The Postliberal Right is Essentially a form of Postmodernism
Why postmodernism and postliberalism are one and the same.
Welcome back to The Liberal View by TaraElla, where I react to things people write and say out there, from a liberal point of view. I believe this is needed because too many people have lost sight of what the liberal way is. We need to have a truly liberal discourse, and I'm doing my part here.
This week I will continue my discussion of the 'postliberal' Right. The point I want to make this time is that they are essentially just as postmodern as the postmodern left, in that they reject objectivity, facts and rational discourse. Therefore, they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
...it’s now a Wild West and a splintering of media. In America, it’s Fox News, here I guess it’s Sky. If all you are doing is watching one source of news – and by the way, in America you’re seeing that progressives say ‘Well, we’re going to have our own news and our own perspective’ – you no longer have a joint conversation and a shared story.
The easiest way to attract attention without having a lot of imagination, thought or interesting things to say, is just to make people angry and resentful and to make them feel as if somebody’s trying to mess with them and take what’s rightfully theirs.
President Obama observes the similarities between the far-left and far-right culture warriors. I think he has it exactly right here: when it's about narratives and not facts, when it's about getting emotional and not encouraging calm and rational debate, you won't get good outcomes. Both sides are essentially guilty of the same thing here. This is why I now advocate for calling the illiberal, Viktor Orban-inspired, culture warrior faction of the right the 'postmodern-postliberal right'. Because like the postmodern left, these people have absolutely no respect for the objective facts. Everything is about power for them. They essentially follow the speech is power playbook just as much as the postmodern left. The fact that they aren't as upfront about it actually makes them even more dangerous. By using the same term to describe both types of postmodernists, we can more readily see that the real division nowadays is those who believe that speech is for finding the objective truth, vs those who believe that speech is for power and manipulation.
The problem with the argument begins with terminology. Counted as culture war issues are immigration and gay rights. But gay equality and marriage rights are old battles long won by liberals. Immigration is a live political issue, but reaches back to the late ’80s in Europe and late ’90s in Britain. This is not what is meant by ‘culture war’.
Instead, the term ‘culture war’ refers to a new rift between cultural socialism, which pushes for equal outcomes and ‘emotional safety’ for identity groups; and cultural liberalism, which cleaves to free speech, due process, equal treatment without regard to race, gender or sexuality, and objective truth.
-Don’t blame conservatives for the culture wars by Eric Kaufmann in Unherd
Kaufmann correctly identifies the fault-line between the 'woke' and true liberals (even though he uses terminology that I find ridiculous). But then, he does a perfect job of ignoring the New Right authoritarians, who advocate being aggressively anti-LGBT, creating moral panics to justify the expansion of government powers to trample on free speech, and using the state to wage the culture war in a reactionary (not liberal) direction. In other words, he's partying like it's 2015, before the rise of the NatCons (or whatever they like to call themselves these days). Rejecting reality this way is very postmodern indeed.
We must reject any alliance with the Right against the woke, unless the Right fully rejects the authoritarian culture warriors and returns to classical liberalism. (They were almost there pre-Trump, but then everything changed in the wrong direction.) Wilful ignorance of the dangers the postmodern-postliberal right poses to liberalism is only going to make us look hypocritical, which would only support the arguments of the woke that objectivity is impossible, and everything is a game of power.
To win the battle against postmodernism would require us to reject all forms of postmodernism equally. Therefore, any slightest hint of an alliance with the postmodern-postliberal right is a path we must not go down if we want liberalism to have any future, even if we both oppose things like critical race theory.
The 2024 Republican primary has long been billed as a two person race between Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But in recent weeks, other GOP presidential hopefuls have been trying to carve out a third lane, doing so — in part — by portraying the two front runners as mere clones....
The distinctions haven’t just been drawn around entitlements and Ukraine. Pence has also expressed disagreement with DeSantis’ revoking of Disney’s special tax status, calling it “beyond the scope of what I as a conservative, a limited government Republican, would be prepared to do.”
I'm glad that at least someone is standing up for the proper definition of 'conservative'. One thing I have been stressing over and over again recently is that postliberals aren't conservatives, and postliberalism is in fact incompatible with conservatism. I think this could be an important theme in Western politics in the next few years. I believe the future of the Western political landscape could depend on the successful rejection of postliberalism in the next few years, which would require people to understand that it is not the conservatism we have long been familiar with.
While liberals and conservatives do have their differences, opposing the postmodern-postliberal assault on politics from both the left and the right could be a common ground for us to work on.
After delivering the speech at Port Vale FC, in Stoke-on-Trent, Starmer took questions from the media and addressed whether Labour was still committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to enable self-ID for trans people. He made promises to reform the act in 2021.
“What we learned from Scotland is that you don’t make changes that you can’t bring the public along with, which is why in Scotland they should reset the situation,” the Labour leader said.
“There are lessons [to be learnt] from Scotland and the primary lesson is that changes which don’t carry public confidence are almost certainly not the right changes.
These comments from British Opposition Leader Keir Starmer has upset some trans activists, because it could mean that he won't support their version of self-ID. However, let's look at it this way: I fully support the Scottish government's plan to defend their local decision making in court (because I always favor local decision making). However, the version of unconditional self-ID that is favored by many British trans activists remains very controversial. Reforms can only be achieved if you care to bring people along. And right now, unconditional self-ID is not what the general public can get behind. The problem is, many activists can't even face this reality. At least 20 years ago marriage equality activists could accept that the public wasn't there on gay marriage yet, and accept the civil union compromise. I get the feeling that Starmer is not the problem here. Rather, the activists are.
That being said, the vehemently anti-LGBT actions of the New Right culture warriors are definitely playing a role in making trans activism more extreme than marriage equality activism was. After all, the conservatives of 20 years ago wouldn't advocate restricting health care or free speech. The most they proposed was constitutionally banning gay marriage, which even some moderate conservatives considered too extreme. As I said before, any compromise on trans issues needs the support of at least some trans people, and anti-trans extremism from the Right is unfortunately making many trans people unwilling to compromise, out of fear of giving ground to those who want to hurt them. This, I think, has led to irrational behavior like treating allies like Starmer as the enemy.
One kind of extremism encourages the other kind. This is why we can't oppose one kind without opposing the other. This, again, is why the postmodern-postliberal left and right should be treated as part of the same toxic phenomenon.
More in Common asked those surveyed: “Several states in the United States have proposed legislation to ban public ‘Drag Shows’, a form of entertainment which involves performers impersonating men or women. Would you support such a ban in the United Kingdom?”....
The research found that across all the groups, more than two-thirds (62 per cent) said they would not support a ban on drag performances. A fifth (20 per cent) said they would support such a ban while 19 per cent did not know.
This poll brings some good news: outside the American South, postliberal policies are probably pretty unpopular in the Western English-speaking world. This means there is plenty of room for us to build an anti-postliberal coalition, to forcefully push back against their attempt at taking away long-standing liberties, which as I said would be a crucial thing to do in the next few years. Of course, we can't be complacent: remember that 'illiberal democracy', as it used to be called, was a distant thing that was unique to some Eastern European countries? Now it's right here in the English-speaking West. Therefore, we must try our best to stop it from advancing further.
Note: The articles quoted above do not necessarily reflect my views, and I do not endorse their arguments outside of what I have specifically agreed with.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Horizon books, 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.