On the ideological biases that are relevant to Covid, particularly those of the progressive left

[Justin-H.S.]

"Summary

The main way that ideology and politics is discussed in relation to covid is to critique the biases of conservatives, libertarians and classical liberals (who find themselves portrayed on the right in this new world). As I'll attempt to show, there are a whole suite of deep and important ideological inclinations related to the modern progressive left, which have gone neglected in the limited debate thus far. It's very important for people of all political persuasions to appreciate their biases, to help us understand how we find ourselves in this mess, and how to move forward.

On the ideological inclinations of "the right"

Much has been written, researched and discussed on the "rightwing" ideological inclinations and aversions towards covid, covid policy and related topics. For example, one of the most upvoted posts on the website yesterday was as below this:

Conservatives and liberals differ on COVID-19 because conservatives tend to attribute negative outcomes to purposeful actions by threats high in agency. If health officials talked about the virus as a palpable enemy that is seeking to attack humans, they may get greater buy-in from conservatives.

Or many pieces along these lines: How the right is responding to coronavirus: denial, realism or dangerous contrarianism

To summarize, the key ideological inclinations of the various categorizations of people traditionally associated with "the right" that are relevant to covid and lockdowns include some of the following:

• An aversion to additional government intervention or any increased role of central government. From a covid perspective this might make people more likely to favor "laissez faire" policies, like herd immunity is often portrayed as.
• An aversion to expertise, seen as the domain of the "liberal elite". Or when taken to more extreme lengths, a greater tendency towards conspiracist thinking, which at its worst manifests in [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]house views like 5G covid and government control stuff.
• A focus on individual rights, which manifests for example as anti-mask or anti-vaccine views (sometimes intersecting with the conspiracy point above)
• A greater focus on "the economy", or specifically on the maintenance and health of a capitalist economy

Those people who find themselves on the right should always be questioning whether their covid views are in fact clouded or biased by their political or ideological leanings. There is no danger to too much self reflection (except the scary risk that we might find our minds changing...). To be honest, these above inclinations are fairly obvious, well covered in media and opinion pieces and to me personally, are fairly boring to discuss.

On the ideological inclinations of "the left"

But, what about the ideological inclinations of "the left", and in particular modern left progressives? These are far less discussed, despite being greater in their influence on existing covid policy. Very frustratingly, progressives often fail to appreciate how their ideological leanings influence their position. Instead they rationalize their view as being the "scientific" one, the sensible one, the only one. Indeed I think most have never even considered their leanings, hence my motivation for this post. (I'm going to use the term "progressive" throughout this as distinct from the very misused/abused term "liberal" which in most of the world has quite a different meaning to how it is abused in the US.

Many of these leanings are the opposite of the rightwards inclinations I mentioned, but there's much more going on here that deserves to be appreciated. The ideological inclinations of progressives that I have appreciated thus far throughout this catastrophe are as follows:

A dominant inclination towards solidarity, sometimes even an obsession with this concept - Many people support lockdowns because they are basically a case study in solidarity. The thinking goes like this: solidarity is good > lockdowns are solidarity on steroids > therefore lockdowns are good. Progressives love the idea that a society which they previously saw as being dangerously individualistic is now brought (or rather forced...) together as one by covid and lockdowns. At the beginning of the pandemic this resulted in some really bizarre displays of solidarity theatre, like celebrity lockdown videos or the perverse "clap for the NHS/health workers and I'll abuse you if you don't". And at that time, many people were sucked in to that sense of solidarity. Months later, it's now "don't break ranks" from the support for lockdown, we must prevail in our solidarity. An obsession with solidarity is the main reason progressives are instinctively averse to the policy proposal of shielding the elderly. Because this would mean that the great solidarity of general lockdowns would be broken! We must all be in this together, and suffer equally! Of course as well all know, the suffering is not remotely distributed equally, but complexities don't really matter here, only the symbol of working towards the greater good. An example of this thinking in action:

[Government policy] should focus on rebuilding the sense of a collective response to this virus – the idea we are all doing this together for each other to protect our loved ones and the NHS

Central/managerial government - Progressives love the idea that most or all of humanity's problems can and will be solved by a centralized, powerful, managerial government. As covid is the biggest worldwide crisis we've had in a generation, it simply MUST be solved this way. More on this later.

The Experts/The Science - some time ago, many progressives (particularly young ones) decided that science was a leftwing concept, as distinct from a non partisan, non-ideological process. The unquestioning, nuance free hero worship of The Science during this pandemic has been nauseating. What's become clear (in fact it was already clear pre-covid) is that many progressives aren't interested in some of the "ugly" bits of science, like for example different levels of evidence, or often contradictory results, or the entire concept of falsifiability, or different levels of certainty, or the reality that scientist's viewpoints often clash. Rather, they subscribe to a perfect version of science in which there is always a clear consensus, in which that consensus is always dominant and unquestionable, and where the outcome of that consensus is a high degree or even perfect certainty. Uncertainty is too complicated to consider, or risk communicating to a populace that must be treated like children.

During Covid we've seen this manifest for example as complete rejection by progressives of ANY debate on the science of masks. It's a big and controversial topic, but regardless of one's personal views on masks it is simply wrong to claim there is certainty and consensus on masks, the standard of existing evidence is fairly poor and it's all based on observational evidence (a lower form of scientific evidence, as distinct from a randomized controlled trial which is the highest form of evidence, hence why we don't base vaccines on observational evidence). There is yet to be a published randomized controlled trial on masks for covid. It's not that one hasn't been done, it's that medical journals genuinely refuse to print it. Perhaps this refusal is for scientific reasons, but given the desecration of science throughout this pandemic, you could be forgiven for wondering if that refusal might be for political reasons. Consider the response of the lead author of this mask study:

“Can one interpret a controversial research result in the sense that no significant effect of mask use is demonstrated in your study?” Torp-Pedersen was asked.

"I think that's a very relevant question you are asking,” he responded.

Scary stuff. But here we are.

A disillusionment with "the economy" - this is a relatively new development, as the entire left has its original base in Marx, who was obviously one of, if not the most influential thinkers of all time and who was principally concerned with economics. But not the new left, for many of them the economy got dumped in the "too hard" basket (that is, it's too hard to understand). It's also not as sexy as social and identity issues: the modern left is obsessed with identity issues and cultural issues at the expense of most other topics. Refer to the way that progressives get angry when you dare introduce class into a discussion or argument regarding privilege. They're not interested in it, they want to focus on identity groups, and no one really or strongly identifies as a certain class.

And what does this mean for Covid? The modern progressive left has decided the economy simply doesn't matter. Some see even raising "the economy" as being a right wing dog whistle! This tendency is partly explained by the way that the modern progressive left is young, and young people (often rightly in my view) see the economy as something that has left them behind as demonstrated through high youth unemployment, unattainable house prices and flat or declining real incomes. Or perhaps "the economy" in their mind means capitalism, and in particular a big business, free market, low tax form of capitalism. Hence anything that harms capitalism must be good, hence bring on the lockdowns.

This is a big broad topic, but in short they are so [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]ing wrong on this point. The lockdowns have worsened wealth inequality, they've resulted in even less competition, stamped out small business, even worse unemployment etc). Less radical and less anti-capitalist progressives will simply sidestep economic issues by suggesting we support the poor/unemployed with perpetual benefits, completely ignore the supply side of the economy and when questioned on debt levels defer to a highly simplified version of modern monetary theory (eg "government budgets aren't like household budgets, we can borrow forever etc").

Virtue signaling - this isn't an entirely progressive tendency (eg what is the American right's obsession with owning and displaying guns, flags and pickup trucks if not for virtue signaling to their own kind), but there is an obvious progressive flavor to covid virtue signaling. It started with facebook "flatten the curve" profile pictures (forgotten, similar to that entire concept...), and is now more related to virtue signaling on masks and lockdown. Let's not kid around, a major reason that many progressives wear masks isn't to do with science at all. It's because they want to be seen as the sort of person who wears masks. And also they want to be seen and visible as NOT the sort of person who doesn't wear a mask. This is the part of virtue signaling that is often missed, it's as much about showing that you're NOT a part of the other team as it is showing that you're on your team. The mask is very much part of the culture wars, and it's not just due to the silly conspiracy right. Similarly there seems to be an absurd competition being played out on social media on who can demonstrate that they're taking lockdowns the most seriously. Who can whittle their lives, human interaction, movement and community involvement down to the barest of minimums, clearly conveying their utter selfless dedication to the cause of lockdowns. It used to be that "if you didn't post about going to the gym, did you even go?" It's now "if you didn't post about breadmaking, netflix, cooking and virtual games, did you even lockdown?"

Human/individual rights - A big section of the modern left pretty much gave up on the concept of rights over the past ten years. Rights are now seen through dominantly through a group lens. And conversely, individual rights are seen as a right wing (often American) concept. Hence the way we've seen hardly any discussion or criticism from progressives on the disgusting erosion of privacy, on the genuine detainment of various innocent parties (see students in the UK), on the forced closure of independent small businesses. This is a really big topic, and frankly I don't have the philosophical background to really unpack or properly articulate what has gone on here. But crudely, individual rights and individual discrimination got thrown out in favor of a worldview where all rights and discrimination are seen through power structures and associated oppression against clearly identified minority groups. At best this analysis looks at the intersection of how these structures and oppression interact, but it never dares to go one level beyond groups and consider how these things manifest for an individual.

As an example of how this relates to Covid, there is something that goes missed in relation to the way that progressives told us to shut up shop, but then supported the BLM protests, only to subsequently portray anti-lockdown protests as dangerous and extremist. It's not quite as simple as hypocrisy (although there is plenty of that). It's that the modern left cannot understand, nor does it want to understand protests or movements that aren't based around group rights and minority group based oppression. The modern left to rationalize or appropriately deal with black and other minority store owners during the BLM protests getting their stores looted and attacked. And similarly relating to Covid, lockdown protesters are not neatly placed into a racial, gender, sexuality etc group, through which is the only way that the modern left understands and wishes to talk about oppression. Individual oppression, and individual rights are not part of their ideology, indeed they are seen as part of "the other side's" ideology. Hence they don't care about your rights and freedoms being quashed by covid.

Putting it all together - immunity - The combination of various of these elements explains the genuine HATRED for a concept that 12 months ago wasn't thought of as being an ideological or partisan issue: immunity/herd immunity. Progressive people inherently HATE this concept. Don't believe me? Go and have a look at the comments in response to this recent article , including the suggestion that it should be taken down.

The reasoning is as follows: if pre-existing or naturally developing immunity exists or is allowed to exist, then this means that Covid will be defeated i) without constant and all encompassing central government management, ii) as a positive outcome through the undirected, unmanaged and unmonitored actions of billions of individuals (boo! hiss!) and iii) without being directly and decisively saved by The Experts or The Science. To a modern progressive, this is simply untenable. There can be no immunity.

Continued in next post...

 

[Justin-H.S.]

So what about "the centre"/moderates? What center??!

As we all know, hence the existence of this sub, there hardly is any [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]ing center! Covid policy has been distilled into lockdowns vs "let it rip". Anti-lockdowners are portrayed as the village idiots, or Koch funded shills, or insensitive selfish individuals. And it doesn't matter what your other or previous progressive credentials were. No one gives a [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] that you are massively concerned with wealth inequality, or the environment, or with opportunities for the young, or refugees, or women's issues, or with combating racism. Covid trumps all.

And to me, that's an intentional false dichotomy set up by the progressive left. I don't think the progressive left is fully at fault for screwing the center more broadly, after all much of this was achieved by the alt-right, assisted by state sponsored disinformation. However when it comes to Covid, I place the blame for the erosion of the center or moderate views squarely on the progressive left. The groundwork for this has been laid for years, through concepts like:

#Enlightened centrism - a several hundred times a day accusation that flies on this website that anyone who finds themselves in the center, or with a view that can't neatly be placed into two nice simple ideological camps is a fence sitting fool, or sardonically an #enlightenedcentrist. Or worse, the accusation that they aren't in fact centrist, rather that their centrist views betray a dog whistle for unspoken underlying right wing views. Many "liberals" get thrown into this bucket by default. As you can see for yourself on various subs of this website, many progressives despise liberals. The distinction is important.

Hatred of disagreement or debate - whether you want to call it "cancel culture" or not (I don't for example, I think it's more complex than that), I think it's simply undeniable that the modern left has gradually and successfully stifled debate, or at least most of it. Major liberal media institutions have been overrun by a young, educated base which actively despises complexity, nuance, debate and challenge. Go and look at the exit letters pinned by various opinions writers, journalists and others at previously liberal institutions who have found themselves forced out. Regardless of your views on these people individually, there are obvious and consistent common threads to what they describe about the new culture of the institutions where they work. People like Matt Yglesias at Vox, Andrew Sullivan at New York Magazine, Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept and Bari Weiss at the New York times. And although she technically remains a writer (although far less active), Suzanne Moore at the Guardian.

And we've seen exactly the same sort of treatment for discussions on lockdowns and similar topics. The modern left [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]ing hates dissent. It has a taste not just for forceful, arrogant, dismissal of dissent but also for straight up censorship. It was already there, but Covid just became the trigger for even more forceful and clear censorship. You see this on reddit all the time, just yesterday I had my comments removed on a /r/worldnews post for daring to criticize covid couch potatoes. Sure it's only reddit, but it's symptomatic of a much bigger problem.

The modern left only has space for one type of dissent, and it's one way. For example on issues of identity politics it goes like this. Person A: "I think Group A is oppressed". Person B: "I think Group B is MORE oppressed". Person C: "I think both groups are oppressed, in an intersectional way and you better check your privilege Person A and Person B". In Covid terms this ends up in arguments not about whether we should lock down, but whether we should lock down HARDER.

Polarisation and character assassination - Related to the above point but subtly different is the way the progressive left has destroyed the center by portraying anything reported by conservative media as being wrong simply by virtue of the fact that it comes from a conservative source. Look at the way one of the main lines of attack against the entire Great Barrington Declaration was the fact it was launched at an AIER venue (which to be fair, the authors of this should have easily anticipated). Or as another example, in various countries around the world, where the media is dominated by Murdoch (very often with highly negative effects on debate, policy and coverage), young progressives have decided that lockdowns must be good simply because the Murdoch press often doesn't like them! Look at the pathetic state of media commentary in Australia, where progressives warmly embraced Daniel Andrews regardless of how ridiculous his policies were (a 5km movement limit, an 8pm police enforced curfew, mandatory mask wearing AT ALL TIMES), and dismissed all criticism as simply being Murdoch shilling. Which ended up being self-fulfilling, because no media outlet dared criticize the lockdowns lest they be perceived as on the side of the Murdoch press, and the Murdoch press criticism ended up being rabid right wing shock jock crap mainly through Sky news (equivalent of Fox). To be clear, much of this is the fault of Murdoch who owns an outrageous amount of media in Australia, the UK and the US. But the modern left needs to learn to actually engage the substance of an argument, rather than immediately dismissing it by analyzing the channel through which it is communicated. In short, moderate views in the media have been quashed. At a more micro level, on reddit this results in progressives trawling through your post history to ascertain whether you're on their team, and to find something easier to attack than whatever criticism or argument you're making in a more recent post or comment.

Dismissal of "spectrum arguments", or discussions of trade-offs - this one kills me. It's probably the most frustrating issue of any of those I have raised. The modern left HATES spectrum arguments, or discussions of trade offs. By this I mean arguments/lines of inquiry that center on the reality of the world as being one of competing objectives, many of which are mutually exclusive. For example we must always balance risk, as we do in many aspects of society for example we do not claim that "even one death is one too many" when it comes to vehicle travel. Or pointing out that pre covid, health departments around the world look at cost vs benefits of new and existing health measures. Or how on many issues of health and security we balance individual rights with group safety and nothing about covid changes this fact, despite what Dan Andrews says. But a big part of the modern left doesn't have ANY time for these sort of arguments, there are no trade offs in their imaginary idealistic world. And by raising a trade off, they become very suspicious that you are dog whistling and revealing your unspoken underlying right wing bias. Or often worse in their eyes, that you're a dirty tainted centrist.

Inclinations that are neither "left" nor "right"

There are some inclinations that I find it very hard to place politically, as I've seen them exhibited by people all over the spectrum. These include:

• Young vs old lives - There are widely varying views on how to rank and compare life years, ranging from passionate disagreements to the suggestion that the very existence of a measure such as a quality adjusted life year is disgusting. Like this absolute claptrap.
• Hatred of children - something that had been bubbling away for a number of years but which covid really let loose. As seen all over reddit, many people actively despise children. In Covid terms this has manifested as people who don't care about the impacts of school closures, or kids going unfed, or kids missing out on opportunities, or youth mental health crisis. They hate kids.
• Obsession with nullifying risk - although I'd put this more as a progressive issue than the right on average, there's no shortage of scared conservative boomers who appeared to realize that they would die only during the pandemic

Conclusion

Thank you for reading my rant. Perhaps you think I have too much time on my hands. And I do, because they locked me down! Really interested in critique or addition to my points. There is so much going on here. This is the most significant thing happening in our lifetimes and it's happened so quickly and frantically that it's been hard to step back and really try to understand what's actually happening. I wrote this almost as a therapeutic thing for myself, to get these ideas that have been bouncing around in my head out of it.

Stay sane!"

Found this Reddit post and thought it was a good write-up.