Regressive Left Pt. 9: The Militant Mind

As was discussed previously, the central characteristic of regressive leftism is a manichean worldview that posits a neat division of society into oppressed and oppressor factions, with little room for ambiguity or shades of grey.  This naturally lends itself to eschewal of the negotiated give and take of regular politics.  All out crusade is the only viable option, with total defeat of the oppressor faction the only desirable goal.  This inevitably causes increased frustration and anger, as such comprehensive and sweeping goals are inevitably unattainable.  Partial success, far from leading to satisfaction, merely whets the appetite, as it leads to the illusion that total, unqualified victory may, in fact, be possible.

But only if vigilance and zeal are redoubled, for partial victory also serves as a reminder of just how vast and powerful the oppressor and their myriad systems of control really are.  As a result, the ends always justify the means, and anything done by the "oppressed" or "revolutionary" faction is good because they are the ones choosing to do it.

The license that this kind of thinking can give for abuse can, I suspect, draw truly sociopathic people into regressive leftism and I’ve heard and read numerous accounts and even had a few personal experiences of what can only be described as cluster B personality disorder behaviors from regressive left activists.  But it would be incorrect and dangerous to assume that this is true of all regressive leftists or even the rule rather than the exception.  Remember what Nietzsche said about he who fights with monsters.

In light of this, do not make the mistake of thinking regressive leftists are fundamentally irrational.  World views such as Marxism and Intersectional Feminism are highly rationalistic and, within their own conceptual framework, logically consistent. In fact, that is a big part of their appeal.  Like religion, they provide tools to make sense of an otherwise often senseless world, without appealing to the mumbo jumbo of religion, racism or conspiracy theory.  They simplify otherwise complex issues and make clear who the good guys and bad guys are.

They are successful doctrines that have drawn large numbers of adherents because they begin with sensible and defensible positions: that capitalism naturally reproduces economically unequal results, that human societies are almost always patriarchal or that the historical development of western civilization has privileged white people disproportionately.  Libraries could be filled with the works of Marxist or feminist scholarship, and much of it is meticulously researched and documented, and sometimes subject to scholarly rigor and peer review, albeit within fairly ideologically homogenous fields of study.

It is precisely their value in explaining the workings of the world that make leftist doctrines vulnerable to regressivism.  Sometimes suddenly but more often subtly, the scope of the sensible, rational and documented ideology expands until it becomes a one size fits all formula for explaining away anything.  At some point, the formula provided by the leftist ideology to explain the workings of the world goes too far, and a shift from the plausible to the outlandish has taken place.

For example, it is ultimately extrapolated from feminist theory – with meticulously detailed appeals to economic and social inequality past and present that male sexual attraction to women is an act of oppression, whereby men objectify women and reduce their status in a way that hampers their ability to compete with men on equal footing.  From this it is concluded that even polite, civil compliments from men to women are a form of harassment.  Pointing out that there are hormonal and biological factors in sexual attraction that operate independently of social context, or suggesting that the repression required to stop all male expressions of attraction towards women would be excessive to the point of being totalitarian virtually never produces a re-evaluation of the doctrine of sexual objectification, in part because the initial premise of male dominance remains sensible.

As a corollary to this, regressive ideologies evolve in this manner to contain within themselves closed systems of logic that can be used to ward off any and all criticism of the ideology.  The flaws of Marxism or feminism, however obvious or glaring when viewed from the outside are not acknowledged, but rather hand waved away as apologetics for capitalism or patriarchy.  The system of oppression, evil as it is, will corrupt the movement whenever and however possible, and to grant those who dissent from the regressive left ideology in question a fair hearing is to traffic with the forces of oppression.

White males are told that they cannot criticize intersectional feminism.  In the former USSR, this kind of thinking went as far as to deem those who disagreed with Marxist-Leninism to be mentally ill, and interring them in mental hospitals!  This epistemic closure is a key feature in many forms of authoritarian belief systems, and that present day media and academia has enabled it in the case of feminism should concern anyone who believes in an open society.

As we've seem, the style of thought associated with regressive leftism is recurring throughout history, and suggests a universal human vulnerability to it, at least for a certain personality type.  Beware the tendency to use pop-psychology concepts to rationalize away regressive left behavior or dismiss their arguments.  But likewise, don’t rule out underlying psychological impulses that can push people into regressive leftism, or any other kind of extremism.  To look at the whole picture requires a look at both internal psychological as well as external social causes for regressive behavior.

The Manichean world view that typifies regressive leftism requires that the negative characteristics of the movement or the party or the revolution and its leaders and theorists be denied.  One way in which this can be done is by projection: this is when the leftists in question attribute to outsiders – especially ones closely associated with oppressive characteristics such as capitalists or white males – attributes that they themselves possess but wish to deny.  By attributing negative characteristics to other people, we infer that we ourselves do not have these characteristics. 

Projection is an imperfect process.  As such, people who engage in it seek the company of others who employ this defense mechanism in a similar way.  The fact that the projected attribute is also both deeply despised and present but denied in ourselves causes it to trigger deep feelings of anger whenever it is encountered in others.  The “other” group onto which the negative attribute is projected becomes an acceptable receptacle for the pent up rage of the regressive leftist, which is often considerable given the demanding nature that life in a regressive movement often has. 

Dyed-in-the-wool radicals can also have a hard time getting along with people outside the movement, and distrust the simple creature comforts that many of us take for granted given that they are procured in a manner that is somehow oppressive, discriminatory or exploitative.  Enjoyment of consumer goods is tainted by guilt over environmental degradation or the exploitation of labor that results from their production.  Everywhere in popular culture, from TV and movies to video games, systems of dominance and marginalization are reflected in statements and gestures other people take for granted as innocuous and insignificant, in a manner not altogether different from how religious fundamentalists hear backwardly masked praises to Satan in rock music albums, or conspiracy theorists see evidence of encroaching illuminati power here, there and everywhere.

As suggested above, even something as fundamental as sex drive and romantic partnership is suspect due to the complex minefield of power differentials that ostensibly characterize heterosexual relationships.  Noteworthy also is that regressive leftists are not alone in their anxieties surrounding sexual relationships: religious fundamentalists and other forms of social purists have shown similar attitudes throughout history, if couched in different terms.

This tendency was wonderfully satirized by the "anti-sex league" of George Orwell's 1984.  Could it be, as suggested in 1984, that regressive movements seek to repress the sex urge and channel this repressed energy into fanaticism on behalf of the faith or the revolution?  Could it also be, again as Orwell suggests in 1984, that intimate relationships create a private realm outside the regulatory reach of political or ecclesiastical control, and as such are opposed by people with authoritarian tendencies?   Would it be reasonable to assume that the depth of intimacy entailed by sexual intercourse would naturally cause great anxiety in people inclined to identify with a church, a nationality or a revolutionary movement as opposed to pursuits and relationships of a more personal nature?  Anxiety that they would naturally project onto the nature of the sexual relationship itself, and denounce it as a form of sin, degeneracy or objectification?

Because the nature of projection attributes to others the traits often found in oneself that are denied, this often results in a funny tendency for regressives to end up imitating their opponents.  Socialist societies end up being highly stratified, while feminists have few qualms about telling other women what their place is, and multiculturalist movements revel in their own forms of ethnic stereotyping.  This is always okay when they do it, naturally.  Power plus prejudice, after all.

Related to this is the regressive left’s tendency towards authoritarian vanguardism – which is the appropriation of popular movements or struggles waged by marginalized people for their own political ends, which they are, of course, justified in doing due to their being on the right side of a manichean struggle.  Regressives feel quite entitled to speak on behalf of whole demographic cohorts, and when disagreed with by members of those cohorts, fall back on the dangerous notions of internalized oppression or false consciousness.  Worst of all are members of "marginalized" groups that consciously betray the movement.  Hell itself can't compete with the sheer hatred that regressive leftists reserve for right wing women or people of color.

Given that regressive leftists regard the societies they live in as hopelessly oppressive, they have a corresponding tendency to lionize groups that are marginalized, oppressed or excluded, to the point of willful blindness and denial of the flaws of these groups.  This ties in with the romanticist tendencies of the late 18^th and early 19^th century crucible wherein western leftism was born.

The results run a gamut of irrational attitudes on part of regressive leftists towards idealized groups, ranging from a quaint infatuation towards “noble savages” or women as being “closer to the earth” to the dangerous beliefs that preferred groups can literally do no wrong and are completely justified in violent acts towards “privileged” groups, to an outright and open sympathy and admiration for repressive and dictatorial societies abroad, such as the loyalty of western communist parties to Soviet Russia, the New Left’s idealization of third world revolutionary dictators, and the 21^st century regressive left’s defense of Jihadist Islam against its “racist” critics.

Apologetics and excuses for violent and oppressive behavior when done by the “right” people against “deserving” oppressors is a sure fire sign of regressivism.  This signifies that genuine faith in the utopian ideal has been lost, and resentment, anger and blaming has now come to define the movement.  From here, it is not a far jump to infighting, fragmentation and eventual implosion.  This is a common historical cycle among regressive movements.

Be careful when attributing psychological motives to regressive leftists.  Do not project your own less desirable attributes onto the regressive left.  Again, remember what Nietzsche said about gazing long into the abyss.  While psychopathology can contribute to a propensity towards regressivism, do not use it as an excuse to handwave claims made by left wing people.  The line demarcating a flaky radical and a strenuous but serious social critic worth listening to is not always so cut and dried.  It is self satisfying to point at regressives and assure yourself that you’re so much smarter and better adjusted than they are.  Once you expose the regressive’s fraudulent attempt at feeling superior, you can then claim that feeling for its obvious rightful owner: yourself!   Who the hell do these regressives think they are, anyway?

It is crucial to keep in mind that these characteristics are not unique to the regressive left, and can also be found on the far right, in religious cults or ethnic separatist groups.  Numerous explorations of political extremism, for example, find certain similarities among extremists of all kinds.  One of the best examples of this is the seminal work by Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.  

For Hoffer, mass movements appeal to a desire for change on part of people who have an external as opposed to an internal locus of control.  Meaning that they are more likely to blame the world around them or blame society as opposed to themselves for their own failings and shortcomings, even in instances where the latter is obviously to blame.  Also a certain kind of person experiences a restlessness and discontent with their own existence as a kind of frustration, from which a substitute or an escape is desired, and found in a utopian cause of one kind or another.  Hoffer stresses that the commonality of mind that exists among true believers of all stripes results in mass movements being interchangeable.  Meaning that the frustrated can as easily find escape in regressive rightism as in regressive leftism.  This may explain why regressive right and left so often resemble one another behind their differing ideological veneers.

Excellent studies of political extremism have been done by US academics John George and Laird Wilcox in their 1996 opus, American Extremists.  Richard Hofstadter takes on regressive rightists more specifically in his excellent 1963 essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, though many of its principles could as well apply to the regressive left.  An excellent work on authoritarian leftism more specifically (and a valuable resource in the preparing of this blog series) is Richard J. Ellis's 1998 The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America.  All of these works explore the activism of people whose minds are marked by an inability to "bring together the dichotomy of both positive and negative qualities of the self and others into a cohesive, realistic whole."

Also worth a look is psychiatrist Arthur Deikman's 1990 study of cults and cult behavior, The Wrong Way Home.  It has since been republished as Them and Us: Cult Thinking and the Terrorist Threat.  Deikman describes the allure of "totalist" institutions lying in their appeal to two deep seated human drives: to be on the side of good, and a concept he labels the dependency dream:

The regressive(!) wish for security that uses the family as a model, creating an authoritarian leadership structure (the parent) and a close knit exclusive group (the children.)

The cult member - or member of any other closed social system or maybe even an extremist believer in a political ideology, seeks to regress back to a child-like state wherein an omnipotent parental figure is in complete control.  Maintenance of this illusion requires epistemic closure: an insulation of the belief system and its adherents from external influences that threaten to undermine it.  Thus, outsiders and dissidents are demonized and ideological conformity and groupthink is made paramount.

... Concluded in Part 10: Lucid Leftism

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Identity Politics: Pro Social Justice, Anti SJW

Identity politics is all over the media these days.  Did it contribute to Donald Trump's electoral victory or not?  Were white voters put off of the excessive feminist and POC (people of color) identity politics of the democratic party?  Were white male voters engaging in a reactionary identity politics of their own in their support for Trump?  These allegations abound.

I am not a fan of identity politics, by and large.  But I think it's important to clear up exactly what I think identity politics are and my opinion of the role I think identity politics should play in a reformed progressive left.

To be a progressive leftist is to be concerned first and foremost with social justice.  Now this is a loaded term these days.  I do not refer to the monstrously bastardized form of "social justice" that we've all come to know and ridicule on the internet over the last ten years or so.  This isn't about some blue haired lolcow on tumblr with her own pronouns and made up sexual orientation posting about how all cishet white males need to go die.  I'm referring to what the term has actually meant throughout the millennia over which the concept has existed and the century and a half that the phrase itself has been in use: a belief in the essential worth and dignity of all people and that the social order should reflect this.  In light of this, the recent mutations of identity politics exemplified by what's happened on tumblr has, in fact, been a glaring blow the concept of social justice has taken in living memory.

So, identity politics (IdPol) then.  To be an honest and meaningful concept, social justice cannot blind itself to those instances where there is unfair treatment of people based on some arbitrary characteristic like race, gender and so on.  The defenders of IdPol would object that history is replete with such instances and that their effects continue to be felt in unequal opportunities suffered by members of the victim-groups to this day.  To say nothing of the fact that racism, misogyny, homophobia and so forth are by no means confined to the ash heap of history.  And that there is nothing wrong with pointing any or all of this out.  This is true.  To redress the grievances of people who have been discriminated against due to some aspect or another of their identity requires a political activism that can, with but little exaggeration, be described as identity politics, and that it would be morally and intellectually disingenuous of any self described leftist people or groups to disregard these politics merely for their identitarian character.

None of the above is what most critics of identity politics object to.  Only the far right fringe would object to Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that we be judged by the content of our character rather than by the color of our skin.  What the critics of IdPol object to is the deterministic and Manichean character that such politics can, at times, take on.  In these instances, logic becomes distorted and what began as a push for social justice can become its polar opposite.

What seems to drive this is the IdPol activist seeing not instances of discrimination and oppression of her group here and there throughout history, but rather seeing discrimination and oppression of her group as being the motive force in history.  The totality of all history, at least of a certain culture or definable era, is the oppression of her people at the hands of a broader society characterized by no other quality than hatred for the oppressed group.  What is therefore felt needed to liberate her people and secure justice for them is therefore not equal status within the society, but the root and branch destruction, or at least radical transformation, of that society.  From there, much discourse involves the ongoing process of shoehorning events and issues into that narrative.

Once accepted, if not consciously and intellectually at least subconsciously and instinctively, the IdPol activist has opened the door to the acceptance of all the most detestable features of regressive leftism or right wing extremism, as the case may be.

When one is locked in a winner take all death-grapple against the ultimate evil oppressor, one cannot afford to be bothered with the niceties of civil discourse or even political give and take.  When the stakes are nothing less than the freedom or even the very survival of your people, one does not negotiate with evil without compromising one's own goodness.  To even consider the possibility that the "dark side" might actually make some good points or have some legitimacy of any kind is to open the door to temptation and eventual heresy and treachery.  Such misgivings cannot be entertained, even a bit!  Only complete victory will suffice.  And it must be achieved by whatever means are necessary.

In such a struggle, the ends justify all means.  Double standards when they serve the ends of the "good" side are not merely acceptable, but necessary.  So too is censorship and repression of members of the "bad" side, even if they're not acting bad in that particular instance.  In fact, the good side cannot afford to be lulled into believing that the bad side, both individually and collectively, can do anything that isn't bad, at least in the long run.  Any act of good faith or charity done by any member of the oppressor group or class is done only to lull the marginalized side into false complacency.  All arguments made by the oppressor groups are done with nothing other than the sole intention of betrussing their privilege and reinforcing the marginalized status of oppressed groups.  Pointing out that one belongs to the oppressor class is therefore more than sufficient to shut down any argument they make.  Only the utmost of unwavering vigilance at all times is a fair and acceptable means of dealing with any member of the oppressor group.

The dangers of this kind of thinking should be obvious.  It lends itself to precisely the kind of self righteousness that ends up enabling the very kinds of oppressive and attrocious actions that give rise to later variations of IdPol.  Ironically, it tends to devolve into the IdPol movements coming to resemble their opponents at their very worst.  When we identify ourselves by who we oppose, we have a funny way of coming to imitate them.  So we end up with feminists who police even non-coercive sexual expression and mandate gender roles, men's groups that advocate the wholesale sexual and romantic rejection of women, POC groups that insist upon "safe spaces" that amount to de-facto racial segregation, and white nationalist advocates appealing to multi-culturalist sentiment.

Bear in mind that the attrocities that most incense western progressives these days were motivated, at least in part, by similar kinds of dualistic, Manichean thinking.  Adolf Hitler believed the Jews to be so malignant that to even share the same world with them was a risk not worth taking.  The European Christian powers colonized other parts of the world in part due to a desire to save the indiginous peoples of the colonized regions from the damnation they'd suffer as a result of not being Christianized, and to bring the light of European rationalism to the uncivilized savages.  The very definition of the White Man's burden.  Of course, they made a tidy profit while doing so, but one is entitled to material comfort for doing God's work, is he not?

Once the attrocity has been commited, after that, it is too late.  Restitution is slow and costly.  The ends only rarely justify the means.  This kind of Manichean self righteousness has a powerful way of blinding people to their own potential moral failings.  Those who see the world entirely in pure good vs. ultimate evil terms put themselves at great risk of ending up in the latter rather than the former category.

What I've described here is the most extreme and quintessential form of IdPol.  Most feminists, MRAs, Black Lives Matter supporters or white nationalists would not go this far.  But some do.  Think of IdPol as a continuum.  To be totally anti IdPol is reductionist, and usually done for self serving reasons.  Reasonable concerns with IdPol should not serve as a shield against all allegations of racism, sexism or the like.  Such allegations should be looked at objectively and accepted - or not based on their merits.

But the tendency to take such an assertion as itself an act of racism or sexism - common in today's hypersensitive social justice spaces, is an equally dangerous extreme, and usually done with equally self serving intent.  It is tempting and flattering to view oneself and one's identity as being a stalwart force for good against an onslaught of pure evil.  Not to mention that it gives our humdrum everyday lives a sense of meaning and purpose.  It taps into what I believe is an instinctual desire to be heroic.  We are drawn to heroic mythology, be it the quest of the Argonauts to claim the golden fleece or the Fellowship of the Ring's mission to destroy the one ring, and quite often we are drawn to the politics we embrace for similar underlying reasons.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.  But it must always be tempered by self reflection.  Such thinking can be quite ego stroking and therefore addictive.  Thus, support or opposition to IdPol must be tempered by self reflection and a capacity to see ourselves as being a potential force for the very kinds of evils we set out to conquer.