Newthinkers see oppressors everywhere. This fact has driven many of the salient trends of progressive society — the redistribution of wealth, the removal of male-dominated institutions, the toppling of European-American culture, a diminishing Christian influence, and so on. In the future it will lead to many new trends, such as the treatment of meat-eating as a disorder like smoking is treated now (because humans are seen to be oppressing animals), and a significant upsurge in Godless theologies such as the new age movement and Neopaganism (because God is perceived to be oppressing humanity).
A new character archetype, defined earlier, has emerged as an integral part of newthink by adapting itself to these social dynamics. Parinciters define the antagonism between pseudoppressors and pseudoppressed, incite conflict between them, and then feast on the carnage they’ve created.
parincitement n : the process of defining, inciting and feeding off a conflict between a pseudoppressor and a pseudoppressed group – parincite vb
Parinciters are common in progressive society. Because they seek fame as a means of increasing their ability to stoke and profit from conflict, these newthink demagogues tend to be public figures, either on a local or a national scale. Progressive society dangles powerful incentives to parincite: fame, political power, champion status and progressive virtue.
Wealth parinciters pit the wealthy against the poor, stoke that conflict, and gain power by doing so. Karl Marx was the first great wealth parinciter. The history of the 20th and 21st centuries is heavily populated with his imitators – Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and others – and depopulated of their victims.
Ethnic (they use the term “racial” because it’s more divisive and inflammatory) parinciters have infected the once-healing wound caused by slavery and civil inequality. Without using that term, Booker T. Washington, the prominent African-American educator, author and political leader of the post-slavery period, wrote about ethnic parinciters back in 1911:
There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs – partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs . . . I am afraid that there is a certain class of race problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out, they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.*
Environmental parinciters define an exploitative relationship between humanity and nature, create fearful and fantastic scenarios about eventual disaster, and gain fame and money from their efforts.
Gender parinciters tar their political opponents with a fictional war on women.
Religious parinciters describe an oppressive Christianity or Judaism and use that phantom to incite conflict with their pseudoppressed religious group.
Global parinciters pit the United States against the rest of the world and ceaselessly attack America. Powerful global political movements are based on global parincitement, sometimes blended with religious parincitement (Islamism) or wealth parincitement (communism).
Because parinciters are public figures, you can probably put names to each of these (and other) types of parinciters. Try it, it’s fun!
* Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education, (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1911), pp. 118-120.