Why the Left has a Problem with 'Culturally Normal'

It's a natural consequence of the critical anarchist worldview

Recently, California Governor and likely 2028 candidate Gavin Newsom called on the Democratic Party to be 'more culturally normal'. This has sparked controversy in some corners of the left. Some of them are saying that calls for the Democrats to be 'more culturally normal' are a dog whistle to move the party to the right, and throw some vulnerable minorities under the bus in the process.

However, does being 'more culturally normal' necessarily mean a wholesale shift to the right, and/or throwing minorities under the bus? This, I think, is what we need to examine here. To embrace normie politics, which is necessary to become 'more culturally normal', certainly does not involve becoming more like the Trumpified right, or moving closer to their positions at all. It would instead look more like moving back to 2012, the year when President Obama publicly supported gay marriage. That's certainly not a right-wing year, by the way.

Nor does being 'more culturally normal' necessarily mean throwing minorities under the bus. The LGBT community was certainly more 'culturally normal' during its campaign for gay marriage in the 2000s and the 2010s, compared with the so-called 'gay liberation' era of the 1970s. The weirdness of the 1970s queers turned the mainstream off, paving the way for the religious right of the 1980s to attack the community during the AIDS crisis. In contrast, the 'more culturally normal' approach of the 2000s and 2010s won public sympathy for the cause of equal rights, resulting in the legalization of gay marriage in almost every Western country by 2020. This, I think, is a very good example of being culturally normal actually also being good for advancing the civil rights of minorities.

The current controversy over calls to be 'more culturally normal' is actually reminiscent of the controversy over 'family values', back when I was in college in the 2000s. Back then, the right used to use 'family values' as a dogwhistle to signal their uncompromising opposition to gay marriage. I was, of course, a strong opponent of this kind of politics. But that didn't make 'family values' itself a bad thing. Nevertheless, many in the aughts left seemed to actually take issue with 'family values' itself, rather than just the dog whistling. 

The cultural left's aversion to family values and normie values in general has also been on full display in the recent discourse regarding Taylor Swift. We all know that Swift has criticized Trump on multiple occasions, declared her support of the LGBT community, and endorsed both Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024. Yet, it appears that the rumors about her being secretly right-wing have returned. Why? It's because she's engaged to an NFL player, wants marriage and kids, has supposedly pro-MAGA friends, and sings that she likes her friends canceled in her latest album.

Although there is plenty of evidence (like the gay marriage example above) supporting the idea that embracing a normie politics is better for advancing and defending the civil rights of vulnerable minorities, certain parts of the left just won't acknowledge this. It seems that they have an inherent aversion to normie politics, that is rooted not in empirical results from history, but in ideological commitments to empirically unsound philosophy. It turns out that, when you believe that the status quo is made up of invisible interlocking 'systems of oppression', this hinders an objective assessment of how things actually are, and prevents constructive action to try and improve things for real people living in the real world. This, again, is why I'm so passionate about critiquing and exposing the 'theory left', in the hope that people will return to their senses and work with the real world as it exists, to achieve practical progress that actually benefits people, for real.