The Tyranny of the Politically Correct

by Keith Preston

  The Poet and radical LGBT activist Staceyann Chin said during an interview,

  …sometimes what we intend to do is to walk in and flip the script, so that we become the more powerful people and the other people become the less powerful. It’s hard because sometimes I want black people to be in charge and some white people to be slaves. Sometimes I feel that way because shit is fucked up. But that’s reactive politics. That’s revenge, not social justice work. The hardest thing is the question of saving everybody at the same time. Because you see how many people that are oppressed and you see the interconnectivity of racism and sexism and you’re like, “shit! I just wanna help these motherfuckers here who are under stress. Can’t I just focus on these people, and just be a feminist and not an antiracist? Can we not talk about poverty now, because these people are being raped over here?” But the most successful revolutions that have happened throughout history are those revolutions that had groups working together, and where the people who were working against slavery were also feminists. Seeing the whole picture. I think that’s what I do, what I attempt to do.

  Well, I actually agree with this. When have I ever endorsed rape? When I have ever endorsed poverty? When have I ever endorsed slavery?

  And at first, this might all appear to be what Preston and Jeremy have both been saying, but you would be wrong as Preston and his broad coalition of “left and right” that “transcends ideology” explicitly states that they are not fighting for equality between individuals and actively rejects those who do as “oppressors of the Right”.

  The critic gives no definition of what he means by “equality of individuals.” If he means equality of legal and political rights in the classical liberal sense, then I would be for “equality of individuals.” If he means the equality of individuals to rise or fall according to their own merit, without being hampered by statist, feudal, theocratic or capitalist institutions, then I would be for equality of individuals. If he means opposition to genuine systems of class or caste exploitation, then I am for equality of individuals. But if he means “equality” in the sense of equating the foolish with the wise, the ignorant with the educated, the stupid with the intelligent, the diseased with the healthy, the drunk and addicted with the sober, the amateurish with the professional, the neophytes with the experienced, the ugly with the beautiful, the incompetent with the capable, the undeserving with the meritorious, and the insane with the mentally healthy, then I am by no means for equality of individuals. As for the matter of “oppressors of the Right,” I most certainly am in favor of the equality of all individuals to own firearms, smoke in pubs, practice religion, own property, join exotic cults, patronize a prostitute, take drugs, open a home school, skip school, drink beer at age nineteen, eat junk food, practice alternative medicine, eat meat, or read a “non de-niggerized” edition of Huckleberry Finn.

  According to Preston and the wider NA viewpoint, identities are a virus that need to be segregated in order to ensure social cohesion.

  I’m only a fellow traveler to NA. I’m actually a classical anarchist and my own “anarcho-pluralist” outlook is simply a modern version of “anarchism without adjectives.” However, NAs if anything celebrate identities rather than regarding them as “viruses.” NA is the polar opposite of old-fashioned segregation like Jim Crow, apartheid, Nuremberg Laws, etc. Rather, it champions self-determination for all ethno-tribal and ethno-cultural groups on the basis of free association.

  Even name-dropping Kropotkin as evidence that it is possible for Anarchists to “agree with some things the Right has to say” is misleading...

  Kropotkin’s strategic outlook regarding anarchist organizing among common people was the same as mine. For instance, he opposed trying to teach peasants about things like atheism, rationalism, Darwinism, etc, and instead favored respecting their cultural and religious traditions while offering assistance on their own issues of concern like economic oppression and exploitation by the state and feudal landlords. And, if this means anything, Kropotkin’s daughter Alexandra actually immigrated to the USA and became a Goldwater supporter while continuing to claim her family’s anarchist heritage.

  ... as Kropotkin and Bakunin both rejected their aristocratic positions in favor of egalitarianism and Anarchism. They didn’t take up the fight for Anarchism to defend their titles or privilege, just as no Anarchist with integrity will take up the pen or take to the street to fight for or protect their own privilege, or the privilege of a select group of people.

  Fortunately, we don’t have titled aristocrats in modern Western societies, or where we still do, they are toothless. What “privilege” is it that we alternative anarchists are defending? The critic gives no examples or illustrations. Are we defending the military-industrial complex? Seeking to uphold the American empire? Are we Ayn Randian-fans of the corporate overlords? Are we apologists for the bureaucratic overlords of the New Class? Do we heap praise on the elites of the media and the world of academia? Do we going around displaying slogans like “Support the Troops” or “Support Your Local Police”? Not that I can tell.

  This means no alliance is possible with the reactive Right which states, explicitly, as an aim and goal, to prevent people from safely being able to be themselves,

  You mean people who want to be “born-again” Christians, or join the Branch Davidians, or display a Confederate flag, or own a handgun, or smoke tobacco, or attend a pre-Vatican II mass, or express politically incorrect opinions, or attend a home school, or watch or participate in beauty pageants? There is no evidence we alternative anarchists or those among our allies who are from the Right wish to prevent anyone from doing any of this.

  or, who want to fight to keep their privileged existence.

  No explanation has been offered as to how any of us are “privileged.” Most of us are certainly privileged compared to our counterparts in many other parts of the world. Fortunately, most of us are also stridently opposed to the oppression inflicted on people of other nations and civilizations by our own ruling classes such as people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Columbia, Latin America, Iran, northern Africa, Southeast Asia, etc. Fortunately, the lumpenproletarian orientation of ARV/ATS incorporates the interests of the most oppressed in our own societies into a wider ideological and strategic paradigm.

  Understand that agreement on one or two points does not mean two parties agree politically, that is, agree on what ought to occur. Milk is white and so is chalk dust. Would you drink a glass of chalk dust?

  Not being Marxists or Jacobin fundamentalists, we recognize that different subsets of human beings will always have conflicting ideals as to what constitutes “the good.” As anarchists and radical decentralists, most of us generally concur that such differences should be dealt with according to the principles of individual liberty, free association, pluralism and peaceful co-existence where possible, and decentralism, localism, secession, and mutual self-separation where not possible.

  What is being done is a total re-writing of basic terms and phrases. This is called spin and propaganda and is made much easier in an American cultural environment where people are not well-educated in politics and terms and phrases have been spun so often and so frequently, by so many different parties, they almost have no meaning.

  This is a rather extraordinary statement coming from someone who displays the level of abuse of political terminology and ignorance of political history of this critic.

  There is no synthesis of ideas in Preston’s work, but a loose set of ideas cherry picked from Anarchism and incorporated into those of reactive politics, the politics and cultural attitudes of the Right.

  This is a highly selective and willfully ignorant reading and evaluation of my work.

  Any claim to have transcended ideology is rendered moot, as the bulk of his argument is taken from the Right in reaction to the Left. The phrasing, the rhetoric, the language and the politics is designed to attract those of the Left, as well as Preston’s personalized anecdotes about his former
life as an Anarchist.

  As the statement of purpose says, ARV/ATS is a dissident tendency within North American anarchism specifically and Western anarchism generally that seeks to compensate for the conventional anarchist movement’s failure to both develop an ideological and strategic paradigm that is actually relevant to a twenty-first century Western society, and to recognize the dangers posed by authoritarian leftism (in spite of the history of bloody conflict between anarchists and left-statists). This is simply a replay of the battle between Bakunin and Marx, between the Kronstadt rebels and the Bolsheviks, or between the Spanish anarchists and the Stalinists.

  14

  Reply to a Cultural Marxist Critic

  A Leftist who uses the name of “Equus” posted a limited critique of Attack the System on Royce Christian’s blog. This is my response.

  Equus begins his rebuttal by offering a concise and helpful summary of the points of his refutation. I repeat it in full:

  My objection to Third Positionism is that it first and foremost has an ahistorical approach inasmuch as it is leftist and only retroactively places itself there, using ideas and attitudes not formulated at the time of the conception of the left/right political spectrum. It claims to be neither left nor right and claims to be a synthesis of right and left ideas while rejecting the sole premise of left-wing ideology. Furthermore, it understands being anti-state as an ideological characteristic instead of a tactical characteristic; it would claim Anarchists and anti-government fascists are ideologically similar instead of correctly placing Anarchism as an ideology that opposes the state in the context of leftist politics. While it co-opts much of Anarchist rhetoric, it dismisses two key concepts: solidarity and community. Finally, it may not be an exclusively right-wing idea, but it provides an arena for people who oppose what Anarchists stand for to enter the conversation as legitimate actors and gives nothing back. I know little of Preston’s personal political background, and it is both irrelevant and hard to make the case that he is knowingly undermining Anarchism with his support of the Third Position. Regardless, his ideas have only provided a dangerous utility to the right that must be understood.

  Equus proceeds with a discussion of the origins of the left/right dichotomy:

  First, we need to look at the origin of the left/right political spectrum to broaden our view. This first began in the French Parliament around the time of the revolution. Those who favored the monarchy sat in the right wing and those who opposed it sat in the left wing. The most radical opponents of Monarchism sat in a part of the left wing referred to as “the mountain.” Among them was PJ Proudhon, the first philosopher to describe himself as an Anarchist and to articulate what was most likely a widely held view (I phrase it this way because any adherence to a figure as the sole example of a philosophy is a failure of understanding, i.e. Proudhon was a sexist, but that does not mean sexism is inherent to Anarchism). So there we have the basic framework for what it means to be leftist or rightist in a historical context.

  While I agree that this is an accurate description of the origins of the left/right model of the political spectrum, I would also insist that the facts associated with the origins of this model are by themselves an indication of both the archaic (and indeed reactionary) nature of that model and the problematic nature of its continued use. If Proudhon is to be our starting point in a discussion of the historical contexts of the evolution of anarchist thought (and I agree he would seem to be as good a starting point as any), then perhaps we should begin by attempting an honest understanding of his actual views. No competent historian denies that modern anarchism has its roots in the left-wing of the Enlightenment and in the radical socialist labor movement. But this does not mean that anarchism is not to be distinguished from numerous other, more dominant strands of thought that emerged within the intellectual milieus and during the time periods in question. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn aptly summarized Proudhon’s contributions to political thought:

  His socialism was distributist rather than collectivist; the key word to his economic thinking is “mutualism.” He was strongly opposed to economic liberalism because he feared bigness - the concentration of wealth, mammoth enterprises - yet he was equally an enemy of the omnipotent centralized state, which is at the root of most leftist thinking. Proudhon’s numerous books are full of notions and ideas that any true lover of liberty or any true conservative could underwrite…He always remained a healthy anti-statist and a convinced anti-democrat…Proudhon and Marx both dreamed of a “withering away of the state.” Marx sought to fulfill his ideas by revolutionary means, by the use of brute force, by the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Proudhon, on the other hand, was an “evolutionist”: the right order of things should be discovered, not arbitrarily blueprinted. Socialism should come gradually…it should encompass the globe through the voluntary consent of the people…not under one centralized superstate, but in a federal system-by federations deeply rooted in local customs, institutions, and traditions..

  In other words, while Anarchism is clearly a product of Enlightenment thinking, it (or at least Proudhon’s version of it) is a product of that strand of Enlightenment thinking that adheres to a constrained rather than unconstrained vision of humanity and the nature of human societies. These contending strands in modernist thought have been identified very well by Dr. Thomas Sowell, and cut across conventional ideological boundaries. Equus describes the historical development of the Left in these terms:

  The Monarchy opposed by the left has gone on to be Capitalism (in the case of socialists), racism (in the case of the black power movement among others), sexism (in the case of feminists), and so on. A colloquial way of phrasing it would be that the left is “anti-establishment.”

  I have no disagreement with this statement. Yesterday’s liberalism is today’s conservatism. Today’s radicalism is tomorrow’s establishment. But if the Left is to be defined as the “anti-establishment,” then who in present day Western societies would constitute the “anti-establishment”? Capitalism began the process of overthrowing the old order centuries ago and is now well-established and has been for a very long time. Likewise, the classical socialist movement has become integrated into the establishment. Labor unions were once illegal in some countries, as were the socialist parties. Today, they are mainstream, respectable establishment institutions led by persons drawn from the middle to upper classes. Contemporary Western economies are a capitalist/socialist hybrid and bear no resemblance to the form of capitalism written about by the likes of Charles Dickens or Karl Marx. In more recent times, racism and sexism have likewise become established as the ultimate social and personal sins. The open promotion of racism is a criminal offense in many Western countries. Indeed, even perceptions of racism of an entirely dubious nature can lead to a confrontation with the law. Few things are more menacing to the careers of public figures than accusations of racism. Overtly supremacist ideologies such as Nazism or the beliefs of the members of the Ku Klux Klan have come to be regarded as the ultimate in evil. During the apartheid era, South Africa came to be regarded as the ultimate pariah state. Those perceived to have waged successful battles against racism, such as Martin Luther King, Ghandhi, or Nelson Mandela have come to be regarded as the greatest of saints. Whatever else one thinks of racists, clearly they are not establishment figures. Sexism remains somewhat less of a taboo than racism, but it is a taboo nevertheless. Even so prominent an establishment figure as the president of the most elite of universities is not insulated from sanctions generated by accusations of sexism. In other words, proponents of capitalism, socialism, anti-racism, or anti-sexism have been absorbed into the political and cultural mainstream of Western societies. Far from being “anti-establishment,” the Left is now the establishment.

  Next we need to understand the basics of the sociological study of social inequality. Sociologists generally use two umbrella terms about social inequality: the conservative thesis and radical antithesis, which divides thinkers into two groups: stru
ctural functionalists or conflict theorists. Structural functionalists generally claim that stratification is functional, perhaps inevitable, or even natural and good. Conflict theorists generally state that inequality is to some extent a social construct and must be destroyed or at least minimized.

  As one who is familiar with the variations of sociological theory, I would say this formulation by Equus contains two principal errors. The first implicitly postulates that structural functionalism and conflict theory are mutually exclusive. They are not. One could recognize that stratification does indeed serve a functional purpose, while simultaneously recognizing the conflicting nature between demographic, political, or socioeconomic groups within a society. Because stratification may include a functional dimension, this does not mean that conflict is absent. Indeed, recognition of this principle brings us to the second fundamental error in the above statement by Equus. He ignores a primary aspect of conflict theory. To quote one of my old textbooks on sociological theory from graduate school:

  Any significant change in the distribution of resources that favors a subordinated group will lead to political conflict or violence aimed at redistributing advantages. In such conflicts, subordinate groups exploit the counter-ideologies they have employed to salvage their self-esteem, using them to delegitimize dominant ideologies. When a previously disadvantaged group rises to power, it exploits its new position just as did the group or groups it has displaced.

  This is precisely the process we have seen unfolding in the Western countries over the past two centuries. Capitalism succeeds in throwing off the ancien regime and “exploited its new position” by creating modern systems of capitalist or state-corporate plutocracy. Anarchists are of course aware of this. Socialism was incorporated into the managerial states that emerged in the early to mid twentieth century, and “exploited its position” through the development of the “new class” bureaucracies that have come to dominate modern states. See Alvin Gouldner on this New Class and James Burnham on its origins. More recently, “anti-racists” (a term that should by no means be regarded as a synonym for actual racial minorities) have achieved so much phenomenal success that their ideology has become one of the primary articles of faith of the legitimating ideologies of post-Christian Western states. The “Anti-racists” are now “exploiting their position” in a wide assortment of ways. Hence, the prevailing political correctness we see in all institutions at present, and the emergence of previously unknown “criminal” offenses such as those prohibiting free speech (“hate speech”), free thought ( “hate crimes”), or freedom of association (discrimination prohibition), and new systems of privilege for the politically connected (so-called “affirmative action,” for instance). In a similar fashion, feminists are also a newly minted establishment force that is “exploiting its position.” In the USA, for example, feminist domination of family courts has resulted in misandrist policies aimed at the criminalization of fathers merely for their male status. In those countries where feminists have achieved the greatest amount of power, such as Sweden and Iceland, they are “exploiting their position” for the purpose of persecuting men and subordinated classes of women alike. Most contemporary left-anarchists understand of course that capitalism has long been a status quo, establishmentarian institution. What they have failed to do is recognize that socialism, “anti-racism,” and “anti-sexism” have subsequently become establishmentarian forces as well. That they continue to beat the drums so loudly for social movements that have long been incorporated into the state is indication of their current reactionary nature. Hence, contemporary left-wing anarchism is a reactionary force that acts as an appendage to the left-wing of the establishment.