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Notes -
(I don't think that's the exact article I'm thinking of, but it contains some of the same concept.)
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For the thought leaders and developers of this idealogy, it is largely about career advancement or just status/prestige/respect from the masses. For the majority of people, the status/prestige/respect is more about being associated with the movement and in the good graces of the leaders and each other. That is, Joe Schmoe doesn't need to personally become the Diversity and Inclusion Officer in order to benefit. If their friend becomes the Diversity and Inclusion Officer and then starts suppressing other people then Joe Schmoe benefits by having a high status friend.
In the context of internet discussions (in the days before cancel culture), the benefits are marginal, but so are the costs. It's not like it's a huge investment of resources and effort to yell at people on the internet that they're stupid and wrong. And I don't think it's inaccurate to describe as, at least in part, status seeking. People want to feel smart and morally superior and convince their peers that they're right and their opponent is wrong. And hijacking the definition of racism or sexism in order to tarnish your opponent with that label is an easy way to do that. This doesn't officially put you in power, but it does give social power/respect/esteem to the conqueror and potentially ostracize the victim, so it is, on a micro scale, a similar effect.
More importantly, the ideology has changed over time. Maybe the old original incarnation of SJW was less about power than it is now and just happened to be coincidentally good at acquiring it because of how powerful the label "racist" is, but the original adherents were true and honest believers (I'm not convinced of this, I think this philosophy has been brewing in the universities for decades, but I guess the modern incarnation took off online). And then as soon as it started to gain power it started to acquire power-seekers. Again, not necessarily people with the explicit psychopathic desire to lie in order to gain power, but the kind of people who instinctively like and imitate winners and high status people, and despise low status people, so end up adopting the behaviors and beliefs of the new high status group that they see. So even if the early movement contained mostly pure believers, more and more impure believers are drawn to it as it gains power.
"Imitate and flatter high status people/groups" is absolutely an instinct most people have, which is driven in large part evolutionarily by the ability to share status and privilege, or just avoid punishment, by the high status people. Again, it doesn't mean that their beliefs aren't as literal as any other belief, but there is an extent to which it lacks genuinity. That is, if the exact same person had been born 30 years earlier they would be a devout Christian condemning Pokemon for being demonic and trying to cancel people who like rock music, because that's what the consensus was at the time. And maybe they would have literally believed in Jesus and that they were making the world a better place. But they still believe it more because it's what they've been told and what the people around them respect and less because it's something they reasoned themselves into. There's a lack of genuinity to it.
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