and reason.

In other words, a social justice warrior is synonymous with an unreasonable, hostile, outraged, and self-interested internet user with a progressive agenda.

 Well, yeah.

This fits with our recent discussions that empathy is not a virtue in itself and can be easily abused, and plenty that I have written over the years about working in a helping profession and its peculiar temptations.

*Communal narcissism; knowledge vampirism; grief, shame, and vengeance; grooming and trauma bonding with the Oppressed they pretend to represent.