Political Moderates Must Stop Being Fearful Sitting Ducks
The center will not hold unless we come out fighting for it
These days, political moderates across the West are living in perpetual fear. This fear has paralyzed us, and made us weak and unattractive. We really need to get out of this state, and come out fighting for our vision. In this article, I will explain what we need to do to overcome the paralysis of the present moment.
The kind of fear political moderates most readily express is the fear of a rising populist right, which champions polarizing and often authoritarian policies. Polls that show Trump beating Biden next year, studies that provide evidence of the extreme educational polarization in countries like the US and the UK, and the shock victories of right-wing populists in places like Italy, Argentina and the Netherlands, are all seen as signs of impending doom by many moderates. Importantly, many moderates are in a hopeless mood right now, because we don’t seem to have figured out a way to stop right-wing populism yet.
However, moderates also suffer from another kind of fear, that is less talked about: the insidious restriction of free speech from the far-left. Incidents of cancel culture, while sporadic and less prominent than right-populist victories, have had a chilling effect on free speech, making many afraid of speaking up. This has hindered much needed discussion on many contentious topics, and allowed the radical left position to become the default position on many issues, in many intellectual circles. Given the radical left position of the 21st century West is often rooted in postmodern critical theory, this also provides a shortcut to legitimize these unsound theories, bypassing the scrutiny and debate that usually takes place before new ideas are widely accepted.
I believe that these two dynamics actually reinforce each other, which is why moderates must try to overcome both at the same time. The normalization of far-left ideas and practices rooted in postmodern critical theory leads to a loss of long-standing norms around free speech, political civility, universalism and more. This provides the perfect excuse for the populist right’s authoritarian approach to politics. Frustration towards the package of ideas and practices often referred to as ‘wokeness’ also sends many voters towards the populist right, something that Democratic strategists seemed to begin to realize after their shockingly poor performance on Election Day 2021. Moreover, we really can’t solve the educational polarization problem without truly staring down the postmodern critical theory problem. The working class is never going to accept a politics that is based on philosophical premises far removed from the realities of everyday life. If given a choice between postmodern sophistry and authoritarian populism, they would always choose the latter, even if it is objectively the greater evil. This is why I have long argued against the approach of many of my fellow moderates who advocate that we ‘deal with right-populism first’ and ‘ignore the distractions on college campuses’. Wokeness is far more than a college campus issue, and we can’t deal with the populist right without also dealing with wokeness either.
On the other hand, a strong populist right leads to more support for the view that politics is about power and oppression in left-wing circles, and that old-school liberalism is too weak to fight against the new enemy. This is why, during the four years that Trump was president, support of the far-left swelled to historically high levels. This means that we also can’t stop the postmodern far-left without providing an alternative, credible opposition to the populist right. (This is also why the idea that we should support people like Trump and DeSantis to fight wokeness, promoted by people like Dave Rubin and Christopher Rufo, doesn’t make sense at all.)
Overall, it is clear that, to halt the march of the extremists on both sides, those in the middle must come out to fight, rather than continue to be sitting ducks hoping that the center will somehow manage to hold, because it will certainly not hold if we don’t change course quickly. Moreover, right now, many people see the moderates as weak, either against the postmodern far-left or the populist right. Nobody wants to join a team of sitting ducks who clearly aren’t having much effect on the direction of society. To overcome this, we really need to speak up more about what we truly believe. For example, many moderates have very real concerns about the positions and actions of ‘woke’ activists, and the influence they are having on center-left parties like the Democrats and Labour, but they decide to give only muted criticism in fear of upsetting their further-left friends and colleagues. On the other hand, within ‘anti-woke’ circles, many moderates are concerned about the influence of the populist right, but only hint at their discomfort, or worse, just disengage from anti-woke circles altogether, paving the way for a far-right takeover. All this must change. There must be no more mealy mouthed, apologetic non-criticisms of things that we are, deep down, very concerned about. We must come right out swinging, against the rising tide of extremism on both sides, even if it will upset many people. We didn’t ask for it, but right now, we really are in a war on two fronts situation, that we just need to accept, and fight back accordingly.
Originally published at https://taraella.substack.com.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
