The Ideological Fuel of a New Left: Cross-Pressures

The Ideological Fuel of a New Left (full series)
Three Axes | Everything Leftism’s Rise | Revealed by Hamas
The People of Everything Leftism | Cross-Pressures

Cross-Pressures

There is a lesson in the failure of Hamas Glampers to reprise the BLM marchers of 2020. Everything Leftism’s success relies on ensuring its demands do not cross-pressure its supporters or the broader liberal coalition base beyond the point of social coercion’s ability to prevent defection.

Smart liberal analysts are aware that there is no hand of God that will ensure constant progression to the left on all issues. In their 2002 book Emerging Democratic Majority, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira premised continued Democratic electoral success powered by growing demographics on “progressive centrism,” by which they meant liberalism constrained by reality. As Everything Leftism has shed the constraints, the majority has fallen away or at least failed to consolidate and expand, as some ebullient leftists confidently predicted was inevitable after Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012.

So if Everything Leftism is not inevitable, from where could cross-pressures in its coalition emerge? There are numerous potential sources of discord, not all of which simply involve defecting in elections to the conservative side. Jewish liberals are already struggling to reconcile their support for Israel’s existence and alliance with the United States with an Everything Leftist ecosystem that wants to rally behind the “oppressed” Palestinian nationalist cause. Others are noticing that institutional DEI schemes they supported have not protected Jewish students in higher education.

Ethnic-minority Democrats, at least in opinion polling, tend not to be as enthusiastic about Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DiAngelo–style racial activism as their white co-partisans. Asian Americans increasingly realize that under affirmative action regimes in higher education, they lose out on educational opportunities. The growing population of Latinos who identify with a Protestant church tend to be more religiously observant than white liberals. Ethnic-minority men may chafe at Everything Leftism’s affirmation of vanguardist “the future is female” feminism, while gender-realist women balk at Everything Leftism’s assertion that maximalist transgender ideology means a “woman” can have male reproductive organs and should smash into their daughters in sports.

Notably few of the cross-pressures I can identify are economic in nature. This shows the relative strength of identity-based Everything Leftism over traditional left economics, even if lip service is still paid to labor organizing and class consciousness. One might recall the position of Biden administration Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su on organizing: “We build critical coalitions not only because of the enhanced potential for favorable outcomes, but also because the process of coalition-building itself sometimes changes each of us.” The creation of labor coalitions organized on Everything Leftist lines makes new soldiers for Everything Leftism, who can be compelled in states without a right-to-work law to pay for “their” union’s Everything Leftist activism.

Prominent cases where a liberal or non-conservative has publicly broken with Everything Leftism illustrate how that might happen. Some, most prominently the economically left-wing gender-realist author J.K. Rowling, have a fundamental commitment that crosses the Everything Leftist Eye of Sauron and enough resources to stand and fight for it. Some, like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, are simply cantankerous and do not care what the Everything Leftist hive-mind thinks. That both Rowling and Musk are fantastically wealthy makes this stand easier; they are immune to social pressure threatening their livelihoods.

Others flip because the Eye of Sauron focuses on an issue on which one is cross-pressured or because leftist activism unjustly targets an individual one knows personally. If one asserts Everything Leftist positions insincerely for fear of reprisal, changes to the threat matrix (either Everything Leftist activists becoming weaker, counter-activists from the right becoming stronger, or expressing any position becoming a greater waste of resources) may change one’s affirmations.

Everything Leftism is a powerful force. It defines the praxis of one of the two great ideological coalitions that define 21st-century American politics and policy. But it is not all-powerful, and its successes may breed its own defeats. In their house they believe, but America may not.