The Fundamental Difference Between Classical Liberals and the Authoritarian Right

The challenge of wokeism highlights a 300 year old fault line

Welcome back to the series where we look at what went wrong with the so-called anti-woke movement. In the previous articles, we established that while classical liberals and the authoritarian right both oppose wokeism, we do so on different grounds, and have different and incompatible answers to wokeism too. Today, I want to focus on what the classical liberal answer to wokeism should look like, and how it stands fundamentally in opposition to the authoritarian right's answer.

I think we should start by going back to the fundamentals of the liberal model of society. Liberalism arose in Europe in the context of long-standing and bloody religious conflicts, and the desire by some to put such conflicts to an end. Hence, the primary challenge of the original liberals was to find a way to govern society that would not provoke religious conflicts. Before liberalism, state and church were tightly integrated in Europe, which meant that whoever controlled the state would also control the church in that country, and vice versa. This meant that religious conflicts would necessary be political conflicts too, and vice versa. The liberal solution, separation of church and state, would put an end to this. In practice, the liberal solution was to have a government that treated every individual equally, and remained neutral in religious conflicts. To do so, the government needed to maintain distance from not only religion, but also everyday life, culture and philosophical debates, because these things were also heavily tied to religion back then.

Hence, for practical purposes, a liberal society is one where the government maintains some distance from everyday society, culture and philosophy, and generally remains neutral towards cultural and philosophical conflicts. This model of society arose out of a specific need in Western history, and later came to foster the pluralism that became a hallmark of Western society. The history of the development of liberal governance is hence also the history of how the West became pluralistic and intellectually free.

Wokeism, more accurately called cultural systemism, threatens the consensus that liberalism built in fundamental ways. Cultural systemists believe that society's culture and institutions are all parts of overarching and interlocking systems of oppression, designed to oppress women and minorities for the benefit of the privileged groups. The first problem with this is that it denies that neutrality in culture and philosophy is fair or even possible. The second, less easily seen, but even more important problem is that it denies any difference between state power and other sources of 'power' (as justified in postmodern critical theory), because it is all seen as a part of an overarching 'system of oppression'. This would lead to the misguided view that a culturally neutral state is actually part of the system of oppression, which would then imply that state cultural neutrality should be 'dismantled' like everything else that makes up the system of oppression. As liberals, we oppose cultural systemism because it would effectively end the liberal model of Western society, by attacking both the position of neutrality in culture and philosophy, and also the separation of governance from culture and philosophy.

Given that as liberals, we oppose cultural systemism as part of our work of upholding the liberal society, our opposition to cultural systemism must also be done in a way that is consistent with upholding the liberal model of society. This means we need to separate the political sphere from the cultural and philosophical sphere, at the very minimum. In the political sphere, our only commitment should be individual liberty, with philosophical debates beyond that (what ancient philosophers characterized as 'what the good life should be') firmly out of scope. Therefore, in terms of politics, our opposition to woke activism should be restricted to the grounds of individual liberty, and equal treatment regardless of immutable characteristics. For example, we should oppose acts of de-platforming and cancellation, and 'progressive stack' style speaking systems. If such phenomenon were to be imported into areas relevant to the activities of government, for example an election debate or an official policy forum, we would need to resist it, including by legislation if necessary. However, the wider philosophical views of cultural systemism, including everything from 'gender is a social construct' to 'marriage is patriarchal and repressive', are not part of the proper scope of politics, from a liberal point of view. This doesn't mean we can't speak out in opposition to these ideas. However, all this belongs in the realm of philosophical debate, which the liberal model of society says should be seen as separate, and kept at a distance from, the politics of government. If we still believe that government should be culturally neutral, then we shouldn't be waging cultural and philosophical battles in the arena of politics, and muddying the waters between the cultural and the political.

The liberal method described above stands in stark contrast to the authoritarian right's model of 'anti-wokeism', which actually represents a return to a pre-liberal form of society and governance. The authoritarian right's model is essentially using state power to stamp out 'wokeism' in its entirety, without discriminating between the spheres of government-politics and culture-philosophy. To do so, it would necessarily have to extend state interference into culture and philosophy, right down to the level of everyday life. The authoritarian right's anti-woke war extends state power into local libraries, schools, main streets, and even families. There is no limit to state intrusion into everyday life, and no right to privacy, as long as action is taken in the name of defeating wokeism. This is reminiscent of the pre-liberal religious conflicts in Europe, where states often attempted to mercilessly wipe out rival religions within their boarders, using every ounce of state power at their disposal. In using state power to stamp out wokeism, the authoritarian right is also effectively forcing their culture and philosophy down the throats of the whole population, because many otherwise non-woke people also oppose actions like banning books or banning drag shows. You could even argue that the authoritarian right is forcing their religion down other people's throats, given that the bans on LGBT books and drag shows are clearly religiously motivated at least to a substantial extent.

In the face of the rise of wokeism we have two different responses. The liberal method is to defend liberty in a neutral way in the political arena, and to combat cultural systemism in the philosophical arena. The authoritarian right method is to fight a culture war against wokeism using state power, extending state power to every area of life in the process. The two methods represent two very different visions of what society should look like: the liberal model that ended Europe's religious conflicts, vs the pre-liberal model that led to those conflicts. The liberal model that made the West pluralistic and free, vs the pre-liberal model where everyone obeyed Kings and Lords and the state Church on everything. The thinkers of the 'postliberal' right are openly disdainful of the liberal model of society and wish to put an end to it. They are already envisioning how an illiberal future for the West could look like. Those of us who support the liberal model should see this attempt to take us back to the middle ages for what it is, and stand firmly against it. Even as we continue to combat cultural systemism too.