The Ideological Fuel of a New Left: Three Axes, Two Buckets, and One Approach

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

Summary: We are not the only people to identify the bizarre tendency of left-of-center causes to be promoted as a block even when they directly contradict each other. Some critics of institutional progressivism call this tendency “The Omnicause.” Liberals who worry that this tendency toward making every issue about every other issue puts sand in the gears of their ability to deliver popular policy outcomes caution against “Everything-Bagel Liberalism.” But this tendency that we call “Everything Leftism” is more than just coalitional transactions or a roadblock to the sunlit uplands to which true socialism would supposedly lead humanity if only it were properly tried. It is a left-wing ideological practice that drives institutional progressivism to take positions inimical to the national interest and even harmful to its own political interest.

Closely tied to the ideology of “intersectionality,” which holds that all identities deemed “oppressed” are united and linked in compounding dimensions, Everything Leftism applies left-wing ideological frameworks to unify progressive policies on issues as apparently distinct as Middle East policy, the environment, and gender reassignment for minors. While incoherent to those who do not see view policy through a left-wing lens, Everything Leftism is highly coherent to those who reduce all political issues to “oppressor versus oppressed” analysis, which flattens out all complexities and leaves only neatly polarized choices to be deployed at the appropriate time. To understand the Left’s policy analysis and institutional structure, we must understand the impulse toward Everything Leftism, how it functions, and how it affects the left-wing’s ability to manage coalitions.

“In this house we believe.” The yard signs, which pronounce banal left-of-center slogans, became a common feature of upper-middle-class suburban neighborhoods where “virtue signaling” is a way of life after the 2016 election. Behind the sloganeering was a presumption of support for a package of left-wing policies, including potentially radical ones:

• Defunding the police (“Black Lives Matter”),
• Liberal access and public funding for abortion (“Women’s Rights Are Human Rights”),
• Open borders (“No Human Is Illegal”),
• Environmentalism (“Science is Real”),
• LGBTQIA+ vanguardism (“Love Is Love”), and
• Commitment to left-wing policies to be named later (“Kindness Is Everything”).

In the years following the first flowering of the “In this house” yard signs, they have retreated as some of those policies were implemented and found wanting. Tough-on-crime, even in some cases crypto-Republican, district attorneys have replaced police-defunders in many cities. President Joe Biden feels compelled to issue executive orders that make him appear to take border security seriously after years of a de facto free-for-all. Liberals have begun to question whether transitioning children is a good idea, even if the governments they elect still dare not.

But the impulse to “‘In this house we believe’ ideology,” as heterodox Bay Area podcaster and chief marketing officer of Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund Mike Solana called it, remains. More recently, radical-left demonstrators proclaimed themselves to be “Queers for Palestine,” apparently ignorant of the fact that “queer” lifestyles are much more tolerated in Israel than under the rule of either the terrorist faction Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. What lies behind this impulse, especially among more radical factions of the Left, to go for “everything” apparently all at once?

This is where Everything Leftism—sometimes known to critics as “The Omnicause” or to more conventional liberals as “Everything-Bagel Liberalism”—becomes a useful concept. A corruption of or derivative from the left-wing theory of “intersectionality,” Everything Leftism views all left-of-center policies and identities as linked in compounding dimensions that intersect. Thus, every leftist advocacy group and cause must align with the rest of the Left on all other issues at whatever degree of radicalism the left-wing hive-mind decides is appropriate. And for important institutional reasons, that degree of radicalism can be very high, with Marxism and its Communist derivatives making too many appearances to be mere coincidence.

Three Axes, Two Buckets, and One Approach

In 2013, libertarian economist Arnold Kling proposed a “Three Axes Model of Political Communication” in a book entitled The Three Languages of Politics. Kling argued that American political argumentation tends to follow one of three styles of argument, each corresponding to an ideological tendency and placing the arguer in a position of moral superiority over an opponent.

Libertarians tend to frame arguments in terms of liberty prevailing over coercion. Thus, a libertarian opponent of marijuana prohibition might argue that the liberty to use the substance should prevail over the government’s desire to reduce usage for the would-be user’s own good by force. Conservatives tend to frame arguments in terms of civilizing forces prevailing over barbaric ones. Thus, a conservative arguing for stricter regulations on pornography might argue that pornography is a morally corrupting force that turns men who consume it into barbarians. Progressives tend to frame arguments in terms of elevating an oppressed class or person at the expense of an oppressor. Thus, a left-wing progressive arguing for a higher minimum wage might argue that employers have the inherent power to oppress workers, so the government must set strict laws on pay and working conditions.

The argumentation styles are commonly associated with but not necessarily exclusive to their prevailing ideological tendencies. One can make a “conservative-left” argument for something like Britain’s National Health Service, suggesting that a civilized country provides medical care to its citizenry. One could make a “progressive-right” argument against affirmative action, arguing that it oppresses white men. Both right and left in the U.S. frequently make libertarian arguments, with leftists favoring them involving personal sexual behavior or abortion and rightists favoring them on economic issues and gun rights.

With the three styles of argumentation in mind, let one return to the concept of Everything Leftism. Everything Leftism functions firmly on the progressive axis, which should not be a surprise, since most leftists are progressives and vice versa. Kling writes, “The progressive asserts moral superiority by denouncing oppression and accusing others of failing to do so.” This is why Everything Leftist argumentation and public commentary includes an overwhelming urge to denounce conservative positions as opposing the “existence” or “bodies” of identity groups in some almost spiritual sense, rather than as necessarily being opposed to the material interests of the left-of-center coalition.

This can be seen across movements by the obsession of left-wing groups with naming their ideological goals “X justice,” where “X” is a designated-oppressed identity like race, gender, or class. Even when the target of “justice” is not an oppressed personal identity (as in the phrase “climate justice”), an oppressor-oppressed framework functions, as one who would deny “justice” is inherently an oppressor.

This form of argumentation conveniently deposits any political position into one of two buckets: For the Oppressors and therefore Bad, or for the oppressed and therefore Good. The only question is defining who is oppressed, which seems to function as a ranking on “intersectionality points.” Thus, it is safe for Everything Leftists to side with Jews when they are attacked by white supremacists, who have no intersectionality points, but it is not safe for Everything Leftists to side with Jews when they are attacked by Palestinian militants, who have many intersectionality points.

One might also here note that the surest way to change one’s intersectional status is to join Republicans or conservatives, who are by ideological definition the maximum oppressors. Such a conversion forfeits any intersectionality points one might possess and subjects the defector to withering vitriol equivalent to the dignity of the intersectional rank forfeited. This would explain why conservatives who are neither white nor male are so viscerally irritating to ideological progressives.

In the next installment, Everything Leftism surged during the “Great Awokening” after the 2016 election.