News from the New Party

Confused? You are not the only one

Sarah Baxter characteristically gets to the root of the problem of the 'culture wars' in The Sunday Times:

There used to be a clear dividing line between conservatives and liberals. It defined the culture wars of the late 20th century, which pitted reactionary fuddy-duddies against tolerant, enlightened types, who believed in equal rights for women, minorities and gays. That fault line is becoming as dated as the flower power of the 1960s.

By the time Terry Eagleton, a Marxist professor of literature – how quaint and old-fashioned that sounds – is laying into Martin Amis, the Mr Cool of British fiction, for remarks on Islam that supposedly make the son as racist as his father, Kingsley, “an antisemitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals”, it is obvious we are into a wholly different culture war, between phoney and real progressives.

Wasn’t one of Amis fils’s main complaints about Islamic militants that they were “antisemites, psychotic misogynists and homophobes”? Confused? You are not the only one.

My own test for spotting a phoney liberal is as follows. If you think Bush is a fascist and Castro is a progressive, you are not a democrat. If you think cultural traditions can trump women’s rights, you are not a feminist. And if you think antisemitic rants are simply an expression of frustration with American and Israeli policy, you have learnt nothing from history.

Sure, there are still old conservatives around who reject many of the basic tenets of modern society, but the real debate has moved on.  Helpfully, you can tell where you stand with this online quiz accompanying the article:

Quiz: Are you a phoney liberal? Where do you stand in the new culture wars?

It is a great irony that some of today's self-identifying liberals and progressives ally themselves with such reactionary causes as isolationism, antisemitism and homophobia.  It is time to reclaim the progressive movement for authentic liberal values.