On the 27th of November, 2017, Spiked Magazine hosted a debate titled “Is the Left Eating
Itself?” and within it Laura Kipnis, Angus Johnston and Brendan O’Neil argued that
it’s not, while Bret Weinstein argued that it is: “I think there are a couple of ways
we can answer this question.
One is ‘yes’, another would be ‘yes, of course it is’.
I mean, that maybe my lived experience speaking here, but it seems so transparently obvious
that that is what is going on that I feel inclined, really, to move on to the more interesting
question, which is ‘why is the left eating itself?”
Now if you’re familiar with my work then you likely know that I tend not to publically
touch politics (at least not directly), but truth be told, I’ve always known that I
would in time, and because this topic is so close to my heart I think it’s a great place
to start.
This is, Is the Left Eating Itself?
These days, claims that the left are falling apart are absolutely everywhere.
Hell, you need only watch a single YouTube video of Ben Shapiro for the algorithm to
incessantly suggest such titles as “Ben Shapiro Destroys Leftist”, “Jordan Peterson
Destroys leftist host”, and “Milo Yiannopoulos Destroys Emotional Liberal”, but do you
know what?
As much as it originally surprised me, in many cases, these videos do actually deliver…
the people within them that represent the left, and the arguments that they use, are
often embarrassingly poor.
But here’s the thing… these people, these arguments, they’re not “liberal”…
at least not in classical sense, but I’ll come back to this point later.
For now, here's Bret explaining his position: “For the moment, what I want to do is suggest
a kind of approach to understanding why this really is the left that is attacking some
of us who all our lives would’ve called ourselves leftists, um, and the first thing
I would suggest is that we may have a basic problem with the game theory of progressivism.
It is quite possible that what is taking place is that the left has a bad actor problem […] what
I'm witnessing in the present are bad actors that have, um, control over the entire dialogue,
and that is a very dangerous situation.”
So is Bret correct here?
Or to ask this question obliquely, when Bret criticised Evergreen for requesting that all
white students and staff not attend campus for a day, did the left endorse those who
called for his resignation?
Was it left-endorsed actors who prevented Brendan from participating in an abortion
debate simply because he doesn’t have a vagina?
Did Cathy Newman really represent the left when she implied that Jordan’s right to
free speech comes second to someone else’s right not to be offended?
Do the left really endorse the authors, journalists and news-outlets that call Sam Harris and
Douglas Murray a racist simply because they’re concerned by the number of Muslims that support
punishing homosexuals?
These are pivotal question, and here’s why Bret thinks the answer (to at least most of
them) is “yes”.
“Um, so, the first thing that I recognised, um, a bit before things went haywire at Evergreen,
or at least went haywire publicly, was that the people I was talking to (and most of the
population at Evergreen is pretty far left), but I recognised that there was a hidden dichotomy
between two populations within the left.
One of those populations earnestly wishes equality, and there can be some debate over
what it is that is being equalised, but virtually everybody on the left would say that they
are for equality of opportunity.
Then there's another population that does not wish equality of opportunity, what it
wishes to do is to turn the tables of oppression, and the problem, for us, is that when these
two populations are intermingled they sound alike […] And the most confusing aspect
of it is that the people who’re earnestly seeking something like equality of opportunity
are unaware that they have signed up with something unholy and un-American.”
Now this is a very interesting claim… and if true, it’s arguably the most important
political insight of our time.
But it raises the immediate question, if this is really the case, then why haven’t those
who’re earnestly pursuing equality of opportunity noticed those who’re insidiously pursuing
a flip of oppression?
Well, Bret provides several compelling reasons: “One of the consequences of this dichotomy
(the bad actors having taking control of the movement), is that they have begun to erect
structures that lead a lot of people to sign up before they really know what it is that
they're signing up for.
So you’ll find across the dialogue of the left at the moment, you'll find words that
once upon a time had a definition that you might have struggled little bit too to resurrect
it, but you could have figured out what words like equity probably meant – and those words
of taking on very different meanings in the present – and they’re actually part of
a larger structure.
So we have what I would call linguistic booby traps, we have policy proposals on college
campuses and elsewhere that are actually Trojan Horses, that are described as pursuing one
thing but actually serve a function other than the one that is on the title page.
And then we have stigma, that is playing an incentivizing role, or actually more correctly
a disincentivizing role, so people like myself, who stand up against policy proposals that
put my institution in jeopardy, find ourselves faced with a social penalty for having done
so.”
So to briefly (and very simply) summarise, Bret argues that the left is currently comprised
of two parties – one party that wishes for equality of opportunity, but whose population
(at large) is falling for “linguistic booby traps” and “Trojan Horses”, and a second
party that wishes to flip the tables of oppression, and aims to do so by obfuscating language
and relying on the first party’s lack of attention.
Now if you ask me, that’s a good argument, but before I respond to it, I want to provide
what was (in my opinion) the best rebuttal against it, and it came from Brendan: “My
answer to the question ‘Is the left eating itself?’ is ‘No’ – for the simple
reason that what we have on campuses in the U.S and the U.K today is not ‘left’.
This hyper-racial consciousness, this insistence on female fragility, this paranoid-philistinism
so that books are defaced with trigger warnings, and everything from tabloid newspapers to
sexy pop songs can be banned, this disavowal of your own autonomy, your own adulthood,
and your pleading with bureaucracy to provide you with psychic comfort… this use of racial
phrases like ‘white men’ as if all white men have the same privilege, as if class (the
building-block of left politics) was irrelevant, or such a small thing that it didn’t bear
talking about, none of this is left!
[…] They are not left!
I know this sounds like semantics but it’s incredibly important that we get this right.
I know they call themselves left but North Korea calls itself a Democratic Republic.
People… people lie, and more importantly people use progressive phrases to disguise
reactionary agendas.”
Now within this speech Brendan does a fantastic job of emphasising that something is eating
the left, and makes a reasonable case for why we shouldn’t consider it “left”,
but in doing so he makes quite clear (to me at least), that him and Bret are on the same
side in all but name… they both see the problem, but they disagree on what to call
it.
So, where exactly do I stand on this one?
Well, at the present, I’m with Bret – I’m currently convinced that the left is indeed
eating itself, and while I hold this position for all the same reasons as Bret, my primary
reason was ironically conveyed by Brendan later in the debate: “I think that what
we have to recognise is that on campus right now we face something far worse than left
vs. left or left vs. right, or the alt-right coming in and stirring things up, and left-wing
people crying as a consequence... we face a generation that has been schooled to reject
enlightenment thought; schooled to reject due-process; schooled to reject freedom of
speech; schooled to reject the idea of autonomy, and encouraged to see themselves as fragile
and weak and requiring bureaucratic, therapeutic scaffolding in every area of their lives.
That is not 'left'.
That is the opposite of left, that is the opposite of radical and it needs to be challenged
who seriously considers themselves to be a left-wing person.”
You see, I’ve literally lost sleep over this observation.
My generation, and those after, have indeed been schooled to reject enlightenment thought,
and yet most of my generation considers themselves “left”, and so while I think Brendan’s
correct when he says that prioritising offense over free speech and censoring opposing views
is not liberal, I’m not so certain that it’s not “left”.
Sure, it’s definitely not “left” in the classical sense, but the question is,
is it “left” in the current sense?
Or to ask this question obliquely, does a considerable proportion of the left (that
being primarily its younger generations) favour regressive policies?
For example, do a considerable proportion of young U.S democrats favour silencing opposing
views?
Yes, they do.
Do a considerable proportion of remainers (who’re overwhelmingly left) insist on a
second referendum because they don’t like the democratic result of the first?
“The British people have spoken?
No they haven’t!”
Yes, they do… and hence, because these people represent a considerable proportion of the
modern left, the left is indeed eating itself – it’s at civil war, and it’s about
time (to echo Brendan’s sentiment) that those who’re falling for these booby traps
(which may or may not include yourself) realise this.
The classical left really does face a serious threat, and they (we) can no longer afford
to ignore it.
Anyhow, what’re your thoughts?
Assuming that you acknowledge that something is eating the left, would you call this something
“left”?
And why?
And what can we do about it?
As I said earlier, I don’t have the answers here, but I’m damn interested in yours,
and will do my best to read them all.
I currently stand with Bret, but rational discourse more than stands a chance to convince
me otherwise.
As always, thank you kindly for the view, and an extra special thank you to my wonderful
patrons and those of you who’ve donated via PayPal.
I should be buying a new camera lens soon and so thank you for that.
Until next time my fellow apes, until next time!