Conservatives Hate Postmodernism, and Liberals Don’t Understand Why
Right-leaning intellectuals toss around the artsy term both as an attack and defense of their values
Published in
8 min readAug 26, 2018
Postmodernism is mostly just a form of artistic criticism, but conservative intellectuals are constantly attacking it these days. Liberals are perplexed by the attacks, if they think about them at all. What the heck is going on?
On the right side of the political spectrum (by most standards), we have statements like these:
- “Postmodernism, in many ways — especially as it’s played out politically — is the new skin that the old Marxism now inhabits.” — Jordan Peterson
- “Obama is the first postmodern president.” — Ben Shapiro
- “These folks form the current Far Left, including those who would be described as communists, socialists, anarchists, Antifa, as well as social justice warriors (SJWs). These are all very different groups, but they all share a postmodernist ethos.” — Michael Aaron
