The Left is in crisis. We no longer present a cohesive movement, and we no longer form coherent political parties. We are a fractured and ill-defined mess, our goals are diffuse and scattered, and we are hemorrhaging supporters from what should be our base—the working class, liberals, and racial and sexual minorities. It is not clear that left-wing parties and movements are currently listening to that base or have its best interests at heart.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the recent British election, which was disastrous for the left. Labour lost key seats, including in areas that have voted left for close to a century, and experienced its worst drubbing in four decades. An outright majority was won by surely the least credible Tory Prime Minister in living memory. It seems uncomfortably likely that this disaster is soon to be mirrored in the US by the re-election of Donald Trump for a second term, despite the fact that the American public has had four years—beginning with his 2015 campaign—to notice how manifestly unfit he is to be the leader of the western world. The pressing questions at the moment are, what’s going on? and what, if anything, can we do to stop it?
Let’s start with what isn’t going to work. It simply will not do to blame these electoral results on the idea that the majority of the population is ignorant, hateful, or unaware of their own best interests. This is the attitude—made popular throughout the educated left by a growing commitment to elitism and critical theories—that got us into this mess in the first place. This attitude is particularly worrying because it leads leftist activists to double down on exactly those things that are killing the left.
If left-leaning parties around the world hope to have any future electoral success, they need to ditch both elitism and identity-based theory and develop some self-awareness. They need to start listening to the people they are supposed to represent so that they can understand what people actually want from a left-wing party. Only in this way can the left heal its fractures and form a strong and principled movement, with political parties that the general public can trust and respect.
The policies of left-wing parties need to come from the people—not represent revolutionary ideologies most do not share or appreciate having imposed upon them for their own good. The public will not stand for this—nor should they. It is absolutely right to reject the social engineering projects of theorists, activists, and the privileged elite who, like self-appointed philosopher kings, want to order society according to their ideological vision of how things should be rather than how they are or realistically could be.
People who reject the ideologues’ vision are not all racist, sexist, and xenophobic bigots or radical capitalist absolutists. Liberals and working people, who form an overlapping majority, generally have strong opinions on what will make their lives better and society fairer, and they are increasingly deciding that right-wing parties are closer to providing this. Barely electable as those might be, that’s still miles better than being totally unelectable. This is a point our left-wing parties seem utterly unable to grasp—as our elections keep demonstrating. This calls for humility and introspection from the left, rather than doubling down and denigrating the masses for their wrongthink.
Left-wing parties and movements generally have a harder job maintaining consistency and cohesion than conservative ones because of their progressive nature. Progress requires change, moving with the times, and finding new directions. It requires fighting for certain advances and then, when these are achieved, fighting for new ones. Conservatives generally have an easier time with continuity because they seek to conserve aspects of society that they see as good, as well as upholding consistent principles, rooted in consistent moral intuitions of individual responsibility, respect for tradition and authority, cultural cohesion, and family. While differences do exist within conservatism—especially between libertarian fiscal conservatives and religious and/or social conservatives—there are natural limits as to how much principles can change and evolve when they are firmly rooted in the drive to conserve.
Progressives, on the other hand, are always trying to move forward and address new injustices and inequalities. The drive to progress necessarily manifests in many different directions at the same time and these can even contradict each other. One good example of this is the vitriolic conflict between the radical feminists, whose rejection of gender is rooted in an adaptation of Marxist class struggle, and the self-ID trans activists, whose conception of gender is rooted in postmodern queer theory. These groups are both decidedly left-wing and yet they do not agree. Another such conflict came to light when Goldsmith University’s Feminist Society endorsed the Islamic Society’s protests against communist feminist, Maryam Namazie, due to her criticism of Islamism. For progressives to make progress, their competing aims therefore need to be balanced within a consistent ethical framework—a liberal framework—that can prevent the left from repeatedly fracturing because of incompatible aims and conceptions of the world.
Helen has previously described the current deadlock between the three main elements of the left: the radical (or socialist), identitarian (“Social Justice”), and liberal left. She argues that the liberal left must strongly champion liberalism, as an overarching principle by which the valid concerns of the other strands of the left can be judged. Neither socialism nor identity politics can win back the voters who have gone over to the right because most people support regulated capitalism and universal principles of fairness and reciprocity, regardless of identity. This is perfectly compatible with profound concern about the disadvantages people face because of their class, race, sex, or sexuality.
The socialists—who prioritise the material realities of economic and class issues—and the identitarians—with their myopic and obsessive focus on race, gender, and sexuality as social constructs perpetuated in language—cannot easily cooperate with each other, without a broader framework that is neither socialist nor identitarian. The left needs to focus on both economic and identity issues. As Andrew Sullivan observes, right now most people want a combination of center-left economics and center-right stability. We can achieve this by restoring liberalism to the heart of left-wing politics and rejecting the lure of illiberal alternatives.
Liberalism, in its essence, seeks incremental reform to address social injustices, and it does so on the level of the individual and the universal. That is, liberalism seeks to produce a society in which every individual has access, in principle, to everything society has to offer, regardless of economic background, race, gender or sexuality. Liberalism is not (as its socialist and Social Justice critics claim) a belief that society has already achieved that aim and a corresponding denial of any continuing disadvantages caused by economic inequalities or prejudice.
On the contrary, by insisting on the rights of the individual and universal principles of non-discrimination we can oppose the barriers impeding any social group. This is the approach taken by the Civil Rights Movement, liberal feminism, and gay pride—with great success. (We have written about this.) Critics of liberalism are right to warn us that focusing only on the individual and the universal can lead us to overlook issues disadvantaging specific groups. But we can address these criticisms most effectively by appealing to a broader liberal framework, not by attempting to overthrow it.
We have moved into a new stage of history. The battles the left fought over the past half-century have largely been won. We cannot go back to focusing on miners’ rights and trade unions, or on securing equal pay for women, outlawing racial discrimination, or legalizing homosexuality: we have won those wars. In fact, much of the right supports these advances now too. We have new battles to fight. These include combating climate change, securing our place on the world stage and within the global economy, and fostering a cohesive multiculturalism, free from moral relativism and enforced conformity. The left now finds itself pulled in many directions at once. This is the source of its profound identity crisis.
The intractability of the problem facing the left was made abundantly clear by the recent UK election. Constituencies such as Grimsby and Blyth voted Conservative after decades of being staunchly Labour. As Aditya Chakrabortty points out, this is largely due to changes in working class political identity:
While the party bigwigs threw their weight about, the mines and the manufacturers, the steel and the shipbuilding were snuffed out. With them went the culture of Labourism: the bolshy union stewards, the self-organised societies, most of the local newspapers. Practically any institution that might incubate a working-class provincial political identity was bulldozed.
Workers have other concerns now, and it seems they did not feel that Labour was addressing them. In areas that were long-term Labour strongholds—and which have now turned Tory—a majority of working people also voted Leave in the Brexit referendum. This points to a deep and fundamental rift that cannot easily be ignored—and some of the responses to this division highlight many of the same issues that triggered working-class support for Leave in the first place.
Corbyn’s Labour Party was torn between honoring the wishes of the many working people who wanted to leave the European Union and those of its liberal and cosmopolitan supporters, who strongly supported Remain. After dithering on the issue for a couple of years, Labour finally compromised by calling for a second referendum, a solution that, by calling Mulligan on the results of the first Brexit referendum, seems not to have mollified its working class base in the least. Since then, a YouGov survey found that Labour voters were more likely to think the next Labour leader needed to be more centrist and that the general population overwhelmingly did not care for identity politics, at least in the realm of gender.
The Economist has described Labour as out of touch with the working class, particularly in the north. In Grimsby, for example, they claim, “Locals have no time for Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader. Three complaints are loudest: he is not a patriot; he is more interested in minorities than ‘people like us’; and he represents the hijacking of the Labour Party by London.” The paper notes that even former Labour MP Austin Mitchell, who once claimed that Grimsby would vote Labour even if the candidate were a “raving alcoholic sex paedophile,” urged people to vote against Corbyn and his “mob of cosmopolitan meritocrats who love the EU more than those at the bottom of society’s top-heavy heap.” Such comments suggest that London elitism and identity politics are not exactly popular with the salt of the earth.
While the issue of Brexit is far more complicated than a simple left-right divide, it highlights a profound disconnect between the old, class-conscious left and the new identity-conscious (read: identity-obsessed) left. By attempting to satisfy both of them at the same time, Labour is tearing itself apart. We can also see this in the anti-Semitism that now plagues the party, which is a consequence of attempting to come to terms with postcolonial guilt by acknowledging Britain’s role in the current tensions across the Muslim world. As a result, Labour often supports conservative Muslims over liberal ones, and condones—or actively endorses—the sexism, homophobia, and antisemitism that comes along with that position, leaving British Jews in a very vulnerable position. These deep inconsistencies have led many centrist and liberal voters in the UK to believe that the Tories better represent their interests than can Labour.
These political challenges are not confined to the UK. In the US, the Democratic Party is flailing, as it attempts to satisfy both its economic and identitarian wings, in the run-up to the 2020 elections. While the majority of the left and center—and a significant part of the right—hope that a reasonable, electable presidential candidate will emerge from within the Democratic Party, they’re forced to stare wild-eyed as the vast majority of the current and past hopefuls catalogue their pronouns in their Twitter bios and declare that “the future is female” and “the future is intersectional.”
Meanwhile, the activist base—the only ones interested in these displays—write articles fixated on the identity politics surrounding these candidates. Joe Biden is just one more old, white man who needs to step aside (even though he has tremendous support among black Americans, as does that other old white man, Bernie Sanders, who is polling in second place). If you don’t support Elizabeth Warren, even as she panders endlessly to the far-left fringe, it’s because you’ve bought into systemic misogyny (or condone Trump’s allegedly racist mockery of her as “Pocahontas”). Pete Buttigieg, who would be America’s first openly gay president if he were elected, isn’t gay enough. He may be married to a man but, we’re told, he isn’t really gay because he’s straight-passing and not a queer activist.
Amid this parade of leftist insanity, former President Barack Obama has pointed out, with his usual calm, that this is not the right way to proceed. “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised, and you’re always politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff. You should get over that quickly,” he said. Obama deplored the idea that being as judgmental as possible is the way to make progress: “That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far.” His point is that left-side activists and politicos are trying to impose what they see as progressive values and policies onto average people, who may share many—but not all—their views and will not support the forced implementation of things they disagree with. The response was an avalanche of hot-taking articles and fast-tweeted condemnations of Obama as a conservative and a boomer.
This leaves left-wing parties in a quandary. They need to move with the times but are currently unsure where those times are going. They also need to appeal to both those left-leaning people who utterly reject identity politics and snobbish elitism—and the very loud and aggressive cohort who adamantly and intolerantly demand them. The results are so messy that some utterly horrifying right-wing parties now look more consistent, reasonable, and electable by comparison. As David Leonhardt asks,
How can the left win again in places like Grimsby or, say, Ohio? It doesn’t yet have an answer. Full-throated leftism doesn’t seem to work, based on the Labour party’s current standing in the polls and on recent American political history. Nor does it work to call your opponents racist. And while it may help to offer a lot of worker-friendly policies, it’s not enough …
Throughout much of the world, the left is still searching for an effective way to convey to the voters who often decide elections: We’re on your side. It’s a hard problem to solve, I recognize. But the payoff for doing so would be very large.
Labour MP Jess Phillips makes a similar point in this Guardian piece, which concludes:
The truth is, there are corners of our party that have become too intolerant of challenge and debate. The truth is, there is a clique who don’t care if our appeal has narrowed, as long as they have control of the institutions and ideas of the party.
We’ve all got to discover the courage to ask the difficult questions about the future of our party and the future of the working-class communities who need a Labour government. Because the alternative is that the working-class voters who, in despair, lent the Tories their votes on Thursday, never take them back.
It is time for the left to acknowledge this wake-up call. If the election of Donald Trump in the US and the catastrophic collapse of Labour in the UK haven’t made it obvious that we have a problem, it is unclear what will. The left cannot continue to try to impose a set of ideological values held by only a tiny minority of the left-leaning public and then blame that public for not electing a left-wing government. While trying to find its footing in today’s society and address the injustices and concerns of most of its natural base, the left has fallen into the trap of listening to noisy ideologues rather than average liberal and leftist working people. How much more evidence do we need that this does not work? When will we start listening to what people overwhelmingly want—a society that meets their material needs and feels fair and ethical? When will the left commit to being liberal again?
101 comments
As someone who, after finding Areo, reconnected with the notion of being a “classical liberal” (although this alignment is, to my mind, in line with being conservative,) I appreciate this article. I try to read widely when I can, but so often feel either alienated or coerced that it is very hard work.
I’d like to add a small point to this list for consideration: progressivism would be helped in its search for unity by recognizing the value of its natural tension with conservatism. To me, the outsized influence of Marx and other (post-)Hegelians makes the conflict between the established and the hopeful a a fight to the death rather than a gymnastic contest. I think this explains some of the purity tests the authors mention here; if the winner is to take all, there’s much more anxiety over the ideological particulars.
We certainly should oppose identity politics and wokesterism. But to denounce socialism in the same breath, is just plain ridiculous and foolish. it’s dancing on the strings of the Man. You’re doing your masters’ bidding. As Ishay Landa has argued, socialism is the aughebung of political liberalism, which the capitalist class finds dispensable, when the workers get too restless, in the name of economic liberalism–the protection of private property–through fascism.
These identity politicians are just a fifth column within the Left for these elites, who are closing down discourse in the name of political correctness, and dividing the working class, to PREVENT socialist revolution. By lumping IP in with socialism as something equally objectionable, you are playing THE SAME GAME. Think about it before you engage in yet more anti-communist folly.
Yuri Felshtinsky has convinced me that Lenin sabotaged the Russian Revolution because he had a strong layer of patriarchal psychopathology. But that doesn’t mean it always has to be that way. Trotsky, Luxemburg, Liebknecht, were all very different from his domineering, mobster-like attitude. Socialism is still MY goal. If it isn’t yours, that’s YOUR problem.
When you see it needful to defend Communism by referencing Lenin’s psychopathologies, and you pretend patriarchal tendencies were the worst of them, you’ve already given up to the Identitarians. When you invoke “Trotsky, Luxemburg, Liebknecht,” as ”all very different from his domineering, mobster-like attitude,” you’ve insisted the problem with socialism is that we just haven’t had the right domineering, mobster-like totalitarians in charge.
That’s YOUR problem.
You’re a very twisted anti-communist Kindly do not put words in my mouth.
Didn’t like the word “communism?” It’s the only one not appearing in your comment, but I took the Lenin reference at face value and you said he sabotaged the Revolution. What did I miss?
The very idea that you present here (I don’t think I’m putting words in YOUR mouth), that Trotsky, Liebknecht, and Luxemburg were also domineering gangsters, reveals your utter McCarthyite bigotry. Some people, if I might further develop on a theme, have a few problems. You’ve got quite a lot. You don’t need to engage in politics. You need a psychiatrist. Perhaps one from Vienna.
thomassmith21,
I’m quite sure we would be unable to have a productive discussion on Trotsky’s merit or lack thereof, but my point isn’t about the examples you chose. It is that you could put any names in there and the result would be the same.
Start with Albert Schweitzer if you want. You’ll still end up with Che Guevara.
Whoever rises to the top of an aspiring collectivist utopia will face the same forced choices. Across time, across cultures and embodied in dozens of fearless leaders, we have irrefutable evidence that collectivist state ideology results in economic disaster and human misery.
I will give Trotsky some credit, though. He refused Lenin’s proposal that he head the Council of People’s Commissars in 1917, and he did not accept Lenin’s support to have himself appointed General Secretary over Stalin circa 1922. I think Trotsky was uncomfortable with what he knew he would have to do.
“I think Trotsky was uncomfortable with what he knew he would have to do.”
Stalin was not so uncomfortable with it. He went above and beyond! ….
Lenin and Trotsky created specific methods of legal reasoning – a network of concepts – that Stalin merely organized technically and expanded into the Gulag, psychiatric imprisonment (which thomassmith21 has internalized), and the Chekists thereby employed.
“Socialism is still MY goal. If it isn’t yours, that’s YOUR problem.”
It’s everyone’s problem that, after all of the misery and destruction caused by this failed ideology, socialism is anyone’s goal.
“It’s everyone’s problem that, after all of the misery and destruction caused by this failed ideology, socialism is anyone’s goal.”
In the best of all imaginable worlds it would be my goal. Imagine all labor productive of genuine wants and needs, no duplication of effort, no built-in obsolescence, no shoddy goods, everything organized at the most efficient level, no ignored externalities, everyone engaged at her optimum level of productivity yet with no one left behind. What’s not to like? One thing: we don’t live in the best of all imaginable worlds, yet what’s wrong with the goal? It seems to me that gangster politicians are not exclusive to socialism either, tho of course they probably finish first in the butcher’s race. Nope, what’s wrong with socialism isn’t the *idea*, what’s wrong is them thinking that humanity is capable of it yet. There is only one real virtue to capitalism and that’s that it deals with humans as they actually are.
“Imagine all labor productive of genuine wants and needs, no duplication of effort, no built-in obsolescence, no shoddy goods, everything organized at the most efficient level, no ignored externalities, everyone engaged at her optimum level of productivity yet with no one left behind.’
Ray, you have quite an imagination! Maybe in the future, when humanity is ready for such a paradise, there will be a Harry Potter type sorting hat. Every human will get sorted at age 6 by this magical all-knowing hat and assigned her fate in life. After all, even paradise will need fry cooks in the community mess hall (individual kitchens being sub-optimum duplication shoddy bourgeoisie).
“There is only one real virtue to capitalism and that’s that it deals with humans as they actually are.”
Maybe just phrasing, but I would put it, “Capitalism is humans acting as they actually are.”
Weasels,
“Every human will get sorted at age 6 by this magical all-knowing hat and assigned her fate in life… even paradise will need fry cooks in the community mess hall…”
And concentration camp guards will still need jobs.
The sorting hat will identify those 6 year old’s who will grow up to be cruel and vicious psychopaths. They are immediately demanded to kill their parents as proof, and then enlisted in the People’s Army. Khmer Rouge were pikers!
“Capitalism is humans acting as they actually are.”
Exactly. But even now there are examples of cooperation and respect for the common good, so socialism is already with us, here and there, and no magic hats have proven necessary. I think such cooperative efforts are commendable.
Ray,
We’re embedded in magic hats. They just take longer than the Harry Potter version.
Think of a magic hat as a hierarchy you must navigate. Some are merit determined, some are not. Some you may choose. Some may be forced. All of them can become corrupt.
The forced ones are more prone to corruption. Most particularly if they are invented by Government.
Well said.
“The forced ones are more prone to corruption. Most particularly if they are invented by Government.”
Quite true. It seems to me that government is the price to be paid for organization at the highest level. Eisenhower wasn’t exactly a commie, but he understood that the Interstate Highway System needed to be a government initiative. As I’m always telling my TFM (The Free Market) friends, I’m very glad that I don’t have to think about my water — the local government takes care of it for me and that’s exactly the way I like it.
Unless you live in Flint, Michigan.
We swim in the pellucid waters of ‘government’ ‘assistance,’ and it can be hard to imagine an alternative anymore. But the alternatives for education, fire, security, roads … all have a history involving private enterprise and/or individual community initiative.
Efforts like the Interstate Highways are evidence that at a certain socio-cultural time large projects could be successfully executed by the US Federal Government, not necessarily that they must have been. Today? We couldn’t build Hoover Dam in two decades, if at all. We can’t build pipelines. I suspect we couldn’t get Interstate Highways out from under the regulatory burden-lawfare-protest dampeners, either. Can you imagine building any Interstate Highway sections in California today?
A better example might be landing on the Moon. For that we needed a compelling vision expressed by a charismatic leader, a seeming external existential threat to justify the taxation, and a will to see the frontier. Now, it looks like private enterprise has taken the baton.
“We swim in the pellucid waters of ‘government’ ‘assistance,’ and it can be hard to imagine an alternative anymore.”
I don’t disagree. There is no doctrinal answer to these things. Capitalism can be as wasteful and destructive as socialism tho on balance less so. Efficiency and honesty can come from government, at the same time, every government will slide into bloat and corruption if given the opportunity to do so. We are at a low point right now and getting lower. What to do? Dunno, some say it’s just over. Anarchism? I’d not choose it, but maybe I won’t have to.
Back in the 12th century, one might have easily, with this mindset, that “feudalism is human beings as they actually are.” And such a person, probably a Thomist, would have been right. This philistine attitude has long been with us. Fortunately, or unfortunately (for the middle class wankers), we have a little thing known as the dialectic of historical materialism. This dialectic, between the mode and the forces of production, forces us to go beyond what is–the present mode of production, which is now so obviously bankrupt–if we are to survive. The middle class, addicted as it is to it privileges within the present order, had better get on the bus, driven by the working class. Or else. Either we fight for a classless society–or there will BE no human society.
“Either we fight for a classless society–or there will BE no human society.”
But as usual you — socialists in general not you personally — go too far. There will never be a classless society, it is impossible. People have different abilities and different motivations. A ‘classless’ society will become a Stalinist dictatorship every time.
Comrade Smith21: Do you go to role playing events (e.g., CommieCon) where you get to dress up like a circa 1917 Russian peasant and hang shopkeepers and other Kulaks and Wreckers from trees?
Can you define/further describe “classless society?” Does it include what we might euphemistically describe as the “stratification” of the Soviet Union? Who gets the “privilege,” and how is it decided?
The Khmer Rouge knew a little something about implementing a classless society. All corpses were equal and classless. Now, you might take the point of view that the ones that died quickly (smashed!) were more privileged than the ones who died agonizingly slow.
By the way, Ray, I just saw this quote attributed to Lenin. Made me think of your comment.
“If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.”
So, just another 400 years. Hang in there!
“So, just another 400 years. Hang in there!”
I had no idea Lenin said that. Everyone has their moments of unguarded honesty no? Dunno if it’s 400 years or ever, but we sure aren’t ready for it now. Do not mistake my idealist speculations for any comment on how the world should be run now — communism is a demonstrated failure.
That’s exactly the problem. It is DESTROYING humans as they “actually are,” and threatens to destroy mankind as a species, along with much of the biosphere. Socialism is the only way out. See the following article by David North and Joseph Kishore on the wsws.org website.(no, because of their anti-union stance, I am not a member of the SEP) The decade of socialist revolution begins
3 January 2020 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/03/pers-j03.html
“The decade of socialist revolution begins”
Unfortunately the left has been taken over by the woke and their interpretation of ‘socialism’ is Social Justice / wokeness.
The left’s problem is that is has run out of ideas on matters of economics. That’s the reason for the obsession about identity and social justice.
There’s a lot in this piece, but I want to single out this remark because I think it contains an important misunderstanding radical politics:
For progressives to make progress, their competing aims therefore need to be balanced within a consistent ethical framework—a liberal framework—that can prevent the left from repeatedly fracturing because of incompatible aims and conceptions of the world.
You’re looking for a new synthesis, but you’re repeating the fatal mistake of your liberal forebears in supposing that liberalism is compatible with radical or progressive movements. Liberalism has an ethics because it accepts the political regime in which it operates. Radicals reject the regime they live in and its ethics. Liberals believe justice and equality are things we take collection action to achieve, in other words, while radicals believe justice and equality are things we achieve when we overthrow the system by whatever means necessary.
Liberalism and radical progressive movements are, and always have been, oil and water. Historical reasons have allowed the two to mix from time to time. Incorporating radicals into their big tent flatters liberals’ sense of openness, while radicals have been happy use liberals’ respectability and institutional power to further their ends. But the coalition never lasts long because the means and ends can’t be reconciled.
The left-right model and the limitations of two-party systems do not help people realize that they are quite different from their usual allies, and indeed sometimes not so different from their usual rivals.
Very good comment. The modern progressive movement is illiberal and authoritarian.
A few days ago, my wife and I visited the place where my wife is a regular guest. By the nature of my character, I immediately distinguish people with deviant behavior (I remember, I took a glance at the picture by an artist unknown to me and said that he most likely suffered from schizophrenia – so it was). That’s why I drew attention to a strange young person and quietly asked my wife:
What kind of creature is this?
I’ll tell you later – my wife whispered.
As it turned out, it was a young girl, “positioning herself as a man”. She looked like a frightened puppy, bristling in constant expectation of danger. Small scared puppy.
Enough!
We all remember what difficulties we encountered at the age of 12-15 years. We remember what confusion reigned in our thoughts, how our bodies and our thoughts frightened us. We remember how lonely we often felt. And only after years we began to understand that what was happening to us is happening to everyone.
The ancients solved these problems by creating rites of initiation. Better or worse but it was helping disoriented teenagers become men and women. In one form or another, these rites have survived to our time.
And now you, The Left, have come with your genders, queers and hormonal treatment (dirty Mengele followers!). You claim you are who bring “freedom, equality, brotherhood” (I suspect there is no equality you will ever be satisfied).
But you only bring destruction and death. Ahead of this young girl is only a hopelessly tragic existence. Existence, not life! She will not become a man and she will never be a full-fledged woman as well as thousands of other teenagers will not become healthy and happy women or men. If not for you, they themselves would have overcome their difficulties. But you made it so that these common problems of adolescents forever broke their future.
Their tragedies are created by you, their ruined lives are the work of your hands. But you despise human lives. In your heads there are only idiotic ideas of an “ideal society” in which there is no place for human being.
Damn you!
Referring to another person as a ‘creature’ within the same setting may be indicative of an attitude problem. I imagine it has consequences for you that you are not even aware of. A lot of doors that we close to others we do so silently.
You and people like you made creature from this nice young woman. You destroyed her life, not me!
The Left IS ‘identity politics’, and will not remodel itself, so thoroughly does the Left literally despise ordinary people for not buying Left bull.
This is terminal for the Left.
THE ORIGIN OF ‘IDENTITY POLITICS’ & ‘POLITICAL CORRECTNESS’: Not Consideration for Minorities but Hatred Towards the Mass of Ordinary People; Specifically ‘the Workers’ — Tracing the Roots of Why and How it Arose and Developed Reveals the Greatest Political Fraud in History.
‘Identity politics’ (often or even usually dubbed ‘political correctness’) is the result of a political-Left major backlash against the mass of ordinary people (in Europe and ‘the West’), beginning in the 1920s/30s, in the wake of the persistent failure of Marxist theory to be realised in European ‘revolution’ or any real change through democracy. In shifting the blame away from Marxist theory and its adherents, and on to those the theory had prescribed and predicted would have been the beneficiaries — the workers — if only they had responded accordingly; then the cognitive-dissonance within the political-left mindset caused by this crisis to an extent was salved. [It is NOT at all the same as what the Left mistakenly term ‘the politics of identity’ to tag the new movements against the elite, on the false assumption that they are essentially nationalistic and ‘white backlash’. Trump and Brexit triumphed because the general populace have come to realise that the government-media-education uber-class has an unwarranted profound contempt for and visceral hatred towards them; and, therefore hardly is liable to act in their interests.]
The intellectual rationalisation was first by invoking Freud’s now comprehensively discredited notion of ‘repression’ to attempt to explain a supposed impact on ‘the workers’ of ‘capitalism’ acting within the context of the family. With most workers (the group considered the principal ‘agents of social change’ in a ‘revolution’) being male, then the theoreticians had in mind the male as ‘head’ of the family. It was a simple extension in political-Left imagination for ‘the worker’ to change from being the putative conduit of the impact of ‘capitalism’ to its embodiment, leaving women to be deemed a replacement supposed ‘oppressed’ and ‘disadvantaged’ ‘group’.
This implausible and unfalsifiable non-scientific nonsense mainly festered within academia until the co-option after 1968 by the political-Left of a movement which appeared to be akin to the revolutionary activity predicted by Marxism: the US ‘civil rights’ movement. This added to the ‘new oppressed’ the category ‘non-white’, which like that of women could be envisaged as an inversion of a retrospective stereotype of ‘the worker’. In the wake of the similarly seeming revolutionary Stonewall riots of 1969, the ‘gay rights’ lobby was also co-opted to further add to the abstract demonised aspects of ‘the worker’, thereafter retrospectively stereotyped as male plus ‘white’ plus heterosexual.
The strands of the ‘new oppressed’ combined in a new (neo-Marxist) conceptualisation to account for these political shifts after the fact, which came to be termed ‘identity politics’ (or more pejoratively but accurately, ‘cultural Marxism’, and latterly dubbed ‘modernising’ [sic] in political parties). The deemed ‘groups’ replacing ‘the workers’ – subsequently expanded to embrace the disabled, the elderly, trans-sexuals and the obese – are abstractions rather than groups per se, and in any case far too heterogeneous to be in reality ‘oppressed’ or ‘disadvantaged’; providing a window on the sophistry and origin of this politics as other than it purports.
This absurd situation arose through the political-Left’s forcing of specific conflicts to be considered as emblematic of Marxist struggle, rendering them as generalisable, with their participants abstractions. US Afro-Americans became generic ‘ethnic minorities’, and ‘gays’ became ‘homosexuals’. The history of feminism — not just of the ‘third wave’ — is of upper-class or upper-middle-class women demanding to somehow to be the same as their very high-status husbands and males within their rarefied social milieu; which even if it could make any sense given profound sex difference, hardly was a basis of anything comparable for the great majority of either women or men. The upshot is that ‘identity politics’ is a ‘gravy train’ for the already privileged. Worse, it is an instrument of oppression against the very ‘group’ perennially disadvantaged and the victim of prejudice, which formerly had been identified as worthy of the liberation Marxism promised: the vast majority of (necessarily lower-status) men.
The pretence to egalitarianism is perfect cover for what ‘identity politics’ actually is: the very perennial and ubiquitous elitist-separatism the political-Left ethos attacks and denies; rendered a quasi-religion, being an ideology in the wake of the Christian notion of ‘the promised land’ in the utopia/dystopia of equality-of-outcome.
Democrats dominated the 2018 mid-terms, the Dem presidential candidate in 2016 won the vote by ~3 million votes, and progressive policies like Medicare for All, student debt forgiveness, minimum wage increase, etc enjoy popular support (in many cases, a majority, but at least a plurality). And yet the Democrats control only the House, while Republicans control the WH, Senate, and SCOTUS. Evidently, the problem is not so much one of votes or policies, but the structure of the political system itself: the Electoral College and the Senate drastically over-represent (highly conservative) rural areas, and the proliferation of extreme partisan gerrymander further entrenches the right’s structural advantages.
The only “identity crisis” the left is suffering from, is the corporate arm of the Democratic party (which includes most of the party’s leadership) being afraid of their own shadow; fearing the popular leftward shift that, if they exercised a simple political calculus, ought to be embraced, not resisted. Embrace policies that are favorable for the working class at the expense of the oligarchy. Embrace the many over and against the powerful few. It shouldn’t be this difficult, the trajectory of political and social views in the US is decidedly leftward, which ought to buoy the Democrats political fortunes.. if they would just embrace it rather than running from it.
“Democrats dominated the 2018 mid-terms”
Moderate Democrats did.
“the Dem presidential candidate in 2016 won the vote by ~3 million votes”
You mean the “republican” Hillary Clinton? I look forward to another round of trash the Democrat from the left once Biden secures the nomination.
“progressive policies like Medicare for All, student debt forgiveness, minimum wage increase, etc enjoy popular support”
Which disappears completely the moment you mention costs.
“the trajectory of political and social views in the US is decidedly leftward”
You’re confusing the “US” with Twitter.
Reading this piece and its attendant comments, I feel there are a few things that need clarifying.
1. In saying that ‘the left’ need to be more liberal, I don’t think the author is telling social-democrats to convert to a classical liberal platform. Rather, they should re-affirm the values of liberal democracy. These are political norms which transcend ideology and relate to how we interact within a shared polity. Of course, liberals and even conservatives can and should do the same thing. Respectful, reasoned debate would benefit us all if only we would commit to it.
2. Identitarians of all political persuasions need to tone it down. And I say ‘all’ because this is something that also transcends politics. Indeed it is tempting to say that conservatives were the original enthusiasts for casting everything in terms of demographic differences. If so that only makes it more important for progressives to move away from a fixation for profiling and caricaturing every tiny thing others say and do.
3. Yes it is important to ‘listen’ to what the punters want but it is better to start a conversation with them. Once you do that then they will listen to you too. You will get a better sense of what they desire but they will get a better sense of how you propose to provide that. I personally appreciate politicians who have opinions and are prepared to argue them rather than just try and placate me. Chances are I can learn something from them and maybe we need more voters who will give politicians that chance.
Here you go:
“They need to start listening to the people they are supposed to represent so that they can understand what people actually want from a left-wing party.”
Fixed:
“They need to start listening to the people they are supposed to represent so that they can understand what people actually want because that’s how representative democracy works.”
Your analysis is a bit idealistic. Labour has the membership who voted with their feet to join. They took it over. This new membership are thoroughly woke. Wokery is not just a set of ideas: it works its way into identity, it filters meaning, it defines what the terrain of ‘political’ is. They can no more transcend their wokery than Catholics can replace the Pope with a Mullah.
Good comment Mark4asp. I would tweak it a little more:
“They need to start listening to the people they desire to govern, so that they can understand what people actually want because that’s how representative democracy works.”
@mark4asp, @Weasels: You both seem to start with a presumption that politicians should have no beliefs that are their own, but rather should be mere functionaries who seek to discern the views of their constituencies and follow them. That’s a version of direct democracy, a system sure to produce super-majorities for, among other things, a trifecta of lower taxes, higher government spending and lower government deficits, perhaps an outlawing of earthquakes and possibly setting the value of pi to 3. That’s why we have representative democracy, not direct democracy. The idealised version of representative democracy does not have politicians as poll-driven weather-vanes, but rather as patriotic citizens who develop coherent and competing visions of how their nations should evolve, and articulate legislative proposals and executive actions to move towards that vision. Many such citizens should present many such (perhaps coherent, perhaps not, but all sincerely held) visions and proposals, and the electorate then gets to choose among them. The hope is that, while the polls will always confirm preference for simultaneously lower deficits and taxes and higher government spending, the electorate is more likely to recognize the inconsistency of such a position when actually proposed by charlatans, cranks and Republicans. It should also put power in the hands of people who do genuinely believe that the trade-offs in the programs they espouse are approximately optimal, and who are therefore more likely, between elections and when confronted with changed circumstances and decisions on unarticulated details, to make adjustments more in line with the wishes of those who voted for them than others who lack an ideological commitment to the government’s program. Furthermore, because we don’t have ranked choice voting among programs (much too complicated for the majority of voters), in practice we force coalition-building and its attendant compromise until we distill those proposals down to a simple binary choice: Con/Lab or Rep/Dem.
So, given that we are supposed to live in representative, not direct, democracies, failures need to be identified in the processes of a representative, not a direct, democracy. One failure, in both the US and Britain, is the participation of voters in the messy and highly technical business of coalition-building. Primary elections in the US have put the coalition building, better suited to smoke-filled rooms, in the hands of a small, unrepresentative number of committed and generally extreme voters. More recently, the UK parties have taken leadership selection out of the hands of MPs and put it, at least in part, in the hands of an even smaller fraction of even more extreme voters. In the US this primarily damaged the Republican party, which selected ever more extreme and bizarre standard bearers for the coalition that the party should represent, while in the UK the damage seems to have been primarily to Labour; Johnson happens to have been the choice of Tory MPs as well as party members, but Corbyn was clearly imposed on the parliamentary Labour party against its wishes, and Labour’s electoral failure seems to have been in significant measure a personal rejection of Corbyn by voters.
The other failure, as Helen discusses, seems to be in the functioning of the coalitions themselves. In the US, the Republican coalition has managed to hold together, even as its policies cease to align with its voters’ policy preferences; indeed party discipline has become ever more extreme and surviving Republican politicians are acting ever more as the functionaries of a direct democracy as the primary electorate becomes ever more intolerant of the constraints of human decency or logic. Among Democrats, there has always been greater fractiousness, but, as Helen describes, the Social Justice wing of the party has been increasingly less willing to submerge itself in the necessary compromises with the Liberal and Socialist wings, and, with the explosion of social media, has a public voice out of proportion to its electoral strength. That public voice is ideally suited to taint the party in the minds of many voters, and has effectively driven off enough voters to make the Democratic coalition vulnerable. Something similar seems to have happened to Labour in the UK, even as the Conservative coalition was sundered over Brexit.
So, in the UK, a ruptured coalition led by the choice of its professional politicians managed to thrash a merely turbulent coalition led by an unrepresentative figurehead aligned with its most antagonistic and loudest voices. In the US, we have relatively small, disciplined coalition led by a representative figurehead (although not the choice of the professionals), competing against a larger but more fractious coalition, probably to be led by a representative figurehead, with its loudest voices being those most likely to antagonize. Shockingly, it could go either way.
“@mark4asp, @Weasels: You both seem to start with a presumption that politicians should have no beliefs that are their own, but rather should be mere functionaries who seek to discern the views of their constituencies and follow them.”
I can’t speak for @mark4asp, but I make no such presumption. No doubt there are, from time to time, politicians that have beliefs of their own. And such politicians can and do proclaim these beliefs in the hope that said beliefs will appeal to the would-be-governed-by-them. 1000 points of Light. Hope and Change. Make America Great Again. Build a Wall and make Mexico pay for it. Everything Free and make the billionaires pay for it. Blah, blah, blah. But, that does not mean they should not bother listening to what the would-be-governed-by-them have to say. One way to “listen” to those who – it turns out – don’t want to be governed by you, is to lose big. That is feedback on your ideas about governing, or perhaps the would-be-governed-by-you just don’t like your face or personality.
Or, you can blame the big lose on something other than the ideas you propose are not popular. Up to you.
“and possibly setting the value of pi to 3.”
Nice summary of the problem. OTOH direct democracy isn’t subject to sale to the highest bidder the way representative democracy is. They say that in democratic Athens it was the plutocrats who favored elections since they could by them. The hoi polloi favored lottery and strict rotation. A dilemma. Seems to me there is no perfect system, the best you can do is have an intelligent, civilized, decent and unified citizenry who will find among themselves the best of themselves to made the best of whatever the system might be. In short, it doesn’t matter what the system is in Zimbabwe, the place will always be a disaster as long as the people there are a disaster and conversely it wouldn’t matter how the Danish government was put together, Denmark would continue to be like Denmark because Danes are like Danes.
Ray,
“direct democracy isn’t subject to sale to the highest bidder the way representative democracy is.”
Well, I’m not so sure about that. Can you extrapolate the fascination with the Kardashians to the voting booth? And don’t the Democrats claim the 2016 election was purchased by the Russians for $100K in Facebook ads?
“the best you can do is have an intelligent, civilized, decent and unified citizenry who will find among themselves the best of themselves to made the best of whatever the system might be.”
Yes. Do you think we have that citizenry?.
“Denmark would continue to be like Denmark because Danes are like Danes.”
Only if Denmark maintains a population with Danish values. There, in Germany, and in Sweden, and in France. and… it is less than clear this is still the case.
Duane
“Only if Denmark maintains a population with Danish values. There, in Germany, and in Sweden, and in France. and… it is less than clear this is still the case.”
And that’s why we’re fucked.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
James and Helen, thank you both for your continued work around these issues. I’m a US-based Lefty feeling torn between the socialist camp and the liberal left camp, but I certainly do not find the identitarian camp productive. I agree with the socialist camp on issues related to economics but see a demand for conformity I’m uncomfortable with. I agree with the liberal lefties on protecting individuals freedoms; but I worry sometimes that the liberal left capitulates too much to free market ideology.
I think what really distinguishes the situation in United States from the UK is the bipartisan commitment to the military industrial complex. Endless war upon endless war since the conclusion of World War II – Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Korea, Syria, countless CIA-backed coups resulting in horrific loss of life in the countries we intervene in, countless deaths of service members, and a massive financial cost to US taxpayers. Tulsi Gabbard has made this the center piece of her campaign for the presidency and has received ire from people all across the political spectrum. So much money spent on unnecessary, profit-driven wars that could be spent here at home on a single payer health care system, infrastructure, ensuring clean water, better public transit, et cetera. Tulsi is definitely not a front runner, and her unpopular “present” vote on the articles of impeachment against Trump may sink her campaign. But I really think she’s on to something. Wish more people would listen.
If there was every a perfectly crafted essay this is it, and not just because I mostly agree. It might be time for a formal schism of the left — the woke/rainbow/globalist/urban SJ types and the conservative left who are basically the sort of people who used to vote Labour but who voted Tory just now. However:
“and fostering a cohesive multiculturalism”
Why? Leave multicult to the SJ left, the conservative left hates it. Why should folks want to give up their own culture in their own country? The authors understand clearly the dangers of Identity and Grievance and that whole show, but under multicult those things are inevitable since multicult officially creates a cultural vacuum in which each Identity will naturally try to advance their position. Multicult = SJ, it is unavoidable. “cohesive multiculturalism” is an oxymoron.
This: “cohesive multiculturalism” is an oxymoron.
If only it wasn’t also instantiated in policy that all cultures are morally equivalent. Except Western Civilization, which is oppressive.
Dividing us into ever smaller grievance groups is advertised as good intentions. It’s the only idea the SJ Left has.
https://theotherclub.org/2012/08/liberal-ayn-rand.html
“Dividing us into ever smaller grievance groups is advertised as good intentions.”
Trusting cetacean that I am, I mostly take these people at their word and thus conclude that they are merely grotesquely stupid. But in darker moods I suspect it is all a fraud and that division and social collapse are actually the intended goals. In a strange sort of way I prefer evil to stupidity, evil is at least rational.
Ray,
Unfortunately, I have to go with stupid, along with a heaping dose of entitled to get what they want by throwing temper tantrums and bullying people. I think is a product of today’s colleges and universities, which is exactly why SJ BS is pushed by the “elite” and the traditional blue collar population wants nothing to do with it.
I don’t think most of these SJWs actually want to have much worse lifestyles, and they really like their i-Phones and craft beers. I think they just want to fit in with their piers and if their piers are SJWs, well, there you go.
And, hard to argue with a 22 year old man saying whatever gibberish it takes to gain entry into pants of 22 year old woman.
“Unfortunately, I have to go with stupid”
Maybe. You make a good case. But the commie in me can’t help but notice that social fragmentation would suit the interests of global business who can be resisted only by cohesive peoples. Divide and conquer, no? Could it be that the Warriors are actually useful idiots? They are working for the globalists and they don’t even know it. Take Bernie — who I really do take as an honest guy, he’s been saying the same thing for 40 years even when it wasn’t popular — he *thinks* he’s working for The People, but the joke is on him, since now that he’s a Victimologist, he’s fragmenting the very People he thinks he’s helping. So no doubt he’s an idiot (sorry Bernie, I loveya but you’ve been used) but one can make a case for a dark malevolence behind the rainbow flag curtain. I really don’t know.
Or Putin or Emperor Xi? Who would be more likely to want to reduce the West to a bunch of squabbling Identities and reduce our universities to playpens for snowflakes?
The Jews?
The Lizard People?
The Illuminati or secret society of your choice?
Monsanto?
Proctor and Gamble?
Bob and Jerry?
Zuckerberg!!
Or, as you say, are we really just that stupid? Jesus.
Ray,
Certainly you can view a lot of these people as idiots. But, I’m not sure how useful they are. Bernie certainly would have been considered a useful idiot by Lenin back in the day. He is just an angry old commie, and his appeal is limited to [1] other angry old commies, [2] young people who don’t want to work (unless of course it’s their dream job and the hours required are minimal) to get all the stuff they are entitled to. They are entitled, for example, to have the local tire repair guy, ski lift operator, waitress at the local diner, etc., who did not go to college and who did not rack up $250K in student loans to obtain an intersectionality studies degree, pay off their student debt for them through higher taxes and shared US national debt. At least Bernie acknowledges everyone’s going to pay in order to give everyone something of lesser value back to them. Such a deal. On the other hand, Warren says Billionaires will pick up the tab.
Anyway, as much as I like the idea that Lizard people are out there and in control, I think its just that we as a civilization – particularly in first world western countries – have too much time on our hands and too little conflict to satisfy our lizard brains.
“have too much time on our hands and too little conflict to satisfy our lizard brains”
It’s one of the better theories. The more useless and bored and selfish you are, the greater your need to feel important and virtuous and Working For The Cause. One hopes for something more dramatic, but it could be that simple.
“And, hard to argue with a 22 year old man saying whatever gibberish it takes to gain entry into pants of 22 year old woman.”
You’ve put your finger on the most powerful driver of leftist thought, and one almost never mentioned.
These are not the pants you are looking for.
“It might be time for a formal schism of the left”
LGBTQ+. TERF.
“that other old white man, Bernie Sanders”
Sanders is not white, he is Jewish. It’s one of the main arguments made against him by the Afro-American community as well as many on the Left – America doesn’t need a Jewish president.
Trump and Boris Johnson were both elected because they were the only pro-people candidates on either side. Trump is on Team USA and Johnson is on Team Britain. The people recognized this and voted accordingly. All the other candidates were anti-their own people, often scathingly so. Anti-working class hatred overflowed like a broken sewer last week, just look at any comment thread about the British election. They are punching down and speaking truth to the powerless.
“Progressives, on the other hand, are always trying to move forward and address new injustices and inequalities.”
So there is no clear separation of supply and demand. Leftist ideology both demands a constant stream of the new injustices and inequalities, to justify itself and keep it occupied, and supplies the means for addressing these – according to its own reckoning. This is not a healthy situation.
The lack of supply of “injustices and inequalities” gets remedied by the Left’s making up fake ones. Of course this is seen through by the people. The loss of credibility is enormous and unrecoverable.
This seems like an attempt to recover the reputation of ‘left’ from those who are destroying the definition.
Good luck, but you face the same problem as the rest of us: Screamy, faux-outrage phantasmagoria promoted by the media for clicks.
I think the ideas are expressed well and worth discussing. If I understand, the authors wish liberals could make some peace around general principles in the interest of ousting the extreme right-wingers who are stealing the show. That seems practical to me, even though it requires some level of compromise, which will be fought bitterly by the ultra-woke factions of the left, who seem to think that a small victory (aka a shift to the left, but not FAR left) will never be sufficient. Better to lose the battle and continue the war until we attain some Utopian world of perfect opportunity for every expression of human race, ethnicity, gender (don’t forget the pronouns please) etc etc wokeness raised to the nth power. As an American suffering through Trump’s disastrous regime, I would be happy to see ANY move away from neoliberalism and toward a more just society, however much the needle moves. More is better, but ANY progress is certainly preferable to the status quo.
«As an American suffering through Trump’s disastrous regime» – “regime”? You definitely need sedatives 🙂
Funny how different people have different experiences in the otherwise same situation. During Trump’s “disastrous regime,” my business has been thriving, as has that of my clients. Our person retirement account values have risen nearly 35% So many people have multiple improved job opportunities, and have increased their mobility and pay as a result. This includes people of all skin hues, reproductive parts, and sexual orientations. States that have woefully underfunded public employee pension reserves have also greatly benefited under Trump’s disastrous regime due to the ridiculous returns (not sustainable, but I digress) on their investments. Many people do vote their wallet. Anyway, I certainly don’t know you, or what has happened in your life since Trump was sworn in that has been a “disaster,” but I’m sorry to hear this is what you’ve experienced.
The only “disaster” I have witnessed since Trump was elected is the complete refusal of U.S. Democrats and the MSM to accept that they lost the 2016 election. Boy do they hate it that he won when he wasn’t supposed to. Blame – Scream-Rage. Electoral College! Russians! White Supremacy! Capitalism! America’s economy has taken off, which makes matters even worse for them. I get it, they hate Trump. How dare he! They are the resistance right out of those Harry Potter books and Star Wars movies they were raised on. Trump is Voldemort and Emperor Palpatine combined.
You mention your desire to move AWAY from Neo-liberalism in pursuit of “a more just society.” Well, good luck with that, since history demonstrates just the opposite will happen. So many examples of pain and suffering and tens of millions of cruel deaths due to attempted socialism and communism. USSR and its eastern European satellites, PRC under Mao, Cambodia (Brother No. 2 finally died!), Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua. There are plenty more. I sure the hell would not want to have to live in one of those “more just” societies that tore off the oppression of Neo-liberalism..
And, to the point of this author and so many others, Trump is not “far right.” Trump’s politics are mostly right in line with Democratic party 1970’s. Trade protectionism, control of borders to reduce cheap labor that undermines blue collar wages (i.e., pro-LABOR), get out of stupid foreign wars and conflicts, and yes pride in their country (I know, how terrible!). Trump is big government spending – deficits don’t matter. Dems loved that when it was Obama doing it. But this is far right only because that is a reflexive label slapped on him to try and get people to not like him. Like calling everyone a racist to try and bully them into getting your way. It will probably happen in my life time that the mere act of driving a gas powered vehicle will be labeled far right extremism white supremacy.
“I would be happy to see ANY move away from neoliberalism and toward a more just society, however much the needle moves. More is better, but ANY progress is certainly preferable to the status quo.”
Look, I’m Brazilian and I grew up listening to this speech. The ruling party in my country (2002 to 2016) was Venezuela’s ally since Chaves and now Maduro, both using the same “argument” of a “just world.” Well, I don’t need to say how Venezuela is today, the people have long passionately defended a “fairer” country far from the damn “imperialist Americans” and “exploitative neoliberalism” today is in chaos with refugees seeking help in Brazil (my country) and Colombia), we see people losing weight because of hunger, we see a lack of medicines in hospitals, women prostituting themselves (including teenagers), and to complete the fear of the Government and its friends who are coming back from power. As Margaret Thatcher said, “Socialists shout ‘Power to the People’ and raise their fists as they say it. We all know that what they really mean is ‘Power over the people, Power to the State.’ Of course in the US today they say something similar: “This is not real Socialism” Well I say in Brazil, and in neighboring Venezuela, I got tired of hearing socialist politicians saying that old socialism has been misrepresented and that we will demonstrate in 21st Century Socialism, the real socialism. Well, I can say that the “New Socialism” gave the same result as the “old!”
So the story of those who wanted to revolutionize and fight the status quo went into disgrace as quoted in a comment here. Cambodia, Mao’s China, Cuba, and especially the Soviet Union fought against the status quo, against the “selfish capitalists” and cost dearly, not only economically but mainly humanly speaking.
Of course, not everything in society is good, there are things that need to improve, but it is a mistake revolutionary thinking, this time has passed, enough of revolutions and crazy ideas of trying to turn the world into a paradise, this is utopia, the only reality that results from this is contrary to what is desired, history shows. Of course it’s right for you not to like Trump, that’s not my point, just to be clear, the point is that the “option” you presented is illusory.
Thank you, Carlos. All these young people wanting free stuff have no idea. Just, “OK Boomer” ….
The only comfort is that we have been here before. The 2019 election was almost an action reply of the 1983 election, with an unpopular Tory leader winning against an unelectable Labour leader. The Labour 1983 election manifesto was famously described as “the longest suicide note in history”. So, on past experience, just another 14 years to wait.
I heard arguments that anything that wasn’t a vote against Johnson was a wasted vote, but my view was that any vote that wasn’t a vote against Corbyn was a wasted vote, so I voted strategically rather than tactically. Now the sensible people in Labour just need to make sure they get a competent leader next time.
I never thought I’d say this but …….. we need a new Neil Kinnock.
The left has spent so much time fighting “monsters” that it has unknowingly become a “monster,” meaning it doesn’t even need a really challenging opposition to beat it, just one that can hear “ordinary people.” The left has locked itself in a bell jar and it arrogantly thinks that it knows what the people think or knows the best way that everyone should go. The people want to be heard, not treated as incapable and stupid.
Now, I don’t know if I can expose it clearly, but to me it seems “simple.” The left has long been superior to the right, and as we see in the media, in universities, in culture as a whole it still is. For a long time the right was classified by them as prejudiced, intolerant, irrational (because of religious dogmatism) and unconcerned with the poor and needy citizen. Of course, this is not a total untruth, there is all of this in part of the right, but a ridiculous generalization has been made in my view. The point is that the common people have begun to realize that the left (much of it) is not that “superior” like that. The left today (again, much of it) is as intolerant, if not more so than many on the right. The point is that the left fought so much against the evils of others that it did not realize its own. There is a demonization of the white man, especially conservative (racism), problems with anti-Semitism (example of the Labor Party), a dogmatism that scares many (who is not with us or even defends our “religion” is intolerant and hateful and should be excluded. ), there is a gender mess that not many of them now understand, criticize Christians as if they were all intolerant but support Islamists who are so “liberal” (Irony), no longer debate they are very lazy because they prefer to silence others as if were “Mao Era Censors Agents in China”, in short, there are so many problems that I will stop not to stretch. She (the left) fought both the “monsters”, the evils of others and failed to realize that she too can become a monster. As Friedrich Nietzsche said in (Beyond Good and Evil) (1886) Chapter IV: Maxims and Interludes Aphorism 146: “Do not fight monsters, lest you become a monster; for if you look into the abyss, the abyss returns.” looking at you ”
I am not a leftist, but I am not angry and I will not diminish its importance, for me both she and the right are important, each one their own form. But it is undeniable, the left is down and it has two ways: Close your eyes to your problems and become more radical, which in my view will be a “suicide”, or make a reflection, take the mistakes and innovate. Let’s see what it will be!
Note: Sorry for the possible errors, because I am Brazilian and I am not fluent in the English language, I read the site and write here with the help of the translator. I hope you understand.
«Helen has previously described the current deadlock between the three main elements of the left: the radical (or socialist), identitarian (“Social Justice”), and liberal left. She argues that the liberal left must strongly champion liberalism, as an overarching principle by which the valid concerns of the other strands of the left can be judged»
If I understood correctly, only the leftists can be judged by the principles of liberalism. Deplorables do not deserve to be judged by any principles. They can’t even be considered people.
And after that, you are surprised that people do not like you. OK, I got it.
Of course, you did not understand correctly. One can not reasonably interpret “There are three elements of the left and I am arguing for the liberal branch’ as ‘Rightwingers aren’t human.” I could point you to the paragraph where I address what conservative values are, but you’d only Cathy Newman this too, so I will leave you to it.
it is the right-wing of the Labor Party that created this problem. Names, does Blair ring a bell? Neo-liberalism is the problem. People, mainly workers, across the English speaking world feel disenfranchised. You take aim at the whipping boys of the right, socialists and post-modern trans-gender based activists. Your argument disingenuously also includes an attack on identity politics and the conservative Muslims so as to make some cheap points. Yes, I agree that identity politics and Leninism (State Capitalism or what you and other ignorant people call socialism) are a big problem. I also agree that many people are sick and tired of the mornings of this mainly middle-class grouping. The problem to me is that Corbyn was never electable, just as Clinton wasn’t and Shorten in Australia wasn’t. For different reasons but all three are actually incredibly conservative on any measure. All three very poor leaders to boot. Corbyn was called on his anti-semitism which is rife on the left, mainly through their misguided support of the PLO and Gaddafi over the years. Clinton because she was called out as a feminist who couldn’t even take a stand against her own husband as well as being incredibly foolish in her use of a private email account. Her hate for Julian Assange didn’t help either. Shorten because, after using his control of numbers on the right of the ALP to depose Beazley, Rudd, and the Rudd again, the kingmaker who even went so far as leaving his own wife to marry the daughter of the then governor-Genreal, thereby lifting his social standing, was found to be the classic emperor without clothes. The people spoke on all three occasions because a total lack of leadership on the “left” of politics. Yes, as you correctly point out, in many ways the conservatives are to the left of Labor and the Democrats on many issues. That still doesn’t give people the right to disband their natural Parties so they can keep foreigners out. That is what a vote for Trump, Johnson and Morrison amounts to. These workers are scum. Coal miners are on the nose and they actually deserve to be ostracised for their voting in my book. Coal miners in all three countries played a disproportionate role in the victories of these demagogues. Because of a perceived threat from climate activists and changes to the focus of government due to climate change, these bastards jumped ship to protect their jobs and stuff future generations. OK, the Tories are light years ahead of the Australia and the USA on these issues. But still, these creeps, jumped ship because it was just too hard to accept change. Besides, all those Poles, Mexicans are crossing the borders and we have to hide our daughters from them. No, this is not a case of anti-working class backlash. The workers who Blair, Hawke and Clinton left out in the cold with their neo-liberal policies have left the fold. They are both greedy and disaffected and went for what they perceive as a leader who at least could;d put a convincing sentence together. This was a failure of the right of Labo(u)r, not the left, who doesn’t even really exist any more. Labo(u)r and the Democrats have tried to out Capitalist the Capitalists and many have become wealthy in the process. Just like the (ex)-Communists in Russia and China. People have seen through this fraud of the pretenders on the left and merely voted for the real thing in Trump, Morrison and Johnston. Nothing to do with post-modernist language theory or reds under the bed. Just good old fashioned political leadership. Corbyn was found to be naked, just like Clinton and Shorten before him.
“Yes, as you correctly point out, in many ways the conservatives are to the left of Labor and the Democrats on many issues. That still doesn’t give people the right to disband their natural Parties so they can keep foreigners out. That is what a vote for Trump, Johnson and Morrison amounts to. These workers are scum… The workers who Blair, Hawke and Clinton left out in the cold with their neo-liberal policies have left the fold.”
How then is Labour the ‘natural party’ of these workers? If their best interests are in restricting the supply of labour and burden on social programmes then whichever party offers to reduce immigration is their party. This cycle, it was the Tories. Your post is an example of just the ignorant, vitriolic, counterfeit analysis which hobbled Labour.
The notion that leftwing parties recent losses are merely a problem of leadership, “Nothing to do with post-modernist language theory or reds under the bed.” is merely a bromide traded among those groups. Corbyn, Hillary and Shorten are bad leaders. However, their follies were the ideas they chose to promote. Labour’s manifesto confirms exactly the sentiments of the voters from Grimsby with its promise of diversity hiring in all enterprises etc. It also promised to nationalise industry in way reminiscent of the horrible 1970’s form of British socialism. Labour’s loss represents a rejection of both the socialist and identitarian strains of leftism.
Now I realized that I understood even more correctly than I thought. Thanks!
This article strives to conflate two very different political disasters as if they are hardly distinguishable, without looking in detail at
what went wrong in Labour in the UK, and how this differs from the Hilary Clinton defeat.
1. Corbyn campaigned on a platform of the kind of “Social Democracy” and regulated economy which took root and reached considerable accomplishments in many nearby countries in the North of Europe. That’s not to say that Corbyn’s personal views and sympathies are not with more radical views, but he in now way sought to turn Labour into a communist party, only to regulate the wild market. Sanders’ views do not veer that far from social democracy either. Corbyn’s view that a first world country like England does not need to have homeless people is not communism, rather it is what the social democrats of neighbouring
Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands believed at different stages with popular support, leading to a period (now in the past) of a very different distribution of wealth.. There is little or no proof that Corbyn’s overall program would not
have won if he had stuck to his original Leave position on Brexit, which was the unwavering condition of the workers.
2. This article refers to Barack Obama as yet another victim of the Social Justice Warrior phenomenon (rather than its enabler) Very recently (see today’s Guardian) Obama stated he’s ”calling out old white men in politics who need to step aside” referring to Bernie Sanders. That should clarify just how the PC wars and identity politics
entered into the mainstream.
3. Hillary Clinton had much of the mainstream media on her side, with the exception of Fox News. While Clinton had critics and dissenters within the Democrats,
smear campaigns against her came from the opposition. Not so with Corbyn: the smear campaigns, including the identity politics fuelling
the ”anti-semitism crisis” came from within Labour, mid election season.
4. Since both New Labour and the Tories have largely embraced the unmitigated market, why is classical liberalism supposedly ”left” if a Conservative can
easily be a classical liberal?
5. Joe Biden is an adamant neo-liberal, not a classical liberal. Would Areo’s editorial writers celebrate the nomination of Biden if it meant the exclusion of ”socialist’ (social dem ) Bernie Sanders?
I don’t understand point one. The article doesn’t accuse Corbyn or Sanders of communism, does it?
It quoted Obama saying something we agreed with. This isn’t a claim that he has never said anything we don’t agree with. I criticised him a couple of days ago for saying the world would be better if run by women.
The article also doesn’t talk about media. You could write a piece about that yourself.
The article doesn’t claim that classical liberals are left, does it? In other pieces we frequently state that liberal does not mean left as Americans often think or right as Australians do. Try this one.https://areomagazine.com/2018/08/23/no-we-are-not-right-wing-we-are-liberal-lefties-and-we-are-many/
The article does not claim Joe Biden to be a neo-liberal rather than a classical liberal. It’s as though you’re arguing with a completely different article. For myself, yes, I would support Biden over Sanders, but I’m British so I have no say.
The article clearly tries to diagnose what caused the recent political failures, and points out the prevalence of ”socialism” and of identity politics.
The use of the term socialism here seems to refer to Corbyn and Sanders (who uses it himself despite being clearly a social dem) and their supporters.
Socialism is communism, or related in any case, whereas Corbyn campaigned as a Social Democrat, not a Socialist ( communist) even if his personal beliefs run further to the left than the Social dem agenda he proposed. “Socialism” is not about getting the rich to pay taxes, so much as to expropriate and communally run the means of production.
The argument in this article goes that classical liberalism is a force of sanity to save the left, and that your classical liberalism in this context favours a more regulated market. But both Biden and Blair stand for the free, unregulated market and stand in opposition to Sanders and Corbyn respectively. Nobody said the article claims that Joe Biden is a neoliberal: I say it. Is the full-throated embrace of neoliberalism by New Labour (and by the Clinton-Biden mainstream of the Democratic Party USA) not a cause of the Left’s self-destruction? Do you see no correlation between the market and identity politics?
Good thing you wrote a piece confronting Obama on his statement that a world ruled by women would be improvement. I will enjoy reading this and thank you for the link. Obama demonstrated how certain identity politics, unlike the more radical calls for social democracy, have mainstream origins.
“In other pieces we frequently state that liberal does not mean left as Americans often think or right as Australians do.”
“Liberal”. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” C.S. Lewis wrote a book called “Studies in Words”. Well worth reading. One of the words he examined was “Liberal”. Coles Notes version: Turns out that the sound, “liberal”, is used as a token for several words denoting different concepts. Of relevance here are two of its uses: to denote one who approbates individual freedom, or to denote one who approbates state generosity.
Those who regard the “Liberal” as a leftist are channelling what was, in Europe, the idea of an aristocratic individual who was generous and condescending (in its original latinate sense), ie: “Liberal” with his wealth, his social regard, and in his moral strictures; which political demeanor became conceived of as the ideal social policy of the State. Those who regard the “Liberal” as a rightist are channelling what was, in the Anglo-Sphere, the idea of the free man possessed of a divinely vested right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in un-coerced congress with fellow, and equally sovereign, individuals (nowadays more commonly called “Libertarians”). Lewis shows how these two radically different denotations evolved out of the connotations of the word in its original usage. Unfortunately, some people are unable to recognize homonyms when they hear them.
“There is little or no proof that Corbyn’s overall program would not
have won if he had stuck to his original Leave position on Brexit, which was the unwavering condition of the workers.”
I just about wet myself reading this. It perfectly captures the insane level of delusion on show.
As for the reference to ‘smears’, that after all this time references to this can still be made is utterly outrageous.
A book could be written on all the ways Corbyn is not a ‘decent man’ but let me pick just one.
How is the fact he’s repeatedly shared a platform and openly praised a man who not only was part of an institutional cover up of rape allegations but has been shown to have threatened supporters of the alleged victim.
Five seconds googling ‘Comrade Delta’ and another five seconds googling ‘Corbyn & Wayman Bennett’ show we’re dealing in undisputable facts not ‘smears’.
I’ve not heard anyone even try to honestly address this outrage, let alone the countless other examples that have emerged since 2015.
Over here across the pond we haven’t always had the parties that exist now. At one time we had a Whig party but because it wasn’t fulfilling a need amongst the electorate it died. I wouldn’t shed any tears to see either of our 2 parties replaced by an anti corruption pro labor party. Sounds like your Labour could also use a re branding. Also bear in mind that when so much of the population has grown poorer, things that are labeled xenophobic or racist such as keeping immigration much lower, are a reaction to losing jobs. Likewise the Brahmin left likes employing immigrants as it ausages guilt for being so well off and not really working.
The left was never as homogenous as the right. That was what was great about it. The left was the wing that would critique, criticize and mock not just the right wing, but itself. And because of that self-scrutiny it developed better ideas than the right. It had a mechanism for weeding out the worst ideas. And that is what it has lost, and why it’s ideas are increasingly more terrible.
The left, like typical racists, consider all the right to be the same 🙂
The right is not homogenous now, nor has it ever been – Burkeans, Straussians, and Augustans are three strands that can be identified just for starters.
But as George Orwell observed about Socialists, the left are nowhere near as good at understanding their adversaries as the other way around.
Helen, much that I value your writing and respect your opinion, I think you encapsulated the problem with the left in your first paragraph: “An outright majority was won by surely the least credible Tory Prime Minister in living memory. It seems uncomfortably likely that this disaster is soon to be mirrored in the US by the re-election of Donald Trump for a second term, despite the fact that the American public has had four years—beginning with his 2015 campaign—to notice how manifestly unfit he is to be the leader of the western world. ”
Who are you to make these judgments? I don’t think either point is clear. While Trump is clearly an obnoxious loudmouth; isn’t the economy doing rather better? Unemployment is down, especially among African Americans, Secondly, Boris Johnson, I think was well regarded generally as Major of London. Well, I could be wrong but these are judgments. You, like the failed left in general, state these points like facts. What’s the point in my reading on? You, like the left, cannot rid yourselves of the idea that the right are nasty bastards and you lot are much nicer.
No, I think it is clear I am stating an opinion. And making judgements is the right of everybody. Of course, it is up to you whether or not you want to read a piece having seen that the writer is not a fan of the Prime Minister or POTUS. Feel free to look away and await a piece from a conservative.
I suggest you made ad hominem critiques of two elected leaders. You don’t have to be a fan of either but so much from the left is sanctimonious and arrogant, so knowing.
My point is that clever clogs, personal attacks on those who have won elections (Boris very comprehensively) is hardly a reflective stance, irrespective of any insights to come. I was attracted to your article because I think we need a decent and electable left and I think that the way to get one is for the left to stop believing they’re on the right side of history; that, ultimately, the people will come to realise how wise their ideas are. The basic critique of the right by the left is that they don’t care about the poor and vulnerable, the left has to start believing that those of us who lean to the right are just as likely to be decent people as those who lean to the left.
Who knows why Boris won but my guess is that people are tired of the self-righteous left – aptly demonstrated by your reply to me.
Excuse my moaning about this paragraph, I regard you as a fine writer and always worth reading for your thoughtful insights. You should never stop being praised for your part in exposing grievance studies.
https://www.facebook.com/steven.lawrence.167189/posts/10221131366537409?comment_id=10221131550902018
Helen,
Clearly your opinion. Most/all(?) of the articles published on Aero are just opinions of the writers, and the comments are just opinions of the readers.
I share your opinion to the extent that if, the “left” wants to win and get back in power (and they do – it’s all about power), then the more level headed and sane people need to adult the intolerant SJWs, teach them it’s OK to compromise here and there, and figure out how to persuade the deplorables instead of just ratcheting up the bullying and insults.
But, you start out your opinion piece bashing Johnson and Trump, and the disturbing (to you) possibility that Trump may get reelected. Haven’t the deplorables been watching him these last three years? Why don’t they see how unfit he is – which is so apparent to you? Why do they insist on voting for what they want instead of for what someone else wants for them? Yes, you do not say those last couple of things, but that is how I interpret what you did write.
You then go on to write a great piece. You rightfully criticize the SJ left for being so intolerant and unwilling to listen or compromise in ways that may actually gain them some ground. Excellent advice and applies to most everything in life, not just politics. How to make friends and influence people – versus how to never get invited to parties. Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy? You get more flies with honey than vinegar. OK, I’ll stop.
Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
Truly, Trump got elected precisely because he said he intended to govern based on the interests of the resident of the US, not the “western world.”
The economy is not doing “rather better” under Trump. Employment in low-wage jobs paying $18,000 a year is up, but in general people are worse off. Homelessness due to rent increases is markedly up as wages have not kept pace. Farmers in the heartland are going bankrupt due to Trump’s abysmal trade policies. The environment is under increased threat under Trump.
Fair enough, you’re probably right but I bet he will be re-elected. Wouldn’t that mean anything? Or are the deplorables to stupid to figure this out?
The left is “sanctimonious and arrogant”, but somehow Donald Trump is better?? I’m sorry, but by backing Trump the right has lost the moral standing to make that accusation. It was always a fairly minor thing, anyway, unless we’re supposed to elect people based on personality traits. And even then, well, *Donald Trump*.
Trump has said disgraceful things, he’s embarrassing. My comment about a self righteous left isn’t so much about the politicians but their supporters.
If Corbyn had won and introduced his policies I wouldn’t have liked it but that’s fine, had he won an election. What has bothered me for a decade or so is the consistent moral superiority of too many of those I encounter on the left. Maybe, I’m being unfair, maybe my perceptions are far from reality but I didn’t feel this I the past. Of course, I would argue with the left and sometimes even thought their arguments strong but rarely did I believe they thought I was an evil cruel man for thinking differently.
This is why I objected to Helen’s first paragraph. If Trump and Johnson are as bad as portrayed then those who voted for them must be stupid or venal. This is the image the left seem to continue to want to believe in and slander us with.
Marian, Walmart here is paying $23K plus bennies, Amazon is more like $33K and even better benefits. It should be double that, but for most it’s better than things were. Yes there is a ton of homelessness, it’s worst in the wealthiest most liberal towns, and farmers here have been going bankrupt for a long time, they are bought out and underpriced by the big guys and slaughterhouse prices and feedlots are owned by only a couple of companies, you take what they give. When I lose a contract, to a company owned by someone here illegally, and the employees are here illegally, well Trump is doing something about my illegal competition, and it’s that way throughout the trades, less laborers pushes up the price of labor. Trump is a lowlife, but his policies allow me to save and pay for my kid’s college, and the mortgage. Should I vote my economic self interest and hope they keep improving health care?
“Trump is a lowlife, but his policies allow me to save and pay for my kid’s college, and the mortgage. Should I vote my economic self interest and hope they keep improving health care?”
Exactly. Why is the alternative to Trump that you have to suffer terrible policies and governing?
Marian, I certainly do not agree with you regarding the economy, and one of the most subsidized occupations in the US is farming. But, OK we are entitled to our own facts and opinions based on said personal facts.
Homelessness is way more complicated than just “due to rent increases.” A lot of factors involved, almost none of them having anything to do with which political party is POTUS. Homelessness has been bad getting worse since I can remember (going back to the 1970s). And would be just as bad now if Clinton had won. There is no magic pill. Way too many moving parts, mostly at local government levels, but also in our cultural values.
A lot (not all) of homeless are mentally ill, addicts, or both. Sure, some areas (e.g., Seattle or Portland or Boulder, etc.) have lots of “spangers” (“spare change?!”) who are mostly young people perfectly able to work and live in society if they so wanted, but they do not. Shelters have rules that the homeless don’t like. No drugs or alcohol? Heck, I would not want to live under that rule. But, yes, there are also a lot of otherwise responsible people that live in their car, tent or park a broken down RV in some city area that they can.
Rents, like most things, are based on supply and demand. More demand than supply and rents goes up. Want to lower rents? Increase supply by allowing more housing to be built or converted into rentable space. Allow “mother in law” units to be rented to third parties. Imposing rent control on landlords creates a few lucky winners already living in those housing units, but makes things worse for everyone else. No one is going to build or buy for the purpose of renting to the general population if government is going to make it not worth it. But, as you well-know, existing property owners – especially in well-to do “liberal” enclaves of the type we are talking about in this article and these comments – are NIMBYs. Sure, build new housing, but not anywhere near my neighborhood or near my favorite open space areas that I day hike in wearing $300 outfits. Oh, and I demand you build nice looking “green” housing that costs way more than it needs to because spenign other people’s money is something NIMBY’s are good at.
And … maybe people who can’t afford the rent in expensive places like San Francisco should relocate to a place that they can afford. Yeah, I know, why should they have to move? Why aren’t they entitled to live where they want, and why isn’t the rest of society obligated to make it happen for them? I see this a lot in Hawaii. A “local” kid born and raised on Maui or Kauai, where they have no chance at getting a job that that pays well enough to rent a decent home, along with all of life’s other expenses, let alone buy something or raise a family that is adequately taken care off, etc. They cannot compete with mainlanders who made their $$$ elsewhere for the limited housing supply. And no one (locals or mainlanders) wants any more growth on the islands. So, if the young people want to join the “American middle class” they have to leave their home state and family, and move off to seek their fortune on the mainland or elsewhere.
What to do? Who is entitled to have others do their bidding for them? Is the rest of society obligated to not just house someone, but do so where that person want to be housed and in a style they want to be accommodated?
Yes, same as medical care, college tuition (is someone entitled to study intersectionality for $75K a year at a school of their choice paid for by others?
“But, yes, there are also a lot of otherwise responsible people that live in their car, tent or park a broken down RV in some city area that they can …
Increase supply by allowing more housing to be built or converted into rentable space.”
I think you’re trying to be fair Weasel, it’s not all drugs, it’s the fact that on minimum wage it is not possible to find a place to rent in most west-coast cities. As to supply and demand, the rentiers control the government and they won’t let more supply happen.
“Secondly, Boris Johnson, I think was well regarded generally as Major of London”
I lived in London through Johnson’s first term and left a little while after he was re-elected. He pretty much ended up Mayor by default both times.
He initially defeat a man who’d been Mayor for 8 years, and was seen as stale and who’s administration was starting to be seen as corrupt.
Virtually all the policies Johnson became known for were already in the pipe line before his election. Sure he didn’t lurch to the right but you can’t in London.
Then in a moment of utter insanity that still beggars belief, Labour put up the exact same candidate that Johnson had already defeated for yet another go and surprise surprise lost again.
In his second term the only memorable thing he did was waste an eye watering amount of money on a vanity project on the buses than no one really wanted.
By the time he went people seemed sick of him and were hoping he’d just disappear.
Labour then won the Mayoralty in a landslide.
If you listen to many of the voices of traditional Labour voters who voted Tory there’s no great love for Johnson, and wide acknowledgement he’s a serial liar.
Corbyn was always unelectable, as someone who’s met him briefly on the odd occasion this should have been plain to anyone. Johnson’s benifted from possibly the most astonishing act of self delusion seen in a Western democracy in generations.