Liberals’ Only Hope Against Neo-Marxists Is An Alliance With The Right – The Federalist

People have been asking me what I think of the HarpersLetter on Justice and Open Debate, a short statement opposing the cancel culture and signed by 153 prominent liberal intellectuals and cultural figures. Here are my thoughts after reading the letter.

First and most important, in the current atmosphere, anyone defending free speech and viewpoint diversity deserves support. We are living through a time of persecution, in which it is common for individuals to be publicly disgraced and to lose their jobs because theyve said something not in step with the latest theory of what constitutes social justice, or because they wrote something foolish decades ago.

So I support the general message of the Harpers letter. Still, I have to say that this statement is pretty messed up.

The most obvious way its messed up is that too many of the signatories have spent years systematically trying to stifle reasonable public debate by delegitimizing conservative voices and creating a context in which its too costly to engage with them in a public way.

Im not talking about those signatories who have strongly disagreed with conservatives, nationalists, Christians, populists, and so on. Vigorous disagreement is all fine and good and welcome, of course. Im talking about those who have accused conservatives of being authoritarian and anti-democracy; who have compared our views to Nazism, fascism, or Stalinism; whove said were theocrats, racists, sexists, and Islamophobes; whove said that were enabling and collaborating.

This campaign to delegitimize conservative views has been going on for years. Its been effective, too: A generation ago, conservatives were a minority in the mainstream media, academia, and other cultural settings. But we were considered legitimate participants representing a legitimate point of view.

Today this has changed entirely. Conservatism has been driven out or underground in one institution after another. And far too many of the signatories to this letter kept quiet or have actively taken part in bringing this about. But now that itsliberals whose standing is in danger, suddenly theyve realized they care immensely about free speech and viewpoint diversity!

Okay, so thats human nature. People tend to defend their own in-group and interests. Its easier for a liberal to worry about whether wereall free to be liberals than to worry about whether were free to be conservatives. I get it.

But now liberals are being persecuted and deplatformed. Now liberals thinking over the mistakes theyve made in the past. And theystilldont get how messed up it is to collect 153 signaturesin support offree speech and viewpoint diversity but to exclude conservatives fromthat as well.

That brings us to the heart of whats wrong with the Harpers letter: Even after all thats happened, the liberals who cooked this up still dont understand the most basic thing about democracy, which is that you need to have twolegitimate political parties for democracy to workone liberal and one conservative.,

This means that to have a democracy liberals need to grant legitimacy to conservatives (even when they dont like them much) and conservatives need to grant legitimacy to liberals (even when they dont like them much). Nothing else is going to work.

Heres what isnotgoing to work: Liberals trying to exclude conservatives fromevery kind oflegitimate discourse (because conservatives arethe real threat), while granting ever more influence to the very neo-Marxists who are working to bring them down. Its not going to work because neo-Marxists arent like conservatives: They dont believe in democracy. They dont believe in compromise. And they dont share power.

Nevertheless, thats what this letter is about, isnt it? Its about excluding conservatives from even the most elementary declaration of civic principles in order to throw a bone to the left in the hope that theyll take it.

Now, I know that not all the signatories are on the same page on this. Jonathan Haidt, for example, has risked much over the last few years trying to persuade liberals that the effective ban of conservatives in many universities is wrong-headed and self-destructive. Other liberals have stood with him, of course.

But far too many of the Harpers letter signatories have been toeing the line with, for example, Yascha Mounk, who on July 2 announced a new organization whose purpose is to ramp up the delegitimization campaign against conservatives, whom he says are the real threat to democracy. In his own words: The most pressing threat to liberal democracy comes from the populist right. From Brasilia to Washington, authoritarian populists are muzzling dissent, stoking racism, and concentrating power in their own hands. Were facing the fight of a lifetime.

So according to Mounk, the fight of his lifetime isnt against the neo-Marxists who are poised to take over the principal liberal institutions in America, but against conservatives, who are the most pressing threat to liberal democracy. And he said thisfive daysbefore appearing as a signatory on the Harpers letter, in anannouncementthat showcased the names of a dozen other Harpers signatories.

No big surprise, then, that the Harpers letter on free speech and viewpoint diversity includes no fewer than three (!) side comments aimed at delegitimizing conservatives. The reason for these asinine anti-conservative swipes is that the liberals behind the Harpers letter still think theyre going to get an alliance with the very same neo-Marxists who are out to destroy them. And they truly believe the way theyre going to get there is by putting conservatives down.

That leads us to the final reason this Harpers letter is so messed up: Its signatories dont seem to have a clue what time it is. They dont understand that the terrain has shifted beneath their feet.

The left has just scored dozens of victories, from taking down Opinions Editor James Bennet at The New York Times to taking out Woodrow Wilson at Princeton. Theres blood in the water and no one on the left is stupid enough to go for these little liberal bribes now.

Liberals only have two choices: Either theyll submit to the neo-Marxists or theyll try to put together a pro-democracy alliance with conservatives. There arent any other choices.

To be clear, I dont mean an alliance with theNeverTrumpersthat liberal outfits keep on their platforms so they can pretend to be dialoguing withthe other.Most of them arent conservatives and they certainly dont bring the conservative public with them.

Im talking about rebuilding a stable public sphere constructed around two legitimate political parties, one liberal and one consisting of actual conservativesmeaning people that the broad conservative public would recognize as their own.

Maybe liberals just arent smart enough to see that this is what theyve got to do. Maybe theydont have the gutsto do it. Maybe most liberal intellectuals are just going to keep hoping for love from the neo-Marxists until its all over. Could be.

But for now, two cheers for the Harpers letter on free speech and viewpoint diversity.Anyone defending free speech and viewpoint diversity at this time deserves support. So I support the general point of the thing. Even if it is pretty messed up.

Yoram Hazony is chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation and author of The Virtue of Nationalism. Follow him on Twitter @yhazony.

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Liberals' Only Hope Against Neo-Marxists Is An Alliance With The Right - The Federalist