Understanding Woke Tactics Pt. 8: Dirty Cop Logic.

I would like to discuss a common tactic employed by Critical Social Justice activists (AKA “woke” activists). It is a tactic they use to make an unjustified accusation stick in the absence of and reason to believe the accusation. You will have noticed that Woke activists routinely call slap people with label like racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, transphobe, xenophobe, ethnocentrist, and fascist. Sometimes they will do this indirectly through insinuation, and sometimes they will simply lob the insult and try to make it stick. One of the tactics woke activists employ in the process of trying to make these labels stick is what I call “Dirty-Cop Logic.”

Using the example of, what else, dirty cops, let’s take a look at a simple case of this tactic:

Police: “You robbed the bank.”

You: “I did not.”

Police: “That is exactly what a bank robber would say. I knew you were guilty.”

You: “But I didn’t do it.”

Police: “Boy you sure sound guilty. You had better start answering our questions honestly.”

You: “I answered honestly, I told you I didn’t do it.”

Police: “That’s exactly what a guilty liar would say.”

You: “This is totally unfair. I’d like to speak to a lawyer.”

Police: “If you aren’t guilty, why do you need a lawyer? Sounds like you just confessed your guilt.”

This is a perfect example of Dirty Cop Logic. As you can see, what the dirty cop does is launch the accusation that someone robbed a bank, and then they twist anything and everything that the person says in their defense to make it look like that person is guilty, even when there is no good reason to believe they are guilty.

This idea has sometimes been called a “kafka trap,” and there are many variations of it. However, what I want to focus on is this specific type of kafka trap because I think it is the move that is used most often.

Typically, the way this tactic is used by the Woke activists is to take something that you said or did, interpret it in the most uncharitable way possible, and then use it against you in order to make you look guilty of something they have accused you of. A very fine example of this topic is the concept of “white fragility,” a term coined by the Woke activist Robin DiAngelo.

DiAngelo says white fragility refers to the agitation, anger, frustration, and shock that white people go through when they are confronted with their own racism. She claims that white fragility is the result of a lack of stamina in white people to confront racial issues honestly. According to DiAngelo, a white person’s denial and refusal to accept their complicity in racism is a result of white fragility, and it is white fragility which explains why white people deny their complicity in racism.

On this view, the reason that white people will get flustered, annoyed, upset, bothered, ticked off, or angry when they are accused of being complicit in racism is because they have white fragility. Thus, so the story goes, when a person is accused of racism they are not getting irritated because they fear for their reputation, or because innocent people don’t like being wrongly accused of something they didn’t do, it is because white people lack the stamina to be able to confront issues of race in an honest way.

The logic that is behind the concept of white fragility is the logic of dirty cops. I will explain why.

If a person is accused of being a racist or being complicit in racism, and deny that they are complicit in racism, the woke activist will then employ the concept of White Fragility. When the person accused of being racist denies that they are racist, or begins to mount a defense of themselves, the woke activist will say that the reason they are defending themselves is not because they are innocent, but rather that the person has white fragility and lacks the ability to confront their own racism, or complicity in racism.

The way that this works is that it places the person in an impossible situation because it makes it look like the fact that they are defending themselves is proof of the fact that they are guilty. It looks like this:

Woke person: "you're racist"

You: "That's isn't true"

Woke person: "you deny that you're racist because you have white fragility and are too fragile to face the truth."

You (flustered): “But I am not a racist, and I did not say anything racist”

Woke person: “The fact that you are still defending yourself and getting upset proves that you have white fragility. Since white fragility has the effect of preserving white people at the top of the racial hierarchy, exhibiting white fragility means you are complicit in racism.”

Do you see how closely that resembles the exchange with the dirty cop that we began with? It is, as you can see, the same logic that a dirty cop uses to insinuate that you are guilty of a crime even when there is no evidence of your guilt.

Dirty Cop Logic really touches on two things that woke activists do. The first is the obvious move of trying to make you look guilty without good reasons. But there is a second move here.

Woke activists have invented and entire lexicon of rhetorical devices and terminology which serve to de-legitimize and dismiss any and all defenses one might employ in trying to prove that they are not guilty of the charge the woke activist have leveled. A brief and incomplete list of these rhetorical devises and terms is:

-Get educated
-White tears
-Mansplain
-Listen and believe
-check your privilege
-manterrupting
-White fragility
-toxic Masculinity
-whitesplainin
-mansplaining
-himpathy

All of these terms are deployed in the service of attempting to de-legitimize and dismiss any defense one might offer to an accusation, or any dissent from the Critical Social Justice (aka ”woke”) worldview.

For example, if you tell a woman that you are not a sexist when she accuses you being a sexist she might tell you to stop “mansplaining” when you try to explain why you are innocent.Mansplaing is, in woke theory, the social phenomenon of men explaining things to women that the women understand better then the man who is doing the explanation. The thing being implied here is that the mans explanation of why he is not sexist is not legitimate on the grounds that he, as a man, is simply attempting to use male social privilege to try to take over the conversation and make himself the authority in the conversation.

The unstated assumption is that the man ought to be deferring to the woman who has accused him because she ,in virtue of being a woman, is the expert and his “explanation” is really just an example of what the woke think is the social phenomenon of men trying to explain to a woman something (sexism) that she understands better than he does.

Another example is if you try to defend yourself from an accusation of racism they might tell you “get educated” and thereby imply that the only reason you are putting up a defense is because you are simply ignorant. They use this term to suggest that your defense should not be engaged seriously on the merits or the substance, but ought to dismissed as the rambling of someone who is ignorant.

As you can see, the game here is to socially manoeuvre the conversation in such a way that it de-legitimizes any defense one might mount of their own character, or any dissent one might offer from woke orthodoxy. The typical way they do this is to employ socially and politically loaded rhetorical devices in the service of de-legitimizing your defense (or dissent) so that whatever you say can be brushed aside and dismissed.

They way to get around this tactic is to point out the tactic that is being used in a way that is very clear so that everyone can see the tactic that is being employed. These sorts of tactics only work when people don’t understand how the tactic works. It is like watching a magic trick. The trick only works when people do not know how the trick is done. Once the magicians secret is revealed and people can see how the trick is done, the trick no longer fools anyone. The same is true with woke social maneuvers and rhetorical devices. Once people see how these tactics are used they lose all their power and people will no longer be taken in by them.

I have said many times clarity is the antidote to bad ideas. The same principle applies here. Making sure that the audience is clear about the tactics being employed by the woke activist is the antidote to the effectiveness of woke tactics.

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Wokal_distance.