James Bartholomew claims to have coined the term in an article he wrote for The Spectator in 2015 ostensibly on the subject of moral superiority, but appears to be largely a defense of Nigel Farage and UKIP when they were still riding high in UK politics. The term took a little time crossing the Atlantic, or I'm being called out by crusty old conservative Brits.
It's a form of counter-shaming, as conservatives feel put out by all the criticism they are facing in regard to the positions they take, and accuse liberals of jumping on the bandwagon, when at heart they are no better. There may be some truth to this in regard to white privilege and misogyny, but for the most part this is no better than calling someone a snowflake because he or she doesn't agree with you.
Conservatives have long liked to claim that they hold the virtuous high ground and that political correctness has led to choices based not on merit but skin color and gender. This goes back to Affirmative Action in the 1970s and the highly publicized case of Alan Bakke in 1978. He claimed both age and racial discrimination in being denied entry to Cal Davis Medical School. Bakke ultimately won admittance thanks to the US Supreme Court, which anti-Affirmative Action advocates took as a moral victory.
Affirmative Action was seen as one of those liberal corrections meant to give women and blacks a leg up when they really didn't merit it. White liberals knew it but did it anyway to assuage their addled conscience. William F. Buckley loved nothing more than to assail this faux liberalism on Firing Line. Here he is having fun with Tom Wolfe over "radical chic." It had become hip to take radical positions whether you accepted them or not, and American colleges were seen as ground zero of this new political awareness or political correctness as it soon became derisively known.
The origins of "virtue signalling" have been lost over time as it is now used primarily as a way to shame those who express their political correctness in open forums. Trump has been seen as the antidote to this hypocrisy, cutting through the layers of false premises that have accrued over the four decades since Bakke.
For many conservatives, Obama was the end result of Affirmative Action in electing someone to the White House solely because he was Black. They refused to accept he had the qualifications, either by birth or by education, with Trump openly challenging the former president on both grounds. Even after Obama produced his long-form birth certificate, Trump was still clamoring for his university transcripts, which Obama kept sealed.
This fed the numerous conspiracy theories in the conservative blogosphere that Obama was a closet Muslim and Marxist determined to drag the United States into an Islamist-Socialist nightmare, which was perpetuated to the very end of his administration. Ben Carson openly opined that anarchy could prevail before the 2016 elections and Obama would declare martial law. That's how crazy it got!
I have to think Buckley would be disappointed in the turn conservatism has taken. He felt conservatives were inherently smarter than liberals because of a set of bedrock intellectual and moral values, but that has become significantly loosened in the Age of Trump. Today, we see conspiracy theories once relegated to the extreme fringe of the conservative movement on full public display.
Virtue is no longer seen for what it is, but rather some false position one takes to promote his or her agenda. It makes you wonder how conservatives reconcile the President's daughter, Ivanka, who appears to be virtue signalling all the time in the positions she takes publicly. I guess as long she continues to support her father she can believe whatever she wants to believe.
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