Subscribe
The last few years have seen a seismic shift in the traditional Left and Right, both in Europe and North America. The Left used to stand for socialism. In the 1920s, this meant the abolition of private property rights to the means of production and hence the end of ‘exploitation’ of the working class by the capitalists. In the 1940s, socialism meant central economic planning where people were mostly allowed to retain their formal property rights but where the planners were supposed to direct individual efforts into the channels deemed most efficient, or socially acceptable. In the 1960s, this meant high taxes and extensive redistribution, not necessarily from the rich to the poor, but rather from those easily taxed to those with the greatest political clout. But socialism in all three variations failed. The Soviet system collapsed. Swedish-type social democracy collided with reality and was quietly abandoned. (When Margaret Thatcher was asked about her greatest achievement, she replied: ‘Tony Blair’.)
Left Dominates Universities and the Media
The Left did not conquer the world, because socialism did not work. But what it did conquer instead were the universities and the media. One reason was that able right-wing individuals become entrepreneurs, investors, businessmen, managers, doctors, and engineers, whereas able left-wing intellectuals become university professors, teachers, and journalists. This trend was then reinforced by the fact that leftists hold their opinion with much more intensity and much less tolerance than rightists. Right-wing university professors would hire newcomers more or less independently of their political views. Left-wing professors would only hire other leftists. Slowly, the universities were thus taken over. The same self-selection bias was found in the media. Left to their own devices, universities and the media will turn left.
Real Victims Disappear, Left Invents New
The universities ceased to be forums for the free competition of ideas, and instead became vehicles for the social changes the Left craved. The journalists ceased to report what was really happening and became left-wing cheerleaders. But which social changes did the Left crave? Its historical (and noble) mission had been to fight for the poor, and the marginal. But at the end of the twentieth century, at least in the West, these issues had ceased to be urgent. Poverty had been largely eliminated, and ethnic and sexual minorities were no longer oppressed. The Left had lost its raison d’être. It therefore invented one. Instead of engaging in the increasingly difficult task of identifying real victims and fighting for them, the Left simply created victims and their oppressors, hence the Left’s cancel culture and wokeism, the passionate rejection of Western civilisation, the inane welcome extended to anti-Western asylum seekers flocking to Europe.
Antisemitism and the New anti-Western Utopia
By now, left-wing political parties were dominated by a new elite of university professors, teachers, journalists, activist lawyers, and government bureaucrats, with no sympathy for the concerns and interests of the working class (which itself had undergone a transformation, with special skills replacing raw muscle). The Left’s imagery had also changed. In the 1920s, the utopia had been the Soviet Union, and the struggle had been supposed to be between capitalists and the proletariat. In the post-war years, the utopia had been Sweden, while the illusion of the epoch had been corporatism—the alliance of big government, big business and big labour. But the Left ran out of utopias to which to send admiring delegations from the West, and it also ran out of real struggles. For a while, the Left embraced ecofundamentalism (and some leftists still do) where the utopia is some imaginary Arcadia of singing birds and the grass swaying gently in the breeze. But recently the Left has found another imaginary country, Palestine (which has never really existed), new enemies, the Jews, and a new constituency, anti-Western immigrants. The Left has changed beyond recognition, while its traditional constituency, the working class, has no sympathy with the new left-wing elite, with its absurd cancel culture and wokeism and its evil antisemitism. This creates a unique opportunity for the Right.