'They Made Us Do It’ Is No Excuse for Conservatives

Why the right must confront its own illiberal fringe instead of excusing it as blowback to the left.

(Audio version here)

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On Wednesday, Paul Embery, author, trade unionist and member of Blue Labour - the economically left-wing and culturally conservative branch of the Labour Party - wrote this note.

I have long argued that many of the problems we are seeing today on the right were exacerbated by issues on the identitarian left and its influence over institutions and mainstream media, under both Conservative and Labour governments. If this is what Embery is referring to by ‘a dominant liberal class,’ I am sympathetic to it. I am less so to his claim that we do not have a far-right problem while also seemingly justifying it by framing it as a legitimate “blowback” to a censorious “dominant liberal class.” Here, I think Embery falls prey to a problem commonly found on the left - a bias towards blaming society for all the unethical beliefs and bad behaviour of a faction of it and removing personal responsibility from the picture entirely. He also indulges in an increasingly common attitude found on both sides of the political spectrum which is to deflect any blame for illiberal attitudes on their own side by pointing out bad behaviour on the other side.

“They made us do it” is simply not a respectworthy ethical argument.

We clearly do have a far-right problem. If we understand ‘far-right’ and ‘far-left’ to refer to illiberal, extreme fringe positions on the political spectrum, we can see quite clearly a rise of such positions on the right. We are not simply seeing cultural conservatives saying things like, “We need stronger immigration policies which can effectively stop small boats and process asylum claims rigorously” or “We need to think seriously about issues of cultural compatibility and vet migrants for values compatible with those we wish to remain culturally dominant.” We are seeing people saying things like “Black and brown people are inherently violent and inferior” and “Let’s burn down migrant hostels with human beings inside them.” Principled cultural conservatives will rightly want to distance themselves from these latter extreme stances, but we need them to do so by addressing the highly illiberal elements on the right, not by saying, “There is no problem here, but if there is, it is justified.”

We can, of course, have many problems at the same time and we always do. Despite many people appearing to believe that, if they can point out problems on “the other side” and argue them to be worse, this exonerates them from addressing the problems on their own side, they all need to be addressed. Problems on one side of the political spectrum can most credibly and effectively be addressed by people on that side.

The British identitarian left and institutional and media narratives (I’d not call them “liberal” for reasons that will become clear) do need to take some responsibility for the rise of the illiberal right and ‘anti-woke.’ The way to keep illiberal right-wing views out of the Overton Window of acceptability is:

1. Do not allow identitarian far-left views that denigrate groups like white people and men to gain social power and prestige either. Criticise them as illiberal extremism and keep them as a marginalised fringe view along with far-right views.

2. Keep as wide a range of views speakable in mainstream institutions and media as possible. Enable legitimate concerns shared by many to be raised and discussed in all arenas of political debate and commentary.

Allowing the identitarian Critical Social Justice (CSJ) movement to gain so much social power and prestige was a serious mistake. It undermined the ethical credibility of the left and was bound to trigger a retaliatory identity-based tribalism on the right. Denigrating white people as invariably racist, exploitative and oppressive and men as universally toxic, and presenting this view as the authentic voice of black and brown people and women is an excellent way to create a backlash against black and brown people and women. Likewise, the hostility of the ‘queer’ LGBT movement to anything that could be considered to be “cis/heteronormative” has resulted in retaliatory animosity to same-sex attracted and gender-nonconforming people from illiberal elements on the right.

We are tribal, territorial apes whose brains evolved to think in terms of in-groups to be protected and out-groups to be defended against and it is simply a terrible idea to present minority groups as a distinct subset of Britons whose interests are in conflict with the majority. That in no way justifies racism, misogyny and homophobia, nor does it explain it - such prejudices long predate the CSJ movement - but it certainly did not help. It enabled justifications not only for critique of activist movements or immigration policies but of the kind that boils down to “They started it!” and “If they can get away with identity-based prejudice, why can’t we?”

It is always the responsibility of the liberal left to strongly critique illiberal identitarian ideas on the left and marginalise them. Some of us tried very hard to do that but did not get enough support. We must continue to do so, nevertheless. I have heard from some on the left who came to see the CSJ movement as a problem that they are now inclined to see it as less of one. Some have even indicated their intention to support it due to the rise of the illiberal ‘anti-woke’ right. Do not do that.

The broader problem with institutional and media censorship of culturally conservative views that should be speakable in polite society is linked to the social prestige of the Critical Social Justice movement, but not entirely explained by it. Criticisms of lax immigration policy escalated during the Tory government and in response to its unworkable and unethical policies. We also saw significant police overreach in this time with the expansion of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ chilling the expression of criticisms of crime and immigration policy. People must have the right to do this. Protecting the right to voice even the strongest anti-immigration views, provided they do not incite violence, also makes it easier to identify and address genuinely illiberal and extreme positions.

I do not agree with Mr. Embery that the ignoring - indeed the sidelining - of concerns about economic injustice, crime and immigration is due to the dominant class being liberal. I would argue that vital institutions involved in everything from policy to knowledge production to education to policing to news reporting have not been liberal enough. A liberal society not only has the duty to respect freedom of belief and speech which we have clearly not been doing, but a responsibility to positively facilitate viewpoint diversity, particularly in institutions of education and knowledge production and in mainstream media.

When we fail to ensure that a wide range of views are able to be spoken and heard, we not only increase justifiable frustrations and resentments but also facilitate the creation of enclosed alternative spaces and movements that can be culturally powerful. However, they can also become twisted and extreme because their ideas are not able to be tested, challenged and sorted in the court of public opinion as they would be had they remained acceptable in mainstream institutions and media.

When culturally conservative beliefs all get bundled together into a mass of forbidden ideas deemed “far-right” and shunted into alternative communities defined by being suppressed by The Establishment, it significantly interferes with the essential process of right-wing self-sorting. Any political group needs to be able to sort itself: to distinguish between views which are widely considered representative of a serious and ethical political position and those which are considered to depart from those values either by being too lax or too extreme. This creates a push and pull from within the group as to where its own Overton Window should be and enables the principled to marginalise their own extremists.

To facilitate this, there needs to be a range of culturally conservative ideas on immigration which are widely accepted by mainstream institutions and media as principled and respectable. If none of them are, the incentives for people on the right to behave in ways that are principled and respectable drops considerably. We then see the rise of a kind of anti-respectability politics and what has become known as ‘vice-signalling’ - the display of cruel, callous, anti-social and boorish attitudes and behaviours. This attitude can best be understood as “You say we’re all immoral? We don’t care anymore. We’ll show you ‘immoral.’”

This attitude is, of course, childish, as are arguments which amount to “They started it!,” “They made us do it! ,”and “If they can get away with it, why can’t we?” Childishness seems to be something that is enabled to flourish when there is not a significant range of views within a group competing with each other to be taken seriously and deemed worthy of respect. We also saw this on the left when the Critical Social Justice identitarians who came to be known as the ‘woke’ took prominence and drowned out the liberals and the socialists on the left, both of which drew on serious, coherent and well-established philosophical traditions. Reasoned, evidenced argument was replaced with intensity of feeling and displays of raw emotion, from sobbing monologues recorded in cars to screaming confrontations in public.

The pressing issue would now seem to be “Will principled conservatives allow their illiberal identitarians to drown out their serious and well-established philosophical tradition?” Is the faction often now referred to as the “woke right” due to the striking similarities in their reasoning, ethical consistency, relationship with truth, collectivist identitarianism and mode of engagement going to come to define the right? This could quite easily happen as it did on the left when those who claimed to stand for the longstanding liberal and/or socio-economic class-focused traditions of the left failed to do so in practice. That also began with “This isn’t really a problem and, if it is, it is justified.”

I very much hope not, because we certainly do have a “far-right” problem. We have the rise of an illiberal, irrational, post-truth, ideological identitarian fervour that cares nothing for truth or principle. Ignoring or denying it will not make it go away. Nor will gesturing to problems that continue to exist on the left in order to justify such behaviour. We can and should look at the identitarian narratives on the left that have left so many people resentful and angry and at the ‘siloing’ consequences of failures to protect freedom of belief and speech and encourage viewpoint diversity. Nevertheless, conservatives cannot keep blaming culture and society for horrible ideas and bad behaviour on the right forever. We need them to lean into one of their strongest and most consistent principles: personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility, along with conscientiousness, impulse control, respect for authority, decorum, and orderliness, are values associated with conservatism. These should offer conservatives some protection against the attitudes and behaviours associated with ‘the woke.’ The crass, volatile, illiberal, irrational, post-truth, populist right and far-right, with its drive to burn everything down and start again, is clearly ‘woke-like’ and profoundly at odds with both the philosophical tradition and the personality traits of the conservative. Throughout my lifetime, in debates between conservatives and progressives, the former have typically presented themselves as the grown-ups in the room. This can be infuriating but the serious, sober and conscientious nature of the conservative is precisely what is needed now to address the problems on the right.

We need conservatives to engage in the self-sorting that distinguishes serious, principled thinkers from illiberal extremists. They must not repeat the mistake the left made when faced with rising identitarian irrationalism: to deny, minimise, or excuse it as a justifiable reaction to the other side. Instead, they must lean into their own values of personal responsibility, self-restraint, and conscientiousness, and say: “Yes, this problem exists on our side. It is not excusable, nor can responsibility for it be shifted to social and cultural factors outside our control. It is our responsibility to address it, and we will.”