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Matt Goodwin recently posted a piece claiming that ‘hyper-liberals’ rather than populists are the real extremists. He was citing a Times article by Matthew Syed. Both men appear to have the principles of liberalism confused and conflated with multiple other phenomena. This precise confusion and conflation is a pervasive problem found primarily on the populist ‘woke’ left and the populist, postliberal right that obscures concepts essential to the preservation of modern liberal democracies and makes productive conversation across political tribes very difficult. Meanwhile, the use of terms like ‘extremist’ and ‘far- (left or right) deflects from and obscures what actually makes a position objectionable and is commonly used by both groups to do precisely that. This essay will use these two pieces to try to untangle these concepts.
Goodwin paraphrases Syed, writing,
Perhaps, [Syed] ponders, we have been looking for “extremists” in the wrong place. Because the real extremists, he argues, are not the ordinary men and women who want secure borders, controlled immigration, sensible energy policy, and governments that prioritise their own citizens.
No. The real extremists are ‘hyper-liberals’, who over the last twenty-five years or so not only dismantled these things but radicalised to such an extent they are now completely and utterly adrift from the vast majority of their fellow citizens.
This is a strawman and a half! Who are the liberals, hyper or otherwise (in some places, both pieces simply say ‘liberals’), arguing that borders should be unsecured, immigration uncontrolled, energy policy non-sensible and governments prioritise something other than their own citizens? Or the liberals criticising populism as a movement for secure borders, controlled immigration, sensible energy policy, and governments that prioritise their own citizens? These are not distinctively populist aspirations! It is, indeed, ordinary men and women who want all those things and it is quite ordinary for British citizens to hold principles of liberalism, which is, after all, a philosophical tradition Britain had a significant role in developing.
The disagreements between groups defined by political and philosophical stances are about how borders should be secured and immigration controlled, which energy policies are sensible according to what criteria and how governments best represent the interests of their citizens. This must be acknowledged if we are to have coherent, good-faith discussions across left-wing and right-wing divides and between liberals, critics of liberalism and post-liberals. Defining populism by sensible stances and desirable outcomes that almost everybody wants obscures legitimate points of disagreement.
The tactic of defining one’s own movement by good things supported by the vast majority of the population, thereby making critics of said movement necessarily opponents of said good things and irredeemable baddies before any conversation has even taken place is, unfortunately, common in populist movements on both the left and the right. We also saw this with the Critical Social Justice (woke) movement calling itself simply “Social Justice” as though everybody else engaging in political discourse and campaigns was aiming for something other than a just society and could not possibly have legitimate criticisms of the CSJ movement’s vision of one and methods for achieving it.
Syed, Goodwin writes correctly, “points the finger directly at Angela Merkel.” Goodwin then further indicts Tony Blair, Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron among others. This argument immediately runs into a problem. It is unclear which principles of liberalism these leaders have taken to excess in the policy-making they find unsatisfactory. Syed uses the term ‘liberalism’ to encompass illiberal identitarian leftism, professional-class contempt for the working class, dysfunctional immigration policy, draconian climate policy, the ideological capture of universities, and inadequate military defence. What connects these things and what makes that connection liberal?
Syed identifies himself as a liberal and expresses fears about the destruction of the liberal order. Yet his conceptual confusion about what liberalism is does a disservice to the cause of defending the foundational liberal principles upon which modern, Western liberal democracies are built. By encompassing a gamut of identitarian leftist, technocratic, academic, interventionist and cosmopolitan issues under the label of ‘hyperliberal,’ he feeds into a common conflation that left-wing populists use to justify being postmodern and right-wing populists use to justify being postliberal.
This is precisely what Matt Goodwin exploits when he uses Syed’s argument to support his own case. Goodwin accepts the label of ‘liberal’ for all the issues Syed critiques, ties liberalism primarily to the political left and throws in authoritarian police overreach, gender identity activism, the rewriting of history, sneering attitudes towards Brexiters and opposition to national flags and free speech as the stances of “the liberal ruling class.” These alleged liberals are then placed in stark opposition to the ‘ordinary people’ and the populists represented as their defenders.
[H]aving spent twenty years in the universities, getting to know countless politicians, commentators, journalists, think-tankers, and others, it simply became clear to me that the real extremists are not the ordinary people asking for change, nor even the ‘populists’ speaking up for them.
The real extremists, as now a growing number of people, including Matthew Syed, now realise, are the liberal ruling class who have radicalised to such an extent they are quite openly and visibly destroying Western nations.
It seems, therefore, that liberalism is to be understood as an illiberal, left-wing and socially privileged position rather than a mainstream philosophical stance held by people of all classes and that the authoritative voice of ordinary (non-liberal) people is that which agrees with right-wing populists.
Syed appears to want to defend liberalism but confuses its meaning. Goodwin uses that confusion to indict it. At the heart of this linguistic and conceptual confusion and populist rhetoric are two primary confusions:
The concept of extremism and what makes it objectionable
The liberal ethical framework and what makes a position liberal.
The Concept of Extremism and What Makes It Objectionable
Calling a position ‘extreme’ does not tell us that it is bad or indicate that its opponents are good. While the term ‘extremist’ is generally used negatively and often for good reason, calling a position ‘extreme’ does not, by itself, explain what is wrong with it. Something can be extremely good or extremely bad, after all! I have argued before that rather than relying on comparative terms like ‘far’ ‘extreme’ or ‘radical,’ we should focus on whether the stance advocates doing harm to others or denying their freedoms. In its core definition, ‘extreme’ means ‘high in degree or intensity’ and is opposed to ‘moderate’ - a low intensity stance. Arguments for whether a high-intensity or low intensity stance is good, bad or neutral must depend on what that stance is. We might worry about Islamist extremists more than Jain extremists for example or, completely coherently, oppose those intensely focused on preserving racial purity while supporting those determinedly dedicated to preserving women’s sex-based rights.
Violent revolution is generally seen as the most extreme response to any political or cultural issue. Yet, we tend to regard the American Revolution fought in the service of independence, sovereignty and government by the consent of the governed as good but the Maoist Communist Revolution fought in the service of a collectivist order that subordinated individual autonomy to the revolutionary state as bad. In order to determine whether an extreme position is positive or negative, we need to know what commitments are being taken to extremes, what those commitments permit, and what consequences follow.
Nor does identifying extremism in one movement establish its absence from another. Statements like “X group are the real extremists!” tend to function to deflect from criticism of another group or even to justify retaliatory extremism. Even if we conceded that Merkel et al. were ‘real hyperliberal extremists’, would this mean that other extremists had ceased to exist? If we acknowledge, as I think we should, that the stances of the identitarian left are extremist, does this indicate that there is no cause for concern about extremism on the identitarian right? A society can and usually does contain several forms of extreme views at the same time. They each need to be evaluated on their own principles and the likely results of acting on them.
This then raises the question of “What is liberal extremism and what are the likely consequences of acting on it?” This question could be best complemented for the purposes of this piece with “What is populist extremism and what are the likely consequences of acting on it?”
Populist Extremism?
Populist extremism is an issue which my readers, in particular, will have cause to be very familiar with. The extreme populist movement I have been addressing for over a decade is the Critical Social Justice or ‘woke’ movement. Meanwhile, the MAGA movement in the United States is the example of a right-wing populist movement with which people will be most familiar. While varying definitions of populism exist, the manifestations of populism that I have written about most extensively fulfil the following criteria:
People defined by certain characteristics seen as oppressed and downtrodden are ‘the people’ and others are ‘enemies of the people’.
The authentic voice of ‘the people’ is that expressed for them by self-proclaimed representatives in positions of influence even if they do not have these characteristics.
The ‘representatives of the people’ produce narratives of intensity and emergency that posit a battle between ‘the people’ whose aims are good, pure and reasonable and ‘the enemies of the people’ whose aims are oppressive, malevolent and self-interestedly detached from reality.
Those who oppose their stance and do not have the defining characteristics are to be dismissed as ‘privileged’ or ‘elitists’ who are blinkered by this protected status and out of touch with ‘the people’ or benefit personally from upholding the oppressive systems.
Those who oppose their stance and do have the defining characteristics of ‘the people’ are to be explained away as brainwashed into accepting dominant narratives or acting in a self-interested (and traitorous) way.
Science, evidence and expertise are to be regarded as inherently suspicious because they are produced by dominant discourses which are privileged and/or elitist and gate-kept away from ‘the people’. “Lived experience” is favoured instead, provided it complies with the authoritative views of ‘the people’ as set out by the ‘representatives of the people.’
Reasoned, evidenced and civil debate are likewise suspect and serve only to reinforce the dominant narratives and confuse and invalidate the views of ‘the people.’ All well-intentioned people will affirm the narrative provided by the representatives of the people because this indicates having listened to the people.
A certain pride is taken in flouting the conventions of civil, reasoned and evidenced debate and instead making hyperbolic assertions and being deliberately vulgar, offensive and provocative. There is no expectation of correction of claims that can be shown to be false because believers are rewarded for speaking stridently into the approved narrative, rather than being accurate.
In her recently released and excellent book, How Gender Studies Broke the University, Cynthia Burack argues that “gender studies, its “studies” brethren, the humanities, other disciplines and subfields, and whole universities embraced and entrenched left-wing populist authoritarianism” and breaks her analysis into chapters analysing 'the people’ and “the enemies of the people”. She uses the work of scholar of populism, Jan-Werner Müller very effectively in this endeavour.
Müller lays out a parsimonious set of features characteristic of the populisms that threaten democracy and human rights in many parts of the world, including the United States. In Müller’s analysis, populism: insists “that a part of the people is the people”; moralizes politics and political conflict in a way that discredits and demonizes opponents and compromise with those opponents; and treats political opponents as “enemies of the people.”
Left- and right-wing versions of populism exhibit the same features because populism isn’t an ideology with consistent tenets but, rather, a “political logic”; “a way of formulating demands, rather than a set of demands.” The political theorist Margaret Canovan argues that populism emerges from “tensions” within democracy, including between “pragmatic” (liberal, constitutional, rules-based, minority-protecting) governance and “redemptive” (people-powered, “action-based,” even “revivalist”) politics. Redemptive political impulses can arise from either end of the political continuum.
The populist playbook gives us Donald Trump telling his followers that he’s their proxy and tribune. That he stands between the enemies they share and those who believe in him, and that the blows he absorbs he takes in their stead. Because, at least as Trump tells it, his enemies really want to harm real Americans who can’t defend themselves.
My colleagues’ [in Gender and other identity studies departments] version goes something like this: when the racists, bigots, phobes, and tools of fascism and neoliberalism disagree with and criticize us, they are really harming you, our beloved students. When you hear these dangerous words, speak up; we’ll step between you and them.
In Burack’s experience as a professor of women and gender studies, use of Müller’s work angered her colleagues by not distinguishing between bad right-wing populism and good left-wing populism. In mine, I am likely to attract ire from both sides of the fence for pointing out these mirroring tactics and appealing to liberals on both the left and right to oppose them consistently, but particularly on their own side.
Consequently, I do believe that those who pursue populist goals in a way that is ‘high in degree and intensity’ present a significant problem, (as do populists when their formulations and reasoning are exhibited by an opposing political tribe). When people who take a populist stance are more moderate and willing to explain and defend their views through reasoned, evidenced argument, rather than dismiss disagreement as evidence of complicity or betrayal, this can illuminate their thinking and help us discern any genuine insights it contains. However, when these are mediated through the platform of influential individuals who seek to gain and hold onto power in government or institutions, this is unlikely to be helpful. When representatives derive authority from uniquely and urgently defending the people against an existential enemy, resolution and compromise can diminish their authority, while continued conflict sustains it. We are unlikely to genuinely resolve issues of immigration policy, climate policy, institutional capture or military defence this way, and these are all matters of legitimate concern to people with a variety of political and philosophical stances which require resolution.
Liberal Extremism?
What would an extremist form of liberalism look like? At the centre of the liberal philosophical tradition which underlies the formation of modern liberal democracies is the defence of individual liberty. I have argued that this is best summarised as, “Let people believe, speak, live as they see fit, provided this does no material harm to anyone else, nor denies them the same freedoms.” However, this principle expands over numerous spheres of society.
John Locke, the English philosopher often treated as a foundational figure in the Anglo-American liberal tradition, helped establish arguments for limited government, government by the consent of the governed, and rights to liberty and property. Thomas Paine, born in England but best known for his role in the American Revolution, made the case for popular sovereignty, republicanism and universal human rights. Adam Smith, the Scottish political economist and moral philosopher, is often considered a founder of modern capitalist economics. He argued that commercial freedom—the ability to compete and cooperate through exchange—best produces thriving societies, and are the natural state for human moral and social intuitions. John Stuart Mill, another English philosopher (and my personal North Star), defended freedom of thought and speech both as essential individual liberties and as conditions for discovering truth, correcting error and reconciling conflict. Because they were all working on Enlightenment principles with Locke being a significant influence on its emergence and Mill a liberal heir to it, they all placed a particularly strong emphasis on the importance of evidence and reason for both truth-seeking and moral progress.
We could summarise the core liberal principles thus:
A commitment to individual liberty - freedom of belief, speech, association (individualism)
A dedication to the value of viewpoint diversity to advancing knowledge and resolving conflict in a democratic society (pluralism)
A recognition of our shared humanity and the common rights, freedoms and responsibilities this bestows upon us all (universalism),
A commitment to free enterprise and trade as well as the right to own property and succeed on one’s own merits.
The belief that all people come into the world with the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and this can only justifiably be removed from any individual due to their own demonstrable harmful actions.
An understanding that threats to freedom come not only from the state but from authoritarian ideologies, individuals and groups, so liberal principles need to be protected not only in law but widely understood and valued in society.
An active commitment to facilitating robust, reasoned and evidenced debate for the purposes of producing knowledge and determining what is true and what is ethical and correcting error. Everything is up for debate and no issue is ever closed to revision and critique.
While liberalism is an evolving political practice, meaning that it has been applied to illiberal societal structures and norms over time, and liberal arguments have consequently looked different in different times and places depending on what form of illiberalism it is responding to, these core principles remain constant. They clearly do not belong to either the political left or the political right. I have argued they represent a higher-order value system that opposes illiberalism which can be found on the left or right. Liberalism is conservative in that it wishes to conserve the liberal democratic foundations of modern western societies and progressive in that it seeks to continually produce knowledge, correct error and reform society along the lines of individual liberty.
In contrast to populists, those committed to liberalism reject the notion that some of the people are ‘the people,’ others are ‘the enemies of the people’ and yet others are ‘the representatives of the people.’ We believe that all of the people are the people but that some of them are wrong, factually or morally. The best way to address this is to facilitate open debate in which people can argue freely, with an expectation that they will use evidence and reason and be open to correction and changing their minds. It is impossible for anybody to be knowledgeable about everything so we all need to be able to listen to others arguing about absolutely anything and evaluate which of them are making the best arguments with the strongest evidence. On a political level, we then all get to choose our own representatives according to their ethics and policies in a democratic system. I would argue that pursuing these goals in a way that is ‘high in degree and intensity’ is not something that should be considered a problematic form of extremism, but important to preserving and further realising the foundational principles of modern liberal democracy.
However, in its political sense, ‘extremism’ does go beyond the mundane meaning of ‘extreme’ and carry specific connotations of hatred, intolerance and dogmatism. In a recent piece, Steve Stewart-Williams summarises and explains a 2019 research paper on the psychology of political extremism by van Prooijen and Krouwel which finds four features in common on both the left and right. These are: psychological distress - a gnawing sense of meaninglessness born of anxious uncertainty, cognitive simplicity: the tendency to view the world in stark black-and-white terms, overconfidence in the rightness of one’s own judgement, and intolerance of political dissent - a tendency to regard those who disagree as not simply wrong but morally abhorrent. In this formulation, liberalism is not only not extremist but positively anti-extremist!
Yet there are, of course, legitimate criticisms that can be made of liberalism and room for disagreement and debate among those committed to liberal principles. This is why democratic systems were set up in the first place. I am politically on the materialist left which means I am least liberal economically and argue that the laissez-faire free-market libertarian branch of liberalism needs to reckon with problems produced by entirely unrestrained capitalism in terms of monopolies, workers rights and social provision for those unable to support themselves. I am also culturally conservative which means that I actually agree with Syed that a liberal society cannot survive unless it defends its own liberal foundations and that people wishing to move to liberal democracies should be required to demonstrate commitment to these.
There are also legitimate criticisms that can be made of the central feature of liberalism - liberty, individualism, pluralism and universalism. Some have argued that, when taken to an extreme, these can lead to selfishness, narcissism, relativism, permissiveness, social atomisation, siloed communities, a failure to appreciate the experiences of minorities, ongoing economic inequality, a loss of shared meaning, declining birthrates and more. I disagree with most of these arguments and think that where some do have value, the ‘cure’ would be worse than the disease, but these are legitimate critiques of liberalism as it really is.
Is this what Syed and Goodwin are doing?
No.
The liberal ethical framework and what makes a position liberal.
Syed’s Definition of hyperliberalism
As previously stated, the primary problem with Syed’s claims about the problem of ‘hyperliberalism’ is that it is unclear which liberal principles have been taken to extremes to produce the issues he criticises. If the problems, at their core, are not an excess of liberalism, trying to address them by critiquing liberalism would seem to be, at best, futile, and, at worst, counterproductive.
This prompted me to look more deeply into what Syed means by ‘hyper-liberalism.’ I found a definition in a piece published last year, “Commonsense voters see the abject folly of the West’s purity spiral” which, as the title indicates, associates liberalism with a desire for ideological purity. This is startling. Liberals are much more commonly criticised for excessive openness and permissiveness.
Syed compares the attitude of liberals to defenders of the Indian caste system in which “Dalits” are considered ‘untouchable’ by “Brahmins” because they are deemed ‘impure’. In the Western conception Syed outlines, the liberals are the Brahmins and the Dalits are the working class.
My sense is that purity has also become the central principle in the 21st-century religion we call hyperliberalism, albeit demonstrated not by caste membership but the adoption of progressive shibboleths. Isn’t that why self-censorship is such a prevalent phenomenon in universities?
This appears to be a conflation of liberalism with professional-class elitism combined with identitarian leftism. There is certainly justification for seeing the last two as combined and Musa al-Gharbi addresses this well in his recent book (although I also have some criticisms of it). Materialists on the left have been leading the charge on the unholy alliance of cultural elites with institutional and corporate power and identitarian leftism for some time. (An excellent and accessible primer to this divide on the left is “Identity Trumps Socialism”and the introduction can be accessed freely here). But what does this have to do with liberalism? In what way can the advocacy of a caste system or a denial of academic freedom result from an excessive commitment to individual liberty, viewpoint diversity and freedom of speech?
It is tempting to assume this is simply an American-style misuse of the term ‘liberal’ to describe the illiberal, identitarian leftism that liberal defenders of free speech (like me) have been addressing for some time, particularly in universities. This, however, appears not to be the case, because Syed finishes by arguing that unless this problem is addressed, there will be an almighty backlash from right-wing populist quarters which could “sweep away the liberal order itself.” He appears to believe this would be a bad development. But if the liberal order is exemplified by advocacy for the Indian caste system and illiberal identitarian leftism, wouldn’t this sweeping away be a good thing? No, it seems that the ‘liberal order’ must be something different to liberals, hyperliberals and hyperliberalism and I suspect it is, indeed, the liberal philosophy centred on individual liberty, free enterprise, democratic systems and the facilitation of free and open debate.
In the piece cited by Goodwin, Syed makes a clearer distinction between his two definitions of liberalism.
The extremists are not the “populist” right … It is the likes of Merkel and that broader generation of western leaders who presided over the two great sins of hyperliberalism: open borders and the betrayal of Nato.
Liberalism as an ideology is muscular and realistic. It recognises that defending freedom requires powerful militaries, solid alliances and strong borders, otherwise fifth columnists will enter our nations and wreck that which we value.
As Karl Popper, the great theorist of open societies, put it: ‘If we extend unlimited tolerance to those who are intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.’ In this sense, hyperliberals have been the enemies of freedom by allowing militaries to atrophy and borders to dissolve.
Hyperliberals, then, are those who advocate for open borders and demilitarisation? Some liberals on the libertarian end of the spectrum certainly argue that borders deny freedom of movement and hinder free trade and stand against it for those reasons. But libertarians also typically support self-defence strongly while objecting to military intervention against other countries. They certainly don’t advocate censorship in universities. We are not told which shared liberal premise supposedly connects these positions. Although some on the identitarian left certainly argue that any criticism of immigration from the Global South is necessarily racist, they are generally the strongest critics of liberalism and argue that it too is racist and imperialist.
Merkel, herself, defended not closing Germany’s borders on the grounds of a humanitarian response to an emergency and responded to criticisms that Germany had not met NATO defence requirements with arguments that it had been increasing its spending and had also contributed troops. It is entirely legitimate to criticise her on the grounds of both of those decisions and many have done so from a range of political and philosophical positions including liberal ones. Syed has not supported the claim that these decisions represent ‘hyperliberalism.’ Deciding against closing borders during a refugee crisis could be argued to be excessive humanitarianism. Underfunding defence might reflect undue complacency or other fiscal priorities. Both could indicate what some would argue to be a misguided strategic assessment. Neither of them automatically indicate an excessive commitment to liberal principles.
Syed appears to acknowledge the contradiction in his definitions of liberalism when he argues for a ‘muscular’ (rather than ‘extreme’ or ‘hyper?’) form of liberalism that strongly and proactively protects liberal societies against illiberal forces. This is, indeed, the liberal case for the protection of borders and a military defence, and liberal values do exert a positive force on people’s willingness to fight defensively. He argues that, by failing to do this, his ‘hyperliberals’ become the enemy of freedom, indicating a recognition that liberalism is a philosophy centred on freedom, yet still offers no explanation for why those he indicts merit having a ‘hyper’ variation of liberalism attributed to them.
Syed could argue from liberal principles that those he criticises are not upholding the principles of liberalism. If he believes they have been claiming to do so or misusing liberal principles, he could cite them doing so and make an argument that this is an incorrect understanding of liberalism. If he thinks there is a direct chain of cause and effect from liberal principles to the policy decisions he criticises and that this has been produced by upholding those principles to excess, he could show this and argue for a more moderate form of liberalism. Syed has made a case for defending liberal societies strongly that is arguable from liberal principles. He has not established that their inadequate defence results from taking liberal principles too far.
Goodwin then exacerbates this confusion. Making a ‘ruling liberal class’ synonymous with ‘an increasingly radical elite class’ and ‘a ruling political and media class’ and the woke he ultimately charges liberalism with ‘insane energy policies,’ ‘the Great Awokening,’ allowing small boats of migrants and terrorists to flood the country, teaching children they can change sex, rewriting history around guilt and shame, erasing our culture and jailing people for expressing national pride. All this, liberals elites have allegedly done while sneering at Brexit voters and “attacking, demonising, abusing, and insulting anybody who stood in their way, even justifying violence against political opponents.” A damning indictment of liberalism indeed!
Goodwin concludes optimistically, (from his perspective),
When a self-described liberal columnist in The Times, the same newspaper that has spent much of this year attacking populism, openly asks whether the real extremists of our age are not populists but hyper-liberals then you know the ground is starting to move. And it’s moving very fast indeed.
The ground is indeed starting to move very fast. The important question is “Is it moving in a direction of a greater understanding of truth as ‘that which corresponds with reality” and towards solutions to societal problems that are likely to be both effective and ethical and protect individual liberty? I am not optimistic that they are and this conflation of so many complex and multifaceted issues into a battle narrative featuring (hyper)liberal villains and populist saviours bears considerable responsibility for this. Goodwin is right to observe that this narrative is growing and increasing in cultural power.
What are liberal stances on all this?
In reality, ‘liberals’ are not synonymous with a sneering professional class, Remain voters, the left or the woke. We are found in every class and all over the political spectrum wherever people are arguing for addressing social issues in ways that protect individual liberty, viewpoint diversity and government by the consent of the governed.
Liberals have a wide range of views on immigration, but are unlikely to support stances that are either ethnonationalist or favour concepts of multiculturalism which tolerate illiberalism. On energy policy, we are equally intellectually diverse but inclined to favour solutions to climate change that are both evidence-based and protective of individual liberty. ( Maarten Boudry is one such thinker who has been arguing against restrictive energy policies and for diversifying energy resources). On the issue of class inequality and neglect of the interests of the working class, we range from left-liberals who favour social policies to address material issues like better social housing and effective trade unions and right-voting libertarians who see solutions in red-tape removal from building ventures and greater freedom in employment law. We are found among Remain voters and Leave voters and, in both cases, liberal arguments in support of liberty and sovereignty were made to justify those decisions.
It is particularly egregious to blame liberals for illiberal identitarian leftism, a denial of academic freedom, institutional capture, authoritarian trans activism, draconian policing and arrests for speech and denials of individual liberty and freedom of speech more broadly! In every manifestation of the authoritarian Critical Social Justice movement, liberals have been the ones opposing it on the grounds of individual liberty! I, personally, took part in an academic sting operation to demonstrate the problem in universities, then wrote a book about the problem, then formed an organisation to support people being cancelled by the problem and wrote another book about that. I have been far from alone in this endeavour! Wokeness is an example of what can happen when we fail to protect liberal principles, not when we take them to excess!
When I raise this point with right-wing populists bemoaning the illiberalism of liberalism and point out that this is incoherent, they typically respond that they are not talking about me and others like me who consistently defend individual liberty and have opposed the CSJ movement but those other liberals who do not and are proponents of it. This is not rooted in evidence either. The Critical Social Justice scholars and activists, whose theories are rooted in postmodern critique of liberal modernity, don’t even claim to be liberal. Postcolonial theory regards liberalism as synonymous with imperialism and white supremacy and condemns it. Critical Race Theory has five central tenets and one of them is critique of liberalism for its ‘colour-blind’ stance and focus on equality under the law. Queer Theory regards liberalism as a threat to the radical queer politics they believe could valuably destabilise our concepts of sex, gender and sexuality.
Postmodern populists and postliberal populists are united in regarding liberalism as a threat to their narrative-driven, emotions-based, collectivist stances. This is because we are. By upholding principles of individual liberty consistently and maintaining an expectation that for a truth claim to be accepted as true, it must be supported with evidence and a reasoned argument and be open to critique on those grounds, we trouble their cognitive simplicity and challenge their narratives. This is also why it is so essential that we do not allow the concept of liberalism to creep and expand into incoherence and contradiction. It is in the interests of those who consider themselves conservative and to be defending the foundations of western civilisation that we do not lose the concept of liberalism which is so essential to it. It is also in the interests of those who consider themselves progressive to recognise that it is these principles which have produced so much progress for women and racial and sexual minorities and not allow them to be lost in confusion.
Why Populist Narratives Appeal
Liberalism is, at root, a way of thinking about individual liberty and human rights that developed over the modern period in Europe and America and is inextricably bound up in Enlightenment rationalism and empiricism. There have always been Counter-Enlightenment forces which have seen it as a threat and sought to undermine it and replace it with “other ways of knowing” which are rooted in religious traditions, ideological dogmas, local customs, tribal narratives and emotional, intuitive and experiential perceptions. Postmodernism was one highly successful assault on Enlightenment and liberal thinking, evolving as it did into the Critical Social Justice (woke) movement and becoming satisfyingly actionable by everyday people concerned about genuine social problems and exploitable by those in positions of influence to create positions of leadership for themselves. Postliberal populism is another such Counter-Enlightenment current which has the same features, providing a simple narrative of good and evil that is both satisfying and comforting to everyday people with genuine concerns and providing a platform for different wealthy and influential individuals to present themselves as the Saviours of the People.
We are more drawn to simple narratives of good and evil when we feel ourselves to be under threat. As Jonathan Haidt wrote in an analysis of the rise of populism which grows only more useful and relevant every year,
As nations grow prosperous, their values change in predictable ways…. Each country has followed a unique trajectory, but if we zoom out far enough some general trends emerge from the WVS data. Countries seem to move in two directions, along two axes: first, as they industrialize, they move away from “traditional values” in which religion, ritual, and deference to authorities are important, and toward “secular rational” values that are more open to change, progress, and social engineering based on rational considerations. Second, as they grow wealthier and more citizens move into the service sector, nations move away from “survival values” emphasizing the economic and physical security found in one’s family, tribe, and other parochial groups, toward “self-expression” or “emancipative values” that emphasize individual rights and protections—not just for oneself, but as a matter of principle, for everyone.
In short, people become more open to considering complexity and reasoning their way through problems both ethical and practical when they feel themselves to be secure. We become more rational, evidence-based and liberal when we feel we can afford to think properly. When we feel under threat, however, we become inclined to seek comforting simplicity in tribal narratives which offer us clear in-groups and out-groups and something to fight. We are, after all, fundamentally tribal, territorial apes. The problem is that, unless these narratives are based on truth and correspond with reality, such tribalism and fighting cannot actually resolve the problems which genuinely exist and need to be resolved.
The Critical Social Justice movement’s identification of and battle against the forces of white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism and cis/heteronormativity as personified by the privileged, straight, white, western men said to enforce them did not result in a decrease of racism, sexism and xenophobia or greater acceptance of homosexuality and the gender-nonconforming. The postliberal populists’ identification of our current problems with immigration, energy policies, class inequality and illiberal identitarian leftism as being caused by a radical class of sneering elitists driven by an intensified variation on liberalism is equally unlikely to make any of those problems better. This is because it does not map onto reality. Reality is much more complicated and addressing it requires engaging with that complexity in ways that are evidence-based and reasoned and upholds individual liberty. It requires liberalism.
Liberals are always vulnerable to being scapegoated as the cause of whichever social ills an illiberal tribe is most concerned about, often even more so than those genuinely advocating those ills. The populist ‘woke’ for example spend more time problematising and hounding those who say that consistently objecting to the evaluation of individuals by race is the best way to overcome racism than they do white supremacists. Equally, they vilify particularly those who say that people must be able to dress and identify as they wish, but we still need sex-based rights for women for reasons of safety and fairness more intensively than those who believe gender nonconformity is degeneracy that should be illegal.
Likewise, the populist right is likely to be more enraged with those who say immigration policy needs to recognise that some cultural norms are incompatible with liberal values but that individuals from those cultures should not all be assumed to hold them than they are with those who argue for open borders. They also tend to direct most frustration at those who say that climate change is a real problem that requires collective action but that this need not and should not centre on energy restrictions that endanger health and constrain freedom than at radically destructive climate activists. And those of us who think racism, sexism and homophobia are social problems that need to be addressed but that identitarian wokeness is not the solution may produce more wrath than the woke.
To the woke left, liberalism simply is white supremacy and transphobia in a respectable suit and to the populist right open borders, draconian energy policies and wokeness simply are liberalism intensified.
In a very real way, this is indicative of the strength of liberalism. We trouble simplistic narratives of good and evil. Those who propose illiberal solutions to social problems want all their critics to be proponents of those social problems to support this narrative. Liberals, with our tendency to say, “Yes, those really are problems which need to be addressed. However, your analysis of them does not seem to be rooted in reality and your solutions are unethical” make their activism difficult. So too does our tendency to point out that complex problems are, in fact, complex and to make our own arguments for alternative evidence-based, reasonable and liberal solutions. Liberalism has a solidity, reasonableness and consistency to it as well as a well-established reputation for problem-solving and making things better that tends to show illiberal stances in a poor light. Proponents of them typically respond to this by finding ways to argue that liberalism is, in fact, illiberal and conflate liberals with the social problems they are addressing.
What liberals can do.
It is essential that liberals continue to trouble these simplistic narratives and make the activism of proponents of them difficult, especially if we sincerely want to find solutions to the genuine problems presented by left-wing and right-wing populists. We must continue to live up to Enlightenment liberalism’s reputation for ethical consistency and evidenced and reasoned argument, if we do not wish to backslide into a tribalistic premodern culture where the narrative-based epistemology, motivated reasoning and self-serving ethics of any political tribe able to gain social dominance gets to decide what the rest of us must believe, say and do.
If you are a liberal on the materialist, economic left, your energies are now best spent in making those strong, liberal class-analysis arguments to counter both the ‘woke’ left’s neglect of class issues and the populist right’s endeavour to appropriate them.
If you are more of a culture-focused progressive liberal, you can make solid arguments for how to address prejudice and discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, sexuality etc. and counter both the illiberal identitarians on the left who undermine the progress already made with their alienating identity politics and those on the right who capitalise on this to undermine it further.
If you are a liberal of a market-focused, libertarian bent, this is the time we need you to defend individual liberty consistently across political divides and oppose degrowth currents on both the left and right while arguing for market-driven, meritocratic solutions to problems ranging from prejudice and discrimination, energy-production, affordable housing and the cost-of-living crisis.
Liberal conservatives probably have the most important role to play in our current (British) political climate. As populist parties rise in popularity across Europe, there is a pressing need for liberal conservatives to send a clear and strong message, particularly to young people, about what conservatism is and why populism is not it. The liberal philosophical tradition is key to British history and identity and conservative defenders of that history and tradition need to confidently present doing so as a legitimately conservative imperative.
Many concerns right-wing populists have about issues like immigration, military defence, climate policies, institutional capture and denials of free speech are valid and shared much more widely. They are quite clearly and demonstrably not a product of upholding liberal principles too strongly, and conflating them with liberalism risks undermining the very commitment to productive, reasoned and evidenced debate and democratic reform than can meaningfully address them.
In order to address all and any of these problems, we must accept that they are not explicable with simplistic narratives about the ordinary people and the elitist enemies of the ordinary people. They are complex and messy and have a multitude of contributing factors including international conflicts, a refugee crisis, the impacts of leaving the European Union in making the UK desirable to people traffickers, conflicting and confused ideas about energy and climate change, complacency about the role of America in maintaining international peace, a failure to recognise and disallow the authoritarianism of the rising Critical Social Justice movement, competing fiscal responsibilities, misguided and unworkable policy decisions, a dizzying turnover of Prime Ministers over the last few years and straightforward administerial incompetence.
To productively tackle all of these issues, we need thoughtful and well-informed people who disagree with each other to identify the principles, policies and institutional failures actually at issue, and address them as they really are. Individuals can legitimately hold a range of views on all these questions. For liberals, our stances must always include consideration of how any decision will impact individual liberty and democratic processes and our arguments should be well-evidenced and reasoned. We must make our cases to one another, to honest critics of liberalism and to the undecided public, seek to build a consensus, and inspire better political leaders to put competing proposals to voters. That is how a democracy can test policies, correct mistakes and resolve problems. This has never been achieved by pretending that one faction of society is legitimately “the people” and everybody else is an enemy of them.
Right-wing and left-wing populists will go on dividing society into the people who matter and the enemies of the people who matter, claiming special authority through ‘common sense’, ideology, identity or “lived experience,” and treating evidence, truth and civil debate as obstacles. It is up to those of us from all over the political spectrum who care about what is true and about individual liberty and the preservation of liberal democratic societies to provide better answers. The production of knowledge via open critique of all by all and the implementation of democracy to enact the will of the people are liberalism’s greatest achievements and they depend on respect for evidence and reason, and on robust, civil, honest debate. An uncompromising commitment to these liberal values is not “extremism” or ‘hyperliberalism’. It’s just liberalism and it works.
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Whenever such a claim is made I have become accustomed to assuming the application of a highly inaccurate, proprietary definition of the -ism in question. Postliberal thinkers have made a habit of obfuscating their equivocation as they frivolously dance between various left of centre phenomenons. Hardly ever so they actually strike the actual content of liberalism. Perhaps they achieve high accuracy when they criticise open borders in europe, which at least has a economically liberal motivation under the four freedoms. But most of the time they conflate particularist identitarianism with liberalism itself, which is ironic since its main appeal is universality
What if the problems people have with current elites are on a different axis than liberalism or populism?
People like Merkel, et al. strike me more as "globalist" in the sense of seeing no difference between her own voters and people elsewhere, of de-emphasizing patriotism in favor of a global citizenry concept, and of ceding national sovereignty to international law and its bodies. This provokes a nationalist response ("nationalism" in this case being support for patriotism, national self-determination, and the belief one's nation is legitimate without appeal to international norms). Insomuch as liberalism developed with the concept of the Westhphalian nation-state, it too can object to globalism.
"Technocratic" too, in the sense that they see the people of their country as things to be managed because they do not know their own best interest. This can certainly provoke a populist response (especially against "experts"), but liberalism can absolutely find fault with technocracy as well.