The Rise of Low Liberalism

'Liberalism is increasingly popular among non-elites. Whilst such voters think ideologically, their conceptual understanding is limited and they embrace populist methods, failing to understand the limits of liberal-democratic politics.

Whilst low liberalism reflects traditional liberal concerns and buttresses liberal democracy, low liberals embrace certain authoritarian and radical left positions, such as draconian measures against MPs and extreme anti-Israel stances.

Low liberalism shares the populist tendency to pathologize the views of opponents, dismissing conservatives as stupid and/or greedy. Relatedly, low liberalism can stray into dark territory, embracing the shadowy and conspirational.

Low liberals fail to understand the limits of liberal-democratic politics. They promote the politicization of once apolitical spheres and regard the state as a partisan organ, contrasting with traditional liberalism’s vision of a neutral state.

More broadly, online versions of liberalism and conservatism have developed in reaction to one another, entailing an arms race which disfigures liberal democracy. We should worry about the end point.'

> Relatedly, low liberals regard the state as a partisan organ, contrasting with traditional liberalism’s vision of a neutral state.

You can literally point out the surge in popularity of Slavoj Zizek as the proximal cause of this with his idea of Ultra-Politics. The promise that someone can step outside of politics. The political in his mind is the non-traversable horizon of society.

This isn't exactly a new concept; it's a radicalization of Althusarian post-politics. It's related to Adorno's critique of society which states that a healthy functioning society is precisely one that can't agree on what it means to be a healthy functioning society. A society without political agonism would cease to be a society. Instead it would be an ideological dictatorship where everyone thought the same thing all the time.

Revisiting Ultra-Politics in this light, Zizek's position is that the avoidance of politics is itself a political gesture, and relates it to Freud's the return of the repressed - or the explanation of why the very spaces which are supposed to be apolitical or politically neutral become the places where there are the most political disagreements. It's embodied in the belief that the ultimate fantasy is the idea of a objective neutral reality that you can begin to see how nothing, in the eyes of the low liberals, can be de-politicized. You would have to create an even more powerful IAS than that of the third wave liberalism that's so thoroughly infused itself in broader society that it has ceased to be viewed as ideological at all - that politics should be depoliticized.

Once you understand how this assemblage operates you can begin to see how groups operate within it and in relation to it, why they make the moves they do, and what would need to change to move out of it and if such a thing is even possible.