The issues that give rise to strident professions of faith on both sides of the ideological divide seem to have little bearing on the problems most people face in everyday life. Politics has become a matter of ideological gestures while the real problems remain unsolved.
— Christopher Lasch
I spent years calling myself a leftist. Before that, I had spent years calling myself a libertarian. In both cases, I actually did not change my values all that much. These were values that wanted what I thought was most conducive to human flourishing, that wanted to end violent wars, poverty, unnecessary punishment, and frankly, unnecessary suffering. I have also always been a huge proponent for free speech, regardless of what my partisan affiliations have been.
What had changed for me when changing ideologies were never really my value systems, but what I thought were the most optimal ways of obtaining goals that corresponded with my values.
Already, this makes me have some optimistic views about humanity. I think people actually agree on more than what the media or politicians portray things as, and often disagree on how to get there. Sure, there are genuine clashes of values that fall outside of this, but for the most part I do not think crossing partisan ideologies necessarily means changing one’s values. Rather, partisan ideologies tend to change values, which can make people want to jump ship.
When I became invested in free speech politics, it was my belief that I was coming at it from both a libertarian and left wing position: ideas that challenge the powerful should not be suppressed. I had learned about McCarthyism in high school history class and - while being staunchly anti-communist at the time - was quite horrified by it. I was inspired by fundamentally left movements like the Berkeley free speech movement, and the first journalistic personalities I had discovered were Glenn Greenwald and Ali Abunimah, both of whom were vocal about free speech rights from what could broadly be construed as a left perspective (though both of them, nowadays, receive vitriol from the mainstream American left).
I was passionate about free speech partly because I was an atheist growing up with religious education. In high school I, as an inflammatory teenager does, decided to try and publish a critique of Mother Teresa in our (Catholic) school newspaper. The critique was, again, something that could be broadly construed as a “left” critique, inspired by Christopher Hitchens’ critiques of her. But really, what I wanted to do is carve out room for dissent in the paper. I thought “wouldn’t it be great for free speech if we could have this kind of pushback in a Catholic environment?” Safe to say, one of the teachers in charge of the paper was not pleased with me and wanted me to change some things. Of course, that just made me more of a free speech SJW.
Importantly, however, as one gets older, the makeup and ideology of the powerful changes. As such, the kinds of ideas that get repressed typically change as well. Whoever feels more repressed will be the ones advocating for less repression, and in turn confuse everyone who has been trained to see issues as falling into one of two partisan boxes.
In my view, this is not great. I would much rather simply concern myself with the issues. But what happens is, if you identify as left, liberal, or right, there is an assumption of which views you must have or ought to have, which is bound to change as societal conditions change. We can have a partisan side traditionally aligned with the free speech movement fail to condemn corporate censorship as long as the censored end up being right wing, making the values of free expression become a domain of the right (that are likely just as disingenuous, and have been just as censorious when it was their cultural moment).
If you want to stick to your values rather than stick to a team, it is going to be hard to have stable partisan affiliations. Some who have been disillusioned with the left have went to the right and vice versa, but this seems inadequate to me. At the end of the day, these are teams that will change and discard your values depending on the direction of the cultural milieu.
Making politics a team sport gives people emotional and meaningful connections to their team, which also makes critique a matter of personal attack (akin to attacking one’s spiritual faith) rather than a disagreement on what a better way to order society would be. And the attacks are designed to be this way. Instead of “I think the left is wrong about this”, it’s “leftists are stupid”. Instead of “I think the right is wrong about this,” it’s “right wingers are bigots”. Your partisan affiliation is intended to be a proxy not only for what your thoughts are on how to solve problems, but who you are and how good you are as a person.
Further, it is frankly, even hard to generalize “the left” or “the right”, because if you critique one or the other, someone will inevitably go “that’s not the REAL left” or “that’s not actually right wing!” etc. And so the only way you can really critique a partisan side is to critique the part of it that has the most cultural and political influence. These days, “the left” is not Marx or Lenin anymore. It is not the Black Panthers, and it is not the Berkeley free speech activists. These are not the people that are holding power, nor are their ideas. Today’s left is largely represented by mainstream left publications like Jacobin and Current Affairs, or mainstream left politicians like AOC (in Canada, the left really does not have international cultural sway, but broadly speaking our left is the NDP, who are on friendly terms with the American left).
Of course, having ideological teams is convenient; it’s easier to form political parties, organizations, and alliances because terms like “left” and “right” essentially serve as shorthand for certain sets of ideas. Some of these ideas will to stay put in their ideological boxes longer than others, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t up for grabs. Some have complained, for instance, that the CIA - an organization traditionally committed to destabilizing the left globally - has “co-opted” left wing politics by using anti-racist and feminist language. Aside the fact that using left activists to fight communism isn’t quite a new phenomenon (but let’s not go down that rabbit hole right now), it is hard to argue that your ideology has not gained ground and dominance at the centers of power when it is being touted so openly in CIA ads.
More importantly, however, it is hard to now argue that the CIA is a right wing entity, despite its history of attempting to undermine the global left. Its ideological rationale has shifted while its projects have not. So how much does allegiance to an ideology matter?
I’m not calling for everyone to jump ship as soon as the going gets rough, but I would say that I have found it preferable to stick to values over ideology. Supporting free speech does not now mean “being right wing”. It means believing that we are better off hearing people out than trying to suppress them. Opposing racism does not mean “being left wing”. It means calling for respect and dignity for people regardless of race. Opposing war does not mean “being left wing” or “being libertarian”: it means believing that diplomacy is a better way to resolve a conflict than killing people.
And the problem is that when we have more allegiance to an ideological team than a values system, we are inhibited from working with others on these issues. Leftists, libertarians, and anti-interventionist conservatives can be a strong anti-war alliance, but will be inhibited from doing so if working with or speaking to the other side is a recipe for cancellation.
It is my view that politics should be about collaborating with each other to improve everyone’s lives. This means that we need to be open to changing our views about what the best way to go about that is, which means communicating with others who have different ideas and not being too attached to our team to admit when something does not work. We should be prioritizing values, and then figuring out the best way to realize them.
This does not mean we can eliminate ideology, nor should we. It can be a useful tool when wielded correctly. There are explanations that follow certain ideological schools that offer coherent explanations to people, and help people organize for different things. But we should not throw away the possibility of coalition building over small differences, nor should we be afraid to not agree with everyone that is supposed to fall in our ideological camp.
Am I a leftist? Probably not in the current sense. Am I right wing? Don’t think I have been in about ten years. I would rather be free to change my mind when new information contradicts my previous views without feeling attacked, humiliated, or like my team has taken a blow. And most importantly, I want to work with as many people as I can to improve our system as much as possible.