The Moderate Model to End the Culture Wars

Here is a moderate’s plea and solution to end the culture wars.

My long-standing criticism of the ‘woke left’ have so far mainly focused on their disrespect towards free speech norms, and their regular practice of de-platforming and canceling speakers they don’t agree with. This has long been my biggest concern about woke left style activism, because I have long believed that a free, fair and healthy marketplace of ideas is one of the most important things for any society to have. (For the record, I also have major concerns about how the populist right are trashing the marketplace of ideas, and I am also very vocal about that.)

However, another important aspect of woke left activism that I think we need to address is its unnecessary radicalism, and the resultant polarization and backlash it causes. The woke left’s approach to social justice is unnecessary radical, because it overfits people into pre-determined oppressor vs. oppressed frameworks, and it unjustifiably assumes that traditional or status quo arrangements are always oppressive towards minorities. This, in turn, is due to the worldview that basically underlies all postmodern critical theory. The result is that woke left activism tends to unnecessarily assume oppressive intention and refuse to compromise (e.g. towards LGBT allies who have concerns about women’s sports), and would rather lose everything in an all-or-nothing fight.

Another aspect of woke left activism is its over focus on changing linguistic norms, which is again inspired by postmodern ideology. Attempts at changing linguistic norms inorganically generally bring about little gain for the minorities it is supposed to benefit, along with major backlash that actually harms those minorities. Overall, woke left activism rooted in postmodern critical theory has been unproductive, and has only brought about massive backlash that has worsened the standing of minorities in society. It is clearly a failed experiment.

The populist right has gone all out in offering itself as the solution to ‘defeat wokeness’. However, in practice, their ‘solution’ is no more than 100% reactionism, on every issue, all the time. They not only oppose all proposals for change and reform, no matter if they are justified or not, they even attempt to reverse long-standing gains in civil rights and minority rights, in the service of the reactionary right culture war agenda. For example, the Trump administration’s anti-DEI policies not only reversed recent changes made by the Biden administration, but also dismantled many long-standing programs, initiatives and arrangements that benefited minorities. Similarly, his administration’s anti-LGBT policies often go beyond just cancelling gains in the Biden era, and state-level Don’t Say Gay policies and drag bans also effectively turn the clock back to the last century. This wholesale turning back of the clock has been done without much consideration for the impacts they have on real people in the real world. Overall, the populist right’s program appear to be all about ‘owning the libs’ whatever the consequences, rather than bringing about good solutions that are compassionate towards everyone involved.

Equally concerning are political strategists and actors who exploit the hot button issues of our time for political gain. While they (pretend to) get outraged about many aspects of woke left activism, their aim is clearly not to provide a better alternative to resolve the underlying issues. Rather, they enjoy having the problem as much as possible, and often make it even worse in the process, by introducing new arguments and conflicts that take us further away from effectively understanding and resolving the problem at hand. The reason they do this is because it ultimately works to the benefit of populist right politics and politicians. However, it is the rest of us, especially those impacted by the issues, who pay the price.

I think we moderates should promote a better alternative to all the aforementioned ways of dealing with controversial social issues. One that unites people and promotes mutual understanding, rather than divides people and promotes mutual enmity. This begins by actually putting all ideological obsessions aside, something that moderates are naturally more able to do than ideologues, and actually respectfully listening to people’s concerns.

TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the book TaraElla’s Political Theory of Everything and the Moral Libertarian book series. She is also the author of her autobiography The TaraElla Story.