Why You Can’t Argue with the New Left
11th March 2016
Arnold Kling sums it up.
Conservative British philosopher Roger Scruton’s most recent book, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left, critiques academics who did their scribbling in the twentieth century, creating what became known as the New Left. Most of the intellectuals profiled by Scruton are continental Europeans whose names are unfamiliar to most Americans today. Although few of us are conversant with the likes of Theodoro Adorno, Gyorgy Lukacs, and Slavoj Zizek, reading about them makes one realize how much of an imprint they have left on contemporary college campuses and even on the approach to politics taken by Barack Obama.
A major theme of Fools is that the New Left evolved a set of intellectual tactical moves against their opponents. These included creating a false left-right spectrum, delegitimizing other points of view, indicting capitalism and tradition for all wrongs while being vague about alternatives, and using Newspeak to present authoritarianism as a defense of freedom and human rights.