Trigger Warnings for the Class Struggle: Or, Why Safe Spaces Are the New Opium of the Left
It’s not a far reach to say that PC (politcal correctness) enforces a subtle totalitarianism through its logic of “I know better what you really want.” It demands internal sincerity, not just external politeness, alongside the social coercion that feels non-authoritarian but is more insidious.
As Žižek (1997) argues in “Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism,” multiculturalism functions as the cultural logic of global capitalism, serving as an ideological mechanism that displaces class struggle by focusing on cultural recognition and tolerance.
The subject knows capitalism’s exploitation, class antagonism, and so on exist, yet treats these PC rituals, pronoun declarations, etc., as the fetish object that “covers” or repairs the lack in social order/ big other. PC creates the illusion that the Big Other is whole and responsive, e.g., “we are inclusive now,” when it is constitutively lacking.
The fetish veils this fundamental incompleteness. It generates surplus jouissance like moral policing of “problematic” speech that provides satisfaction like feeling superior, and the ritual in itself becomes a source of enjoyment rather than a genuine confrontation with desire or lack. PC creates this perverse superego, turning inclusion into a mandatory enjoyment.
PC requires constant public display of inclusion; it must be on your phone, everywhere. The performance is exhibitionistic; the subject gets off on being seen as morally pure.
The superego law ("be respectful, inclusive, antiracist") is obeyed excessively. Over-compliance (hyper-correct language, endless sensitivity rituals) secretly violates the spirit of the law by turning it into a game of moral superiority. While maintaining perfect compliance, the subject enthusiastically polices and cancels others for minor slips.
This is the perverse twist, breaking the law in others while maintaining one’s own purity; the enjoyment comes from the act of punishment itself. The excitement of hunting microaggressions, exposing hidden sexism, and delivering public punishment. This is the "prohibited" enjoyment the superego secretly commands.
The subject enjoys both self-surveillance: The fear of being caught non-PC, and sadistic enjoyment in exposing others. a perfect perverse loop where guilt and pleasure feed each other.
The result? The superego feeds on the cycle of display, accusation, and cancellation, rather than genuine ethical transformation.
Trigger warnings and safe spaces as fetish objects: A 2024 meta-analysis in Clinical Psychological Science (12 studies) by researchers from Flinders University and Harvard University finds that trigger warnings increase anticipatory anxiety before content, have no meaningful reduction in post-exposure anxiety, no reliable effect on avoidance of material, and no benefit to comprehension or learning (Bridgland et al., 2024). Serving as a form of "protection" gesture, they displace deeper mental health support or exposure therapy principles.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, spikes in anti-Asian, anti-Black, and anti-Indigenous racism in multicultural countries (for example, Canada) exposed that official multiculturalism tolerates surface diversity but does not dismantle underlying racism or white-supremacy structures. Police-reported hate crimes in Canada rose 37% overall, with race/ethnicity-motivated crimes increasing 80%; anti-Black incidents rose 92%, and anti–East/Southeast Asian incidents quadrupled (Arora, 2022; Statistics Canada, 2022).
And well, of course, in their modest, non-performative guise, voluntary support groups for trauma survivors, minorities and so on, where the marginalized can breathe without the immediate hammer of hostility: safe spaces, might offer a pragmatic relief, a temporary shield. Fine. But precisely here lies the trap; what begins as a tool of survival swiftly fetishizes itself into the mandatory enjoyment of the superego "You must feel safe!" thereby covering the Real antagonisms, soothing the symptom.
References:
Arora, S. (2022). Police-reported hate crime in Canada, 2020 (Juristat). Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 85-002-X. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2022001/article/00005-eng.htm
Bridgland, V. M. E., Jones, P. J., & Bellet, B. W. (2024). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of trigger warnings, content warnings, and content notes. Clinical Psychological Science, 12(4), 751–771. https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026231186625
Žižek, S. (1997). Multiculturalism, or, the cultural logic of multinational capitalism. New Left Review, I(225), 28–51.