Leftist Theory is Still the Root of Our Problems
If we want a more rational politics, we really need to face this problem
Recently, I have been making more criticisms of the right, in light of their authoritarian turn. After all, a liberty loving person can't just sit there and let them make authoritarian law after authoritarian law, targeting everything from drag queens to abortion to IVF. However, I think I also need to make this clear: I still see leftist theory, specifically the identity-based critical theories, as the 'evil' at the root of all our problems. Only by soundly defeating the theory 'New Left' will we be able to move on from our current predicament.
My intention, to be clear, is not to make excuses for the right, as some online influencers (I won't name names) actually do. I have always been strongly opposed to the authoritarian religious right, which needs to be dealt with on their own terms. The religious right might be using wokeness as an opportunity to make inroads back into the mainstream, but their authoritarianism is not a result of the existence of wokeness. Rather, religious authoritarians have long been committed to their scary theocractic vision, and were always just looking for the right opportunity to strike. The toxicity of the current political landscape has given them their perfect opportunity.
However, it is still true that postmodernism and critical theory are almost entirely responsible for the toxicity of our current political landscape. It is these theories, and the worldview they give rise to, that has done the most to promote an oppressor vs oppressed, us-vs-them, tribalist, no compromise political landscape. Moreover, their insistence on painting everyone who disagrees with them, even if only on one or two things, as right-wing oppressors has served to silence more moderate voices, effectively moving the Overton Window of many so-called progressive circles to the far-left. This causes extremist ideas like 'deplatforming' (i.e. cancel culture) to be normalized, and makes those who favor more rationality and compromise afraid to speak up. The far-left's clearing out of the center-left is the fundamental reason for our polarized politics, and we can't change anything without first addressing this problem.
Furthermore, far-left theories are inherently orientated towards revolution, and at least implicitly against reformism, because of their historical roots in the reform-revolution split in Western socialism. Even though the theory left has since turned away from workers and economics towards identity politics, this revolutionary orientation remains deeply embedded in their worldview. For example, critical race theory states that civil rights reforms have done nothing much to advance the equality of black people. This basically echoes the older revolutionary left's claim that democratic socialism would do nothing much for workers, and that a revolution was the only way to justice. This worldview, when applied to the identity politics claims of contemporary society, fly in the face of reality. Who in their right mind would say that things are not much better, in terms of racial equality, compared with the 1950s? The far-left refusal of reformism and embrace of revolution logically leads to an inability to compromise, and a view of society in us-vs-them terms, two things that are basically required for a revolution to happen. It is therefore in the DNA of the theory left to bring about the toxic polarized politics we see today. This is why, if we want a more positive and rational politics, we must learn to completely reject the theory left and its toxic worldview.
If we want a rational, reformist politics, defeating the theory-based identity far-left is not optional. It is in fact the most necessary thing to do. Of course, we also need to critique the equally irrational and authoritarian people on the right, like the religious right. What we need to remember here is that we can definitely walk and chew gum at the same time.
From my other newsletter:
Why Classical Liberals Should Never Give Up on Progressive Politics
…And let's face it: all the extremely illiberal policies discussed above are made possible by their popular support in the Republican base, reinforced by the propaganda of the 24/7 right-wing news media that Tracinski described as a 'firehose' 'coming at them all day long'. For example, in a 2023 survey, a whopping 40% of Republicans were uncomfortable with finding out that their friend was gay, and the figure rises to 59% for trans (compared to only 14% and 19% for Democrats respectively). Remember, we're not talking about disagreement with certain LGBT activists' agenda. We're talking about having a gay or trans friend here, and roughly half of all Republicans had a problem with that in 2023! The intense anti-LGBT propaganda in right-wing news media appears to have had a powerful effect here. Again, it's just not something a small and powerless libertarian movement could address effectively by any means…
Is the New Right Actually That New?
…The fact is, what the New Right wants to do is basically what the old right was doing, up until around the mid-aughts. The main difference is that the old right did these things while paying lip service to individual freedom and Burkean conservatism, while the New Right has no such pretenses. The reason is because such hypocrisy could no longer stand up to scrutiny. Back in the aughts, the rise of libertarianism associated with the backlash to the 2003 Iraq War, and the rise of the internet as a platform for political discussion, meant that the hypocrisy of saying you're for freedom while promoting authoritarian policies simply became untenable…
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
There is nothing particularly "far-left" about both postmodernism and critical theory.
In this time and place when every possible point of view on every religious, philosophical, cultural and political issue is freely available on the internet everyone necessarily has to critically examine their presumptions about quite literally everything (especially on religion).
Two of my favorite authors who do, and promote this are Jeffrey Kripal from Rice University, and the little known very prolific writer Richard Grossinger who is the founder of North Atlantic Books, and now closely associated with the Inner Traditions/Bear@ Co publishers.
Another now deceased author was William Irwin Thompson the author of the more-than-wonderful book Coming Into Being.
That having been said in my opinion the principal driving force of our now collective madness (even psychosis) are on the right-side of the culture wars shouting match (and of course the dis-information machine)
An early critic of the culture wars shouting match was/is Deborah Tannen in her book The Argument Culture. http://www.deborahtannen.com/the-argument-culture
Check out the books by David Brock beginning with The Republican Noise Machine Right Wing Media & How It Corrupts Democracy. That Noise Machine is of course now muchly bigger.
One of my favorite writers (now deceased) pointed out in a 2010 book that at the time there were more than 1000 right-wing-hate-radio stations in the US
Some early very popular and influential right wing psychos were Glenn Beck and Russ Limbaugh.