‘I didn’t leave the Left, the Left left me’
A reaction to 'Home Team Authoritarianism'?
‘I didn’t leave the Left, the Left left me’.
[The Politically Homeless of the 2020s]
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard the above phrase (a paraphrase of a famous quote by President Ronald Reagan) being uttered in the last few years, but it's a lot. It seems to have become the catchphrase of the disenfranchised Liberal; the mantra of the ‘politically homeless’ former Leftie. The type that historically cared about the little guy; believed in social safety nets, equality and Progress (with a capital P); but has become disillusioned with the extremities of the radicals that have taken over their tribe.
In private conversation, many of these will voice their broad sense of fealty to the causes of the ‘Woke’ (social justice, equality, the eradication of discrimination, etc) but claim that they recognise the fringes of the Left have pushed political correctness too far, even to the point where they are asking questions like ‘How long until we have blind people driving buses?’
Many of these people have since stopped cheering for their political home team as a result and are thus adrift in the political waters; rudderless, lost and factionless. Others have aligned themselves with the Right in either an overtly partisan way or loosely, citing that they are ‘small c conservatives’ or ‘neo-cons’, etc. Whether they become an active part of the Right’s ‘Anti-Woke’ movement or not, this is a profound ideological change in political leaning and attitude.
But did these people leave the Left, or did it leave them?
I have pondered this question quite a bit over the last few years, but my instinct has always been that the second part of the question is true; that the Left moved away from them ideologically. That they stood still, anchored in place as the Overton Window sailed over the Woke horizon.
This was increasingly how I felt after 2016 and more so as time went on. Before that, I had always identified as a left leaning centrist and normally voted for centre left parties. But since Brexit, I have seen a demonisation of those on the Right that never sat well with me.
I was a Remainer, but we lost that vote. I got caught up in the ‘Remoaner’ movement for a bit (I must admit), but I always believed that Brexit was the will of the majority (however marginal) so it should be carried out as voted for. Democracy was king for me in that, or indeed, any vote and there will always be a minority who are unhappy with any outcome. We lost, and after a few months of bemoaning, I relented to the democratic voice of the voting public.
But many on the Left never really let it go, and fought it constantly. Even now there are those that claim Labour are doing all they can to rejoin the European Union in one way or the other. This is but one of the ways I have noticed that many factions of the Left seem to ignore the will of the people in favour of promoting their own philosophical framework. Like they know better than the people, (the ‘Populist’ supporting ‘great unwashed’ as it were), and will go along with policies they believe in that the majority would obviously not. You can probably guess the kinds of policy that I am referring to.
Long before Labour got in, I felt they and the other left leaning parties in the UK had completely abandoned the principles that had drawn me to them historically, not least respecting the democratic process and therefore the voice of the majority. I have thus felt politically homeless for close to a decade now.
But that’s me. What about the rest of the politically adrift? I return to the earlier question: Did they leave the Left or did the Left leave them?
As I have already said I have always leant towards the latter, but I recently heard a live streamer say something that resonated with me profoundly and made me think about it more deeply.
This little nugget of wisdom wasn’t discovered during a conversation with a wise sage of political discourse. It wasn’t in a philosophy text or a great literary work. It wasn’t even on a serious journalistic outlet that reports on politics. It was in fact on a Pop Culture entertainment live stream between a bunch of Youtube nerds that I was listening to in my downtime while I played Fifa.
I was listening to Nerdrotic’s Halloween Live stream on YouTube when the conversation got on to politics and the US election. One of the guests said that a lot of the people who previously identified themselves as being on the Left but are now politically homeless were, in fact, never really on the left: they were just Anti-Authoritarian in nature.
The streamer claimed that, until very recently, these ‘Anti-Authoritarian’ types only aligned themselves with the Left in the past because that side historically was the side most ideologically opposed to dictatorial oppression. But since the rise of ‘Wokeism’ with its cancel-culture, compelled speech and purity policing, these individuals have split from the pack as the contemporary form of authoritarianism is coming from their traditional ‘home team’.
This resonated with me because, even when I used to identify with the left, I never felt like I was a Leftist, nor did I ever call myself a Leftie. That was because I knew that I had some opinions that those who do would find to be abhorrent. For example, I have always believed that borders should be policed and patrolled. Another is I fundamentally disagree with the concept of cultural relativism. For example, I believe that a culture that DOES NOT mutilate the genitals of children is fundamentally better than one that DOES. Controversial, I know. I must be a fascist or something, right?
So I never aligned completely with the Lefties and, although I would never discuss it with them at the time, I was never ‘anti-conservative’. If a centre right party won an election, I was never too bothered as I saw them as ‘not too far’ from where I landed on the spectrum. I even agreed with some of the Tories’ policies on certain issues occasionally; another fact I could never tell my artsy, liberal friends.
I saw then, and still do, that both a centre right and a centre left government were ‘close enough’ for me in terms of political philosophy. No one will ever have a leadership that completely marries up to their own personal political ideology, so I settle for ‘close to the centre line’, regardless of which side it is on.
The ‘culture war’ has highlighted this point for me in spades. What I dislike politically isn’t one side or the other, but extremism itself. Like almost anyone else, I don’t want to live under a Fascist dictatorship. But equally, I don’t want to live under a Communist one either. History has amply proven both to be societal dead ends.
I am, as the nerd on the stream said, at the base of it an ‘Anti-Authoritarian’ in nature. I want politics to gravitate to the centre to maximise the freedom of the individual by avoiding the authoritarian extremities on either side. Bouncing around the line is fine. A little left one election, a little right the next? That works for me. What doesn’t is a government system that demands you fall in line, regardless of the colour of their ties.
I completely agree with the streamer and thus believe that’s why people are abandoning the Left. Not because they became conservatives all of a sudden, but because the Left became the authoritarians under the influence of Radical Progressivism in the last decade and a half. The Left changed, and lost the support of those whose main political drive is Anti-Authoritarianism, like me. That’s my thesis, at least.
Thanks for reading,
The Common Centrist
I absolutely am one of these politically homeless types and I know exactly what my problem is.
I was always left wing because I was raised with Enlightenment values, namely that everyone is equal and that the truth matters.
Because everyone is equal (in terms of rights etc), I want every baby to be born with a fighting chance of success.
I want everyone to be educated well, but not indoctrinated, as is often the case these days.
I know that life will never be fair, but I think that we should care about making it as fair as possible.
And, in a similarly egalitarian vein, I believe that reality should be accessible to all, and that objective reality should be our focus, rather than the privately held “lived experience”.
Truth matters and people matter.
The left became too mired in postmodernism, undermining objective reality and then unequally doling out the power to shape a socially-constructed narrative. It gave itself the meta-power of deciding who should receive these advantages.
The left decided the ends justify the means, whereas, for me, upholding the principles of the Enlightenment always was the objective.
In short, the left became the right by deciding that some people are more important than others because of made-up stories. And the new hierarchy presented opportunities to gain power for those who toed the line.
For all of these reasons, the left has left me.
OMG, I feel you were writing with my words. I could not have expressed it better. Thank you for this. I am in the exact same position living in Canada and coming from a country that traditionally was center-left. I come from Venezuela, where we used to have a balance between socialism and democracy until Chavez, who masked himself as a socialist but, in practice, was an authoritarian dictator, got into power and never left.
Here in Canada, I was a liberal until Trudeau became woke, and we are getting to the point where soon we won't be able to breathe without apologizing about it.
Thanks again for eloquently writing about it.