We need more nuanced discussions like this. I hope to have, hear and see more of them.
Good luck HN.
This is one of those areas where liberal and leftist diverge. As the author identifies, this aspect of social justice thinking is decidedly anti-liberal.
I actually think this is one of the bigger issues we are seeing with the current debate. Historically, we have had a liberal/leftist coalition in our culture. Now that this is starting to break apart, us liberals are having to come to terms with our leftist allies not actually being liberals; while the leftists are coming to terms with us liberals not actually being leftists.
Because of how inconceivable this divide is to many people, there is a lot of strawmaning of positions. So if a leftist sees a liberal argue for the liberal position in this debate, they see it as arguing against the leftist position; and since leftist==liberal, they must be arguing for the right/conservative posisition.
Since this issue is so politized, I don't think many liberals see the left as arguing for a right/conservative posistion; but many do see them as arguing for an authoritarian posistion, which has historically been associated with the right. As a result, I think that many liberals are simply confused about what is going on since, without the liberal/left distinction, all they see is "their" side going "crazy"; when, in reality, there simply is not (and never was) the common ground that both sides thought there was.
(Obviously, any reference to "historically" refers to the recent history. One does not need to go back that far to find major examples of widely accepted leftist-authoritarians, but those are more in the history books, then in the public perception).
A European leftist is not the same thing as an American leftist. In fact, if we were to look at a different issue, the division between liberal and leftist would be different, even withing American politics.
For some issues, there is so little corralation with the general notion of liberal and leftist, that we would not even think to frame the problem in terms of those lines.
My point being, political identities are not a fundamental unit. They are an abstraction that is only meaningful in a particular contexts. There are real clusters of thought in politics; and we are currently discussing the relationship between two particular clusters of American politics. For the sake of communication, we are forced to give these clusters names, and we choose liberal and leftist because they are the best names we have available.
Where you start to see the fissure is around how universities should handle controversial material in the classroom and accusations of sexual misconduct in their student populations. The Christakis incident at Yale [0] is one of the best test cases. In particular,
>...if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.
is one of those flash-point statements that separates liberals from leftists. This incident has been picked up as a rallying cry by the far-right so there's a lot of FUD flying around, but just to prove I'm not the only Democrat who would agree wholeheartedly, here's Obama [1]:
> I think you should be able to — anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, "You can’t come because I'm too sensitive to hear what you have to say." That’s not the way we learn either.
I would call Obama and has allies "liberals" here, and the protesters and their allies "leftists." Happy to be convinced otherwise on terminology, but it shows that there are at least two very distinct value systems going on here, which may be aligned on policy only by accident.
[0]https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-per...
[1]https://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9326965/obama-political-correc...
Culturally, the underlying problem is that certain people have spent too long in echo chambers that have atrophied their ability to interpret criticism rationally or thoughtfully. It's to the point that it's gone beyond oppression olympics to outright witch hunting. Liberals are terrified of being accused of not being liberal because apparently not being a complete extremist in your beliefs means you're not dedicated or passionate about them or have no credibility. This is so unbelievable as to be absurd.
Journalism and discussion have completely broken down into whichever side can throw the most hate at the other. It's just complete nonsense.
But, the current leftist movement, as far as I can tell, is a product of the humanities culture. In the current iteration of this fight, there seems to be, at a minimum, a liberal/science coalition, but I am not sure how fundamental that is.
I actually avoid talking about this, because people tend to get far more offended when I attack the humanities culture relative to the leftist culture (probably because humanities students take an attack on the humanities much more personally; while most non-activists would not have such a personal attachment to "the left").
I won't deny that women and minorities still face actual discrimination, but as some minority groups are being normalized in general culture, there seems to be a drive from the same people to normalize every potential minority no matter how small or unusual. Simply put, there's a limited amount of accommodation that's reasonable to make. We're at the stage where some of the minorities that are left are well below 0.1% of the population and they don't face significant discrimination due to appearance like races and women do. Maybe someday there will be an "Other" on a form for gender, but it's not ever going to be there on a medical form where genetic sex has a real and meaningful impact on your healthcare treatment.
However, I still don't think it's necessarily a good idea to separate leftists from liberals. First of all because I'm not entirely sure how large this "leftist" group actually is. I suspect that it's actually radically smaller than the group of liberals, and it's only the Internet and social media and shitty journalism that reads individual Tweets from regular citizens on the national news that amplifies their voices. Furthermore, I don't see why they wouldn't be better classified simply as radical liberals. Just because they have extreme views doesn't make them less liberal, just less centrist. In a time when being centrist and favoring compromise is apparently a sign of weak morals, I can understand the desire to instead excise that group entirely, but I really don't believe that's correct.
I think it's also useful to note that in most European countries, they always seem to have four or five political parties: far left/liberal, left/liberal, central, right/conservative, and far right/conservative. Sometimes you'll see multiple parties in each area or an occasional party that breaks these -- some parties might be left/conservative or right/liberal -- but by and large most can still be pegged to one of those five, and the parties clustered around the middle always tend to get the most seats. It's possible that the geography and politics of the US has simply allowed the far left to stay hidden within the normal left, largely because our election process tends to favor rural communities slightly, and they tend toward conservative and right.
I don't know how much credence that particular claim gets, but the broader context is apparently a whole academic movement [0]. Guess I took the wrong philosophy sequence.
I think you are right about the "coalition" between liberals and leftists. I've noticed it falling apart for a while but not really been able to describe it. Talking with friends I previously considered liberal and being shushed for questioning or simply not knowing the current vogue in social justice discourse has been a really horrible experience.
Worse, I've seen that experience turn others into frothing radicals who then do the same thing to other people. It's a forward feedback loop of people entrenching their existing preconceptions.
It's a mess.
In fact, it's so hard to reconcile that I sometimes wonder if leftists are a straw man invented by the right, but I'm starting to realize that may not be true.
Leftists are not, but "leftists" as described by the right often are, as are "feminists" and "SJWs."
And because it will probably come up, yes, the same phenomenon exists on the other side as well.
I don't know about "general democratic principles" but I would include these as ideas valued by liberalism and not by leftism.
> That's not what I see happening, but sure, you can accuse other people of that if you like.
I've seen videos of it happening. Basically a speaker is invited to give a talk, but people who disagree with her crowd the auditorium and scream to prevent the talk from being given. The intention is not to "engage [or] defeat on rational grounds," but to shut down and exclude.
A lot of the people who have this done to them are in fact disagreeable, but that doesn't make the reaction less illiberal.
Fortunately, Ann Coulter or someone has plenty of outlets for her speech. And we've come a long way from Governor Ronald Reagan ordering UC Berkeley to cancel speakers because he didn't like what they had to say.
How have we “come a long way” from Reagan doing it? No-platforming actions don’t require the backing of a democratic majority. A few self-righteous people get going and no one wants to burn political capital objecting. Making the disinvitation button available to a wider population isn’t progress.