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What is the point of this sort of comparison? I'm sure the religious fanatics who were burning Pokémon cards and Harry Potter Books thought they were making the world a better place. People didn't send their kids to gay conversion camps to make the world worse. The Taliban think they're doing the right thing by forbidden women to learn, the Soviets and Nazis thought they were making the world better with their atrocities.
No one is a villain in their own story. Everyone thinks that their beliefs are good and result in good things. But specifically calling for generosity in regards to SJ on this seems particularly perverse, because as an ideology, SJ emphatically denies that generous goodwill to anyone else.
And it seems double-perverse given how much of SJ appears to be upper-class double-think games, e.g. the numerous times Darwin has expressed annoyed confusion that people keep trying to take SJ ideology literally and seriously, instead of just knowing that it's tribal-signaling mouth-sounds.
I generally agree with your first and second paragraphs. The context is in the link; the first quote is from Atomised.
I used to be an SJer and hang out in an SJ space; I remember believing parts of the orthodoxy (some of which I have since renounced) and other people there seemed to believe all of it. While I agree that SJ denies the Principle of Charity, I think of this mostly as an ultimately-self-destructive mistake that we shouldn't follow SJ into making rather than a defection by SJ that we should return in kind.
I am not sure which Darwin you refer to.
This guy:
https://old.reddit.com/user/darwin2500
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Any ideology, however polished, serves as a device for rationalization and coordination within tribes. Is your point that sj is so consolidated as to be called an ideology -- but a flawed, contradictory one? Or that sj is just a spontaneous result of signaling games, and not ideology at all. I wouldn't dismiss any views, overlapping with its umbrella.
Edit: for prospective downvoters. Ever care to engage? or my view is too idiotic for you to descend to?
My point is more that SJ as an ideology is so optimized for conflict theory that it's adherents begging for the protections of mistake theory is somewhere between cute and contemptible. Say what you will about fundamentalist Christianity, but it does still contain memes about loving and forgiving your enemies for they know not what they do. SJ as a meme/ideology, OTOH, is more purely specialized as a weapon, which makes it more valuable to people who want a weapon, either because they just enjoy attacking or they want the weapon to win status games.
Christianity's potential as a weapon had expired long ago, but it performed well for several centuries. Ideologies, like institutions, are optimized for the contemporary circumstances. The more time passes, the more they confine your movement -- as you need to look coherent -- but less effective they are as intended tools. SJ might be in its most defiant phase now, but might evolve into something more net positive and cooperative (or provide a bunch of positive externalities and disappear altogether). Christianity also took time to assume its peaceful role.
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