The Google Memo, and what makes a Red Pill
Let’s recap it one more time. In the famous scene in The Matrix, Neo is offered two pills and a choice: to stay philosophically asleep, or to wake up. He can the take a pill that allows him to see the world as it is now and as it always was, or he can remain in blissful, comfortable ignorance, and in slavery. It’s interesting that what we normally describe as being red pilled is the effect of the pill and not what makes it work. What are the active ingredients in the pill itself? What makes one event a red pill and another not? Everyone on either end of the political spectrum should want to know the answer to that question, since it could dictate your ability to either prevent or promote further incidences, depending on your needs. Luckily, for the purposes of discussion, there’s appear to be a mass red-pilling happening right now – in the form of James Damore’s Google Memo. Will this join the ranks of the acknowledged key events that have pushed people permanently the right, and into a position of activism? Many believe so. Why?
No one out there is handing out official certifications, so all of this is open to dispute, but anyone who has spent any time listening to people on the right will know there are canonical red pills whose significance everyone agrees on. Those are: the trial of George Zimmerman, “Hands up don’t shoot”, Gamergate, and the European Refugee Crisis. At this point you’ll have to accept that your writer has done the leg work on Twitter and /pol/ and is fit to make that judgement but believe me – those are the ones that changed things.
What are the common factors?
In order to constitute a red pill something must paint you as the villain in a way you feel is unjustified. You must feel that it’s telling you something important about the world that is verifiably, demonstrably untrue and that clashes with your lived experience. It must represent an incursion into your private space by an external force that you previously thought would leave you alone if you just minded your own business as others were minding theirs.
This result in an overall experience I think can be summarised as something like the below:
“I knew there were problems out there in the world and I knew I disagreed with how they were commonly understood, but it didn’t impact me much. I felt if I kept silent about them they would pass me by, and I could live my life in peace, and private disagreement. But then the problems came looking for me – not just looking for me but with me in the crosshairs as the enemy, as the cause of this problem and all problems. They asked that I not merely lie about what I thought was true for the sake of a peaceful life, but that I take those lies into my heart and speak them, live them out, constantly. That includes recognising myself as the source of all evil in the world, and endorsing my own disenfranchisement. Now I realise if I want to have some semblance of the life I had before and be able to look myself in the mirror, I need to actively push back against those lies and that incursion. I can’t go back to the way it was before.”
(To take a momentary diversion – its worth noting that the old usage of “Red Pill” was as something relating purely to men’s rights, and the phrase is still in use in that community in that way. But it’s usage has spread and its meaning has changed, including the development of varieties of pill. In right wing parlance, White Pills cheer you up and make you feel like your side might be winning is spite of degeneracy, Black Pills do the opposite. At this point the phrase “Red Pill” is basically a right wing analogue for “Woke”, or at least being red pilled is the equivalent of being woke.)
Not every skirmish in the Culture Wars is a red pill. Superficially, the fuss over the Google Memo might seem like the standard Social Justice Twitter Drama that crops up from time to time and just as quickly disappears. Someone says something that offends someone else, someone behaves obnoxiously, someone gets their knickers in a twist, everybody rubber-necks at the wreckage, rolls their eyes and gets back to retweeting videos of cats.
In that light, many people would put the memo in the same category as what’s going on in Charlottesville, and President Trump’s reaction to it. Everyone in the media clutches their pearls no repairs to the fainting couch over what it represents, asking how anyone can hold these kinds of views in this day and age, and after a couple of days it dies down and is replaced by something else. The Google Memo goes deeper. It not the same. It will change people’s minds.
To see why, well, read the reaction.
The memo is described, initially by Gizmodo and then by a curiously large number of other outlets, as a “screed” or “manifesto”. The terms used are inappropriate and peculiar but consistent, giving the impression to a skeptic of a coordinated campaign to poison the well. In terms of it’s content, CNN among others tells us (falsely) in its headline that the memo described women as biologically unfit to be programmers. Naked lies of this types were repeated ad nauseum elsewhere. In its initial story on the memo Gizmodo removed the embedded links to science articles explaining the reasoning behind Damores’s arguments, lest its readers be corrupted by exposure to widely accepted facts, figures and data justifying the authors views. By sleight of hand, this enabled Gizmodo to simultaneously create the false impression that the views expressed are not mainstream which, again, was repeated elsewhere until it was an accepted official position of Right Thinking People. The consistent way of describing the author was the usual canards of “dude” and “bro”, indicating not just a contemptuous eye roll of “these guys again” but to clearly insinuate that his views must and should be discounted because of the authors race and gender. Now let's read the memo itself.
No, it’s not a screed, it’s written in a patient and considered neutral tone. No, whether you disagree with the conclusions, the science isn’t phoney or fringe or toxic. No, the memo isn’t anti-inclusion or anti-diversity, and it makes that point frequently and explicitly. No, it does not claim that any group is biologically inferior or unfit for any particular profession of job within the company.
James Damore goes out of his way in the memo to show that he accepts the premises of modern Social Justice. Inclusion and diversity are good, I like them, and we need more of them. Part of the red-pilling is seeing that this didn’t protect him. For the Powers That Be it is not enough to voice your obedience in a rote manner. The Catherdal’s inquisitors will look into your soul, and if they don’t see it there, at the centre of your being, then you will be scourged. Probably this more than anything else make it a classic example of a red pill event.
Anyone who is on the left and is truly concerned with the growth of the right should be on the watch for red-pillings because the nature of the change is so deep and profound that it appears to be permanent. I say “appears” and not “is”, because all of these changes are so new, and many of the people impacted are so young. It could be that in five years time Trump will be out of office and all of the people moved by this stuff could have changed their minds and gone back to be good members of the congregation. It doesn’t feel like that right now – right now it feels like a stop on a journey that only goes one way. The way we react to these events is probably the most significant part of what gives them influence.
One of the most infuriating aspects of our era is the way it constantly forces you into a position of defending ideas you don’t agree with because of the dishonesty with which they are attacked. I personally disagree with plenty in the memo, and wouldn’t have written it myself, at least not how Damore did – yet here I am writing what feels like it amounts to a defence of it, because the reaction has been so repulsive and dangerous. On the off chance that anyone left wing is reading this, let me plead with you a couple of things. Familiarise yourself, in good faith, with the arguments of the people on the other side of the aisle so that you can competently refute them. Don’t lie or obfuscate or mislead just because you feel it’s in a good cause or its a way of displaying social value to your peers. If you declare matters of race and gender identity are important to you, consider how hypocritical that makes you look when speaking about people whose gender and racial identity you clearly hold in contempt. In the last week the reaction to this event has probably created a few hundred more right wing activists, people who now feel it’s essential for them to get involved in politics, in order to protect what’s true and good in their lives. I doubt it had an equivalent impact on the Left. You’ll draw your own conslusions about whether that’s a good or bad thing.
