The False Attractiveness and Danger of the Radical Left.
You need to understand the history of the Radical Left NOW, because its making a terrifying comeback…
Words by William Cooper.
The Radical Left, as ambiguous a group as it may be, has always possessed a certain degree of political and ideological allure, which predominantly young people have fallen victim to. Their attractiveness is understandable; indeed, I myself have fallen victim to its theoretical beauty over my life. This, I discovered in hindsight, was due to the fact that the Radical Left are constructed around three things which are superficially attractive but substantially dangerous policies: Equity, Identity Politics and Collectivism.
These three things, to a young adolescent starting at the foot of the world, are music to their ears. However, what I have come to realise, as my politico-ideological boundaries have matured, is that the Radical Left are no less dangerous than the Radical Right. If anything, they are more dangerous because of the natural allure they exert; a trait which thankfully the Radical Right has never quite managed to grasp.
Equity.
Perhaps the most alluring of all the Radical Leftist ideas is that of Equity (otherwise known as Equality of Outcome). This idea, to the eyes and ears of the naïve, has the potential to rejuvenate our political surroundings as we know it. Unfortunately, this rejuvenation would be catastrophic in nature if implemented; producing consequences that even the Radical Left themselves are naïve towards.
The idea of Equity is much more complicated and problematic than the Radical Left have led many to believe. Under a nationwide Equity policy, each level of society would be divided into specific strata, which would be subsequently analysed by community demography. This would entail taking each individual strata and dividing it up into the different characteristics and group identities that construct that strata of society.
Consequently, there would be a percentage applied to each group identity or characteristic that that strata consists of, based on how much that specific identity contributes to the construction of that strata. Then, the strata would be reconstructed, under an Equity policy, so that each demographic is equally represented in that strata, according to their wider representation within the immediate community.
The first problem that Equity would cause is that all economic incentive, in the form of wages, would be flattened across all society. This would mean that a heart surgeon would be paid the same wage as a supermarket worker. This would completely eradicate any person’s desire to reach the top of a respective field, because there would be no incentive to do so. Therefore, instead of flattening society and creating equal distribution, there would be a pooling of the vast majority of people in the lower skilled jobs, which require less effort and time to obtain. As a consequence of this occupational bottlenecking, many high-skilled jobs would be left vacant because there would be no incentive to work harder to access them.
The issue of economic incentive is not the only thorn in Equity’s side. By stratifying and equalising every social strata, this would mean that in each level of every profession, there would need to be a certain percentage of representation, which would be dictated by what the Postmodernists have deemed the four most important human variations: sex, gender, ethnicity, and race.
For example, men and women would have to be equally represented in each strata of every workplace, even in jobs that are occupied almost exclusively by women (nursing, social care) and men (engineering, construction). Even in these occupations, where there is a distinct skew towards either sex, there would have to be equal representation by both men and women. Not only that, then there would have to be equal representation of all ethnicities, sexual genders, and races. And because society is a ‘melting pot’ of different characteristics and demographics, it would be the state’s responsibility to essentially control the population of each strata to ensure equal and proportionate representation at each stratified level.
Moreover, as you make a society more egalitarian and the hierarchies are flattened to make way for Equity, the biological and temperamental differences between these four variants do not follow in suit. On the contrary, they increase and eventually maximise. This is because by flattening all other hierarchies in society, the biological, tyrannical hierarchies become heightened, because they are the only ones left. Therefore, under Equity, instead of flattening a society for equal distribution of wealth, three main outcomes would eventually occur:
1. There would be a mass pooling of society in lower-skilled, easily attainable jobs because of the lack of economic incentive.
2. There would be the creation of four tyrannical, corrupt hierarchies, based on the four chosen Postmodern variants.
3. An equally tyrannical, oppressive state would operate to ensure that the equal distribution of wealth is kept equal, and that each strata constantly represents the wider demographic. It would also make sure that the interests and temperaments between the four variants are kept constant and equal. If they are not equal, then the state rectifies this by forceful intervention.
The fact is that Equity as a policy would never work. It seems like a great idea; a society of hierarchless, equal stratification based on the widescale social demographic. However, this will not work, for the reasons I have given above. We need hierarchies and we need inequality. Hierarchies indeed can become tyrannical and corrupt, and the role of state, and indeed the role of the Left itself, is to ensure that the hierarchies are maintained so that they do not become corrupt.
There needs to be as little inequality as possible so the people at the bottom do not lose faith in the structure, but enough inequality between the bottom and top of the hierarchy to incentivise people to actually climb up and strive to get to the top. Hierarchies are necessary because without them, humans are aimless; with no meaning in life to ascertain. Without any aim, society results to creating its own hierarchies so there is an aim; only these hierarchies are more corrupt and divisive than the ones that had previously existed. The hierarchical tension that naturally exists needs to be maintained and tolerated at all costs, because the alternative is worse.
Identity politics and Collectivism.
It is from Equity that we move to the other behemoth of the Radical Left; that of Identity politics. Identity politics is the tendency for people to form political alliances and group identities around the four Postmodern variants: race, ethnicity, sexual proclivity, and sexual genderisation. Identity politics places paramount importance on one characteristic that a person possesses and claims that to be their overarching identity.
Identity politics links to Collectivism in the sense that by forming these distinct group identities, where the individual is a mere representative of their group identity, and no longer an individual, the group is prioritised over the individual. The collective interests of the group supersede individual autonomy; an individual can no longer exist, cooperate and compete with other people without their group identity superseding their own.
There are two issues with Identity politics that are ripping society apart even today. The first is it is causing society to revert back to its tribal antagonisms. People become opposed to each other based on differences, whereas they should be connected through mutual respect of each other’s self-determination.
Secondly, there is the problem of Intersectionality. By classing people predominantly by the four Postmodern variants, there are many intersection points that occur between these identities that can be seen in people all over the world (e.g. a person can be a black female lesbian, which crosses three identities and so has three intersection points). It is technically impossible to equalise across all these points, which under the guise of the Radical Left would be attempted under an Equity policy. And because it is impossible to equalise across all these points, society is continually fragmented into smaller and smaller intersection points. Indeed, the intersectionality of group identity is practically endless; until the final state of Intersectionality occurs, which is Individuality.
The individual, as the West has propagated for hundreds of years now, is the ultimate minority. This is how society should be constructed in the first place. Societies should be porous collectives of individuals, all competing in hierarchies of competence. The collective that society embodies should never be prioritised over individual autonomy.
Historical ignorance and Ideological allure.
The final point I would like to make concerning the Radical Left is not so much what it advocates for in the future, but its historical basis. The Radical Left and Right, especially in the 20th century, both came into stark fruition and both eventually (and thankfully) crumbled. The Radical Right was seen in Germany under the Nazis, who utilised Ethno-Nationalism and Anti-Semitism to legitimise the extinction of the Jewish Community. Similar policies were also seen in Fascist Italy as well under Mussolini.
The Radical Left’s position is far worse, however for reasons I cannot completely understand, society continues to view the Nazis to be the ultimate form of the evil. This is by no means an advocation for the Nazis or an excuse for the atrocities they presided over. However, in comparison to the Nazis, the Radical Left systems in both the Soviet Union and Maoist China led to the deaths of millions of people, far more than in WWII and the Holocaust. This is not to take away from the horror of the Holocaust; it was an event fuelled by far different motives.
However, the atrocities committed upon their own people, by Stalin in the Soviet Union, and by Mao under the Great Leap Forwards and the Cultural Revolution, were horrifyingly immense in number. Collectively, in the Soviet Union (mostly under the reign of Stalin) and in Maoist China, the historical consensus suggests that 70–100 million people died. To put this into context, the Holocaust claimed the lives of 6 million Jews. Even by taking the conservative estimate of 70 million deaths, that would attribute to roughly 12 Holocausts.
This is where the Radical Left really struggle to explain the atrocities that, by conservative estimates, were twelve times higher than the Holocaust. Mostly, they try to deny any ideological and historical connection between the policies that led to these deaths and their own advocatory policies.
And yet, the Radical Left remain terrifyingly attractive. Indeed, I have in the past fallen into the trap of believing an ideology that killed 100 million people in two countries in the previous century. This is the inherent power of the Radical Left and yet it is a horrifying danger to the wider world. Collectivism, Equity, Identity politics, historical ignorance; all are equally terrible ways of dividing the world into the neo-Marxist narrative of oppressor/oppressed; the binary hierarchy which Postmodernism is predicated on.
There is a solution to this however. The Radical Left must be clearly cut off from mainstream politics, just as the Far-Right have been. They already hang by a thread, but that is a thread too many. Individual autonomy is the sacrosanct notion of a great, free society. The Radical Left will have you believe that Collectivism is the ultimate way to construct a society.
It’s an attractive argument; it makes a person refuse to try to make themselves better, because instead they can just complain that they are oppressed and marginalised. But how will that create a great society? People, especially young people, need to be protected. This nonsense that they are a victim needs to be furiously refuted before it comes to engulf the entirety of the West.
