The Decade the Left Destroyed Itself
One of the ways the teens — this bruising, miserable decade now drawing to a troubled close — will be remembered is this: the left was shattered and destroyed across the globe.Extremist right wing parties, on a spectrum from hypernationalist to protofascist, arose in every corner of the globe, rich and poor, old and new: from America to Britain to China to India to Europe and beyond. The world began to race backwards — precisely because the left was left a smoking wreck, across the globe.
The situation’s so bad, ironically, funnily, that when a vaguely leftish government does rise to power, it’s the stuff of astonished global headlines, like in New Zealand and Finland. But those are small exceptions — though they are wise and gentle nations — which prove the rule: the hard right rocketed to power, and the left was left destroyed, as a global force, power, or influence.
It was the worst decade for the left since the 1930s. But weirdly, the left doesn’t seem to even understand that, much less be curious about why that ruinous oucome happened.Now, if you’re the kind of angry leftist…whom that thought makes…angry…then…good. You’re going to hate this essay. The question is whether today’s left, made of angry, militant children is capable of learning anything from a ruinous decade, in which they lost nearly all global influence, power, and respect….willfully. If they can’t, then the next decade is going to be a lot like this one, only worse.
The left wasn’t destroyed just by the right. The left committed a kind of political suicide, across the globe. Here are seven reasons why.(Let me pause for a moment to say: I’m not particularly political. I hate politics. I think disco and fashion and puppies are better things to do with a life. So don’t take this in the spirit of some angry activist. I’m not. I’m not remotely a leftist, much less a perfect one. This is meant in the spirit of gentle, constructive criticism, from someone who’s lived through social collapses, and studied them.)
The left gave up on the idea of solidarity.Let me use myself as an example — always a tricky thing to do, so have a little mercy. If I were to log onto Twitter right now, and express an opinion that deviated in any way whatsoever from the fringe — on anything, say what kind of healthcare system works best, gender, anything at all — I’d be beset by an angry mob. Of purists. Demanding that I toe the line.
In other words, the modern left demands a kind of total conformity. Not one iota of free thinking or self-expression is allowed anymore. Every opinion and belief must be the one held by the most vocal, angry, shoutiest fringe. Or they will sic their armies upon you. And who wants that?
But the problem is that you can’t build a political coalition this way. All that happened as a result of these kinds of childish, student politics of anger and rage was that…the left began to attack its very own allies, sympathizers, and friends…who then turned away in disgust. That was the story of Corbynism in Britain. It was also the story, sadly, of America’s left, over and over again. The fringe succeeded — but at the expense of a working politics across social classes, groups, stratums. And that is because the fringe wasn’t — and isn’t — interested in solidarity, but in sniping, in petty insults, in twitter wars fought by attack mobs, but those only alienate everyone who’s not in the ultra militant 5% of the left’s shock troops. Good luck winning an election with that — which is my next point.
This point is so crucial, I want to say it again.Solidarity is the most fundamental thing the left has.How did this left give up on it almost entirely?
The left forgot how to win elections.How does the left actually win elections — versus simply mock and harass its friends and allies on Twitter and Facebook? The answer is very simple — European history teaches it to us. The moderate left and the hard left form an alliance — even though they might dislike one another. The Social Democrats and Communists form a coalition, in other words (and in a modern context, that might include Greens and so forth.) They set aside their minor differences, which are mostly intellectual — a global revolution today or tomorrow? Full communism, this century, or next? — and understand that the pragmatic goal of having a functioning society is bigger than theoretical debates. And then…they win.
Because that bloc of people in society encompasses everyone from the poor through the working class to the middle class to the bourgeois. Conservatives are left, usually, routed. When left parties work together, finally, the political center is redefined: it’s no longer tilted right, but angled left.
But the left forgot this crucial lesson: that real-world politics is about working together, setting aside minor differences. Why? Because the angry children took over, and decided that purity tests and ideological conformity to extremist theory was more important than…real world coalition building. Hence, in Britain, Corbyn’s angry, bellowing Communists quickly alienated the moderates, and in the States, the center is still baffled by whom to choose. The story was the same, from India to China to Europe. The extreme left fought the moderate left — and the right surged to power, laughing, astonished at the stupidity of it.
Take France. There, the whole country is currently…on strike. That’s a powerful left. Communists, Social Democrats, everyone else…in coalition. That’s solidarity, in action. But nearly everywhere else, the left was reduced to stupid, toxic infighting…Corbyn’s shock troops attacking everyone else…Pelosi vs AOC…and so on.
The left has devolved to student protest movements, incapable of handling criticism, stewing in militant rage — and that way gave up the real world politics of power.What does the extreme left go on attacking the moderate left over and about? About fringe issues, mostly theoretical. Do you believe in my right to be a pangender asexual magical being? Should you pledge allegiance to Lenin and Marx? Make no mistake my friends, these things might matter to you — but they don’t to 99% of humanity. That’s not to say that you are unimportant. Sure you are. It’s to say: is everyone else important to you? Anyone else?
What was left in the lurch — left totally undeveloped as a result of this endless animosity, this venomous fringe theoretical political infighting…was…a real world politics. What plan, what agenda, what vision did the left have for solving any of society’s growing problems, from inequality to poverty to despair? On that topic, there was…a deafening silence.
More and more, left parties simply didn’t offer any solutions to this decade’s problems — at all.That’s still the story in America: the Democrats literally have no solution for America’s problems that they can agree on. That was the story in Britain, too, where the Corbynites spent three years attacking friends, so failed to develop any agenda whatsoever until…literally the lastweeksof the election. What the? But that story was repeated in India and Europe and China, too. In India, the left offered little but the same old tired nostrums, and in Europe, the left devolved into infighting over minor-league issues, like bureaucracy. Everywhere, the dynamic was precisely the same: infighting left the left crippled, impotent, so weak that it couldn’t do the world of real-world politics anymore. Who has time to envision or plan the future of a society, after all, when there are twitter wars to be fought, allies to be shamed, friends to be alienated, for not being pure and perfect enough? So is it any surprise the left’s share of the global electorate shrank catastrophically? Does anyone but the militant fringe want to be part of this kind of militant Soviet Bolshevik leftism, really?
The left forgot the most basic lesson of modern history: fascism wins during depression, unless there’s a New Deal. Why does the left need a powerful real-world agenda? Because people will revert hard right, especially in times of poverty, if there isn’t one. That is the fundamental lesson of political history. Nobody chooses progress unless somebody is offering it. But in the 2010s, who was offering much progress? Nobody, really.
Left parties forgot, in every corner of the globe, the most fundamental lesson of economic history. Depression and stagnation breed fascism. When a global economy is becoming depressed, like during the 2010s, the left has to offer an even more powerful plan for social reinvention, and come together faster and harder to offer it. A New Deal. A New Society. A Marshall Plan.
Yet can you name a single society in which the left offered a New Deal, during a decade of inequality, depression, and despair? I can’t.There wasn’t one. Notone.Nobody —nobody— rose to this challenge. Don’t you think that’s…incredible? I do. Because this challenge was the most crucial — and fundamental — of all. Don’t we all study it in college? So what the?
This was Keynes’ fundamental lesson — one of the left’s greatest thinkers, the father of modern left political economy. He built on Marx and Durkheim, the grandfathers of the left as we know it. During lean times, people will revert hard to the right, unless the left offers them dramatic social reinvention. The reason is dead simple. You are getting poorer. Much easier to blame your decline on hated others, even more powerless than you, than anything or anyone else. Poverty breeds distrust, hate, division, rancour, spite, pessimism. Despair becomes rage. Neighbors become adversaries, friends become opponents. It’s an old, old story. When the harvest fails, the villagers sacrifice virgins, and so on. How on earth — how on earth — did the left fail to remember…any of this?
The reason, again, is that the left was so busy with radical-chic, with infighting and purity testing, with the perfection of comrades…with proving how tough and nasty it could be on Twitter…that it forgot…history…reality…truth…everything else. It was more important to prove you were cool, one of the gang, by making an enemy of a friend on Twitter, than…remembering the great lessons of history. But the left’s forgetting of history hardly ends there. That brings me to my next reason the left got devastated.
The left was seduced by narrow fringe issues — and forgot its greatest ideas and breakthroughs.If I ask the average millennial about some abstruse aspects of gender theory, they’ll probably be able to reply with unerring precision — about, say, what “panromantic” means. But if I ask them what Keynes’s fundamental economic breakthrough was, what Durkheim said about social bonds fracturing, what Marx’s definition of exploitation and immiseration are, what Arendt really meant by “the banality of evil”, or why Orwell was a socialist…do you think they’ll be able to tell me? I doubt it. That’s not an aspersion cast on millennials. It’s on those who teach them. How exactly are today’s young people being taught this bizarre history of the left that leaves out…all its greatest minds and thinkers and their ideas? One which begins with a new cast of mostly American ideologues, who imagine that culture wars are the beginning and ending of the left’s ideals?
Let me be clear. There’s nothing wrong with caring about culture, whether gender or comic books or whatever. There’s everything right with it. Go forth and be your bad self. But it cannot be the only thing or the most important thing. Because to most human beings, it isn’t. Sorry if that rubs you the wrong way — it’s a simple truth. The average person is “straight” precisely because that is true. If a leftism is alienating them because it doesn’t seem to care about their priorities very much — which are usually simpler things like jobs, families, retirement, savings — what future does it have?
Like I said, I love disco and fashion. I wear 3 inch Cuban heels (don’t judge me, and I’m sorry.) But I can’t make that the basis of my…politics. I can’t say to the average working person: “Hey, you need to support more disco and fashion! High heel rights for men first!” But that is effectively what the left says to people now — you must support us, in our cultural aims, which you probably don’t share, whether or not we support you…and then maybe, one day, in some distant future, we might think about supporting you. That’s just not…a realistic way to think about politics. The left’s ignorance of its own history is intimately connected to its failure to build political coalitions this way, through the emergence of a kind of juvenile narcissism — “it’s all about me!! I’m the most oppressed one!! Me me me!!”
(Don’t think, by the way, the modern left is the first to make this mistake — or the first to care about culture, either. Weimar Berlin, too, was full of radical culture warriors in cabarets. That hardly stopped the Nazis from taking over. It’s an old story.)
The left at this point is literally so divorced from its history that if I say something like “Keynes is the father of modern political economy,” I’ll either get attacked for it, or I’ll be laughed at, and told that some kind of faddish political correctness matters more. Wait, what? Keynes is literally the mind on whose epic and radical ideas the world was rebuilt after a world war. Who can teach youmoreabout how to build a politics of mass appeal? Yet today’s left couldn’t pick him out of a police station lineup — but they can tell you a million different reasons comic book movies matter. How can a left like that ever win? One focused on being petty, nasty, and small? One so incredibly narrow-minded?
That brings me to my next point.
The left gave up on its fundamental values.The thing that truly distinguishes the left from the right is its values. The values, in particular, of gentleness, wisdom, friendship, caring, concern, compassion, fellowship, self-expression, understanding, curiosity, defiance. That’s not a random list. Re-read, and think about Keynes, Marx, Arendt, Frankl, Orwell. They are its truest exemplars. Their message wasn’t just their ideas — but their values. The left has nothing — nothing — without these values, because it becomes an empty shell.
But do you see much of any of those values on today’s left? I don’t. I see angry children led by their own demagogues, who are perpetually enraged at their friends, shouting at their allies, testing the purity of their flock. I see exactly the polar opposite values of a true leftism on today’s left. Spite. Rage. Puritanism. Groupthink. Tribalism. A complete lack of room or space for even the slightest difference in opinion. I see people who think hostility is the way to build a political coalition, intimidation is the way to keep a politics vital, and demagoguery is the way towards a better future. None of that is true.
When the left gives up on its fundamental values of gentleness, decency, humanity, friendship, expansiveness, curiousity — and replaces them with spite, rage, intimidation, hostility, conformity, and tribalism…in what way is it different from the hard right? Sure, its ends might be different. But its means are not. And in politics, means and ends are not so distinguishable. A noble end had by terrible means is…still an atrocity or a massacre or a war. Perhaps you see my point. Who is really going to be tempted to join a bitter, venomous, militant left, except a tiny fringe of the angry and embittered? The average person will just roll their eyes…and head off to the nearest conservative party instead.
The horseshoe theory of politics, as its sometimes called, came tragically true in the 2010s.The left was indistinguishable from the extreme right. Its goals differed — but to the average person, being part a movement of hostility, rage, intimidation, cruelty, and conformity? If they were going to join one, it was always going to be on the right. Because that is what the right is, at its worst. It is natural for the right, and it’s easy. There are easier targets to hate — Mexicans, Muslims, Jews, Europeans. But when the left asks you to militantly hate someone…the result for the average person, like me, is bafflement…and walking away.
The left has to give people something to love, or it fails catastrophically. And it didn’t do that in the teens. Think of an Obama. Sure, we can criticize him in many ways. But he attained real power because he got many of the lessons above correct. Above all, he gave people desperately seeking something to believe…something to love again. What was that something? It was many of the foundational ideas of the left. True — he didn’t live up to them. But that’s a secondary challenge. First, you have to gain power, and today’s left can’t remotely seem to do that. So what should the left really give people to love?
The left stopped fighting for a better world.There’s a funny and strange and sad thing I see in American leftists. They might care about gender politics and higher wages and even healthcare, sometimes. But they will almost never, ever care…about a better world. I I say to the American leftist: “Listen, do you think every child on planet earth should have an education, healthcare, money, retirement, and so on?” They’ll look at me blankly. What the hell am I talking about?
What the hell I’m talking about is…leftism. The real thing. It was about global solidarity. A global working class. The global dispossessed and exploited and abused. A global proletariat. A global revolution. It wasn’t about your revolution or my revolution. It was about our revolution. All of us. Remember any of that? I do — and like I said, I’m not remotely a leftist.
But today’s modern left doesn’t care about the world. Identity politics killed any notion of a larger “us.”So today’s radical-chic leftist doesn’t know any of the following facts, usually: half the world lives on less than $5 a day, a quarter of the world doesn’t have decent sanitation, global hunger is actually rising, and so on. The modern left in rich countries literally has no solidarity whatsoever with poorer ones. The radical-chic leftist thinks the revolution ends on his or her campus. Do they even know a world exists?
I abjure identity politics for this reason. It taught the leftist to only care about people he or she “identifies” with, and so if some poor kid in some war-torn country will never have food, education, or opportunities…who cares? We’re the oppressed ones, us, my “identity!” Wait, what? You…the rich Westerner…are more oppressed than a kid with literally no money, food, shelter, medicine, safety, or chances? Give me a break. Only a fool would believe that. But that is what identity politics has made of the left. Incapable of caring about a world they can’t see. That’s not to say there aren’t degrees of oppression. But to see yourself as the horizon of oppression in the world is to be blind.
The right didn’t destroy the left. It didn’t need to. The left destroyed itself. It committed suicide, turning on itself, instead of fighting the bad guys. One bite at a time. With irrelevant narcissism, impotent perfectionism, endless infighting, a great forgetting of its raison d’être — which culminated, worst of all, in a shattering indifference to the suffering of the world.And that is the deepest reason the left got devastated. It turned so narcissistic it forgot that there was a world still suffering far more than the rich leftist. Who could care about a movement that shallow, that naive, that blind? I couldn’t — and increasingly, many people joined me in my alienation. And so the left was routed, across the globe. Without a better world to fight for — what can the left offer people to love again? Not much, is the answer. And so there the left is…dying a slow, painful, idiot’s death: one of self-immolation, not even one of the good fight.
My conclusion is simple. Unless the left it rediscovers itself, it will go on becoming irrelevant, impotent, and self-destructive. It will go on turning into something very much like basically an impotent global student protest movement — but it will never really have real political power in our lifetimes. The question is: does it care enough, is it even intelligent enough, to understand any of this, or is it just going to hate and attack those of us who point out what’s so painfully obvious by now?
My money’s on the latter.
UmairDecember 2019
