All Social Justice Warriors are pecksniffs but not all pecksniffs are social justice warriors

Just came across a word I haven't seen or thought of in a long while - Pecksniff.

NOUN

An unctuous hypocrite, a person who affects benevolence or pretends to have high moral principles; (also) a person who interferes officiously in the business of others. Frequently attributive Also (occasionally) as adjective.

Origin

Mid 19th century; earliest use found in The Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal. From the name of Mr Pecksniff, a hypocritical character in Charles Dickens's novel The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit.

Perhaps this a solution to a longstanding inaccuracy that has bothered me which can be summarized as:

All Social Justice Warriors are pecksniffs but not all pecksniffs are social justice warriors.

People who subscribe to the garden variety postmodernist ideas - social justice theory, feminist theory, critical race theory, critical theory, deconstructionism, gender theory, etc. - typically are not thinkers. They hold these ideas through some emotional appeal (or character defect), not necessarily because they have engaged with them on an epistemic or philosophical level, or have read anything about them. Postmodernism is effectively the advocacy branch of socialism and yet many, many good people holding these obnoxious ideas would not consider themselves socialist.

It is a fair point and referring to them as Social Justice Warriors has always bothered me somewhat. Partly because it is mildly dismissive and partly because it often is not technically accurate. You can parrot ideas without understanding them.

Most these ideas, while often having a very small nugget of insight, are usually blown way out proportion. The nugget of true insight cannot bear the weight of the nonsensical extrapolation.

While SJW has bothered me, I have never come up with an adequate alternative. Pecksniff is actually pretty close to the real distinction. Most of the banal evil of people spouting SJW ideas is not in the ideas themselves (bad as they are) but in their associated behavior. They are nearly all Dolores Umbrage models of humanity, happily convinced of their moral virtue and inherent goodness and simultaneously capable of extreme cruelty and yet completely unaware of the dichotomy.

Pecksniff better captures exactly the type of person who is so aggravating and unconsciously evil in effect, though not in action.

An unctuous hypocrite, a person who affects benevolence or pretends to have high moral principles; (also) a person who interferes officiously in the business of others.

Extending the idea even further. What is the political disturbance we are seeing across the OECD? The MSM, Clerisy, and Mandarin Class characterize it as polarization or emergent populism. I have characterized it as a revolt of the citizens against the Mandarin Class Establishment. I think that characterization is functionally correct but another springs to mind. The Rise Against the Pecknsiffs.

Certainly, most citizens dislike the corruption and incompetence of the Mandarin Class Establishment. But perhaps almost as much a motivation to overturn the Mandarin Class Establishment is due to the behaviors on display. The Mandarin Class Establishment are characterized by unctuousness towards dictators and tyrants, they are violent against independent thinkers, they are disdainful of those not part of the Mandarin Class Establishment, not to say disrespectful and dismissive.

It is bad enough to have to deal with an establishment which is ignorant and corrupt but that can be managed as long as they are far away and inconsequential. But when they become intrusive and close, the ignorance is on display with arrogance and the corruption is paired with dismissiveness. No wonder ordinary citizens rebel against such presumption.