Left-wing activists are less likely to understand or listen to people with conservative beliefs, compared to the rest of the population. They are more inclined to view them negatively, and to dismiss them as having ‘been misled’ in forming their opinions. This is the revelation on the front page of the Guardian today. Reporting on a study by the political group More in Common, it relates how the liberal-left are ‘out of step’ with most people in the country when it comes to cultural matters and immigration. When it comes to conservatives in particular, progressives are more prone to misunderstand them, criticise them and even refuse to campaign alongside them.
Elaborating on this progressive mindset, Luke Tryl, an executive director at More in Common and co-author of the study, speaks of ‘a tendency to impose purity tests on those they will campaign with, overestimating how many people share their views, and using language that is inaccessible to the wider public’.
This feels less like a news story from the Guardian and more a belated admission of what conservatives have known for ages: that left-wing progressives often don’t listen to their opponents, will dismiss them as ignorant, ill-educated or immoral, and regard themselves by contrast as superior members of an enlightened elite.
This long-standing state affairs only came into sharp relief in recent years with the arrival of a woke ideology in the last decade. The language deployed by its advocates in progressive circles today – ‘heteronormative’, ‘terf’, ‘microaggressions’ and the rest – is indeed ‘inaccessible’ to most people, and for a good reason. It was adopted deliberately by a new clerisy to signal their membership of an elite. Our new, Eloi class used it to differentiate themselves from the Morlock underlings too stupid to understand it or use it properly.
Yet the ‘Great Awokening’ of 2016 merely solidified and made more glaring a mode of thinking that’s been around for aeons. Long before the arrival of a hyper-progressive dogma, there existed an ingrained progressive assumption that right-wing people were not just in error, but actually immoral. To be a Tory in the 1980s and 1990s was to risk accusations of being ‘selfish’ and ‘heartless’. Until the early part of the new millennium the Conservatives still sought to shed the image of the ‘nasty party’.
This is why students of old used to ‘no platform’ contentious speakers, and why students today ‘cancel’ similar types they likewise designate to be beyond the pale. Progressives have forever been liable to regard their most outspoken opponents as unworthy of human dignity. This assumption that those on the right are actually bad people persists in politics today, with Reform in the UK and Donald Trump in America routinely and constantly slandered as ‘fascist’ or ‘racist’ by leftists – campaigners who simultaneously profess to be ‘caring’ and ‘compassionate’.
While the abusive language used by those who call themselves loving and tolerant may strike some as peculiar, or even ironic, it does actually make sense. The reason why so many passionate progressives on social media have heart symbols on their X profiles and declare themselves members of a #BeKind collective, while simultaneously engaging in the most atrocious and vile behaviour, is that those possessed with unshakeable righteousness have always behaved like this.
So many went along with trans ideology or Black Lives Matter because they wanted to appear compassionate
Bigotry and intolerance, whether it be political or religious, manifests itself among those convinced that they have good on their side, and that their opponents are evil. In this regard, hyper-liberals don’t merely hold that left-wing policies are better or more efficient, they believe a left-wing perspective reflects a superior moral character. Today’s bellicose progressives are merely continuing a long tradition, one that equates right with might.
This is why efforts to counter a philosophy based on feelings will always fall on deaf ears. In an attempt to counter the accusation that they are selfish or heartless, conservatives will try in vain to make arguments based on reason. Those whose interest is in economics will invoke Adam Smith’s metaphor of the ‘invisible hand’, the theory that if everyone is motivated by self-interest, then society will consequently benefit in the long term. Social conservatives will argue that policies that encourage individual responsibility, family stability and community cohesion will likewise benefit the country as a whole.
None of this makes a difference. The pull of sentiment and the elevation of convictions triumphs these days. It’s why woke ideology took hold in the western world in the first place. It emerged in a post-Diana culture in which emotion, herd opinion and the imperative of being seen to be good became more esteemed than rational argument. So many went along with trans ideology or Black Lives Matter because they wanted to appear compassionate, because it felt right, and because being progressive always seems like the right thing to do.
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