Now More than Ever: On Virtue Signaling

Every google image of “virtue signaling” was a terrible meme or a cartoon of some variety. So, since “signaling” ultimately comes from Darwin’s sexual selection, here’s a peacock, the heraldric animal of signaling. Uploaded by wikimedia user Jebulon and released under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

I’ve encountered more and more references to “virtue signaling” lately, and it seems to be something that bears examination, because it’s potentially a useful thing to discuss, but it’s often used by Very Online right-wingers as a silencing tactic instead of anything remotely useful. Of course they do: otherwise, they might have to do research. The basic idea is that “virtue signaling” is the performative – and dishonest – act of very publicly behaving as if you hold a value. The implicit assumption is that the person so accused does not actually hold the value – does not possess the virtue – being signaled.

The term was introduced in an article from 2015, called “Easy Virtue”, written by James Bartholomew and published in the center-right magazine The Spectator. The original definition is tied up in the anecdote of Bartholomew’s visit to a Whole Foods, whereupon he saw a poster that says “Values Matter” and depicted a mother holding a child. He goes on to write:

The poster goes on to assert: ‘We are part of a growing consciousness that is bigger than food — one that champions what’s good.’ This a particularly blatant example of the increasingly common phenomenon of what might be called ‘virtue signalling’ — indicating that you are kind, decent and virtuous.” (underlining added.)

JamesHe goes on to provide several examples – journalist Mishal Hussain accusing Nigel Farange of being racist; noted pig-sodomizer David Cameron of pretending to care about the poor by dedicating 0.7% of GDP to foreign aid; calls for an increased minimum wage, that sort of thing – but he also notes that it often consists of declaring hatred for something:

The emphasis on hate distracts from the fact you are really saying how good you are. If you were frank and said, ‘I care about the environment more than most people do’ or ‘I care about the poor more than others’, your vanity and self-aggrandisement would be obvious, as it is with Whole Foods. Anger and outrage disguise your boastfulness.

It then devolves into a discussion of economics, how people go about their valedictions, and twitter. I don’t know, I was rolling my eyes very hard at this point.

This concept, virtue signaling, then leached out of this column written by a mid-rate British columnist like heavy metals leaching into the soil. This term has become a common accusation of people on the right against people on the left, and the general message is quite simple: why are you pretending to believe in something?

If you’re still having trouble with the concept, consider the ALS ice bucket challenge. Which didn’t seem to do anything. Photo taken from wikimedia commons user slgckgc, posted under a CC BY 2.0

You see, implicit in the concept of virtue signaling is that the person being so accused doesn’t actually believe in what they are saying. They’re doing it to gain social capital. The most obvious example of this would be the man dishonestly parroting feminist talking points in the hope of convincing women to have sex with him. Of course, we only very rarely note that this man is virtue signaling, because we tend to call it by a shorter, punchier term: this man is a liar.

Redundant terms very rarely catch on unless they are somehow better, and virtue signaling cannot take over for “lying” as a term, because we’re much more invested in calling something a lie than we are in pointing out virtue signaling. It’s more visceral, more satisfying. The term in question must have emerged to fill a need, and it seems to me that it’s mostly a way to imply that leftists don’t actually believe what they say.

Because you’ll note that this term isn’t really used against people on the right: for some reason, it’s not considered virtue signaling to talk about balancing the budget and still vote for the F-35 and other major military expenditures (no one asks who’s going to pay for the hellfire missile, but that Ventilator needs to be explained before you can even think about it.) I imagine it’s the same reason that people who cheat on their spouses or solicit anonymous sex feel the need to froth at the mouth about how sacred marriage is. Maybe it’s the same reason that people who talk about individual liberty and people’s right to privacy vote to eliminate encryption and surveil citizens.

In short, I find it frustrating how people point out that compassion is a virtue being signaled, but nothing else is. Because responsibility can’t really be signaled. Loyalty can’t really be signaled.

The implicit message is “no one actually cares about other people, and if you act like you do, you’re a liar.”

Taken from user Microsoft Sam. It’s also found in this Ad Age article by Ann-Christine Diaz.

Of course, this can’t be the whole story, either. Despite the thing that kicked off Bartholomew’s whole screed, this accusation is only ever leveled against individuals or informal blocs of people. Never formal organizations like companies. Consider, the various corporations putting together ads during the current public health crisis that begin with somber piano music and someone saying “now more than ever” or “in these unprecedented times” or whatever – they’re not advertising anything in particular, they’re just trying to make you feel like the corporation that paid for the advertisement cares about your safety. They say something along the lines of “we’re here for you.”

This is pure signal. There’s no actual promise or anything here. It’s just an empty platitude assembled out of stock footage. Somehow, no one thinks it notable to comment that this is virtue signaling.

Of course, all of this is tied up in the concept of virtue, itself: the idea that there is a positive quality that can be possessed by a person. I’d say that this is, generally, an essentialist and archaic concept. Sure, it’s occasionally a useful one: I talk about virtue a great deal when I’m teaching freshman-level rhetoric. It’s acknowledged in rhetoric that it is often useful to at least appear virtuous – to show respect for the values extolled by your audience. In short, for longer than the concept has been used to refer to the seven heavenly virtues of Christianity, it referred to the appearance of holding a value.

Virtue has never been anything but signal.

More useful, I think, than talking about some positive quality possessed by a person or group, and held to be an inherent trait to them, is to talk about what people do. I have a process orientation, so this should come as no surprise. Is the guy in the intro to women’s studies course a feminist? I don’t know, how does he react when a woman tells him, definitively, no? Is Nigel Farange a racist? I don’t know, does he do racist shit? Does David Cameron care about the poor of the world? Maybe, but he I’m reasonably certain that he sodomized a pig corpse for access to the halls of power.

I don’t think any press photo has ever been considered more unfortunate. Taken from the Guardian, ultimately from David Hartley/Rex Shutterstock.

Of course, focusing on what people actually do would be counter to the mission of the right. Because when you ask a leftist keyboard warrior “yeah, well, what are you actually going to do about it?” there’s a chance they might actually log off and go do something about it. They might go and join a Mutual Aid organization or the DSA or the SRA.

And this is what makes accusations of virtue signaling actually an ingenious rhetorical ploy: it angers the target without pushing them to act in a way that might actually change things. It forces them to expend time and energy arguing.

So, here’s my challenge to you: if you get accused of virtue signaling, ignore what was actually written. Walk away from the computer, put down the phone, and ask yourself: “what, exactly, am I going to do about it?”

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