On a pedestal   ...


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What does it mean, these days, when someone says their politics are “left-wing” or “progressive”? This has always been debatable, but in recent times these terms have taken on meanings that earlier generations of leftists would scarcely recognise. Ideas that used to be thought cons­titutive of left-wing thinking have been turned on their head. To see what I am getting at, ponder the following thought experiment. Try to imagine how a moderate leftist in the social-democratic tradition (my own position) or a liberal in the American sense might react on awakening today from suspended animation after a half-century. >snip< Welcome to the leftist Counter-Enlightenment. In Britain and the US some critics have coined the term “regressive leftism” for this movement. There are two aspects to the regressive Left ideology. The substantive content of the ideology is identity politics, the view that people should be seen in their essence not as members of a common humanity but as bound to a particular identity group. There is an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy written by a sympathetic academic that expresses it thus: “… it is qua women, qua blacks, qua lesbians that groups demand recognition. The demand is not for inclusion within the fold of ‘universal humankind’ on the basis of shared human attributes; nor is it for respect ‘in spite of’ one’s differences. Rather, what is demanded is respect for oneself as different.” Note that when members of a particular identity group demand respect for “oneself as different” they are not talking about respecting each person’s individuality and agency. On the contrary, they insist that people accept being defined by their identity and that they stick to the accepted script, the particular narrative of victimhood, that pertains to their group. Members of each victim group are urged to claim ownership of — indeed, to be extremely proprietorial about — all aspects of their culture, including ephemera such as clothing and cuisine. We must all stick to our own cultural reservation. To violate this tenet is to commit the high crime of “cultural appropriation”. >snip< American writer Lionel Shriver delivered a brilliant critique of this mentality and its deadening effect on fiction writing at the Brisbane Writers Festival last weekend, to the horror of organisers, who immediately disavowed her remarks. And woe betide anyone who breaches this cardinal rule, as dissenters from within Islamic culture such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali have found. At best, they can expect condescension from bien pensant progressive intellectuals, some of whom denounced Hirsi Ali as an “Enlightenment fundamentalist”. They will be pilloried in progressive media and will face attempts to bar them from speaking on campuses and elsewhere, as when Hirsi Ali was barred from speaking recently at Brandeis University in the US at the behest of a coalition of “progressive” student groups. Then there are the death threats from Islamist extremists intent on punishing the crime of apostasy. The Council of Ex-Muslims on Britain released a report this year detailing how extremist preachers have been given free rein to speak on British campuses while its own leader, Maryam Namazie, a leftist from an Iranian background, has been subjected to sustained efforts — including death threats — to stop her speaking. These activities consistently have been backed by campus student organisations including, incredibly, feminist and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups. The de facto alliance that has developed between the Left and militant Islam, the most reactionary force in the world today, is the strangest and most disconcerting political development in my lifetime. If identity politics is the substantive part of this mutant ideology, the compliance and enforcement arm is the system of thought control we nowadays term political correctness. According to the PC mindset, someone who openly or even privately challenges core tenets of identity politics is not just wrong but morally depraved. Such a person is not to be engaged with argumentatively, but must be vilified, censored and, where possible, pursued legally using instruments such as the iniquitous section 18C of our Racial Discrimination Act and equivalents in other countries. Given their head, “progressive” politicians will introduce even more restrictive laws. Former British ­Labour leader Ed Miliband pledged before the last British election to make Islamophobia, which he never bothered to define, an aggravated criminal offence. Regressive Left activists often claim to be fighting against “fascism” or “the extreme Right”. Ironically, they are the ones who, time and again, resort to classic 1930s fascist tactics such as wrecking the meetings of their opponents and in some cases harassing or attacking attendees. I experienced this last year while attending a meeting at the University of Sydney that was being addressed by a speaker known to be defensive of Israel, a position now verboten on cam­puses around the world. The meeting was disrupted by a chanting mob led by a young woman with a megaphone, the leaders making clear afterwards that they were there not to challenge or debate but to silence.

cont'd

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Consider the enormity of the transformation Europe is undergoing and imagine how it will look in several decades if this continues. Yet Europe’s elites seem incapable of conducting an honest debate about the implications of this, since this would involve asking some tough questions about whether Islam, with its undoubted violent and supremacist aspects, is ultimately compatible with liberal societies. Some of Europe’s leaders actually seem to have become reconciled to the prospect of large parts of Europe becoming Islamised. After all, what could be worse than the existing civilisation that is nothing but a sorry litany of racism, colonialism and oppression? And the biggest losers from this will be the self-styled progressives. What prospect for gay rights under the new dispensation? This fecklessness and intellectual paralysis would be far less serious if it were confined to the Left proper, but it is not, as exemplified by Angela Merkel’s extraordinarily naive actions in the past year. The impulse to censor and anathematise anyone who challenges the prevailing zeitgeist can be found in parties regarded as centrist or even right-wing. This has created space for the emergence of new political forces throughout the Western world including Australia, with a surge in support for Pauline Hanson at the recent elections. I believe the time has come for a fundamental rethinking of the lines of political division. At this his­torical juncture decent leftists must drop the masochistic obsession with denigrating post-Enlightenment

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/regressive-left-puts-bigotry-and-militant-islam-on-a-pedestal/news-story/c42df8a48a1e2da5f33311f4a3303919

It's a long article but well worth the read.

Good article. However, it stops short of a solution to defeat this beast. Descriptions of leftardism are everywhere now. What the next step is, is to outline methods to defeat it. This is in the works at the moment, but you've really got to search for it.

This has to be the best podcast of the year.
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/islamism-vs-secularism

Well everything is finally shifting and I hope it is not too late.  What a sad state we have let things get into for a minority of lunatics.

Gordy that is 2.5 hours long!

Black Orchid wrote on Dec 7^th, 2016 at 4:42pm:

Well everything is finally shifting and I hope it is not too late.  What a sad state we have let things get into for a minority of lunatics. Gordy that is 2.5 hours long!

Yeah, but really really worth it.
Knock off 30 mins at a time.

*SIGH*  No one who is sane would link Left politics with militant Islam, except in their imaginations.  It is merely another example of label throwing.

In reality, the Left believes that ordinary, everyday, moderate Muslims are not deserving of the bigotry and hatred directed their way by the Right.   They are innocent of any crimes and are peaceful and attempt to fit into our multicultural/multireligious society without attempting to offend any one.   The Right stereotypes people quite happily and that includes Muslims.   Muslims to them are all Isis supporters or actually Terrorists.   ::)

Brian Ross wrote on Dec 7^th, 2016 at 5:08pm:

*SIGH*  No one who is sane would link Left politics with militant Islam, except in their imaginations.  It is merely another example of label throwing. In reality, the Left believes that ordinary, everyday, moderate Muslims are not deserving of the bigotry and hatred directed their way by the Right.   They are innocent of any crimes and are peaceful and attempt to fit into our multicultural/multireligious society without attempting to offend any one.   The Right stereotypes people quite happily and that includes Muslims.   Muslims to them are all Isis supporters or actually Terrorists.   ::)

And no-one sensible from the left believes that people are defined by their identity.

All in all, a stupid article.