Hypostasization Warning: Johann Hari Detects It

I think I'm going to institute a regular feature pointing out examples of the fallacy of hypostasization in politics and economics.

Johann Hari writes of how a small group of nutcases, claiming to speak for "the Bengali community," have managed to force a film crew out of their neighborhood because they object to the content of the film. The objectionable content? A Bengali woman slowly comes to reject the traditionally extreme Bengali subjugation of women.

Here's the paragraph in which (without using the technical term hypostasization) Hari puts her finger on the fundamental logical flaw (which is a nice way to say "moronic stupidity") of British multiculturalism (the emphases are added by me). But read the whole thing.

The logic of multiculturalism has made it hard for these thugs to be challenged. Multiculturalism treats immigrant communities as homogenous blocks, represented by elderly, reactionary “community spokesmen”. It has created the bizarre situation where the often-great feminist Germaine Greer has ended up siding with the patriarchal protestors as the keepers of authentic Bengali culture against the carping feminists. Yet in reality, immigrant communities are diverse, clashing cacophonies like everyone else. As the great Amarya Sen has been arguing, we should ditch the outdated idea of multiculturalism and support the progressive wings of all and any communities.

Now, a test question, to be answered below the fold: does anybody see the potential (merely potential, I hasten to emphasize) hypostasization in Hari's own formulation?

Answer: She'll have to be careful when she talks about some community's "progressive wing" to make sure she doesn't hypostasize that "wing" herself.

Also, it's worth pointing out that anytime you hear somebody who uses the term "progressive" as a self-evidently good term and "outdated" as a self-evidently bad term, you get a strong signal that they probably have a tendency to tell truth by a calendar, which is a different type of fallacy (the inability to recognize that "old" and "new" are not the same thing as "false" and "true"). Again, that doesn't mean Hari actually commits that fallacy, just that her use of language is an indicator that she probably has a tendency in that direction, and therefore when you read her you should keep an eye out for that fallacy in particular.