Why Do I Piss Off So Many People?

And what this says about the power of liberalism.

Photo by Wai Siew on Unsplash

This morning, following a day yesterday which saw me targeted by a group of far-rightists (Groypers, mostly, I think), I woke up to this warming tweet by my friend, Iona Italia, and several positive replies expressing bewilderment at the amount of hostility I receive and commenting on my own polite and charitable mode of engagement.

I started to write a light-hearted reply about how I too am puzzled at the sheer number of ideological groups that hate me intensely, but I am also often touched by how warmly protective people who appreciate my social media presence can be. I’m not particularly worried by the regular ‘pile-ons’ I receive from illiberal extremists on social media because I am not remotely conflict-averse, and when it comes to a verbal conflict I am, I’d like to think, fairly well-armed. However, it is a little bewildering that I attract so much vitriol, because, as people have noted, I am not aggressive or malicious in online exchanges myself and generally seek to form an understanding and have a civil exchange of ideas.  

“You'd not think a politely tutting "squishy liberal" tea lady would inspire 'love her or hate her' sentiments” I typed. However, this led to a qualification and then a series of points and then an argument and a passionate defence of liberalism, so here we are.

The reality is that my liberalism is not squishy. It's radical. I strongly uphold the principle of “Let people believe, speak and live as they see fit provided it does no material harm to others nor denies them the same freedoms” and strongly oppose any ideas contrary to this. "Squishy liberal" is an accusation that often gets aimed at consistent liberals by people on some side or other who like to use some principles of liberalism but think we have to make an exception for those people or those ideas.

This is, in fact, what I believe unites extremists from ideological groups that tend to go after me (aside from their shared belief that I should be informed that I am fat regularly) and other strongly consistent liberals . They're typically people who have appreciated our objections to forms of illiberalism they object to but not our objection to theirs. There is truth in the observation that people often hate heretics most of all & consistent liberals are very prone to being seen as heretics by illiberal people who have assumed a liberal's defence of their freedom of belief etc. means we must firstly, agree with their positions and secondly, support their aims to impose them on others.

In my case, I first drew especial ire from people on the left who, having observed me to be on the left, then regarded me as a traitor giving power to the right by dedicating my time to objecting to illiberalism on the left. Aside from the inconsistent ethics, that's just terrible psychology. If we want liberal swing voters to support the left but they are correctly noting an illiberal ideology like Critical Social Justice gaining dominance on the left, what's more likely to reassure them? Liberal leftists saying, "Yes, we see the problem & are on it" or illiberal ones saying "No, there is no problem here & if you think there is, you're probably just racist."

I then seriously annoyed the illiberal faction of gender critical feminists who had approved of me because I supported their right not to have to pretend to believe in gender identity & to speak about illiberal activism harming women & children without being fired, threatened with violence, no-platformed or otherwise cancelled. This came to an abrupt end among the illiberals when I opposed their stated wish to control the clothing choices of men & the freedom of everyone to make their own choices about pronoun usage in their personal lives. Again, aside from the ethics of this, these authoritarians were behaving counterproductively and alienating men (with the rhetoric they used) and everybody who wanted to be able to speak freely without having their language policed.

I have most recently been enraging various factions of the illiberal right-wing anti-woke who had approved of my critiques of the problems with Critical Social Justice but not my opposition to white identity politics, restrictive gender roles and stereotypes and/or anti-LGB (and yes) T prejudice and discrimination. I also aroused ire by arguing against the police detaining people for holding republican (anti-monarchy) views or saying that people who did so should not be allowed to be Members of Parliament as well as saying that nobody should be arrested for calling members of the government ‘coconuts’ even if the premises such slurs rely upon are illiberal and racially essentialist. Again, aside from the ethics of holding such positions, illiberal right-wingers who do so undermine their own goals by alienating anyone who objects to racism, sexism, homophobia etc. and believes in freedom of belief and speech.

The through-line here which explains why consistent liberals enrage so many people who also enrage each other is that identifying problems of illiberalism & offering liberal solutions is extremely unwelcome to people who are identifying the same problems but want illiberal solutions. This is because they seek more radical, revolutionary or reactionary solutions and their arguments for such simply aren’t as strong or persuasive to the majority of people who are not radical, revolutionary or reactionary as liberal ones.

It annoys people who, for example, see the problem with CSJ 'anti-racist' identity politics & want to oppose it with white identity politics when liberals also counter the former problem but propose objecting to racial identity politics consistently because that's a stronger, more defensible & more ethically persuasive position. Equally, people who see the problem with authoritarian trans activism & want to oppose it by verbally abusing trans people & seeking to deny their freedom of expression are liable to become irate with liberals. Our objection to harm being caused to women & children by self-ID laws and ideologically captured gender clinics and the denial of freedom of belief and speech by authoritarian activists combined with a liberal commitment to otherwise leaving people alone is another strong and ethically defensible position.

Consistent liberals really are the biggest threat to authoritarians of all kinds because our principles are coherent, ethical & persuasive to anyone who isn't an authoritarian. This is why we need to bring them together to recognise this & work together. The problem we tend to have with doing this is two-fold.

Firstly, liberals tend to be individualists, not collectivists so bringing them together around a cause is always challenging. This is where radicals, reactionaries & totalitarians of all kinds have the advantage over us. They are united around a single ideal and can organise more effectively. This gives them the appearance of a larger presence and the ability to dominate narratives. Nevertheless, liberals have the advantage of being able to work together in a way that authoritarians of any group cannot. If the reason for this seems unclear, imagine the impossibility of authoritarian Christians and authoritarian Muslims working together to impose their own beliefs on everybody else and then imagine the potential for collaboration between liberal Christians and liberal Muslims who want the freedom to practice their own faith but also defend this freedom for other people. If the number of people who want to protect their own rights and freedoms but have no wish to impinge upon other people’s is higher than the number of people who actively want to compel others to believe what they do (and I think it is), we have a strength in numbers that can be used to our advantage against the vocal but divided assortment of authoritarian factions. We just need to convince more liberally minded people that liberalism is an ideal we should unite around.

That brings us to our second problem. While I believe that the majority of people are not authoritarian and have no active wish to impose their own ideas on everybody else, too few broadly liberal-minded people are motivated to actively defend the rights and freedoms of people outside their own group, especially those with whom they disagree. While for some people (like me) liberal principles are at the centre of their moral compass, for most broadly liberal-minded people, they are not. Their primary moral framework may be something else – left-wing politics, right-wing politics, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, feminism, anti-racism, gay rights etc. For possibly a majority of people, they simply have intuitively held moral values rather than strong ideological commitments and focus on their own lives, families and communities. In these cases, the people I am referring to as ‘liberally-minded’ are liable to become aware of illiberal currents that affect their own ideological group or community and object to it using liberal ‘freedom’ principles which they genuinely hold but may not be motivated to notice or object when they are affecting other people’s. They hold a set of beliefs or priorities of their own and a broadly ‘live and let live’ attitude and we need to convince more of them to turn that into a ‘live and help live’ attitude.

I am aware that I am vulnerable here to being accused of taking an activist stance and saying “It is not enough to be non-authoritarian. We must be anti-authoritarian.”  Well, in one way I am (I did admit to being a radical liberal right at the beginning). I do think we need more people to oppose authoritarianism consistently. However, I do not believe that everybody has to be a liberal activist, and I certainly will not be advocating for ushering people into mandatory anti-authoritarian training sessions (which would be rather paradoxical). Rather, I believe that people who do genuinely hold liberal values or hold their political, religious or community-based values in a way that is liberal (rather than authoritarian) would do well to give more thought to exercising those values in a more active way and to the benefit of people who are not them.

This does not require dedicating your life to seeking out and opposing authoritarianism wherever you find it, but simply expanding your scope for noticing it in your own group and when it is affecting members of others. If you are a liberal leftist, recognise when authoritarianism on the left is affecting the freedoms of others and object to it, even if you share some of their premises. If you are a liberal conservative, recognise authoritarianism on the right that impacts the rights of other people and say “This is not the way” even if you share some of the concerns underlying their authoritarianism. If you observe a social media post about someone with whom you disagree being fired, no-platformed or otherwise cancelled, object to this on principle even if you find their views abhorrent. (I disagree with people who say that we should not need to preface such principled objections with “I disagree with almost every view this person holds but…” I think that demonstrating that you are supporting the freedoms of someone with whom you disagree is valuable in our current polarized time and the more of us who do that, the more likely we are to be able to build bridges and encourage reciprocity.)

I recently had valuable (separate) conversations with an orthodox Christian and an LGBT rights activist who both held liberal values (although the Christian preferred ‘anti-authoritarian). The Christian said he wanted the right to be able to believe and say that homosexuality was a sin, argue with Christians who hold that it is not a sin that they are wrong and oppose any attempts to make his church marry same sex couples. However, he said that he did not believe that he had any right to make other members of society share his Christian values and would both defend the existing rights of gay and lesbian people and treat same sex attracted people with dignity and respect. The LGBT activist said that he wanted the right to criticise religion for having such views on homosexuality and endorse and support those places of worship and believers who interpreted their faith in a way that supported same sex relationships. However, he would also defend the rights and freedoms of orthodox Christians to believe differently and say so and oppose any attempts to penalize them for expressing such beliefs in a way that did not harass any individual or any attempt to make churches marry same sex couples (or compel Christians to make specifically same-sex wedding themed cakes). When I made each of these people aware of the other’s stance, they both felt that they could support each other.

This is the way.