Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

white people have exhausted me this year

Also not wise to assume everyone is white.

i have a sinking feeling that people are using 'liberal' to mean extremely different things again, depending on whether they are posting in the UK/europe (liberal=free-marketeer) or in the US (nominally left-of-center NPR-style political views)

UK (liberal = smug middle class centrist who pretends to believe the left and the right are as bad each other while climbing into bed with the right at the drop of a hat)

Thanks for the post about Derrida, treeship. I admit that I haven't read as much theory, in particular Derrida, as I would like, but that's neither here nor there.

I'd broadly write that I actually agree with much of what you wrote, but that at this juncture, I am willing and in fact wanting to be away with the language of "western liberal democracy" as signpost because of those very real, deadly histories that continue to result from its promulgation. In my estimation, the limited humanism of western liberal democracy-- limited because of those violences and also limited due to the most obvious fact that people are still arguing over whether trans and black lives matter-- is what I hold onto most, but as an ideal that could be expanded. That is, I believe the biggest problem with western liberal democracy is that it's placed too many people outside the realm of the human, thus irrevocably delegitimizing itself; given where we are, one possible way of expanding the human community might be doing away with vaunted ideals unacted upon or ignored in western liberal democracy, and instead moving toward verbiage that actually makes sense. In that way, much of what I think I object to is the reliance on terms in which the cleavage between the signifier and signified is so deep and troubling that it poisons the sign, which in this case is being used to promulgate a massive con that is actively killing people. It's the con that I am opposed to-- not necessarily the vaunted ideals that might actually result from a true western liberal democracy.

Haven't had coffee, sorry if that was mush.

Yeah, I didn't think Thatcher was considered a liberal in the UK (except maybe in the academic sense in which she and Reagan are both 'neoliberal')?

xp

I don't understand half this stuff

trans women are women

otm

hard agree with both statements

Yeah, I didn't think Thatcher was considered a liberal in the UK (except maybe in the academic sense in which she and Reagan are both 'neoliberal')?

A 'classic Liberal' maybe. Non-classic liberals in the UK are just squeamish Tories.

Jordan Peterson calls himself a classic liberal too. I think most English speakers use "liberal" to mean "vaguely centre-left" in everyday lay usage at this point? Maybe Aus/NZ are different?

This 'classical liberal' thing is something of a reprise no, only really back in use over the last 8-12 years or so? And something of an affectation

ums otm. People that want to make this complicated have an agenda.

This 'classical liberal' thing is something of a reprise no, only really back in use over the last 8-12 years or so? And something of an affectation

Libertarians have been saying it as long as I can remember.

Thats true, but wasn't there something of a branding exercise a decade or so back, when this term started to come back into vogue?

maybe as a replacement for 'Libertarian' because they wanted to look more intellectual?

And with a more respectable historical basis than Ayn Rand.

The US/Uk divide Tracer Hand referred to is further complicated by the fact that US popcult influences people all over, so the defintion of "liberal" that LJ-who-is-British is working with is clearly the American one.

The American one is talking over. Sadly.

Jordan Peterson calls himself a classic liberal too. I think most English speakers use "liberal" to mean "vaguely centre-left" in everyday lay usage at this point? Maybe Aus/NZ are different?

in australia ‘liberal’ does mean ‘vaguely centre-left’ but ‘Liberal’ (‘big-L Liberal’) specifically means ‘corrupt paedophile-defending homophobic white supremacist’

The American one is talking over. Sadly.

I almost feel the opposite? In the 80s and 90s, "liberal" seemed to mean "leftist" in the US - didn't Bill Clinton want to distance himself from the term? Canadian leftists still identified as socialists or social democrats so I thought of liberals as wishy-washy moderates (or crypto-conservative from a hard-left pov); I thought the UK was approx similar. But the US left wants to distance itself from liberalism now, for the opposite reason as before, since they identify it with excessive moderation and complacency.

People that want to make this complicated have an agenda.

I don't buy this either tbh

Doesn't wanting to distance itself from it prove the definition is prevalent enough to do so?

The American one is talking over. Sadly.
I almost feel the opposite?

It's both! US popcult brings it to younger people all over the world, especially those who aren't very deep into politics; the resurrection of left wing politics in the US means Americans start to use the UK/European/basically most of the world afaict definition.

uk pol profs will talk about the liberal left to mean yr progressive left that supports identity politics and so on

Doesn't wanting to distance itself from it prove the definition is prevalent enough to do so?

Yes, that's my point. As a moderate, B Clinton wanted to distance himself from a then-prevalent understanding of "liberal" as "leftist"/"radical" in 1990s US. As leftists, supporters of Bernie Sanders and AOC want to distance themselves from a currently-prevalent understanding of "liberal" as "Establishment moderate".xp

I thought the UK was approx similar.

Not approx., exactly.

ogmor otm

meaning that the meaning of "liberal" in the US was becoming closer to the international one xps

uk pol profs will talk about the liberal left to mean yr progressive left that supports identity politics and so on

That's weird. No progressives I know in the UK would ever identify with the label.

While the international one was becoming closer to the US one. (xp)

xp I bet if you went to a random amnesty group you'd find a bunch of ppl who would say they were liberal. it's probably on the wane, seems more common/less fraught as a descriptor amongst the over 50s

can you have social equality (the concern of the left) without the liberal value of individual rights? (freedom of speech, association, etc). i don't think liberalism only refers to liberal economics.

being "a liberal" or not seems kind of beside the point. we live in the world liberalism made. and like, i don't accept despotism for the sake of the revolution, i'd want social and economic transformation to emerge through our imperfect democratic institutions. and in the process, i'd like them to become more democratic. to me this describes most western leftists--they're not the opposite of liberals.

I also think liberal has less pejorative sting amongst some religious ppl for whom it's the de facto opposite to fundamentalist

they're not the opposite of liberals

No-one is actually saying they are?

I don't think so either, I just think actual leftists are more clear-eyed.

we live in the world liberalism capitalism made.

ftfy

ums and table otm, all I have to add here is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bivsP_h6l0s

OK so here is an attempt to be clearer:

broadly speaking, i'm sorry, but a culture that tolerates differences of belief (a liberal one) is better, which is why people are perturbed by the collectivist shaming that characterizes cancel culture. ("read the room!") like, it might seem fine now that the left-wing side has the social power to get people like David Shor fired, but it's not unthinkable that the shoe could someday be on the other foot. historically it usually was.

liberalism certainly is a convenient cloak that power hides behind. but i think any ideology can and has been used that way. narrowing the range of acceptable opinion is something that worries me a lot. i don't think it's the way to protect the rights of minority groups of any kind. because honestly if individual speech is devalued than who gets to speak for the groups? how is that legislated?

i have some reservations about posting this. i recognize rushomancy's general point, that cis people shouldn't speak to the trans experience. doing so can be presumptuous, invalidating and even cruel. and this is a really important starting point. but how to prevent it--what alternative norms can be enforced, ones that can have a universal character to them--that is harder.

the biggest problem with western liberal democracy is that it's placed too many people outside the realm of the human

it's exactly the opposite imo: western liberal democracy's 'humanistic' vision is a totalitarian one that amounts to imagining there's a cis white man inside everyone just waiting get out and type on the internet under their name if the host body can just be patient, good subjects for long enough and not get too pesky with demanding their rights

^and here he is

we live in the world capitalism (not liberalism) made.

liberalism is the dominant political ideology that emerged in the capitalist centuries. it has good and bad components to it. as with capitalism, the goal of the left should be to transcend liberalism, not just pretend we can do without norms like free speech and individual rights. again, these things were not realized in practice, but liberalism gave us a vocabulary to talk about them. and it's not the only one, but it is the one that most people in our society can understand.

Isn't liberalism more about who we are rather than what we do? Why Trump is anathema because of his character more so than anything specific he does. To a liberal his badness is in his character...similarly with the white fragility workshops, our badness is contained within us employees, not the company. We should seek to change ourselves, rather than anything external. the external will take care of itself once we are all good

treeship, I'd argue you can't disentangle liberalism from capitalism as you (I think--apologies if I'm wrong) are implying, particularly the specific rights included under "individual rights"

anyway, I mostly just wanted to recommend a book to the table is the table: Lisa Lowe's The Intimacies of Four Continents

banaka to thread

you can't disentangle liberalism from capitalism. you also can't disentangle yourself from liberalism and capitalism, at least not easily. we are subjects of a modern capitalist society and that conditions what we think of as "good" and "bad." i think criticism of liberalism needs to start from the point that we are inside it--this is what Marx said about capitalism, it created the social conditions that made communism not just realizable but thinkable

Rob, thanks for the recommendation. Think that might be in my big PDF folder of theory stuff to read.

Tracer, I think that we actually agree, because I believe that western humanism's imposition as you write of it is part of what I refer to as placing others outside the realm of the human-- that is, imposition of hegemonic values and qualities onto an Other doesn't bring those grouped as the Other into humanity, but instead insists that only one version of humanity exists, and to be coarse, fuck that.

US left-liberals now prefer "progressive" so ppl don't confuse them with the barrenness of Chuck Schumer.

(or any other Clintonians)