Last week, I began responding to this Instagram post by ON Canada Project (OCP). If you haven’t seen the post already, I suggest that you read it and the first part of my response. I continue my response today, focusing on another leftist tactic: the Kafkatrap.
(2) It’s a (Kafka)trap!
The term “Kafkatrap” was coined in 2010 by Eric Raymond. The term itself was inspired by Franz Kafka’s The Trial, in which the protagonist is subject to vague charges that he cannot refute, and a process that is meant to humiliate and degrade him, to break his will until he concedes his alleged guilt.
As for what a Kafkatrap is, Christopher Anadale summarizes it well:
A Kafkatrap is not an argument, as it does not attempt to establish a conclusion by appeal to reasons and inferences. Its goal is to gain the target’s agreement with a judgement of his character, that he is guilty of or complicit in some social sin, such as racism or economic oppression. Once the target has acquiesced in this judgement, he is told that he has forfeited his moral authority to argue against critics of that oppression. The silence or cooperation of the target is the Kafkatrapper’s immediate goal.
And as Eric Raymond observes:
Real crimes—actual transgressions against flesh-and-blood individuals—are generally not specified. The aim of the Kafkatrap is to produce a kind of free-floating guilt in the subject, a conviction of sinfulness that can be manipulated by the operator to make the subject say and do things that are convenient to the operator’s personal, political, or religious goals. Ideally, the subject will then internalize these demands, and then become complicit in the Kafkatrapping of others.
The basic form of the Kafkatrap is as follows: (1) The Kafkatrapper accuses a subject of racism, sexism, homophobia, or so on; (2) The subject denies the accusation; (3) The Kafkatrapper claims that the subject’s denial is an indication of the subject’s being guilty of racism, sexism, homophobia, or so on. Raymond identifies several models of the Kafkatrap. Model A is what was just mentioned. On model C, the accuser claims that even if the subject denies personal guilt, he is nonetheless guilty because he has benefitted from racist, sexist, or the otherwise oppressive behaviour of others in the system. On model P, the Kafkatrapper claims that the subject is nonetheless guilty because he’s in a privileged position in an oppressive system. As Raymond observes, it is essential to these variants that “the subject’s attention be deflected away from the fact that no wrongdoing by the subject . . . has actually been specified.” The Kafkatrapper’s goal is to take advantage of the subject’s self-doubt, leveraging it until he concedes guilt.
Some of the models don’t even require a subject’s denial of guilt. For example, on model D, demanding clear definitions of key terms, such as “racism,” “sexism,” and so on, is an indication of guilt. On model L, applying rational skepticism in evaluating assertions of racism, sexism, and so on, is also an indication of guilt. And on model S, skepticism about particular anecdotes regarding racism, sexism, and so on, is yet another indication of guilt. What’s pernicious about these and like models is that the Kafkatrapper refuses to engage in rational discourse, according to the norms of critical thinking. Attempts at rational discussion are misappropriated against a subject as evidence of his guilt. (If you’re dealing with people who use these kinds of Kafkatraps, just end the discussion. By rejecting rational norms, it probably won’t be useful to engage with them.)
When it comes to OCP’s Instagram post, we see two Kafkatraps (see the fifth image). The first Kafkatrap is this. The main accusation against the Freedom Convoy and its supporters is that they are guilty of or complicit in white supremacy. One defence is to point out that there are visible minorities among the protesters (e.g., Punjabi, Indigenous). However, OCP thinks that this defence (presumably, if used by a white person) is itself a form of tokenism, which in this case can be taken as an expression of white supremacy. Thus, if you’re a supporter of the Convoy (and presumably white), even if you point out the presence of visible minorities at the protest, that itself shows that you are guilty of or complicit in white supremacy.
The second Kafkatrap is this. The accusation of white supremacy is the same, and the defence is basically the same, but in this case, the person who defends the protest is a member of an ethnic group represented at the protest. Let’s say that you’re Punjabi and you respond to the accusation of white supremacy by pointing out that there are other Punjabis at the protest. OCP’s response to that is that you’re guilty (or a victim?) of internalized racism. In this case, the claim is that you’ve accepted or internalized white supremacist ideas, which is supposed to explain why you support and defend the protest. But because of your internalized racism, your opinion ought to be dismissed.
These two instances illustrate an important problem with Kafkatraps. Kafkatrappers refuse to see counter-evidence to an accusation as counter-evidence, but they take it instead as evidence for the accusation. You would think, for example, that white supremacists—if they’re truly racists—wouldn’t associate with non-whites on account of their racism (just think of segregation and other forms of racial conflicts throughout history). Thus, the presence of non-whites at the protest should count as counter-evidence to the accusation of white supremacy. But the Kafkatrapper, in response, appeals to tokenism and internalized racism, so as to explain the presence of non-whites at the protest and their support of it. The problem here, though, is that the Kafkatrapper is being presumptuous about the mental content of those defending the protest. Tokenism involves the inclusion of minorities for the sake of appeasing those who would accuse you of racism. Internalized racism suggests that minorities have accepted the racist ideology of their oppressors. Both of these notions are somehow dependent on the mental content of the relevant subjects. But how do Kafkatrappers know what’s going on in other people’s minds? What independent evidence do they have to suggest that tokenism or internalized racism is at play? And absent of such evidence, why can’t we take people at their word when they claim that they are not guilty of racism, or victims of internalized racism? In the absence of such evidence, and in light of outright denials on the part of the subjects, the Kafkatrapper would violate the Principle of Charity if he were to impute onto the subjects motives and beliefs that he has no right to impute.
Anyway, I hope this has been somewhat informative. I recommend that you read Eric Raymond’s original post for a more comprehensive explanation of Kafkatraps. I also recommend a couple of videos by Chris Anadale: this one explains Kafkatraps and its various models, while this one suggests ways of escaping Kafkatraps. I’d offer advice myself, but that’ll have to wait for another time. I suggest instead that you check out the second of Anadale’s videos.
Art by Taylor Lymbery
The worst case is when upon demonstrating the irrationality in the kafkatrapping, your argument is dismissed on the grounds that the concept of rationality and logic are Western, colonial, white, straight cis male social constructions.
This is great. "...how do Kafkatrappers know what’s going on in other people’s minds?" sums it up well. This is what killed journalism as well. Articles no longer report on "why". I have yet to see an article about the Freedom Convoy - especially by legacy media - that actually reports on why it began and talks about their points about our freedom as outlined in our Charter.
Looking forward to part 3 on coercion.