So in response to this Michelle Goldberg interview with Vox, I want to point you in the direction of this piece I wrote awhile back. To put it simply: Goldberg is simply incorrect about who the people expressing “anti-liberal” sentiment are, and in fact, they are far more a part of the Clintonite triangulation lineage than the actual, socialist left. Indeed: most of the people I identify as language-obsessed in the way Goldberg means are in fact incipient NIMBY Democrats. I know; I’ve been around such people my whole life. In contrast, the actual post-capitalist/socialist/anarchist leftists that I know are constantly counseling people to push for structural, economic reforms over focusing on language and feelings. Remember: it was Clinton who told you he felt your pain while he cut the social safety net. It’s Andrew Cuomo who drapes himself in rainbow flags while he assaults unions and public school teachers. That’s your team, Michelle, not ours.
But you don’t get to keep a career as a Nation liberal without punching hippies with more gusto than you go after conservatives.
Goldberg is aware that McCarthyism was a thing, right? Like how do you not mention that in this interview? How do you not think to say, “Hmmm, maybe I should mention that the political ideology that has inarguably been subject to the most vicious oppression of speech rights in this country’s history is the very ideology I’m calling anti-liberal”? Does she think people just won’t remember that it’s the left that has been subject to witch hunts and redbaiting? How does whatever Ivy league big media ambition robot Vox assigned to give the interview fail to bring up people literally being subject to federal inquisitions for having radical, leftist views? It’s incredible.
Update: The Espionage Act of 1917– American leftists were the target. The McCarthy era– American leftists were the target. The FBI’s infiltration of the anti-Vietnam war movement, the black power movement, and similar political groups and campaigns– American leftists were the target. The post-9/11 enforcement of patriotism and support for military aggression– American leftists were a target. Police surveillance and crackdowns on anti-globalism and Occupy protesters– American leftists were the target. Any of this ringing any bells, Michelle?
I’ve only read a couple of paragraphs and I’m already shaking my head. I have no idea who she seems to be talking about, certainly not crazy commies like you and me, who avow both social justice and free expression. Some feminists maybe? If she’s actually scrapping with feminists she should have the courage and honesty to say so. The Chomsky-reading left that I’m familiar with are mostly staunch free-expressionists and the most forceful defenses of forcing Condoleeza Rice out of her commencement speech that I’ve read were all on mainstream liberal blogs. So she is confusing me on a basic level and my best guess is that her real issue is with some strains of feminism, or with her mainstream liberal comrades.
Freddie, you’re working with a classification scheme that just doesn’t seem based on any traditional distinction between liberals and the left that I’ve ever encountered.
I would agree that there’s a certain form of dilettante activism that’s in play here, which is not emblematic of the broader left, but my sense is that it’s coming from campus (particularly undergraduate) activists who I’m pretty sure would self-identify as leftists. No doubt many of them will go on to be card-carrying members of the liberal establishment, where they’ll promptly forget all their actual politics in favor of empty signaling politics, but it’s weird to address them when they’re defiantly self-identifying as leftists and call them liberals. It’s also the case that some of them will go on to become seasoned, mature left-wing activists, whose politics won’t be so dilletantish, but I don’t think even they would retroactively describe their early politics as liberal.
It may not be a left that you like very much, and it may be unfair for Goldberg to conflate it with the broader left, but I’m pretty sure it’s left. It’s certainly not Clintonite. As Goldberg says, correctly, it’s the “liberals” who are the bad guys in the worldview of this particular type of leftist.
Also, on a related point, it’s very strange to me to hear The Nation described by you as a liberal, anti-left magazine. It certainly hasn’t been that for most of its history. In the 1930s it was at a minimum a fellow traveling publication. It was pro-Hiss in the late 40s, pro-Rosenbergs in the early 50s, pro New Left in the 60s, pro Black Panthers in the 70s, anti-anti-Communist for the entire run, has always been pro-labor, etc. If you look at the current crop of columnists, there are some liberals in there, but also a bunch of inarguably left-wing writers. Their list of contributing editors, and their editorial board, includes many leftists in good standing, and so on and so on.
Again, maybe The Nation is yet another, different part of the left that you don’t like, but it’s left.
There are good arguments to be had about whether this critique that Goldberg is waging is a useful or fair one, but you’re confusing things more than clarifying them.
Agreed, Goldberg is talking about “campus leftism” in the 2010s; not about the 150-year tradition of leftism in America. I suspect that she very rarely thinks about the latter, which just ain’t the stuff of clickbait.