Progressive Intellectuals: Image vs. Reality

I have spent many years around progressive intellectuals. They fill the academic world and the elite cultural circles of our society. As a group, they seem to me incredibly deceived and self-deceived people—much more self-deceived than right-wing intellectuals (of whom there are far fewer). Their worldview revolves around self-serving lies, and much of their self-image is practically the opposite of reality.

Let’s see some examples, then think about why this might be.

1. Five Self-Deceptions

a. Progressive Prejudice

There are still right-wing racists and sexists in the country, but they’ve been excluded from elite cultural circles for decades. If you move in even moderately high-status circles in our society, you’re basically never going to run into right-wing bigots. But you’re going to be repeatedly bombarded by left-wing bigotry. The most virulently racist people you’ll ever meet will be people whose entire self-image and worldview revolves around “anti-racism”. The most irredeemably sexist people will be the ones whose life revolves around feminism.

Some manifestations of this prejudice:

1. Collectivist obsession

Progressive intellectuals are obsessed with race, sex, and other “identity groups”, far more so than normal Americans. They cannot stop talking about race and gender, viewing every event through that lens. When they look at you, they don’t see a unique individual; they see a collection of group identities. You’re just a representative of your race, sex, etc. When two people have a conflict, the progressive “anti-racist” needs to know the races of the two people before he decides which side he is on. The “anti-sexist” feminist needs to know the genders of the two people.

2. Animosity

A classic feature of racism is animosity toward one or more particular races. In traditional, right-wing racism, that would be hatred toward blacks, Jews, Latinos, and perhaps Asians. Traditional sexism involves having lower respect for women (though perhaps not hatred).

In contemporary, left-wing racism, we see hatred toward white people, and perhaps Jews, and perhaps Asians. (The Jews get it from both sides.) In left-wing sexism, we see hatred and contempt for men.

Progressives don’t like to think of themselves as hate-mongers. But if someone talked about any other group the way progressives talk about white men—e.g., talking about the harms of “whiteness”; going on about wrongs committed by white men, emphasizing their race and sex, while passing over wrongs committed by other groups—progressives would take one nanosecond to label that “hate speech”.

3. Scapegoating

Progressives like to blame white people for most of the world’s problems. This is another classic feature of racism. Right-wing racists such as the Nazis tried to blame the Jews for most of society’s problems. It doesn’t cease to be racism just because you pick a different race to scapegoat.

4. Stereotyping

Another classic feature of racism: negative stereotyping. Traditional racists would stereotype Jews as greedy, blacks as criminals, etc. Traditional sexists stereotype women as less capable than men. Left-wing bigots, on the other hand, stereotype white men as abusers and oppressors, and other groups as victims of white males.

That is the first element of progressive self-deception: they style themselves warriors against prejudice, but they are the biggest force stoking prejudice in our society. They think that their prejudice is different because the group they’re attacking is actually bad. They don’t see their stereotypes as stereotypes but just as the truth. That, of course, is what all bigots think.

b. (Anti-)Fascism

Leftists in America used to be called “liberals”, and some people still use that word. But the contemporary left has turned in the opposite direction. Now the loudest voices for illiberalism come from the left. Now we see the left calling for people with “the wrong views” to be silenced, shouted down, and personally harmed. Leftists now think that if someone disagrees with you, rather than discussing the issues, you should try to destroy their life—doxxing them in the hope that someone will go to their house and harass or injure them, starting campaigns to have them fired from their job, etc. They now have memes about “punching Nazis”. “Antifa” (short for “antifascist”) activists destroy property and start physical fights with their political enemies.

All of this is the opposite of liberalism. It is, in fact, more akin to the tactics of fascists.

The traditional political spectrum places communists and fascists at opposite ends, but they are in reality barely distinguishable. A more informative spectrum would place communists and fascists at one end, and libertarians at the opposite end.

c. Elitism

Left-wing intellectuals like to view themselves as defenders of the weak and the vulnerable masses against the powerful elites. But this is the opposite of what they are. Left-wing intellectuals are the elites and the handmaidens to the elites. Their ideology (esp. “wokeness”) controls virtually all the elite institutions that deal with ideas. They control the movie industry, the publishing industry, all the arts, primary and secondary education, colleges and universities, the government bureaucracy, the mainstream news media other than Fox, and most of the big tech companies. They continue to advocate for giving more power to the most powerful organizations (governments).

Whatever might have been true in the past, today it is the right that better represents the masses. Despite being a New York billionaire, Donald Trump drew more support from the masses, and much less from the elites, than his Democratic rivals. Right wing voices find their place in alternative media, such as private podcasts and blogs (yay, Substack!), precisely because there are fewer barriers to entry and individuals can start their own thing without elite institutional approval.

d. Courage

Some left-wing intellectuals even think of themselves as heroically “speaking truth to power”. They praise the “courage” of women who make accusations against men, or people who speak up for left wing causes.

This, again, is the opposite of the truth. Leftists do not speak truth to power. They speak power to truth. I.e., they use raw social power to advance false narratives and silence dissent. That’s the point of cancel culture. In our current society, it takes no courage for people to speak up for leftism, nor for women to make accusations against men. It takes no courage for people to take the side of the elites or to invoke the elite ideology. Nothing happens to them, except that they get celebrated in their elite left-wing social circles. This is the opposite of courage.

Many leftists seem to live in an alternate reality in which our society—including the most left-wing-dominated of institutions—is filled with neo-Nazis bent on hurting women and minorities at every turn. In the academic world, you can hear people talking about how biased the academic world is against women, in the very same meeting that everyone present agrees to give women preference over men in hiring, and no one notices the dissonance. Constantly talking about how the other side has all the power, while being constantly directly confronted with their own side’s power.

The actual displays of courage are by the dissenters, who risk being cancelled and doxxed by the left-wing mob.

By the way, none of that is changed by the last election. Left-wing footsoldiers still know that they are in step with their own institutions and social circles, and those institutions will insulate them. When, for example, the Trump administration goes to battle against Harvard University, left-wing professors have no personal fear. None of them think that they, personally, are going to get fired for promoting left-wing views. They’ll only receive accolades from their colleagues. But they’ll pretend not to know this.

When people start getting fired for left-wing views, that is when intellectuals will have the chance to show their courage. If and when that happens, I expect nearly all of them to flip their allegiance—or at minimum go silent. Left-wing intellectuals include some of the least brave individuals you could ever hope to meet.

e. Justice

Lastly, left-wing intellectuals imagine themselves as deeply concerned about justice—“social justice warriors”, as they used to put it. But contemporary progressives are themselves among the biggest anti-justice crusaders. Without going into detail, my reason for saying this is

1. It is a central, uncontroversial principle of justice—perhaps the most central and uncontroversial principle—that it is wrong to punish someone for a crime they did not commit.

2. Progressives are frequently unconcerned about punishing people for (alleged) sins that they did not commit. They start campaigns against people who are accused of some ideological sin, without trying to find out whether the accusation is true, and even in the face of evidence that the person simply did not in fact do the thing they were accused of.

3. If you value justice, you can’t be indifferent or hostile to a core, uncontroversial principle of justice.

4. So (many) progressives don’t value justice.

Again, their self-image is not merely mistaken; it is the opposite of the truth. If you’re campaigning to punish innocent people, you are an anti-justice warrior. (For more, see:

.)

2. Why Are Progressives Self-Deceived?

a. Selection

One possibility is that it is a selection effect. Perhaps contemporary “woke” progressivism is just such an obviously false belief system that only people who are skilled at self-deception can believe it. Those people, in turn, hold many false beliefs about themselves. People tend to be particularly strongly motivated to form self-congratulatory beliefs, so a person who is good at talking themselves into false beliefs about the external world will probably use their skills to talk themselves into false beliefs about themselves.

b. Echo Chamber

Another possibility is an effect of the left-wing echo chamber. Most progressive intellectuals rarely hear challenges to their beliefs. They are surrounded by other progressives, who never question the ideology because to do so is viewed as disloyal and as a moral flaw. They rarely listen to right-wing viewpoints because they view the right-wingers as evil and everything the right has to say as driven by evil motives. Progressives in fact actively try to prevent each other from hearing right-wing viewpoints, e.g., by campaigning to stop right-wing speakers from coming to campus, or shouting them down when they come.

This sort of echo chamber tends to make people overconfident, to make them ignore problems with their worldview and even take increasingly extreme and implausible positions.

Conservative intellectuals, by contrast, are probably more self-aware because they keep hearing criticisms from left-wing intellectuals. (But this is not true of the right-wing masses, who ignore the left-wing intellectuals.)

c. Social Conformity

Related to explanation (a): Perhaps leftists are disproportionately susceptible to social pressure. That difference shows up in their ideologies in obvious ways.

This social conformity might correlate with lower receptiveness to truth, particularly with regard to ideologically-tinged beliefs. Highly agreeable/conformist people prioritize loyalty to the social group over loyalty to the facts. This, in turn, would be correlated with the ability to self-deceive.

3. Conclusion

The part of contemporary progressivism that I find hardest to relate to is the dishonesty. I can relate to people being either selfish or self-hating, loving or hating their own society, being either brave or fearful, being agreeable or disagreeable. I just can’t relate to the sheer indifference to the facts of reality. That may be the worst political problem. If you’re honest, then you can eventually be brought to support the right policies, given enough evidence, no matter what your other personality traits.

I don’t understand what is going on in the minds of individuals who devote their lives to espousing claims that contradict their everyday experience. In many cases, their behavior seems to show awareness of the facts that they verbally deny—for instance, people who complain about how disadvantaged they are because of their race and sex, then go to register on the “underrepresented philosophers” website to make sure that everyone knows their race and sex.

I don’t understand it, but it’s bad. This is the thing I like least about progressivism.