Has the very online left, the bane of our times, been usurped by the very online right? It’s a poetically appealing idea, for sure – an amusing conceit. But I really don’t think so. Purity spirals and internecine denunciations have been a feature of the last decade or so in the era of woke. This seems to have been mainly fostered by women, for which Louise Perry persuasively makes the case here. Perry argues, convincingly, that a lot of the progressive censoriousness was female-led – or at least female-coded – and introduced using passive-aggressive HR ‘guidelines’, office politics, etc.
There’s recently been some concern that a similar mode of operations is emerging on the so-called ‘woke right’, but with a difference: that there are new resurgent reactionaries on the block who want to ban stuff – smartphones for kids, DEI initiatives, even TV – and that these tend to be men, and a lot more blunt in their tactics. Are these chaps the new Mary Whitehouses, and guilty of something we might dub paternalism? Is the new right essentially a new version of online-only identity politics?
I think this is a slightly misleading way to frame the situation. There is, in fact, a marked squeamishness on the right – a desire to play the game by rules that were last observed in about 1990. In Britain, we’ve witnessed the clumsiness and vindictiveness of Rupert Lowe’s expulsion from Reform, and the attempt to smear this loveable sexagenarian buffer as an internet-crazed loony, despite him being in much closer alignment with public opinion on many key issues than pretty much anybody else.
This middle ground fallacy is, perhaps, an inevitable product of democracy and its compromises. Maybe a few stabbings is tolerable? Maybe a few (million) unidentified migrants could illegally enter the country? Maybe ‘there’s nothing wrong with being woke’, as Boris Johnson said, as he blew his historic victory by backsliding into soggy consensus?
But the level playing field that underpinned the system is long gone. Every gender-related employment tribunal, for example, reveals that very basic assumptions have been overturned. Then we have the grotesque Attorney General Lord Hermer, who brazenly assumes that the judiciary is infallible and must never be criticised – and the Sentencing Council, who have set themselves above parliament. How, exactly, do you deal with crushing, unaccountable state power like that by using the rules of liberalism and playing nicely? It’s a rigged board, a marked deck.
The temptation is always to say ‘ah well, things aren’t so bad, must play a straight bat’. When you’re appalled by the state of the country, it can be tempting to check yourself – oh no, maybe I’m being very online? Are the stakes really that high? You look away from your screen at the real physical world. Things seem like they’ve always been, sort of, if you squint. Sunrise, sunset. Perhaps we’ll just muddle through. No need to get het up – or worse, shrill and hysterical.
Then you are brought up short by something so hideously, outrageously wrong that this understandable desire for normality and quiet turns to ashes. This turning of blind eyes – to asylum hotels, to net zero, to blatant anti-Semitism, to a hundred and one other piecemeal degradations – is exactly how we got into the terrible mess we are in now.
Playing fair with people that have never played fair and never will – how does liberalism get us out of that?
Playing fair with people that have never played fair and never will – how does liberalism get us out of that? I would like that liberal world back too, but I have a creeping, creepy feeling that it isn’t coming back.
Sometimes a very firm ‘no’ is necessary. That’s why we have a state, to regulate our society and to stop those who might cause harm. Some things do indeed need to be banned. I’m afraid I think the sight of a smartphone in a child’s hand should be regarded in the same way as a wrap of crack cocaine in a child’s hand. If that makes me a very online woke right male Mary Whitehouse, fine.
Adults have to take responsibility for children. I don’t want a world where it’s even a consideration for any child to be put on puberty blockers. It was very online people who made that possible – and it might take very online people of another kind to put it right.
But the kerfuffle about the ‘woke right’ is, ironically, itself extremely online. In Britain for the foreseeable, at least, there is no chance of the right – of any kind – getting anywhere near the actual levers of power. The disparity is enormous. The woke left control every institution; the woke right are having little spats on Twitter.
What this situation does need is more thought and direction. The laser focus of effective American fighters against the culture war – Chris Rufo or Jonathan Haidt, say – needs to be emulated. It is important to fight the battles that really matter, and concentrate on exactly how to begin to turn things round, if the opportunity ever comes. There may be a time when things are different; that chance must be taken firmly – not wasted on embarrassed backsliding or worse, silly internet squabbles.
Comments