Unfair justice, or how social activism destroys the ideas of equality and ‘good society’

Abstract

The article is a review of the book by Douglas Murray The Madness of Crowds (translated from English by N.A. Lomteva; Moscow: RIPOL classic, 2021. 480 p.). Although this does not follow from the title (as in the book by H. Pluckrose and J. Lindsay on the same topic and with the same estimates Cynical Theories. How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Genders, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody ), the book focuses on the idea of social justice or rather its transformations due to the blurring boundaries between academic research and social activism, private and public life, past and present (in their media representations). On the example of several macro-cases, typical and obvious for the Western society, but well known to the Russian reader through the media-discourse rhetoric, the author identifies the consequences for the ‘objective’ state of social justice of such radical changes in its interpretations as the transition from idealistic-philosophical (social level) to punitive-politicized (the level of groups and communities, including personal responsibility) definitions.