Topic: Liberal Fascism
Recently in another Web venue I posted some comments regarding progressivism’s progressive slide into illiberalism, i.e. the renunciation of its commitment to traditional civil liberties like freedoms of speech and association. This disturbing trend manifests itself in many ways and places, from the US Congress to university campuses. Its signs and symptoms are such things as campus trigger warnings and restrictions on political speech, vicious online campaigns of denunciation and persecution aimed at people who transgress progressive orthodoxy, etc. Examples of progressive illiberalism abound and I cited a few.
For this I was denounced by an interlocutor as a purveyor of “fear and hate.”
This individual—his identity does not matter—responded to my defense of free speech in an odd way. I had cited George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” and quoted him to the effect that if freedom of speech means anything it means telling people what they don not want to hear. While professing to agree with Orwell on that point he went on to claim that Orwell had a problem with free speech. I scoffed at this, whereat my interlocutor cited another Orwell essay, “Notes on Nationalism.”
Like almost everything that Orwell wrote, “Notes on Nationalism” remains well worth reading but it certainly does not include a critique of freedom of speech. I pointed this out and was thereupon invited to participate in a “discussion” of the essay. Having already been accused of spreading “fear and hate” I felt that such a discussion would not be fruitful, and called it a day.
If anything, both “Politics and the English Language” and “Notes on Nationalism” embody a devastating critique of the mind-set that has pushed progressivism in an illiberal direction. The former deals with the corruption of language by ideology; the latter deals with the irrationality of ideological conformity. No one at all familiar with George Orwell will have difficulty imagining what he would have thought, for example, of the current jihad against the “culture of rape” on campus—a campaign based on bogus statistics and driven by mob hysteria in the style of the Two Minutes Hate. In this, as in so many other manifestations of illiberal progressivism, he would undoubtedly have recognized the spirit of Ingsoc, Newspeak and doublethink: willful ignorance reinforcing blatant dishonesty.
In exchanges of this kind with progressives, you really have to expect to be denounced at some stage as a hater, a fearmonger, a bigot, a sexist, a homophobe, a fascist, etc., etc. The name-calling usually starts when you’ve made a cogent point and once the vitriol has been flung it’s time to head for the exit. Why bother to hang around? After all, has not your interlocutor reinforced your point?
I have no doubt, incidentally, that George Orwell would find much to dislike in contemporary conservatism. But characteristically he would judge conservative principles on their merits for, as he said, no argument can be said to be refuted until it has been given a fair hearing. But this classically liberal attitude is one that illiberal progressivism not only violates in practice but rejects in principle. Fear and hate? Those are the twin pillars of a twisted, ugly ideology that falsely advertises itself as liberal, enlightened, rational and compassionate while viciously persecuting the dissenter, the heretic and the unbeliever.
