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I never thought that I would become politically homeless in my lifetime. The tenets of class analysis, proletarian struggle, looking after the less fortunate in society seemed like a rock-solid bulwark to hold.
Lately though, the Left I see is rife with witchhunting, purity tests, and outright excommunication for heretical actions (and non-actions). Disagreement is met with a extreme paucity of charity and hostility that at one time, was the sole domain of the fundamentally religious right.
I understand times change, but the illiberal Left today doesn’t resemble anything I ever signed up for. So, the next step I suppose for me is the coming to terms with being more politically unmoored as time passes.
Obaid Omer shares a similar experience but his narrative speaks of a journey from the full embrace of Islamic religious values to a seeking solace in Liberal values of the West. In his journey though he observes a chilling similarity between his religious roots and the new set of ‘liberal values’ (hence the title of this post the Fuaxgressive Left) that are flourishing today.
“But when I came back to Canada in 2014, I returned to a different country than the one I had left.
I had left a country that was proud of being the opposite of what bothered me about Islam, that was proud of a tradition of free inquiry and free speech, open debate and civil discourse. The Canada I returned to resembled the religion of my youth more than it did its opposite.
I left a culture that was steeped in a sentiment that could be summed up as, “I may disagree with what you say, but I respect your right to say it.” I returned to a culture summarized by, “I disagree with what you say, so shut up.”
Quashing debate and argument seems to be the name of the game these days, as certain opinions have been designated as unapproachable or ‘settled’ topics. In a society that values the free exchange of ideas almost everything has to be on the table. Odious free-speech must be protected along with the prosaically milquetoast free speech.
“The dam broke. Once they started calling it racist to criticize Islam, it was easy to shut the conversation down completely. The accusation meant the accused was morally beyond the pale, and thus completely dismissible. Words like micro-aggressions, trigger warnings, and safe spaces became mainstream. An emphasis on pervasive racism grew exponentially. To even question the extent to which racism was everywhere resulted in accusations of being a racist. Like with religious blasphemy codes, you can only talk about certain topics in specific ways.”
Ask your local MP what their definition of Woman is. I’d be surprised if you got a response, because like discussing the extent of racism in society, trying to discuss female rights, boundaries, and safety has been designated a no-go zone by the gender reactionaries – the people that believe that men can become women simply by saying so. Oppose their dictates and suffer the consequences: insults, threats, and if you happen to be a public figure the loss of your job or opportunities because the zealots get in touch with your employer. Not very free-speechy I’m afraid.
“I couldn’t help but notice there was an almost fundamentalist, faith-like aspect to these claims. It was as if in the years since I’d been gone, our society had decided to adopt the blasphemy codes of my youth. When I heard people asked to check their privilege or introspect the ways they have been racist, it sounded like the inner jihad that Muslims are supposed to perform to make sure they are on the correct path.
How did this happen? How did the religious tenets I had abandoned come to take over the liberal culture I had abandoned them for?”
When liberals lose sight of the basic principles of liberalism, this is what happens. 
Yeah. The fauxgressive left is really big on the Rationalism or Individualism tenets anymore.
“And just as in Islam, there is a jockeying for who is the accurate representation of the faith, Sunnis or Shia, in the social justice camp, believers decide who the true representatives of each oppressed group are. Fall afoul of the right political view and you will be denounced; people throw around terms such as “political blackness” or “multi-racial whiteness.” Just as apostates from Islam are said to not have been real Muslims, detransitioners are told they were never really trans and Black people who speak out against the tenets of critical race theory are told they’re not really Black.
In Muslim countries, biology textbooks will censor evolution. Now, due to gender theory, biology is similarly coming into conflict with an ideology—and losing. A mixture of post-colonial theory and critical race theory is behind a push to disrupt texts, a call to decolonize the Western Canon and school curricula. Critical social justice ideologies are in direct conflict with Enlightenment values and the rigors of the scientific method, like Islam, and are thus a huge threat to liberalism—like Islam.”
Yep, it’s moving toward (or has already jumped ship from actual liberal values) batshite crazy inside the hallowed halls of so many of Canada’s institutions now. The federal government, Universities, social institutions. We should heed Omer’s warning:
“I have had the good fortune to meet and speak with many brave people in the fights against fundamental Islam and critical social justice. As I once did when speaking to Muslims, I keep hearing about the silent majority that is opposed to CSJ.
That silent majority needs to become vocal very quickly. We need more people to be brave enough to speak up and push back. The long march through the institutions is sprinting into the final lap, and it cannot be allowed to win. Take it from an ex-Muslim.”
This excerpt is from James Lindsey writing on his blog New Discourses.
Lindsey is very critical of one of the methods used to analyze our culture. Apparently correctly identifying systemic racism, and how it flows through society is a bad thing. Rather, we just need to do better and try harder with the current system and hope that one day we can reach a better place – cue unicorns and gleeful music – where society is just better. (???)
Some of the criticisms Lindsey has can be directly applied to his own prescriptions which are vague and lacking in detail as to how to proceed to the state of having a better society:
“We need to listen; we need to investigate; and we need to use the best methods available to understand and fix the problem.”
Yeah. Okay. So using the best methods available we can probably ascertain that having a police officer kneel on a person’s neck for several minutes isn’t conducive to that person continuing to live. It would seem that this sort of treatment is disproportionately handed out to people that are not white.
So, using the best investigative tools at hand and all of our listening skills we should be able to parse out a reasonable solution to the problem in our liberal society? No?
Is telling minority populations, who are still being incarcerated and extra-judicially murdered at an alarming rate “just be patient, we’re working on it” a viable solution? How many incidents of police discriminate police violence and the corresponding race riots do we need to get a ‘good data set’ to start fixing the disadvantages of being a colour other than white in society?
Go read the entire article – For me, the overall feeling came down to this – Okay, so critical race theory is pessimistic… buuuuut what do you offer to replace the way it exposes the very real and very deep fractures in our society? Like we had Rodney King in 1992 and yet, here we be in 2020 with George Floyd; I’m not seeing anything close to the epoch changing liberal progress Lindsey so tepidly puts forward. Rather, the status quo has been maintained and the system continues as it did before – systemic racism intact and going strong.
“We can do better than Critical Race Theory. We can do better than a sloppy “theoretical” approach that’s really about pushing divisive grievance politics into our society, one that treats people as props for the narrow politics that primarily, if not solely, benefit the elite grifters who know the Theory. Critical Race Theory advances them at everyone else’s expense. And we already know a lot of how to tackle these problems better than Critical Race Theory can. We already know how to be liberals, apply liberalism, judge by the content of character rather than anything to do with identity or color of skin. And we already know that liberal approaches are open to reform and improvement of the societies that employ them.
Sure, we need to listen better. When a black man, or anyone else, says “I can’t breathe,” people need to listen. When people say there are problems, we need to listen. We need to listen; we need to investigate; and we need to use the best methods available to understand and fix the problem. But we also need to see past race, not focus on it. We need to work together, talk together, adopt shared goals, hold shared vision, find shared identities. For those of us in a hurting America, we are all American. We all have a stake in this system and what it can provide, and we’ll all lose if we let these Critical Race Theory wannabe dictators tear it down or take over.
These approaches work. Working together, talking together, sharing goals together, sharing a common vision, finding common ground and common identities. We know they work. So, we should throw out the little tyrants who, with their academic theories, educational influence, and journalistic and political bully-pulpits, are going to tell our country that white people are the cause of everything bad and that black people they have to stay on script if they want to be black. We’re going to reject these race-baiting jerks and reject them just like they reject any honest attempt to help or understand. They are the problem, and their Theory is the problem. We can and will do better.”
Not convinced Mr.Lindsay.
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