SuperMechagodzilla posted:

I've seen the following story reposted repeatedly as a sort of meme:


The appeal here is understandable: the basic narrative is of an college-educated man inflicting violence against an innocent. The narrative is an exaggerated version of the familiar chain e-mail, where a precocious young child (or United States Marine) stands up before a sputtering liberal college professor to tell him that abortion (or terrorism) is actually wrong, causing the whole class to applaud.

However, there is a more familiar narrative here. The conflation of writing with torture bears an unmistakable resemblance to the phenomenon of 'triggering', popularized by Tumblr, where certain words are alleged to 'trigger' latent traumas from abuse, rape, etc. SJWs effectively claim to be 'raped by words', and consequently hold uncareful speech to be an absolutely unacceptable harassment. In this sense, the story is accurate; I am not tolerant or respectful of others' opinions 'by default'. Standing for truth is by nature violent, intolerant.

'"Harassment" is another of those words which, although it seems to refer to a clearly defined fact, functions in a deeply ambiguous way and perpetrates an ideological mystification. At its most elementary, the term designates brutal facts of rape, beating, and other modes of social violence which, of course, should be ruthlessly condemned. However, in the predominant use of the term "harassment," this elementary meaning imperceptibly slips into the condemnation of any excessive proximity of another real human being, with his or her desires, fears and pleasures. Two topics determine today's liberal tolerant attitude towards others: the respect of otherness, openness towards it, and the obsessive fear of harassment. The other is OK insofar as his presence is not intrusive, insofar as the other is not really other. Tolerance coincides with its opposite: my duty to be tolerant towards the other effectively means that I should not get too close to him, not to intrude into his/her space - in short, that I should respect his/her intolerance towards my over-proximity. This is what is more and more emerging as the central 'human right' in late-capitalist society: the right not to be harassed, i.e., to be kept at a safe distance from the others.'
_{-Slavoj Zizek, "God is Dead, but He Doesn't Know It"}

Despite the Koos character's claims to stand for 'aw shucks' traditionalism , family values and whatnot, the ideological universe of the story is wholly liberal-capitalist.

The choice of the Goofy Movie as the subject for the fictional debate is quite revealing. Any viewer of A Goofy Movie knows that although Goofy feels threatened by the pop artist Powerline (a black 'afrofuturist' artist with a hitop fade and astronaut costume, hailing from LA), the harmony in his family is actually disrupted by the intrusion of a girl. A Goofy Movie is essentially a gender-swapped Forbidden Planet, where Max's encounter with the woman as Object disturbs he and his father's incestuous peace. Find explanation here for why a literal Bigfoot monster appears. Max and Goofy are each trying to make sense of an impossible antagonism, so that Max blames the loss of harmony on the rednecks, and Goofy blames 'rap music'. The moral is, of course, that these are both false targets. The harmony they seek is an impossible fantasy.

This is relevant because the story depicts the SuperMechagodzilla character as a 'terrorist' threat trying to 'destroy our way of life' (despite my consistently voicing support for 'conservative values' in actuality) - an abject creature to be eliminated so that a harmonious, capitalist society can be guaranteed. As in Tumblr, the language of authentic emancipatory movements is appropriated for personal empowerment, divorced from actual class struggle. Imagery of martyrdom is abused.