Why Progressives Need to Oppose Critical Race Theory
And Why Some Leftists Once Suspected Taylor Swift of Being a Closet Conservative
Story of the week:
…By promising a shortcut to utopia, critical anarchism implies that all the hard work of reformist progressive politics is unnecessary, or worse, counterproductive, because you are working to prop up an 'oppressive' system. By encouraging people to place all their hopes and dreams in an unreal future utopia, critical anarchism leads people away from the actual hard work of improving things in the here and now, bit by bit. This work includes coming up with viable proposals for reform, winning the debate in the marketplace of ideas, and yes, deciding to make necessary compromises along the way. Instead of all this, critical anarchism essentially teaches that we can have a shortcut to utopia simply by radicalizing enough people to agree with its worldview, and deconstructing and dismantling everything we have. What better way to 'dismantle' the status quo than to make moderate liberals lose elections to right-wing culture warriors, and radicalize upset young people along the way? Or to promote outlandishly extreme ideas to 'challenge' the status quo, to make everyone ultra confused about everything?
Meanwhile, the real world effects of this would simply be to create a reactionary backlash, and enable right-wing authoritarian politicians to take power…
Why Some Leftists Once Suspected Taylor Swift of Being a Closet Conservative
Looking back, the fact that some leftists once suspected Taylor Swift of being a 'closet conservative' sounds like nonsense. However, this paranoid idea was indeed brought up from time to time, by various people on the left, from around 2009 to 2017…
…the supposedly conservative Swift is contrasted with the 'fresh potential revolutionary' Lady Gaga, who was arguably the biggest pop star back in 2009. It seems that one can't like both Swift and Gaga, even though many people were actually fans of both back then! The point here is that everything has to be politicized, and divided into 'conservative' and 'revolutionary', even music and entertainment. What is 'revolutionary' is good, and what is not revolutionary is inherently conservative, and therefore bad. In recent years, I've found this form of thinking very prevalent in some parts of the left, and trust me, it is not a good thing.
We Need to be Reasonable About Tradition
The mass deconstruction of social norms leads to potential instability, and would naturally be met with backlash. Instead, I suggest a much less invasive approach: only the social norms that actually adversely affect minorities should be changed, and they should be changed to the least extent needed to resolve the problem.
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).