The Non-Left, Non-Right Free Thinkers' Manifesto

We who reject the 'philosophical left' are free-thinkers, not right-wing reactionaries

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

(Note: This manifesto adapts some content from The Progressive Conservative Manifesto also written by myself in 2025. There is some overlap between the core concepts of the two manifestos, since progressive conservatism is a subset of ‘non-left, non-right’ thinking.)

1. The Necessity of Going Non-Left

In the 2010s, there was some sort of awakening to social justice concerns across the West. At first, I welcomed this awakening, because I have always been compassionate, and have always believed that society ought to be made fairer and more accommodating to disadvantaged minorities. However, as the decade went on, things became unsettling. Feminists began accusing men of ‘mansplaining’ and guilty of upholding the ‘patriarchy’ on a widespread scale. Colorblindness began to be rejected, and replaced by ‘race consciousness’ in some circles. The ‘born this way’ argument that had served LGBT rights so well for decades was increasingly being replaced by weak and unscientific paradigms like ‘gender is a social construct’. Free speech was attacked, and ‘safe speech’ was championed instead. Later on, cancel culture would become widespread, and it would be justified on postmodernist talk about ‘power dynamics’. Still later, society would go into full postmodernist mode, where activism often became about enforcing clumsy top-down linguistic changes, reinterpreting history to cast the West and its liberal institutions as irredeemably racist at their foundations, destroying statues of controversial historical figures and so on. It became clear to me that progressivism and social justice had lost their way.

I never left the ideals of social justice and progress, but the movement clearly left me behind. After several years of trying to understand what went wrong, I concluded that postmodern critical theory was to blame. I further understood that postmodern critical theory had essentially become the operating principle of the contemporary Western left, the lens through which they see everything, and the method with which they approach every issue. Postmodern critical theory was strangling the quest for social justice from every angle, and it had become so entrenched that it had become essentially impossible to challenge that worldview sufficiently from within the left. I concluded that, only by exiting and firmly placing oneself outside the philosophical left, could one truly begin to solve this problem.

The necessity of a philosophically non-left alternative is demonstrated by the fact that the excesses of the 2010s left had created the space for a toxic, reactionary movement to rise, which is at least partly responsible for allowing Trump to return to the White House, and it has also exhausted the optimistic passion of a substantial part of two generations (Millennials and Zoomers), who are now too burnt out to engage in any meaningful movement to improve society. This is also not the first time the far-left’s model of change has brought nothing but reactionary backlash and exhaustion of the youth: the radicalism of the 1960s-70s gave way to three decades of right-wing dominance (the time during which my generation grew up in), while the radicalism of Europe in the early 20th century arguably paved the way for fascism. It is clear that the far-left’s model of change has failed repeatedly, and will always fail, leaving behind the people who would be harmed by the resulting backlash, and the broken passions of a generation of youth, every time. Such a faulty program must be thoroughly challenged, so no more generations will be wasted and/or harmed in the future.

2. Why the Non-Left Must Not be Hijacked by the ‘Right’

In the 2010s, an ‘anti-woke’ movement arose gradually to counter the excesses of the ‘woke left’, which was what activism rooted in postmodern critical theory had become known as. I joined the anti-woke discourse in an attempt to cure the social justice movements of their newfound postmodern critical theory influences, but later came to be frustrated and ultimately heartbroken by the reactionary New Right’s hijacking of the anti-woke discourse, and indeed, the whole anti-woke brand. When Ron DeSantis is using ‘anti-woke’ to bully Disney, and when Donald Trump is using anti-DEI to justify his radically authoritarian executive orders, you know the right-wing has turned ‘anti-woke’ into an excuse for doing something horribly authoritarian. I certainly want no part of the culture war that Trump, DeSantis and their cheerleaders represent. Frankly, that movement insults my fundamental values like compassion, freedom and objectivity.

Just like other reactionary right political factions before it, the Trump-inspired New Right is trying to corral all sorts of non-left people into a ‘right’ unified by a reactionary cultural program, one that leads to very real harms in the real world. They are doing so in order to gain political benefit, and they have very well-funded media, both old and new, at their disposal to achieve their goals. This is why they have succeeded to some extent. However, those of us who are aware of what is happening need to resist them in whatever way we can. There is no reason why the non-left needs to be reactionary or bigoted. One can indeed be non-left and still be humane in outlook. That we disagree with the philosophical left doesn’t mean we should accept racist, anti-LGBT or otherwise hateful ideas. This is especially true for those of us who came to adopt a non-left stance from frustration with the left during our participation in social justice movements, and/or because we were inspired by philosophies like classical liberalism, libertarianism and Burkean conservatism, all of which are clearly incompatible with the radically reactionary sentiments of the populist right.

3. The ‘Non-Left, Non-Right’ Should be About Intellectual Freedom

What we need to remember is that the reason why we left the left in the first place was because the left didn’t offer enough intellectual freedom. The contemporary philosophical left’s mix of philosophical influences collected over the past 100+ years has hardened into an ideological straitjacket, and only by leaving the left could we break free of this straitjacket. Given this, there is no reason why we should work with other forces that similarly seek to limit our intellectual freedom and independent thinking, including, but not limited to, the aforementioned New Right.

We should also acknowledge that there is no one way to be ‘non-left, non-right’, and there should never be a ‘party line’ that everyone needs to toe, like in the left or the right. The ‘non-left, non-right’ is inspired by philosophical traditions like classical liberalism, libertarianism, reformism, moderatism, pragmatism and Burkean conservatism, and the way each individual interprets and combines these philosophical traditions are certainly not going to be identical. This means that, as long as free thought reigns, the ‘non-left, non-right’ cannot become an echo chamber of conformity.

4. The ‘Non-Left, Non-Right’ Seeks Good Faith Debate with the Left, Not Culture War

We in the ‘non-left, non-right’ ‘left the left’ because we cannot accept the ideological straitjacket of the philosophical left. This doesn’t mean we don’t have common ground with the left, or that we see the left as enemies we cannot work with. We are certainly not diametrically opposed to the left, like the way the ‘own the libs’ right is. Where it makes sense, we will continue to work with the left on shared goals. Moreover, even though we have left the philosophical left, there is no reason why we cannot continue to support politically ‘center-left’ parties. This is for two reasons: firstly, the political center-left (US Democrats, UK Labour etc.) are not the same as the philosophical left (the cannon of thought that animates activists and thinkers who identify as belonging to the left-wing tradition), and secondly, there is no reason why we can’t support the same party as those in the philosophical left, if only for pragmatic reasons. Influencers from the reactionary right keep trying to confuse the two forms of ‘leaving the left’ in order to coerce us into joining the ‘right’. Sorry, that’s not happening.

I need to re-emphasize the point that we don’t see the left as enemies. By rejecting the left’s ideological straitjacket, we are not necessarily saying that all of the left’s ideas are worthless. Rather, we are saying that we see things from a different point of view, and seek to have a good faith and robust debate over all sorts of issues. What we seek is conversation, not polarization and enmity. We ask that those in the left treat us and our ideas in good faith, and not lump us together with the reactionary right in bad faith. (This, again, is another reason why we must not be enticed to work with the reactionary right under any circumstances, because they actually do seek polarization and enmity against the left. This really cannot be good for society.)

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TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Progressive Conservative Manifesto, the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series. She is also the author of her autobiography The TaraElla Story.