Uttering the name Boris Johnson alongside the epithet blue-collar would have been incongruous, to say the least until just a few months ago. As mayor of London 2008-16, Johnson positioned himself as a liberal Conservative who advocated an amnesty for illegal immigrants, touted his green credentials and attacked Trump after his controversial comments in 2015 about the Islamification of London. The Prime Minister, who attended Eton College before going on to study at Balliol College, Oxford, had earlier gained notoriety for insensitive and snobbish comments about the residents of Liverpool in 2004 that necessitated a public apology. Johnson’s slightly German appearance, without doubt, has its origins in his Bavarian ancestors of the von Pfeffel family some of whose members were ennobled in the nineteenth century. On the face of it, then, the former editor of the Spectator magazine would seem an improbable champion of Leave-voting Labour supporters outside the metropolitan bubble.

Realignment

The shift from the largely class-based politics of the twentieth century to a world marked by the new fault lines of patriotism vs. globalism and traditionalism vs. cosmopolitanism is, however, creating some strange bedfellows as doors open to politicians who can make this realignment work to their advantage. In December 2019 Johnson, following in the tracks of Donald Trump and others, proved particularly adept at superseding the old divisions of his country. A glance at the electoral map before and after 12 December makes this abundantly clear. What had become known as Labour’s red wall crumbled as Leave-voting seat after Leave-voting seat in the North, the Midlands and Wales fell to the Conservative Party.  The constituency of Wrexham in North East Wales, purely by way of example, had never delivered a Conservative member of parliament since the advent of universal suffrage in 1928, having been Liberal, Labour, Social Democrat and Labour. All in all the Conservatives gained 57 seats from Labour across the country.

Labour’s electoral base

In Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, political parties inevitably represent coalitions of views and sections of the electorate. To understand the outcome of the general election of 12 December 2019 it is necessary to understand the coalition that had been the Labour party before that date. At the risk of oversimplification: in the one corner stood the socially conservative patriotic white working class that are left-wing to the extent they support Britain’s free at point of delivery national health service, the welfare state, workers’ rights and, with varying degrees of intensity, the trade union movement; in the opposite corner stood middle-class progressives in the metropolitan areas, woke graduates, champagne socialists, ethnic minorities and Muslims. Ultimately, the gulf between the two different parts of the coalition proved impossible to bridge, especially given the large metropolitan middle-class leadership of the Labour Party.

Snobbery and the metropolitan elite

The widening cultural gap between Labour’s metropolitan leadership and its base was nicely exemplified by an episode that occurred during the Rochester by-election of 2014. As Labour MP Emily Thornberry was campaigning on an estate in the Kent town she noticed a house draped in English flags with a white van parked outside. The MP for Islington South in London tweeted an image of the scene. Accused of snobbery and condescension she resigned from the Labour Shadow Cabinet later in the day. During the 2019 election, Thornberry was again at the centre of controversy when she allegedly called Leave voters in a pro-Brexit colleague’s constituency “stupid”. Thornberry denied the allegations and brought legal action against the Labour MP who made them. These episodes had echoes of the notorious incident in the 2010 election campaign when the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, called a Labour-supporting pensioner, who challenged him on the street about immigration in her home town of Rochdale, a “bigoted woman”. Brown was subsequently forced into a grovelling apology.

Somewheres and anywheres

Using the terminology of the British political scientist David Goodhart, the divisions within the Labour electoral base reflects the division of British society into the two camps of “Anywheres” and “Somewheres”. By “Anywheres” Goodhart means those individuals who are well-educated and value openness, fluidity and personal autonomy. They are mobile and have, or at least purport to have a cosmopolitan mindset. “Somewheres” on the other hand value rootedness, a sense of locality, familiarity, security and patriotism. Anywheres, according to Goodhart, are generally graduates and affluent people who make up around just a quarter of the population but this value block has in recent decades dominated political discourse through cultural hegemony in the education system, the civil service, the media and the arts. The two worlds collided in the Brexit debate.

One Nation Tory-ism

The chaos of the 2017-19 Remain dominated Parliament, the Labour Party’s shift towards support for a second referendum and the threat of the Brexit Party produced a seismic shift in the December 2019 election. Indeed, the election itself was in some ways reminiscent of the 2016 Leave Campaign as the Conservatives focused relentlessly on Brexit and funding for the National Health Service. For the moment at least Boris Johnson seems to have brought about a new settlement in British politics, bringing together an electoral coalition between the working class of Labour’s old industrial heartland and the Tory voting shires. Further, Johnson’s “One Nation” rhetoric alludes to the Disraelian conservatism of the 1860s and 1870s that sought to unite the country around social reform, patriotism and opposition to soulless utilitarianism.

The outlines of Johnson’s One Nation Toryism or what his detractors label as populist nationalism, then, are taking shape: Brexit, greater funding for the NHS, a substantial increase to the minimum wage, increased public spending in the north, a clampdown on foreign criminals, an extension of police stop and search powers and symbolic acts such as reducing the UK presence at globalist glamour events like the Davos World Economic Forum. Such measures may not please some on the corporatist-globalist wing of the Conservative Party but the prospect of a very long period in government thanks to the new dispensation may assuage their concerns.

L'articolo Boris Johnson and Blue-Collar Conservatism proviene da InsideOver.

The referendum on Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the rise of national populism in Europe are a clear sign of mass discontent towards our current political system. But what is the ideology behind this system, how has it failed, and what can replace it? We have interviewed Patrick Deneen – a political theorist, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, and author of the book Why Liberalism Failed – renowned among American conservatives and also recommended by former president of the United States Barack Obama, to tell us more about the flaws of the liberal order which has dominated European and American society since the 17^th century until today.

First, what do you mean exactly by “liberalism”?

I know the terminology in Europe is different, but by liberalism I mean the tradition in the United States and Great Britain that first appeared in the 17^th and 18^th centuries with Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, and so forth – the philosophy that inaugurates the American political tradition, but which also includes free-market liberalism and progressive liberalism. My argument is that there is a deeper continuity between the two worldviews that make them actually very similar. The recent elections in the United States and what is happening in Europe constitute a rejection of that very narrowness of both sides of liberalism.

What would you say to those who claim you’re confusing the liberal values of the Enlightenment with progressivism and post-modernism?  

Post-modernism to me is an extreme version of liberalism, essentially critiquing the ways and forms of power that are designed to subtly control human behaviour. At its heart, I think liberalism is the redefinition of liberty in the modern era, essentially it means the freedom from external constraints from my actions, instead of the classical and Christian tradition of freedom, which meant governing one’s appetites and freedom from my basic desires. The debate between libertarians and progressives is about means rather than ends; whether the freedom to do what one wishes is best achieved through the free-market or the use of state power defines the fundamental difference between a libertarian and a progressive. The post-modernist rejects both the free-market and statist views and believes in a kind of anarchic perspective, where if all forms of power were eliminated we would be completely free. All three philosophies are deeply informed by this modern redefinition of freedom. Michel Foucault is a really good example of the post-modernism I am referring to – he is a great critic of the Enlightenment and how it ultimately intends to control the individual, but he does this analysis seeking an even more extreme end than classical liberalism, where there is a liberation of what it means to be human in itself; being free from being human for him represents the ultimate liberation.

With civil uprisings like the Gilet Jaunes taking place in countries like France against the liberal order you claim has failed, do you think this form of resistance is the preferred one, considering it looks very similar to the violent revolutions of the 18th century, which were inspired by liberal ideas in the first place?

We live in a strange moment now, when the philosophy which was born out of revolution – classical liberalism in the US and radical liberalism in France – has now become dominant, holding power over all our institutions. The question that arises is: how do you protest against a revolutionary philosophy that has become institutionalized? The irony is that it makes people seeking stability, defence of tradition, culture, and their way of life turn into revolutionaries. So the people who were the original reactionaries are now turning into revolutionaries, and the original revolutionaries are now reactionaries. If people come to the conclusion that there is no way to articulate their position through the normal course of politics, then it will find another form of expression, and historically that has been violence or civil disobedience. I see it as a reflection of a breakdown in politics; it is less subject to my own assessment of whether it is right or wrong, and more a reflection on whether normal politics can be the appropriate avenue for the expression of these discontents. It shouldn’t surprise us this is how this protest is manifesting itself.

In your book you encourage small-scale, local communal relationships based on faith and family as a solution, but how do you see this as feasible in a society that is becoming increasingly globalized and connected with the advent of technology?

In certain ways, that recommendation was my own effort to suggest an alternative way of living to the dominant form of life under liberalism. It was in some senses, referring to living in protest against the liberal order in a more peaceful and less confrontational way, and it would require an intentional way of life which resists the anti-culture of liberalism. But it was not intended as a comprehensive political solution, and I do think there has to be a political solution. When I finish the book I talk about how there has to be a reform in the life of the community which has been lost, but these practices and virtues need to be cultivated before a political solution. The political solution has to come as a reaction to our culture. As for the technological revolution, it has radically changed our place, time and form of relationships towards others, but it can co-exist and maybe even correct the placeless, irresponsible way of life that modern technology has encouraged. I see this solution as a corrective to the thoughtless trajectory of modernity. What was once natural, village life of a small Italian town now has to be lived much more consciously, with a form of hyper-awareness of the faults of modernity.

The development of technology will also likely bring automation, which will lead to less manual labour, larger economies of scale, and therefore an even greater break from localism than the one brought by the industrial revolution. How do you see this process reversing? 

It’s hard to predict right now. There is an eternal fantasy of humanity to be liberated from work, but work has always given us meaning and dignity. On the one hand, one might imagine that people would find other ways to find meaning and dignity in their daily lives that doesn’t involve work – hobbies and passions etc., but on the other hand, one imagines a feeling of discontent, usefulness, not contributing to the goods of life. The ushering of the imagined Marxist utopia of the 19^th century also brought about profound cultural and political discontent, instability, and violence in the same way the industrial revolution ushered the reaction like the Luddites destroying the machines which had replaced their work. I think it’s difficult to predict what will happen at the moment because it’s a double-edged sword, but what is certain is that we won’t be able to escape the human condition.

L'articolo Something Has Changed: the New Western Order proviene da InsideOver.

The political philosophy of liberalism was invented to solve a specific problem. That problem was the challenge of pluralism, the difficulty of achieving peace in European societies that were increasingly riven by disagreement about core beliefs, especially religious beliefs. Liberalism’s early architects – figures like Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, and John Locke – believed that government needed to be reconceived to resolve the conflicts arising from a diversity of world views. It was John Locke who proposed that the state could act as a neutral arbiter – a “referee” – allowing for the free expression of a variety of viewpoints and beliefs while reserving legitimate powers to restrain public expressions of those beliefs only when they caused harm to others or fostered instability to the political and social order. In addition, it was believed that through such promotion of freedom and tolerance of belief, people could craft their own life paths as they saw fit and, as a result, contribute to the peace and prosperity of society and power of the nation.

Liberalism thus proposed itself as a “container” of diversity, in two senses of this word. First, it would “contain” the potential for diverse elements in society to descend into violent disagreement, an experience fresh on many people’s minds in the aftermath of the wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants. Liberalism provided a “container” in which these differing beliefs could co-exist. However, it also sought to “contain” belief itself. For liberalism to work, it demanded a primary allegiance to the regime of toleration itself. What this meant in effect was that each person was required to recognize for political purposes that one’s own belief was in the first instance merely opinion. Liberalism thus demanded – if not at first, but over time – a profound transformation in which all beliefs outside liberal toleration itself were transformed into mere opinion, including those religious claims that once were regarded as so profoundly true that they resulted the willingness to commit and suffer violence.

While at the outset this first “container” seemed to many supporters of liberalism to be the ideal resolution by which societies could at once secure peace and genuine pluralism, the second form of “containment” over time manifested itself in the dissolution and breakdown of these very communities that were animated by forms of “true belief.”

The liberty that was originally to be accorded to groups was increasingly claimed by individuals in the name of their liberation from those groups

Cultural practices – frequently the result of longstanding religious belief – having now been rendered into mere “opinion” – over time became viewed as arbitrary impositions upon the liberty of individuals who no longer shared those opinions.The liberty that was originally to be accorded to groups was increasingly claimed by individuals in the name of their liberation from those groups. And the protector of this individual liberty became the liberal state, which ultimately became not simply tolerant of plural belief, but intolerant of belief that demanded certain restraints of the liberal individual.

The logic by which the “containment” of belief itself undermined these kinds of communities has now made those who defend such communities and beliefs the very portrait of “illiberalism.” While liberalism was created in the name of giving space for, and respecting, a variety of cultures, the formative beliefs of religion, the centrality of the family, all secured by the power of the nation in protecting the rights of such institutions, today the disintegrating logic of liberalism is aimed squarely at those very practices and institutions: culture, religion, family, and nation.

Enacted liberalism was largely able to dissolve strong cultural traditions and practices through the seductions of individual liberty and free expression, the transferral of the locus of liberty from groups to the individual. Cultural traditions and forms were not conquered, they were dissolved. It was especially the power of the liberal market that acted as a solvent on cultural forms, demanding mobility, flexibility, a priority on efficiency and utility over practices that often sought to teach opposite lessons of self-sacrifice, generational continuity, tradition, and stability.

The relationship of liberalism and religion is more complex, with more direct intervention by the state. From the very outset, religion was the main competitor for the devotions of its people, and the liberal state historically sought to restrain religious expression and belief not only by the transformation of “true belief” into “opinion,” but the imposition of power itself – for instance, in the United States, removing religious symbols from public places, banning public prayer, legalizing abortion on the grounds that opposition to abortion was based solely upon irrational faith claims. But, as in the case of culture more broadly, religious belief has waned as liberal faith has gained traction, with young people today especially attracted to the vision of self-making and individual liberty contrary to the basic tenets of the main religions.

The family was always the most difficult unit for liberalism to be reconciled to, given that the relationships between parents and children are not “chosen,” and thus, do not conform to the liberal belief holding that only commitments based upon consent are legitimate. The scientific project of “planning” birth ushered in a great revolution moving this relationship toward consent, and efforts to imbue children with rights protected by the liberal state are increasingly used to restrain the efforts of parents to raise children contrary to liberal beliefs (for instance, witness recent decisions to ban home schooling in Germany). The general movement toward childlessness (and, when there are children, the absence of siblings) is a culmination of the liberal belief in the “self-making” self. While today immigration is seen as the necessary form of replacing a population, developing technologies may one day make it possible to create children without parents, now to serve the needs and demands of society.

Finally, and most paradoxically, liberalism today regards as suspect the very political unit that was believed to be essential for the securing of rights – the nation-state. Early liberal thinkers believed that the state was the most comprehensive form of political and social ordering that could be brought into being by consent, and the comprehensive organization that would ensure the individual liberty of its constitutive members. However, today the state is increasingly regarded by many as an arbitrary limitation upon that same liberty, particularly the right to complete mobility in a world now emptied of geographic, cultural, technological, and even linguistic barriers.

The vanguard of advanced liberalism today takes on the role of actively seeking to root out and destroy any last vestiges of these forms of “true belief.”

Advanced liberalism delegitimizes the political form that brought it into being, now in the name of greater liberty. Indeed, the vanguard of advanced liberalism today takes on the role of actively seeking to root out and destroy any last vestiges of these forms of “true belief,” regarding them today as obstacles toward the realization of a fully liberal regime. The religions of old have been replaced by a new “religion” of liberalism, in which any dissent from the new orthodoxy of radical liberationism from culture, religion, family and state is seen not as legitimate disagreement, but a form of heresy requiring active persecution by liberal elites, whether through state power or social pressure.

In response, defenders of culture, religion, family and state – mainly drawn from the “less advanced” part of liberal societies – have arisen as a political force in opposition to these internal trajectories of the liberal project. Some see themselves as recovering “original” liberalism, embracing the notion of a limited state that exists to preserve those forms of human organization. However, a growing number of the leaders of these “populist” movements understand that they are protesting liberal logic itself, and thus, enter new waters in exploring different ways of grounding political society in distinction from the dominant liberal norms that have reigned for the last century. As liberalism devours the sources of its nourishment, the demands of human craving for belonging in a world of meaning, membership, and community reasserts itself. How that will be manifest is the great question and challenge of our time.

Cover photo by Vincenzo Metodo, Usa, New York City, Brooklyn, 2017

L'articolo The Global Crisis of Liberalism proviene da InsideOver.

Relations between the West and Islam seem to be worsening with an increase in Islamist and far-right terrorist attacks. Why is Islamic integration in the West so difficult? How can dialogue be improved? We have interviewed Shadi Hamid, a Muslim-American who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the book Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World, for a different insight on these pressing questions.

You have worked extensively on the relationship between Islam and the West – do you think the two can co-exist peacefully in the future, even as Muslims grow in numbers in Western countries, with what appears to be a proportionate rise in intolerance towards them?

I don’t think there is a real risk of serious violent conflict or war. Citizens with different attitudes towards religion can and should try to live together with that difference. I acknowledge that there are fundamental differences in how the religions are practised, for example, 54 per cent of French Muslims think religion is very important for them, compared to only 11 per cent of French citizens overall. The biggest problem in a country like France is that the latter believe Muslims are not respecting their secular ideals – and these are people who tend to feel very strongly about secularism. So it’s an interesting question to ask if Christians in Europe were more observant, whether they would get along better with observant Muslims, but what we know in the American case is that being a conservative Christian does not necessarily make you more sympathetic towards Muslims. But maybe in Europe, because secularism is more dominant, religious Christians sympathize with Muslims since they would both, in a sense, be religious minorities trying to live within aggressively secular societies.

The main question that has risen in Europe in the last few years with mass immigration from predominantly Muslim countries, is why Western society should accommodate Islamic practices while Muslim countries would likely not accommodate ours. What would you say to the people who bring up this double standard?

The answer is that Western democracies are different – do we want to compare ourselves to repressive regimes? That is not the standard by which we should be judging this, by comparing ourselves to states like Morocco, Saudi Arabia etc., where there are fewer freedoms and dysfunctional or nonexistent democracies. But if they were to say that to me, my answer would be that I don’t have another country; I consider myself a Westerner and an American Muslim. I also don’t think Western countries are radically changing – no-one is asking them to change their constitution or basic laws. Muslim grievances in European democracies are often times about asking for more accommodation for things like work-place prayer, halal meat, wearing the headscarf etc.. I understand these practices may sometimes be in tension with secular ideals, but if it remains a personal relationship with God – it’s not too much to ask to accommodate those personal beliefs. And it’s problematic to tell them they can’t live up to their religious aspirations.

Even if individual Muslims were left to practice their faith privately and within the law, there are cases of foreign influences which threaten the sovereignty of Western nations – like that of Qatar – which funds Mosques and think tanks with a fundamentalist view of Islam. What are your thoughts on this issue, often lamented by right-wing populists?

In that case, it’s a legitimate question about sovereignty, and there are laws that can regulate that. I don’t have a problem with regulations on certain kinds of foreign funding; I just worry about assuming people become more conservative primarily because of foreign influence. Empirically that does not hold up. Foreign influence may exacerbate some of these divides, but in many countries, it’s the European children of immigrants who become more conservative than their parents, so you can’t explain that in terms of funding from the countries of their parents. I find myself in a strange place in these debates, because I think that right-wing populists are not completely wrong on some of these issues – it’s not fair to say that their concerns are solely based on bigotry and racism because there is a kernel of truth in what they say. After all, there is a difference in how Islam and Christianity are practised in Europe, but I disagree with the conclusion they reach after that. Right-wing populists ask that Muslims become the same as them, whereas I want to find a way where different groups can live together with their differences. That being said, we can’t just condemn right-wing populists, as they are speaking to a real, cultural and religious divide. There is a clash of cultures taking place.

On some issues, however, both Muslim and Christian conservatives appear to agree – for example, they both oppose progressive agendas, like the LGBTQ movement. Why then, don’t they find common cause against progressivism, instead of using these ideas as a “weapon” to show how intolerant each side is?

The right-wing in general feels a kind of insecurity towards Islam because they’re lamenting the loss of Christianity and an ideological vacuum in their own societies. Part of the reason right-wing populists are able to appeal to voters is that they speak to a sense of civilizational and cultural loss – they look at Muslims and they see a resilient, powerful, and unapologetic religion. It’s hard for them to be happy about that because that’s what they want to see in their own faith and civilization. They fear that over time Muslims are going to be more influential than even conservative Christians. So when you’re in this position of cultural decline, it’s hard to reach out to the other side from a position of weakness and insecurity. I don’t see much evidence of dialogue between the two sides– it requires one side to reach out to the other. It’s not realistic to expect Muslims to reach out to the other side when they feel under attack. I personally oppose the kind of fluffy, superficial interfaith dialogue we see sometimes, but would like to see conservative Christians, conservative Muslims, and conservative Jews in the same room and see what might happen, even if some of them deep down think the other will spend eternity in hellfire. Once I spoke to this evangelical conference in Nashville, and a guy basically said to me: “It’s the first time I shook hands with a Muslim, but I want to be clear that I still think you’re going to hell.” There was something very refreshing about that theological honesty – I don’t agree with it, but I think it can also encourage honest dialogue.

Media outlets like Al Jazeera, funded by Qatar, have an Arabic channel which supports a fundamentalist view of Islam and a Western channel which supports progressive liberalism. This appears to be a subversive way to undermine Western democracies, what would you respond to this? Why would they advocate for the same ideas in Western countries that they despise in their own?

This obsession with Muslim Brotherhood infiltration and that every Muslim in the West is a potential Trojan horse worries me – the Brotherhood has very little influence in America – someone like Ilhan Omar, the Muslim congresswoman who is a pro-LGBT Muslim is obviously not a Muslim Brotherhood member. Ilhan Omar does not have a grand plan to overthrow her country. They view their progressive activism as part of intersectional solidarity. Personally, I’m pro-gay marriage, and I don’t see how that leads to American decline. I hear that criticism of Western decadence from European Muslims, but I don’t hear it as much from American Muslims, and that reflects the shift that I’m talking about, in part because American Muslims generally feel lucky to have this level of freedom. The best place in the world to be a Muslim today, in my view, is America, even more than Muslim countries, where there are restrictions on what you can say or do religiously. This is why American Muslims don’t want to mess with the freedom of other minorities – they feel they might also lose their freedoms in the process.

Do you believe that, fundamentally, the reason why many Muslims can be hostile towards Western integration has to do with the history of Western imperialism, religious incompatibility or something else?

The hostility some European Muslims feel is mainly about socio-economic dislocation, which overlaps with the cultural and religious divide. In the Middle East and North Africa, however, it’s more about the history of Western imperialism. Also, what I would say makes integration easier in America, is that we don’t have the strong welfare component that Europe has, because we’re more sceptical of state intervention in the economy. While in Europe, this sense of hostility towards immigrants is exacerbated by the fear that they will take disproportionate welfare benefits. More immigrants put stress on that basic conception of a social contract – if you give benefits to people you don’t know, you want to feel you have something in common with them. A weak welfare system like the one we have puts more pressure on immigrants to integrate while having immigrants depend on government largess in countries that give a lot of benefits can be counter-productive because it does not encourage integration.

L'articolo Islam and the West: is Peaceful Coexistence Possible? proviene da InsideOver.