Why is progressive politics so intolerant?
The use of the word “progressive” is an odd and presumptuous way of describing one’s politics. There is an implicit suggestion that those of us who do not support so-called progressive parties are somehow regressive types propping up an old, reactionary order while the progressives bravely struggle for the future. Ironically, if not unsurprisingly, the result is that these progressives are more likely to be intolerant than those who disagree with them.
This much is clear on the great dividing line of British politics over the last three and a half years – Brexit. A recent Ipsos Mori poll conducted in January 2020, called “Tolerance across the values divide?”, asked Remain and Leave voters from the UK’s 2016 EU referendum how they feel about people who hold the opposite view to them on various topics.
The results are fascinating. When asked whether they would “find it hard to respect people who hold the opposite views” as to whether man-made climate change is real, 51% of the Remain voters said that they would. By contrast, 51% of those who voted to Leave said that “it does not matter to me if someone holds the opposite view to me on this topic”. There were similar, if not quite as stark, figures on the issues of same-sex marriage and immigration.
One conclusion to draw from this survey is that we clearly cannot lump Britain’s Remainers and Leavers into homogenous or reductive brackets. Yet, the results are striking when one considers that it was the most ideological Remainers who claimed to be the champions of enlightened modernity. It was they who still argue that the European project is an earthly manifestation of the progress of humankind. In this way, the very same people who most zealously preach the gospel of progress can often be those who are most uncompromising in their treatment of dissenting opinions and discursive pluralism.
The paradox of this “progressive intolerance” is born from a belief that one’s own views are the self-evident, indisputable rules of civility. It seems to produce an unshakeable conviction that one’s own world view is a certainty akin to revelation, a necessity written into the laws of history. This allows the more aggressive progressives to talk as though they have a monopoly on truth and morality and are possessed of a unique power to determine right from wrong.
It is this spirit which has led to the epidemic of twitter denunciations as well as the cancelling and no-platforming in our universities, just as it continues to fuel the stifling groupthink which dominates our academic circles. In reality, it turns out, what “progressive” means for many progressives is simply “people who think like we do”; and progressivism has become the ideology of a city-dwelling patrician class who believe they, and their ideas, are on the right side of history.
It is this same patrician attitude applied to power and government that leads those who identify as progressives to denounce their opponents as “populists”. In their eyes, they are the virtuous guardians of right, the senators of the republic, while the rest of us are wretched demagogues whipping up “the deplorables” with bigoted chimeras and cynical ploys. It is an entitled attitude, the temperament of those who believe they have a divine right to rule – and defeat at the ballot box merely solidifies and reinforces their prejudices.
This all plays into the warped political logic of progressivism, where a conviction in one’s own indisputably pure ends can be used to justify the most immoral means. The assumption that there is one, specific end point of history led some voters at the 2019 general election to conclude that a particular political mission was worth the distasteful measures used to advance their cause. This is why many self-proclaimed progressives shamefully overlooked Jeremy Corbyn’s culpability in empowering the toxic anti-Semitism which has had been allowed to infest the Labour Party. They did so in the myopic belief that putting the man responsible into Downing Street was a necessary price for the ultimate goal of a left wing government or remaining within the EU. Thus do the beacons of progress cast a long, dark and regressive shadow.
If this is the salvation of progressivism, then many will readily choose the path of damnation. The wider public can feel justified in preferring a healthy dose of humility to the malicious righteousness of those who believe they are arbiters of the laws of progress. Faced with such a vicious spectre, it is as important as ever to challenge those who practice intolerance in the name of enlightenment.