It has been a while since I posted on RF. Between becoming a college senior (finally... after a roller-coaster ride of five years and changing majors), planning my graduation project, and making new friends and bonding with them, RF hasn't been my highest priority in the last few months.
I have lately been feeling the absence of expressing my thoughts freely here, however, especially since I often don't have this luxury offline. This will be about how I have come to feel about the political left—especially the American left, being that American politics has a lot of international exposure—and why distancing myself from the label has felt intellectually liberating.
And it hardly starts with the disputes and griping over issues that are quite often overblown and exploited by ideologues, from "cultural appropriation" and "white privilege" to blaming the "White Man" for the ills of the rest of the world and diluting the definition of terms like "Islamophobia" and "racist" so much that they have, in many cases, practically become slurs reserved for those who don't fit into a specific cultural and political box reminiscent of puritanical exclusivism.
You point out that immigration can carry risks if its laws are too lax? You're a xenophobe and/or a racist.
You point out that mainstream Islam has considerably worrisome tenets that need reform? You're an Islamophobe.
You express belief that not all cultures are equally respectable or progressive? You're a bigot.
You cite facts indicating that many of the Arab world's problems are internal and self-perpetuated rather than caused by colonialism or "white privilege"? You're a racist and possibly a sympathizer with white supremacism.
You don't share the above prejudices and express opposition to them? You're not "woke" (a term I have increasingly come to dislike and associate with tribalistic, self-validating identity politics) or "progressive."
These are just a few examples. Of course, many examples tend to be more subtle and, most dangerously, masquerade as championship of tolerance, pluralism, and acceptance, when in reality they serve to demonize the metaphorical Other and paint them as bigots and in some cases even quasi-nazis.
Several years ago when I left conservative religion, I found in secularism a unique, profoundly liberating sense of intellectual independence, compassion, and tolerance. I didn't leave conservative religion to instead replace it with groupthink that promotes appeals to emotion, reactionary and selective outrage, and mollycoddling minorities or putting them on a pedestal under the misguided assumption that this somehow makes one "progressive" or "liberal."
I realize that these issues don't encompass the entire left, but they have felt increasingly common and vocal in the last few years enough for me to distance myself from the label. As things stand, I find myself relating most to Arab secularists who vocally and uncompromisingly oppose political Islam, virtue-signalling identity politics, and open-door immigration due to the very real and anti-freedom risks that it carries.
So, for the foreseeable future, I don't see myself identifying with the left. I still oppose much of what the right wing stands for and don't consider myself a conservative, but this now applies to the left as well, albeit to a lesser extent. I just wish liberalism remained about things like support for LGBT rights, gender equality, and religious pluralism instead of becoming the mess that it is turning into today.
It's nice to be here again, by the way. I definitely needed to get this out there because I frequently hear news about political issues and controversies over things like "cultural appropriation" and find myself facepalming at what many people are trying to pass off as progressivism.
I have lately been feeling the absence of expressing my thoughts freely here, however, especially since I often don't have this luxury offline. This will be about how I have come to feel about the political left—especially the American left, being that American politics has a lot of international exposure—and why distancing myself from the label has felt intellectually liberating.
And it hardly starts with the disputes and griping over issues that are quite often overblown and exploited by ideologues, from "cultural appropriation" and "white privilege" to blaming the "White Man" for the ills of the rest of the world and diluting the definition of terms like "Islamophobia" and "racist" so much that they have, in many cases, practically become slurs reserved for those who don't fit into a specific cultural and political box reminiscent of puritanical exclusivism.
You point out that immigration can carry risks if its laws are too lax? You're a xenophobe and/or a racist.
You point out that mainstream Islam has considerably worrisome tenets that need reform? You're an Islamophobe.
You express belief that not all cultures are equally respectable or progressive? You're a bigot.
You cite facts indicating that many of the Arab world's problems are internal and self-perpetuated rather than caused by colonialism or "white privilege"? You're a racist and possibly a sympathizer with white supremacism.
You don't share the above prejudices and express opposition to them? You're not "woke" (a term I have increasingly come to dislike and associate with tribalistic, self-validating identity politics) or "progressive."
These are just a few examples. Of course, many examples tend to be more subtle and, most dangerously, masquerade as championship of tolerance, pluralism, and acceptance, when in reality they serve to demonize the metaphorical Other and paint them as bigots and in some cases even quasi-nazis.
Several years ago when I left conservative religion, I found in secularism a unique, profoundly liberating sense of intellectual independence, compassion, and tolerance. I didn't leave conservative religion to instead replace it with groupthink that promotes appeals to emotion, reactionary and selective outrage, and mollycoddling minorities or putting them on a pedestal under the misguided assumption that this somehow makes one "progressive" or "liberal."
I realize that these issues don't encompass the entire left, but they have felt increasingly common and vocal in the last few years enough for me to distance myself from the label. As things stand, I find myself relating most to Arab secularists who vocally and uncompromisingly oppose political Islam, virtue-signalling identity politics, and open-door immigration due to the very real and anti-freedom risks that it carries.
So, for the foreseeable future, I don't see myself identifying with the left. I still oppose much of what the right wing stands for and don't consider myself a conservative, but this now applies to the left as well, albeit to a lesser extent. I just wish liberalism remained about things like support for LGBT rights, gender equality, and religious pluralism instead of becoming the mess that it is turning into today.
It's nice to be here again, by the way. I definitely needed to get this out there because I frequently hear news about political issues and controversies over things like "cultural appropriation" and find myself facepalming at what many people are trying to pass off as progressivism.