The New Church Ladies: The Extremely Uptight World of "Social Justice"

by Jim Goad

Hey, you! That’s right—YOU! Do you constantly find yourself grievously offended by racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, hatred, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, rape culture, and bigotry? When you look around, do you find nearly everything “unacceptable” and “problematic”? Do you take psychiatric medication to help you cope with all the world’s injustice? Do you walk around wearing diapers on your heart all the time? Are you relentlessly seeking “safe spaces” to get away from all the “microaggressions” that life unfairly hurls at you? Do you cry when people say mean things? Do you classify anyone who disagrees with you as a “fascist,” a “bigot,” a “hater,” a “white supremacist,” and a “Nazi”? Do you believe that “hate speech” is different than “free speech”? Do you often mistake mere words for literal violence? Do you think that people should be beaten up, jailed, or even murdered for harboring or expressing “right-wing” thoughts? Have you ever chanted in public with a group of likeminded, politically motivated individuals? Do you think that anyone who disagrees with you should lose their job? Have you ever told anyone to check their privilege? Are you convinced that you’re on the “right side of history”? Do you feel “oppressed” even though you’ve never worked an honest day in your life and still receive handouts from your parents and the government? Do you feel that “social justice” can be objectively defined and ultimately achieved? Do you think straight white males are the primary source of all human suffering throughout global history? If so... YOU’RE THE FUCKING PROBLEM, YOU UPTIGHT, CENSORIOUS, SELF-RIGHTEOUS ASSHOLE! AND YOU ARE RUINING THE WORLD WITH YOUR PSYCHOTIC WITCH-HUNTING, ENDLESS PROTESTING AND BOYCOTTING, AND MOST OF ALL YOUR ABSOLUTELY SMACKABLE LACK OF HUMOR! YOU MAKE THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS AND THE McCARTHY ERA LOOK LIKE A NICE WARM BUBBLE BATH BY COMPARISON! In The New Church Ladies, beloved author Jim Goad uses weaponized words, violent rhetoric, debunked and discredited pseudoscience, and shocking, unforgivable hate speech to explain why the people who are always fighting “hate” are the most hateful jerkoffs on the planet...and why anyone who spends their life “shaming” others for not thinking like a perpetually miserable, microchip-implanted, ideologically clubfooted, progressive brainwashed zombie Social Justice Warrior should be ashamed of themselves.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

226 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 13, 2017

About the author

Goad started his writing career with the magazine "ANSWER Me!" Which got connected with a triple suicide by British gothics and of the white house shooting of Francisco Martin Duran.

In 1998 he was convicted of abusing his girlfriend and was released in 2000. In prison he wrote his autobiography "Shit Magnet."

Reviews

[Thomas Caldwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW! That was a trip. The most anti-politically incorrect book yet published (that I have read). And you know what's really amazing? The guy is spot on in so many ways.

I first came across the author back in the mid-1990s. He was politically incorrect then, and was even a guest on Bill Maher's show of the same name. But as Goad has gotten more bitter over the years (justifiably so), his wit and writing-style has gotten even sharper. Honed to a razor edge at this point.

Goad is back, and he's back with a vengeance. Entertaining reading with one hell of a point to make. I look forward to more of his work, and I REALLY look forward to making it back on to the lecture circuit and, hopefully, some TV appearances. Like him or not, agree with him or not; he takes a stand and defends it briliantly.

“Political correctness is tyranny with manners," said Charlton Heston. Goad takes the fight to the tyrannical aggressors and begins the long, hard slog to the Berlin bunker.

[Negin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve been hesitant to post a review of this book, since I’m sure that I’ll offend many. First, the fact that I even read this book will hit a nerve. Then, the fact that I’m reviewing it, oh, the outrage.

I really dislike political correctness. If you happen to have drunk the PC Kool-Aid, please read no further.

Years ago, I was an undergrad in one of the first colleges to be involved in the whole stupid politically correct rubbish. I was right there in the thick of it, when all that nonsense started. In one class, we were asked to do a mock interview. To warm things up a bit, we were requested to joke about something, only to realize that the joke part was a trick question. The instructor, a complete idiot in my mind, said she hated jokes. No, not just for the purpose of the mock interview, but she hated jokes overall, since they always end up offending somebody. At the time, I thought, what a sad way to live one’s life. Now, we have an entire generation of college students, who are just like her. They cannot seem to find humor in anything and get offended by the smallest thing. This is why some comedians such as Seinfeld and Chris Rock, now refuse to perform in colleges. Everything is labeled racist, sexist, prejudice, you name it.

For me, this book was hilarious and insightful, but it’s also obscene, and so I cannot recommend it to anyone. No. Not a single soul. Those who need to read it probably won’t. Everyone will eventually find something in this book that they will find offensive.

My favorite quote:

“If you’re really sincere about the idea that diversity is a good thing, you need to quit insisting that everyone should THINK exactly like you do. Unanimity of thought—especially when it’s enforced through speech codes and laws that restrict and criminalize ideological dissent—is not tolerance, it’s totalitarianism. Tolerating different ideas is the most important form of tolerance.”

[Peter Derk · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is something I read. It's...interesting.

While Jim Goad makes some good points, he also makes a lot of points I disagree with. Reading this confirms for me that I'm pretty middle of the road.

My personal values:
1. I'm very against censorship.
2. I'm very pro-speech.
3. I'm very anti-violence.
4. I'm very anti-shaming (SUPER recommend Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed).

I'm somewhat disappointed politically because I've felt increasingly that the left isn't the home for me. After reading this, I'm sure the right is obviously not the right home for me, and their foundation values are not ones that I share. However, the left is also not as much aligned with my values as it once was (or perhaps as I felt it was), but I think the ways in which I disagree with the left has more to do with fringe, highly vocal elements of the left as opposed to core values and the median or average tone.

3 stars because, well, it's not a GREAT book for me, but I did get something out of it. It's probably the first thing I've read that's right of where I stand, and it's helpful to read something so different from myself. Reading Jim Goad's views helped me better understand my own position on the spectrum, and while I'm talking about this as a right-y book, I'm doubtful that Jim Goad would call himself right wing, and he's kind of all over the map when it comes to central issues. He's an individual, and I was curious to read the views of an individual (Stephen King's essay Guns is similar in that he's lefty and pro-gun-ish, which makes for interesting reading).

I also give this some extra credit because while I don't necessarily agree with the text, I'm glad we are in a world where something like this exists. I want to live in a world where stuff that differs from my views, sometimes in borderline-horrendous ways, is able to exist. And I do think that it's a good thing for people to think aloud and think on the page and for imperfect things to come into the world as part of a discussion.

In case you're wondering, I want to say that it's possible to read something with different views and emerge mostly unchanged. Like I said, this book really crystallized more of who I am than it changed who I am. Part of why I read this was because it felt a little dangerous, like some people might think me a monster for even viewing this material. I debated about reviewing it or not, but I think people shouldn't feel afraid to say they've read/viewed/experienced something that is taboo or outside the acceptable discourse. It doesn't make you a bad person, it turns out.

[Gator · Rating 4 out of 5]

Refreshing & Hilarious! Goad does not disappoint.
Crazy thing about this book is if it was written 70-80 years ago it would be taken as slap stick humor, three stooges type stuff .... even more crazy thing is all the $hit he talks about is absolutely real and our current reality is obviously a dystopia of the highest order, worthy of a Twilight Zone episode.

[Bill Gregory · Rating 1 out of 5]

Proving that he always has his finger on the zeitgeist of the nation, Jim Goad released this book in 2017, around the same time when the anti-SJW movement on the internet had started to fall apart due to infighting, favorite targets disappearing, and disputes with the Alt-Right. But it's pretty transparent that this book is a cash-in by an edgelord past his prime who doesn't want to admit to believing in anything, because he's convinced himself that admitting to actually caring about anything is lame and that affecting apathetic detachment is the epitome of cool.

Nevertheless, it goes without saying that the boogeymen of political correctness has been around since the 80s and the massive backlash against so-called Social Justice Warriors is only the nearest incarnation of this much older phenomena. Yet, for all that the anti-PC love to portray themselves as brave iconoclasts speaking to truth to power, the reality is that railing against political correctness has been an extremely lucrative gravy train for nearly 40 years now. Roger Kimball, Dinesh D'Souza, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro have all made solid careers out of it, after all, and until fairly recently, Sargon of Akkad was making six figures a year on Patreon for churning out countless anti-SJW YouTube videos. One wonders how the PC and SJWs could possibly be such powerful groups of thought police when so many people can easily make bank complaining about them, but that's the kind of paradox the anti-PC outrage merchants pray their fans never notice, lest they have to find a new line of work. Goad is nowhere near as successful as any of the other men I mentioned, probably because of his pedant for profanity and bashing of Christianity, though I can't imagine his felony conviction helps much, either.

It should not surprise anyone that this book traffics in extreme common line of anti-PC diatribes where the politically correct are simultaneously fragile weaklings who can't function without their a safe space AND a ruthless, intolerant hoard that suppresses dissent as thoroughly as the Stasi or KGB. This type of caricature is reminiscent of Umberto Eco's observation that fascist propaganda consistently presents their enemies as both too strong and too weak in order to make followers feel humiliated by their enemy yet also reassure them that said enemy can be easily defeated. (Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I am NOT suggesting that Goad is a fascist; that would require him to have some actual convictions, and he cheerfully admits that he has none.)

As I read through this book, I realized that I had read the vast majority of these essays before in the 90s and 2000s. That's right, for all that Goad markets this book as an attack on SJWs, the 2010s version of PCers, he originally wrote a lot of these essays when most of them were still in middle or high school and republished them to make some shekels off modern conservatives, reactionary centrists, and edgelords with fragile egos and persecution complexes. That none of the glowing reviews on this site have noticed how obviously 90s much of these essays are says a lot about how little the anti-PC crusaders have changed their caricatures and generalizations over the years. As a prime example of what I mean, Goad dismisses Neo-Nazis as nothing worth worrying about in his essay on San Francisco, because they live in less affluent places than the Bay Area. Perhaps that was a sensible stance in 1996 or whatever, but it's seems downright quaint in the 2010s, between the shooting rampages of Dylann Roof, Robert Gregory Bowers, Anders Behring Breivik, and the like. Granted, Goad has addressed white supremacist violence elsewhere, but only insofar as to vaguely speculate that Roof's shooting was a false flag for to justify coming genocide against White men and admit that he totally agrees with Breivik's manifesto about killing leftists and Muslims, a stance so insincerely edgy it should be on a Hot Topic shirt.

By far the single dumbest sentence in this book (that isn't part of unhinged REEEEing that looks like something copy-pasted from 4chan) is when Goad calls the 20th century communist regimes "non-racist." Yeah, they may well have affected that stance officially, but it's hard to square with the ethnic cleansing campaigns of the Soviet Union or Khmer Rouge. Calling them "peace-licking" is even more laughable because no actual Communist leader ever expressed much enthusiasm for peace at all, instead frequently invading numerous other countries to spread their ideology and sponsoring left-wing terrorist groups in the First and Third worlds. Though probably unintentional, Goad instead wholeheartedly presents the tankie view of them as anti-racist, egalitarian peaceniks as fact and that is so completely at odds with reality that he might as well have claimed that the USSR and Maoist China were also extremely LGBT-friendly. Goad predictably repeatedly harps on the indisputable fact that communists killed more the Nazis as a gotcha toward SJWs and college professors who preach "Cultural Marxism" (which is a total contradiction in terms, but that's another rant for another day), but ignores that this is hardly surprising, given that the Third Reich only lasted 12 years while the Soviet Union lasted 69.

Goad has been trying to masquerade as a poor, rural redneck since at least 1991, but he very obviously isn't. No one who grew up in Philadelphia, attended private Catholic schools for 12 straight years, graduated from Temple University with a liberal arts degree, and spent much of their adult life in large cities on the coasts is a poor redneck in any way, shape, or form. Goad might have some claim to working class roots, mind, as his father was a plumber, yet that hardly makes him poor; plumbers make just as much as, if not more than, teachers and computer technicians. Nevertheless, he himself is no longer working class by any metric, despite his pretensions.

If anything, Goad should sincerely thank his protégé, Gavin McInnes (who, ironically, is the epitome of the silver spoon, upper middle class brats from urban enclaves that Goad rails against in this book, just with completely opposite politics) for keeping him somewhat relevant, because otherwise he'd might have to take up busing tables or scrubbing toilets to pay the rent instead of collecting weekly wingnut welfare from Taki Mag. This book, Goad's columns at Taki Mag, and his podcast are more of the same bullshit he's been churning out for almost 30 years: he's still incandescent with rage that there are people in the world who claim to give a shit about anything but themselves and accuses of them of acting only out of self-interest to assure himself that he is correct to disavow all convictions and do nothing. The only slight difference is that he now openly pals around with open fascists like the aforementioned McInnes as well as Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, Jean-François Gariépy, Henrik Palmgren, and Lana Lokteff, not because he sincerely believes in their white nationalist ideology, but only because he's noticed that it makes liberals and mainstream conservatives mad. Alas for Jimmy, to be an edgy contrarian in your twenties and thirties is to be expected; when you're pushing 60, it's just pathetic.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to love a man who isn't afraid to speak truth to power -- in this case, taking today's media thought police to task -- skewering the political correctness that permeates every news story, social media post, television show and film modern audiences encounter.
Through the book's two parts -- one a critique and one a parody, Goad takes a stand against white, straight guilt with his very, very special brand of humor and sarcasm. Goad has been around for a while, and if the holier-than-thou powers that be got their way, he'll never have his day in the sun. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this lampooning of today's political and social (sub)consciousness.
Not recommended for readers without a sense of humor...

[Jorge Rosas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this books as it speaks the unspeakable of today’s moralism and shows the bitter truth about its hypocrisy and unsustainable arguments, it’s aimed at the U.S. but applies almost anywhere with internet connection. A problem with the use of internet and the death of free speech by the common use of public shaming and not letting the other side expose an argument is the focus of this book.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of Jim Goad, and he has created a solid book. The satire in the last quarter of the book is perfect.

[Mina Bahadori · Rating 1 out of 5]

Picked up from a free library
Horribly written and no choice but to burn it….

[Cwn_annwn_13 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this book Goad is on point doing what he does best. Critiquing hypocritical politically correct SJW whitebreads in a humorous ranting style. The second half which is parody/satire essays has some witty and funny stuff but it got tedious after a while.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll occasionally still read Taki's Magazine, though it's mostly for Kathy Shaidle at this point, since the best writers over there (Derbyshire, Sailer, et. al.) are double-posting at other outlets I'd rather read more anyway.

Jim Goad was never my favorite at Taki, though I admit he can be humorous and insightful in small doses. Reading all of his essays compiled together in one place makes his deficiencies too glaring, though. He writes as if he's trying to cram a joke into every sentence, and the cumulative effect is wearing (imagine a reactionary Gene Shalit talking about why progressives suck and you're in the ball park). I personally think Goad is at his best when he just tells stories, as he occasionally does in this collection, like when he relates how he was beaten up by some anti-racist skinheads for wearing an Iron Cross (the Nazi Iron Cross looks different from that awarded by the Second Empire but I guess the Portland Antifa don't make those kinds of fine-grained distinctions).

At the end of the day, Goad's shtick (and let's face it, that's what it is) is just a variation on the old center-right cop-out about how "democrats are the real racists," although in Goad's case, he makes it clear that his hate flows in every direction because he's a misanthrope and naturally goes against the herd, no matter which way it's running. He even brandishes his bona fides by mentioning that he lives in a majority-black neighborhood, just to show he's not racist (while also mocking similar pieities when mouthed by his opponents in the kulturkampf).

The satire is undercut by Goad's (understandable) rage at the cultural mandarins of the left who want to tell us what to think and say (and have succeeded to a frightening extent in Europe, Scandinavia, and Canada). Satire can and should be biting, but Goad is sometimes so pissed that he breaks character in the middle of a piece and he devolves into more of a poo-flinger than an iconoclast, using all caps and a bunch of exclamation points. I sympathize with his frustration, but I guess I'm just so relieved to be free of the madhouse of the modern campus that I don't even want to return to it just to lampoon its worst excesses and untruths without going into deeper analysis of the "why" behind it all. This is meant to be light reading and not a prescriptive, but even so, it's still too airy and lacking in content. Mocking the humorless can be fun, but it's unlikely they'll even tune in long enough to read this, since it's well outside their safe space. Younger people might dig this one, though, since the pieces are at least short.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

The quickest way to get me to read a book is for a group of people to be outraged about it. I know it hit a nerve and is most likely true. Especially if the only retort against it is to whine like a child and sling mud like a caveman. What an enjoyable read, if not just for the salty, salty tears ideologues have shed over it. It helps that Jim is a good writer, but I probably would've given it 5 stars even if he wasn't. It's good to see someone who's honest, a quality in short supply these days.

"If you see someone online these days being dubbed “a piece of shit,” a “scumbag,” a “knuckle-dragger,” a “Neanderthal,” or “subhuman garbage,” what’s mind-meltingly ironic is that the person who’s lobbing these verbal shit-bombs tends to be a liberal—i.e., someone whose entire worldview is based on self-righteous notions of compassion and tolerance." - Jim Goad

[Jorgon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny? Yes, although in a crude not-quite-gonzo way when Goad punches up--which is about half of the time. But the brush is too broad, and too frequently he misses the point of political philosophies he lampoons so mercilessly. Which is a pity, because many of his targets DO deserve to be lampooned, but the devils are in details and subtlety, and we need more devils of that sort and not so much the crude slapstick ones.

[Fiannawolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very amusing commentary.

And people wonder why I mostly read indie sci fi nowadays. Those books are interested in telling stories, not soap boxing, so get this book if you feel like busting a gut over how over the top PC culture is shooting itself in the foot.

[Chumley Pawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obscene, hilarious, profane, provocative and pretty much right about everything.

[Mark Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first subscribed to the "American Spectator" way back in the nineteen eighties. MR Goad's book reminded me of those wonderful days when I discovered; P. J. O'Rourke, Tom wolfe and Florence King.

[Caspar Vega · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not his best but still plenty of laugh-out-loud moments.

[Maria Wroblewski · Rating 3 out of 5]

first half good satire. Last 1/2 is silly.

[Zak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious. Truthful. Harsh. Brutal. Uncaring. Sublime. On point. I love Goad's writing and style.

[dchtzr dchtzr · Rating 1 out of 5]

holy fuck this dude was your average internet edgelord before internet edgelords were a thing. he's been putting out dumb shit like this since the fucking early 90s smh

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for the brilliant blurb. That's it.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably one of the finest “Fuck you and your bullshit!” I’ve read on paper in a long time. I definitely needed someone else to call bullshit and confirm my suspicions.