Guest Post by Adrian Morgan
The U.S. election provoked divisions on mainstream media and a political schism, and similarly Brexit has divided the United Kingdom in ways that may never be healed. Even the Mother of Parliaments appears to be denying the implementation of a democratic mandate (to leave the EU). In America, the liberal elite from the East and West Coast have continued to maintain that Trump’s victory was gained illegally, much as Remainers maintain that illegal funding of advertising and misleading adverts led to the Brexit result. For the most part American and UK politics have been binary, pitting the “left” against the “right.” But why have post-2016 schisms been so severe?
For at least 15 years the left (far more so than the right) in the USA and Britain has made a point of deliberately blacklisting and smearing those who have the audacity to not echo their own sanctimonious brand of politics. Bodies like the Southern Poverty Law Centre, Media Matters, Think Progress in the USA, and Spinwatch, Powerbase, Stand up to Hate and Hope not Hate in the UK have specialised in naming and shaming figures on the right who are seen as “enemies”, sometimes falsely. SPLC smeared various figures, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Mawaz, a moderate Muslim in the UK, as “anti-Muslim Extremists”” in a document entitled “A Journalist’s Manual: Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists”. Maajid gained an apology and settlement from SPLC, but Ayaan Hirsi Ali received no suchapology https://www.splcenter.org/news/2018/06/18/splc-statement-regarding-maajid-nawaz-and-quilliam-foundation Why are elements of the left so censorious of those whose opinions differ?
I think that is because they take a position - on social and political issues - of "moral certainty." And as their views on such things are morally certain, they assume any other opinions lack any justifiable rationale, and thus should be swept aside to make room for their own "moral dominance."
In the real world, people can assume completely rational positions without having to subsume them to the idealism of moralists. But the notion of the left's preachers is that the leftist view is always on the side of emancipation of the oppressed and an idealised view of progress - the corollary of this is that they have to trade in notions of labelling people into groups who are "oppressed" and those who are "privileged."
Thus "identity politics" and the notion of "intersectionality" has become all-pervasive in modern discourse. The social has become the political, and there is an "order of importance" in the identities who should be treated as "victims" and those who are seen as having more inherent privilege - a bit like the PEMDAS (also called BODMAS) order of operations in mathematics. And in the way that operations contained within Parentheses are treated as having more weight than Exponents/Orders, then in leftist reasoning identities and causes are also ranked by order. Those people or causes that deal with victimhood or disadvantage automatically trump those that are seen as having privilege or even pre-existence. The "new" is favoured over the "traditional" - even when the new has never been tested.
And though such principles can wreak havoc upon existing beliefs, no-one likes to mention how this support for "minorities with victimhood" is arbitrary and ultimately keeps minorities unable to ever be seen as deserving of the "progress" that the left-liberal likes to believe in. Those who are black - or BAME - are always treated as disadvantaged and thus they are never seen as being able to have progress. And those who witter on - as Owen Jones does - about minorities and injustice cannot see how stifling to progress their attitudes are.
And ultimately, following the Trotskyite notion of perpetual revolution, even if progress and emancipation (of the sort favoured by traditional socialists like William Morris, George Bernard Shaw, Annie Besant, the Fabians, etc) happens, and one creates an idealised and balanced society, it must all be thrown down to stop bourgeois complacency arriving.
And thus - groups that are constantly viewed as the beloved "victims" of the left are always thrown under the bus as a new "victimhood" is identified. In 1977, the Socialist Worker wrote about how women and gay people and black people were oppressed, but soon they found a new "victim" in Islam and Muslims, and at one of the first anti-Iraq War demos in London, SWP members urged women to wear headscarves in solidarity with their Muslim "sisters." Adopting Islam as a "victimhood" cause - despite its scriptural tenets of not approving of women's full equality and gay people being a threat, those two groups (women and gay people) were instantly disenfranchised. And just as Gerry Healy of the WRP did, Comrade Delta of the SWP was sexually abusing young women recruits and then mounting attacks upon their integrity if they spoke out.
And nowadays, the cultural Marxists in the LGB "community" have co-opted transsexuals into the gay/lesbian umbrella group, even though transsexuals whose notions of gender identity have little in common with gays or lesbians, who do not have any problems with their natural born gender. And so we get tits like Owen Jones wittering on about the LGBT grouping as if it is a real thing, and he has the chutzpah to say gay people should be standing behind Muslims, even though most Muslims regard gay people as sinners who have no place in Islam.
The saddest aspect of the left seeking for new groups to uphold as the latest "victims" in the wheel of privilege and oppression is the notion that children are treated as being "transgender" as young as five - and even at the Tavistock, resigned clinic workers have claimed that children even as young as THREE are treated as transgendered. The disabled are treated as victims by the left, but are never offered real rights, and autistic children are being encouraged to think that they are "in the wrong gendered body" too, in some schools. Many women, lesbians and gay males feel that the current drive to encourage gender change is erasing their own identity because of the actions of a few transactivists - while many transsexuals who went through surgery are also marginalised because of the sudden prevalence of transactivists who were born male, fancy women, still have male genitals, but define themselves as lesbian.
The Utopian aims of the left have moved far away from benign socialism. They have created social warfare, and it is now getting harder - even from the left - to know who is the most deserving victims any more, because the politics of identity are not the politics of unity and collectivism any longer. The modern leftists - and the modern left-liberals - have sown more division in society than any other group in recent history. The social progress that was happening in the 1960s and 1970s has become a free-for-all of sectarianism and social competition and resentments and - ultimatelty - chaos.
______________________________________________
* Jones, Robert P., and Daniel Cox. “‘Merry Christmas’ vs. ‘Happy Holidays’: Republicans and Democrats are Polar Opposites.” PRRI. 2016. http://www.prri.org/research/poll-post-election-holiday-war-christmas/
Thus "identity politics" and the notion of "intersectionality" has become all-pervasive in modern discourse. The social has become the political, and there is an "order of importance" in the identities who should be treated as "victims" and those who are seen as having more inherent privilege - a bit like the PEMDAS (also called BODMAS) order of operations in mathematics. And in the way that operations contained within Parentheses are treated as having more weight than Exponents/Orders, then in leftist reasoning identities and causes are also ranked by order. Those people or causes that deal with victimhood or disadvantage automatically trump those that are seen as having privilege or even pre-existence. The "new" is favoured over the "traditional" - even when the new has never been tested.
And though such principles can wreak havoc upon existing beliefs, no-one likes to mention how this support for "minorities with victimhood" is arbitrary and ultimately keeps minorities unable to ever be seen as deserving of the "progress" that the left-liberal likes to believe in. Those who are black - or BAME - are always treated as disadvantaged and thus they are never seen as being able to have progress. And those who witter on - as Owen Jones does - about minorities and injustice cannot see how stifling to progress their attitudes are.
And ultimately, following the Trotskyite notion of perpetual revolution, even if progress and emancipation (of the sort favoured by traditional socialists like William Morris, George Bernard Shaw, Annie Besant, the Fabians, etc) happens, and one creates an idealised and balanced society, it must all be thrown down to stop bourgeois complacency arriving.
And thus - groups that are constantly viewed as the beloved "victims" of the left are always thrown under the bus as a new "victimhood" is identified. In 1977, the Socialist Worker wrote about how women and gay people and black people were oppressed, but soon they found a new "victim" in Islam and Muslims, and at one of the first anti-Iraq War demos in London, SWP members urged women to wear headscarves in solidarity with their Muslim "sisters." Adopting Islam as a "victimhood" cause - despite its scriptural tenets of not approving of women's full equality and gay people being a threat, those two groups (women and gay people) were instantly disenfranchised. And just as Gerry Healy of the WRP did, Comrade Delta of the SWP was sexually abusing young women recruits and then mounting attacks upon their integrity if they spoke out.
And nowadays, the cultural Marxists in the LGB "community" have co-opted transsexuals into the gay/lesbian umbrella group, even though transsexuals whose notions of gender identity have little in common with gays or lesbians, who do not have any problems with their natural born gender. And so we get tits like Owen Jones wittering on about the LGBT grouping as if it is a real thing, and he has the chutzpah to say gay people should be standing behind Muslims, even though most Muslims regard gay people as sinners who have no place in Islam.
The saddest aspect of the left seeking for new groups to uphold as the latest "victims" in the wheel of privilege and oppression is the notion that children are treated as being "transgender" as young as five - and even at the Tavistock, resigned clinic workers have claimed that children even as young as THREE are treated as transgendered. The disabled are treated as victims by the left, but are never offered real rights, and autistic children are being encouraged to think that they are "in the wrong gendered body" too, in some schools. Many women, lesbians and gay males feel that the current drive to encourage gender change is erasing their own identity because of the actions of a few transactivists - while many transsexuals who went through surgery are also marginalised because of the sudden prevalence of transactivists who were born male, fancy women, still have male genitals, but define themselves as lesbian.
The Utopian aims of the left have moved far away from benign socialism. They have created social warfare, and it is now getting harder - even from the left - to know who is the most deserving victims any more, because the politics of identity are not the politics of unity and collectivism any longer. The modern leftists - and the modern left-liberals - have sown more division in society than any other group in recent history. The social progress that was happening in the 1960s and 1970s has become a free-for-all of sectarianism and social competition and resentments and - ultimatelty - chaos.
______________________________________________
* Jones, Robert P., and Daniel Cox. “‘Merry Christmas’ vs. ‘Happy Holidays’: Republicans and Democrats are Polar Opposites.” PRRI. 2016. http://www.prri.org/research/poll-post-election-holiday-war-christmas/
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