The way in which I’ve generally thought about politics is in terms of ideology and particularly, the divide between the left (socialists, social democrats, labour and related groups) and the right (various strains of conservatives, market liberals and business advocates). But increasingly I doubt that this is the right way to look at things.
First, the long-heralded ‘end of ideology’ seems to arrived, but not in way its proposers imagined.
The long struggle of left and centre-left parties to maintain their relevance in the face of the resurgent market liberalism of the late 20th century gradually eroded any belief in the possibility of a fundamental transformation of capitalism, to the point where such ideas no longer receive even lip-service, let alone serious and sustained attention. Instead, these parties have found themselves lumbered with the task of managing the mixture of social democratic and market institutions that emerged from the conflicts of the 20th century, tweaking them sometimes with market-oriented reforms and sometimes with marginal new interventions. This is broadly consistent with the ‘end of ideology’ story.
On the right, however, the scene is one of complete ideological incoherence. Market liberalism has run out of steam, libertarianism has failed to produce a coherent response to the Iraq war or the Bush assault on civil liberties (to be fair, Obama has also failed here) , and the various other elements that have emerged or re-emerged as forces on the right – Christianism, aggressive nationalism, anti-feminism and so on – amount to little more than a tribalist set of hatreds of various others.
The unifying feature of the right in the 21st century is not so much ideology as an embrace of ignorance, represented most obviously by the leading figures on the right in the US, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. Rather than reflecting an even partially coherent world view and political program, rightwing politics now consists of the restatement of talking points in favor of a set of policy positions that represent affirmations of tribal identity, rather than elements of a coherent program.
So, Christianists fight to the death on gay marriage but are unconcerned by the emergence of serial divorce and remarriage as a social norm, particularly among the Republican elite. Libertarians denounce gun control as the first step to dictatorship but, many have been unconcerned or supportive of the abrogation of most constitutional protections against arbitrary arrest and punishment. Business pushes its own barrow through continuous advocacy of tax cuts, but shows no concern about massive defense spending that is already rendering those cuts unsustainable.
Increasingly, I’ve become convinced that the best way to understand this can be summed in the term ‘agnotology’ (h/t commenter Fran Barlow), coined by Robert Proctor to describe study of the manufacture of ignorance. Proctor was referring primarily to the efforts of the tobacco lobby to cast doubt on research demonstrating the link between smoking and cancer. But the veterans of that campaign have moved on to a whole range of new issues, and their techniques have been so widely imitated that the entire political right now looks like Big Tobacco writ even bigger.
The manufacture of ignorance is most obvious in relation to climate change, where the gullibility associated with ‘scepticism’ has reached levels that would have seemed unbelievable (at least in the absence of the kind of religious commitment associated with creationism). If supporters of science had invented someone like Lord Monckton, he would have been dismissed as an absurd caricature.
In this context, it’s important to observe that, while the big oil companies initially funded the manufacture of ignorance about climate change using recycled tobacco hacks like Fred Singer, Fred Seitz and so on Steve Milloy, the process has developed its own momentum. Hostility to science and scientists on this issue is now so universal on the right that there is a ready market for additions to the supply of ignorance in the form of new talking points, manufactured scandals and so on. So, even though Exxon pulled the funding plug a few years ago, this stuff keeps on coming.
But the same pattern can be observed repeated across a vast range of issues – creationism, birtherism, the abortion-breast cancer link, the supposed WMDs in Iraq, the idea that the financial crisis was caused by the Community Reinvestment Act and others too numerous to mention. The intellectual atmosphere is one of uncritical acceptance of any talking point, no matter how absurd, that appears to support the position of the tribe.
Some of those maintaining such absurdities continue to present themselves as serious intellectuals, and indeed some of them once could have justified this claim. But now, above and beyond the abandonment of independent judgement on individual issues, they have been forced to pay obeisance virtues of ignorance, as represented by first by GW Bush and then, in even more extreme form by Palin, Limbaugh, and Beck and their Australian equivalents, such as Abbott, Minchin and the rightwing commentariat in general.
How will political contests over agnotology play out? Ignorant tribalism is not a force to be dismissed lightly. In day-to-day politics, the absence of any coherent position or relationship to reality is not a big disadvantage, while a machine capable of disseminating talking points is a big asset.
On the other hand, there are some significant long run costs associated with the embrace of ignorance. Science has been the central engine of human progress over the past century or more and anti-science political movements have rarely prospered for long. The average voter has not yet recognised the fact that the political right is now vehemently opposed to science and scientists. But both scientists and their rightwing enemies are well aware of the fact.
Stereotypical images of scientists as grant-grubbing fans of world government are routinely found in public rightwing rhetoric along with welfare queens, limousine liberals and other outgroups. These attacks are now extending to vicious campaigns of personal harassment, ranging from the overt disruption associated with the FOI and hacking campaign called ‘Climategate’ to anonymous hate mail and death threats. Rightwingers have almost universally cheered the criminality of the Climategate hack, and have tacitly or overtly supported the broader hate campaign.
Conversely, scientists are now as reliably hostile to the Republican party as African-Americans (a total of 6 per cent, according to this poll) When the general image of the political right catches up with this reality, the costs are likely to be severe.
But, in the meantime, their abandonment of reality-based politics has left managerialists like Rudd and Obama wrong-footed. Their whole approach to politics assumes that the other side shares a broadly consistent view of reality. But in John Cole’s acid metaphor, dealing with the agnotological right is like going on a dinner date where you suggest Italian and your date prefers a meal of tire rims and anthrax.
The big political problem is that while competent management commands widespread approval it does not mobilise much enthusiasm. What is needed here is a return to ideology, and a project to move beyond day-to-day management and offer the ‘light on the hill’ of a positive social transformation, based on justice and equality.
John Quiggin 
Malcolm Fraser was on the radio this morning saying the same thing. Have you two been lunching together?
I don’t really get the insinuation that libertarians have as a rule become supporters of government torture. It seems like little more than a slur. Do you care to back it up with some evidence?
“The average voter has not yet recognised the fact that the political right is now vehemently opposed to science and scientists. But both scientists and their rightwing enemies are well aware of the fact”
Quiggin you are off with the pixies.
#1 I have in mind Glenn Reynolds, Eugene Volokh, Mark Levin and many others who have openly supported both war and torture. Then there is a large group who stayed silent and continued to support Bush. Looking at the ALS blog, for example, only Sukhrit Sabhlok seems to have been consistent and vocal, and he quit in disgust at being a lone anti-war voice. I think it’s fair to say that only a minority of self-described libertarians have been vocal opponents of torture and other breaches of constitutional rights – the majority, as I said, have been either unconcerned or supportive.
#2 Even more incisive than your usual, Tony. I’ll remind you of the current zero-tolerance policy for personal attacks.
This libertarian party poll shows a nearly even division on the fairly basic question “Is waterboarding torture?”
http://www.lp.org/poll/is-waterboarding-torture
Since this question only requires a minimal grasp of reality to answer in the affirmative, it seems clear that nearly half of the respondents must be considered in terms of agnotology. And there’s no reason to assume that all of those who answered “yes” were opposed to torture, let alone to less extreme, but still severe, infringements on freedom such as indefinite detention without trial.
“libertarianism has become shmibertarianism”, “tribalist set of hatreds”, “embrace of ignorance”, etc
I don’t see any attempt at debating ideas here, just silly caricatures of your perceived enemies.
I find it hard to believe that Abbott or Minchin or any of the political right (Palin excepted), as opposed to the commentariat, really believe this stuff. Rather, it is a stalking horse for their actual politics, which they do not wish to discuss because it would alienate the public in droves. Instead, because they hold the public in contempt for not agreeing with their extreme agenda, they rely on the truism that half of the voters are of below average intelligence to push them over the line via snow job.
JQ – I posted a comment with a stack of links. I’m hoping you can fish it out of the spam queue.
“Stereotypical images of scientists as grant-grubbing fans of world government are routinely found in public rightwing rhetoric along with welfare queens, limousine liberals and other outgroups. These attacks are now extending to vicious campaigns of personal harassment, ranging from the overt disruption associated with the FOI and hacking campaign called ‘Climategate’ to anonymous hate mail and death threats. Rightwingers have almost universally cheered the criminality of the Climategate hack, and have tacitly or overtly supported the broader hate campaign.”
Man this stuff is hilarious! This isn’t some kind of self parody is it? Please dude, take a chill pill and just at least look into some ‘denialist’ stuff for yourself. I promise from the bottom of my heart it’s not all ‘anti-science’ conspiracy funded by big oil.
http://joshfulton.blogspot.com/2010/02/75-reasons-to-be-skeptical-of-global.html
I think that you are going to be pelted with garbage for your perceptions here, JQ. This shows that you have struck a nerve. Tony Abbotts political tactics are an exact fit for your hypothasis. The only thing that you have not accounted for, and this will be the basis for much of the unfolding derision, is the curious contradiction between the libertarian dependency on technology (but now that I think about it technology as destinct from science, technology being applied science) for its well being. Simply put it is hard to get rich without technology, or a mass of people (slaves) to manipulate. Once wealth has been created there appears to be a shift in mindset away from the very devices that made the wealth possible in the first place. Maybe it is that Libertarians are those who seek wealth, and shmiberbertarians are those who seek to retain it (at all costs).
@James
I agree that Abbott probably doesn;t believe much of this stuff, though as health minister, he cited the bogus abortion breast cancer link. But Minchin is a full scale conspiracy theorist on climate change, denies the link between passive smoking and cancer and so on.
Terje, your post didn’t even make to moderation. But to appease you, I’ve edited the post, simply noting that large numbers of alleged libertarians have gone along with assaults on civil liberties. I don’t think you can dispute that.
@Damian
I’m possibly missing your point, Damian. The site to which you point is full of the standard attacks on science and individual scientists, including claims about plots to impose “world government”. But the author appears to be some kind of general conspiracy theorist with a mixture of ultra-left and right wing views. Obviously, given the size of the blogosphere, there must exist some site putting forward such a combination, but it’s the first I’ve seen. Are you claiming that anti-science conspiracy theories about climate change are widely held on the left? Or are you endorsing the delusional claims on the site?
It’s not just a problem on the right, though, John. The partisan right is too dismissive of climate science; the partisan left too dismissive of economic science.
Does anyone have any idea where the “end of ideology” thing first started? Is it associated with any particular theorist or movement. Excuse my ignorance.
I like the idea of “agnotology” as a new kind of political force. I was interested to read this piece by Prof. James Allan from UQ on quadrant:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2010/02/not-rape-rape
Basically he seems to throw the idea of agnotology back on left-leaning types by accusing us of not paying enough attention to “unavoidable facts”. Basically it seems like an excuse for a disjointed and petty rant, but I’d be interested to hear what you thought JQ. Are there any uncomfortable facts that the left ignore?
As for agnotology, are we sure that it is a new thing? Maybe it’s an old, old political force, that has lately just bubbled to the surface. I am too young to remember, but maybe the anti-anti-communist left were the original agnotologists.
@Eric Crampton The most clear cut rejection of economic science in mainstream politics is that of those US Republicans who claim that tax cuts pay for themselves. That wasn’t true in the past, I agree – back in the 70s, belief that deficits will always pay for themselves was most prevalent on the left.
As regards the general contest between market liberalism and social democracy, I would say that the evidence in support of social democracy has been getting stronger, and that changes in the opinions of economists are reflecting that, even if the median position is more supportive of market liberalism. But I can’t think of a widely held view on the mainstream left that contradicts established findings of economics in the way that rightwingers routinely reject climate science.
John – I don’t dispute that. However lots of libertarians, including pro-war libertarians, were vocal about the breach of civil liberties and of torture. The pre 2006 ALS blog contains lots of examples and I posted nearly a dozen links of explicit articles that were critical of the Iraq war, critical of torture, critical of breaches to civil liberties or critical of the lot. That you now can’t find my post is annoying but it does make clear that you have misrepresented the tone of the ALS. I’d ask that you check the spam trap again because given the number of links I’m sure that is where it will most likely be.
Other libertarians to oppose torture vocally and publicly include Bob Barr and Ron Paul. And Ron Paul was voting in congress against the war whilst democrats were handing Bush a broad license to kill. We even had libertarian antiwar dot com ringing the bell. To claim that libertarians support torture or libertarians support wars of aggression is no more credible than claiming Americans support torture or that Americans support wars of aggression merely because they had a president that did.
We should remember also that loads of people, not just libertarians, were mislead by the US government and the British government in terms of the imminent threat posed by Iraq. I never personally credited the WMD argument and I was vocal about the folly of launching a war on such a basis. However loads backed the war on this basis including now prominantly Democrats in the US. If you want to attack ideologies on this basis there are a lot of ideologies much further ahead in the queue.
@Jquiggin: Are there really Republicans who claim that they totally pay for themselves? That’s absurd. Yeah, they’re less expensive than a linear estimate would tell you as income increases a bit, but anybody claiming they’re a complete free lunch is insane – there’s no way we’re that far off on the right tail of the Laffer curve.
Here’s a mainstream left claim in New Zealand that I find absurd: there is NO employment effect of increasing the minimum wage. The Labour Party’s activists’ blog, The Standard, repeatedly makes the claim. True you can find some studies showing small increases have no effect, but they take that as meaning large increases also would have no effect.
As for social democracy/liberalism – I’d say social democracy does not seem to have been nearly as harmful for economic growth as we might have thought at the start; it’s unclear how much it can be extended stably beyond highly homogeneous societies; and, it’s best implemented through a strong negative income tax combined with liberal labour market policies. I’m not a social democrat, but there are economically respectable versions of it.
RobertUK
The term is new (agnotology), the process is, I suspect, ancient. I am thinking of the similarities with voodoo, only applied to politics. Right down to the pins in mediarised enemy effigies.
TergeP,
In every camp there is every view. It is the sum total that forms the outcome. And the outcome is that the right goes “righteously” to war to protect their position in every way. Libertarianism is gladiatorial at its core. I am thinking that Libertarians are apprentice Shmibertarians. Schmibertarians have put down their swords, shields, maces and nets, and taken up politics and the media as their weapons of choice.
Alan Greenspan has won the ‘Dynamite Prize in Economics’
http://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/greenspan-friedman-and-summers-win-dynamite-prize-in-economics/
@Eric Crampton What about the anti-economic right wing ideologues who suggest that raising the minimum wage always increases unemployment and never decreases unemployment or leaves unemployment levels unchanged? Or right ideologues who refer to economic ‘science’ when economics has yet to earn that title?
JQ, I’ve been visiting your site for a while now – whilst my view of the world is very different from yours I’ve generally found your posts interesting and inciteful. I’ve enjoyed reading perspectives which are differnt from mine.
However – this latest effort of yours is a little on the bizarre side! I read the opening paragraph thinking ‘this will be good – JQ’s going to write a piece trying to square the circle between left wing and right wing views – mayble he’ll come to a centrist conclusion which matches my view of the world’
Taking a few quotes –
“The long struggle of left and centre-left parties to maintain their relevance in the face of the resurgent market liberalism of the late 20th century gradually eroded any belief in the possibility of a fundamental transformation of capitalism”
Maybe if you change the words ‘left and centre-left’ to ‘extreme left’ (ie Greens) then you’d have a point. However – that’s a pretty weird comment to make when we currently have a centre left government in power! It’s weird when you consider the massive reforms under Hawke/Keating’s centre-left government – or do you consider them centre-right?
“The unifying feature of the right in the 21st century is not so much ideology as an embrace of ignorance”
In other words – anyone who doesn’t agree with a left view of the world is ‘ignorant’???? C’mon John – you’re better than that.
“The average voter has not yet recognised the fact that the political right is now vehemently opposed to science and scientists. But both scientists and their rightwing enemies are well aware of the fact”
In retrospect, I can see that you’ve been building up to this view for a while now. But c’mon – how do you ‘oppose’ science….. what a strange concept!!! Science is science – it’s basic human knowledge and development… ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ and all that. The amazing technical progress in the last 20 years really puts the lie to your view. Science is powering on – it’s an unstoppable force. The advance of computing and the internet is just astonishing. I have more computing power in my iphone than I did in my first PC! The power of internet communication is one of the wonders of the modern age – the ability to share ideas across the globe will be a development that history will look back on with the view that it was the turning point for world freedom. I also find it a little amusing that traditionally it was the left that was always seen as opposing science with the extreme left expousing a ‘hair shirt’ view of the world.
“What is needed here is a return to ideology, and a project to move beyond day-to-day management and offer the ‘light on the hill’ of a positive social transformation, based on justice and equality.”
And at the end I realised what the rant was all about – it’s actually a ‘call to arms’. So at the end we’re simply down to the opposing ideologies. My view of the world is better than yours. ‘Man the placards comrades’!!!!
Unfortunately not. Whilst I sympathise with a lot of your points – and agree that there are some ludicrous extreme views and actions on the right. In general, I found this post to be nothing more than an extreme left wing rant. JQ – with posts like this, you’re just adding to the problems.
@Andrew
Many consider they have ‘centrist views’ no matter how far they sit on one extreme or the other (Comrade). The view is wishful thinking that they will become the new centre.
Freelander – I’ve voted for both the ALP and the Coalition in the past decade. I find One Nation and Family First to be parties of the extreme right and the Greens to be extreme left. So yes – I’m probably fairly centrist in an Australian context. If you vote Green – who would you consider to be more left in Australia that could justify calling yourself centrist?
@Andrew
Andrew, you ask how one could be against science. Miranda Devine shows how, with a cite to someone well-known on this blog
It’s easy to find similar stuff. Google scientists + “andrew bolt” or substitute your preferred right wing commentator and you’ll find heaps of it.
The general public will not support ratbags and conspiracy believers, unless they are living in ideologically polarized times and societies. The German voters in the 1930’s voted in a Nazi led government, despite evidence that Hitler and his supporters were mad as hatters, because of the extreme difficulties they were undergoing. In normal conditions the majority of the population steers well clear of these people. Despite the Liberal and National Parties adopting aspects of the rabid right’s positions since they lost the last election, their standing in the polls has been very poor. When Labor were in opposition, their poll standing was much better than the current opposition’s. The conservative parties are only talking to their base in making a lot about climate change skepticism, which is a sign of how well Labor has captured the centre. The average voter, when they start to pay attention once the election is called, will have little stomach for such ratbaggery. That the end of ideology (or at least that prevalent during the last century) will have consequences, is obvious. Some new ideology will arise to take its place but we are still to see what that will be. Currently we are revisiting some of the remnants of old ideology that lurked in the shadows during the left/right polarisation. These are not the ones we will be engaged with in a generation, but something new will arise.
John,
For every example of some right wing nutbag who thinks science is a left wing conspiracy I could probably find an example of a left wing nut bag who thinks, say, global trade is a right wing conspiracy.
You’re making the common extreme left-wing mistake of taking the views of extremists from the right and attributing them to anyone who’s to right of you. The extreme right wingers make the same mistake in reverse. I get called a left wing by religious nuts on the right!
Science is not a political movement. Across its many disciplines it’s a process that deals in facts, theories and hypothesis. Science will always win any debate against politics – it may take time, but at the end of the day, ‘truth will always out’.
@Andrew I’ll accept your challenge, and nominate three prominent conservative members of Parliament (Nick Minchin, Dennis Jensen and Barnaby Joyce) who have endorsed the climate change conspiracy theory. I’ll throw in half a dozen prominent commentators (Bolt, Devine, Albrechtsen, Windschuttle, Sheehan, Akerman). Note that none of these people are “extremists” in the usual sense of the term – they are leading figures on the right who are treated as serious politicians/commentators. And, this isn’t an isolated aberration of a few individuals. As the Liberal leadership ballot showed, they represent, the majority view of the Liberal base.
Now name me Labor/left figures of comparable stature who have endorsed the claim that global trade is a right wing conspiracy (or feel free to pick another example if you can’t find anyone to back this one).
In the heat of elections this claim does get wheeled out. Personally I think the laffer curve for most nations looks like Uluru with most of the centre being relatively flat. Any cost to public sector revenue is modest. Any decline in public sector welfare is offset by a greater increase in private sector welfare. This is not the same as claiming that tax cuts will pay for themselves but it is pretty close to saying we shouldn’t worry overly about the revenue impact of tax cuts.
p.s. Clearly some tax cuts will pay fo themselves. Ethiopia has (or had) tax rates of nearly 90% on agricultural production above a certain threshold. Margaret thatcher cut a top tax rate on capital income that approached 90%. The Kennedy tax cuts tackled similar excesses. It is hard to prove either way but on the face of it I think these tax cuts were no brainers.
An interesting post John, though I’m not sure the term “schmibertarianism” adds a greta deal to your primary claims.
Just to place my own political background into my remarks …
As you know, my first steps into politics were with the Whitlam-era ALP from which I broke ultimately to the far-left — the Trotskysists (after a brief flirtation with the CPA-ML [Maoists for those who don’t know]). In the years since the dissolution of Comecon (the USSR and its satellites) I’ve come to occupy a spot which I’d call left-social-democratic. I recognise what most of us call “market mechanisms” as having a valid and useful role to play in the allocation of scarce resources, but insist that those who may broadly be called “the producers of wealth” have the decisive say in the operation of the mechanisms through which public goods are created and deployed.
You say a return to ideology is what is required. I find this formulation excessively loose and open to misuse by those hostile to clarity on questions of political culture, or who affect an “end of ideology” stance in order to disguise the primacy of the particular stakeholder interests to which they have attached themselves. We are today certainly involved in the most explicit of culture wars.
This war is being waged between those seeking as best they can to defend and warrant arbitrary privilege for elements of the elite, opportunistically relying upon the perceived social marginalisation of socio-economically disadvantaged elements of the populace of first world countries and those seeking (sometimers in a confused and inarticulate way) as best they can to empower the producers and their dependents to secure their needs, if necessary at the expense of the elites. Elsewhere, I have coined the term SSA (socio spatial anxiety) as a useful summary of the key themes in this right-wing populist commentary. Persistently, the fear is of the impositions of the remote, unauthentic other upon the identity and discretion of the disembodied individual. It trades on self-doubt, vulnerablity and the paradox inherent in wanting control over the other and being free from it. The problem being beyond resolution, the political predisposition is insurgent and yet apolitical and culturally heterogenous, and therefore tolerant of virtually any antithetic claim, regardless of its capacity to cohere with broader knowledge about the world. It is key to allowing Young Earthers to coghabit with those referring to the multi-billion long geological history of the Earth, and anti-taxing “libertarians” to cohabit with moral crusading conservatives, neo-cons, paleocons, birthers and anyone else who will have them.
In such a setting, clarity about the nature of stakeholder interests, and about the faultlines between the various stakeholders driving the forms of agnotology we have seen would be most fruitful. While I favour relating what should be done to the major truggler over the disposition of labour power and its reproduction, Couching this critique in terms of ideology may subtract from what should be an exercise in cultural analysis by placing it under the rubric of a new but as yet unspecified metanarrative.
Thanks for these comments, Fran. I’ve already deleted “shmibertarianism”, which was a lazy shorthand.
I think you have a good point about ideology. To combat anxiety-based tribal populism we want something positive that provides the organising force previously associated with ideology, but it’s not clear what the something should be.
I’ll think about this as I revise the post.
JQ – how about names such as Brown, Milne, Garrett, George, Cameron – who have all at various times come out with extreme-left utterings.
By the by – you also need to distinguish between people who are anti-science, climate change ‘denialists’, climate change conspiracy theorists and those who advocate a cautious response to climate change in Australia. Just because someone is cautious on whether or not we should have an ETS in Australia does not make them anti-science.
For example – I firmly believe that climate change is real, and the globe needs to cut its CO2 emissions. However I do not believe that Australia should implement an ETS at the moment, and I also believe that there are some on the extreme left who have hijacked elements of the climate change issue to advance their own socialist agendas. However, in no way could I be considered anti-science.
Fran – “While I favour relating what should be done to the major truggler over the disposition of labour power and its reproduction, Couching this critique in terms of ideology may subtract from what should be an exercise in cultural analysis by placing it under the rubric of a new but as yet unspecified metanarrative.”
I beg your pardon?
i like it john, i think it is challenging, thoughtful well argued and correct on all the substantive points,
on the subject of the american right glen greeenwald had an excellent piece regarding terrorism that ties into torture and war justifications by the right
in my opinion a lot of it isnt meant to be coherent, it isnt meant to represent an ideology
in his words “It’s really more of a hypnotic mantra”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/19/terrorism/index.html
I think that you made an important destinction JQ between the ideal of Libertarianism, which I see as a form of growth and building model, and the ______ (something else) that is created to protect the vested interests of the mature Libertarian end result. The 2 are different entities and operate in different ways, but, as in any state or economy are merged to create the confusion that the comments above are thrashing out.
andrew, you have in no way responded to johns challenge there,
your list of names is confusing and ambiguous, Milne? Cameron? and you offer no links or statements or evidence of any kind
what does this statement actually mean or allude to?
personally,
the only real hijacking of climate change i see is the resurrection of nuclear power as a clean green energy source, its well organized, backed by extremely powerful forces, a long time in the making, tangible as opposed to alleged as evidenced by Obama’s announcement (what a surprise), and runs counter to the hopes of almost everyone who is genuinely on the left
Actually – thinking about this more – I think the problem here (as outlined in your quote “The long struggle of left and centre-left parties to maintain their relevance in the face of the resurgent market liberalism”) is that indeed the left wing view of the world has become irrelevant. What used to be considered right-wing has now become centre-left. The ALP of today would perhaps have been considered right wing in the 1960s/70s?
The result is that mainstream Australia has comfortably embraced the ‘market liberalism’ you refer to. We’ve become ‘relaxed and confortable’ to use a Howard phrase.
The problem for the extreme left then, is that to maintain relevance, it can’t battle with mainstream views in a meaningful way – it will just look silly. It has to do battle with the extreme right. Meanwhile, mainstream Australia bilthely goes about its business either unaware or uncaring about the battle of idealogy.
I really enjoyed this post, though I think it was potentially missing a para or two to at least consider anti-science on the left. I can think of a few examples of anti-science that – while they could be held by people across the political spectrum, are probably more at home in the left wing mindset:
– anti vaccines (distrust of “big pharma”)
– pro – alternative medicine (distrust of “big pharma”)
– anti GM (distrust of big agriculture companies)
– anti nuclear (distrust of links to weapons manufacture, and safety issues brought on in the pursuit of energy profits). This position is even worse in Australia, where it is apparently fine to export uranium, but not to consider building a reactor (though probably more about protecting coal than being anti-science I guess)
– pro internet censorship (anti-science in the sense that I’ve never heard a good response to the criticism that the internet filter will be straightforward to circumvent)
Here’s how it works.
In every election year, the Left Party come and tell us that the country has moved to the right, and so the Left Party has to move right too in the name of realism and electability.
(Actually, they don’t say they’re going to move to the right; they say they’re going to move to the center. But of course it amounts to the same thing, if you’re supposed to be left of center. It’s the same direction of movement.)
So now the Left Party have moved to the “center.” But of course this has the effect of shifting the “center” farther to the right.
Now, as a consequence, the Right Party suddenly don’t seem so crazy anymore — they’re closer to the center, through no effort of their own, because the center has shifted closer to them. So they can move even further right, and still end up no farther from the “center” than they were four years ago.
In fact, the Left Party’ rightward shift not only enables the Right Party to move farther right themselves; it actually compels them to do so, if they want to maintain their identity as the angry-white-guy party par excellence.
This is the electoral ratchet
The electoral ratchet permits movement only in the rightward direction. The Right Party role is fairly clear; the Right Party apply the torque that rotates the thing rightward.
The Left Party are the pawl. They don’t resist the rightward movement — they let it happen — but whenever the rightward force slackens momentarily, for whatever reason, the Left Party click into place and keep the machine from rotating back to the left.
but guess what? human political systems are also bound by physical laws like storm clouds,
and when the build up in one direction goes too far,
it snaps with a great release of energy,
the left is not irrelevant, its humanitarian, community first approach is hibernating while the world shakes off its insane delusion that a non-existent chimera called ‘the market’ can make the best decisions with regards to everything,
make no mistake,
this period of market sociopathy will be seen as a sad delusional aberration by a more enlightened future,
when? i dont know, but as surely as night follows day
i should have noted that i did not write the first bit of my post above, i did not mean to post it without attribution
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/stopme/chapter02.html
(distrust of “big pharma”, big agriculture companies) is not anti-science,
its evidence based skepticism formed by repetitive patterns which is firmly within the scientific scope
I hate the word agnotology and I hate it nearly every time Fran uses it. This is why. It’s fine to say that agnotology is the study of ignorance and that is a worthy thing. However to call the practice of ignorance as agnotology and the ignorant as an agnotologist is to accord a level of knowledge to an anti-knowledge practice that is totally unjustified.
Agnotology could be a study of denialism, but to link it to the practice and to call a denialist an agnotologist is quite wrong. One may then be justifed in calling a rock a geologist.
No, Andrew – John didn’t ask you for examples of people who had made “extreme-left utterings”. He asked for Labor/left figures of comparable stature [to the right wing Parliamentarians and opinion writers] who have endorsed the claim that global trade is a right wing conspiracy, or similar barking mad conspiracy theories.
That you can’t demonstrates his point – that denial of science in the service of tribal politics is far more “respectable” in right wing than left wing circles.
Andrew needs to re-aquaint himself with the definition of extreme – meaning outermost. The extreme left is Communism and the extreme right is Fascism. Describing the Greens as Communist, and Family First and One Nation as Fascist is wrong and probably offensive to the majority of supporters of those parties.
I would also second smiths @ #39 in that the distrust by the Left of big pharma/big agriculture is in the way big business seeks to gain profit from the science without due regard to the adverse consequences rather then evidence of anti-science and this distrust is shared by many ordinary people who would consider themselves of the Right.
As someone from generation X I have felt that the left/right polarity has declining relevance in categorising anyone under the age of 40. Ever since I have been in the workforce unions have had a declining relevance because increasingly workplaces aren’t easily unionised and careers aren’t as stable or rigid as they might have been in the past. I can appreciate that unions have a role in negotiating conditions and supporting workers rights, but I haven’t ever belonged to one and grew up witnessing some of the extreme and over the top union actions. The fact is there big fights in the past were more or less won and they are left (sometimes unfairly) with the taint of overreach and corruption.
Gen X also grew up with the cold war fading as an idealogical battle ground and I don’t think people subscribe to grand historical narratives as tightly as they might have in the past. I don’t know how this might play out though if there isn’t much awareness or understanding of underlying philosophies that drive political beliefs.
I find it disturbing that some on the right have gone rabid on issues and people like John Gray who would have been considered a conservative realist are now so far from right politics. The rabid collection of loonies that seem to be dominating the right are driven by hate and fear, but their hate and fear seem to be directed all over the place. It is the right that has lost it’s unifying enemy at the end of the cold war and I don’t see much support for what would have been considered socialism in the 70’s (not the Obama variety). The fact that Obama is being tagged as a socialist demonstrates how far the centre has shifted to the right.
@Andrew
Well you might as the typography was sub-optimal. major truggler should be major struggles. Couching should not had had the initial cap.
Was there something else?
On the borader objection in your post, you are guilty of doing what you accuse others of — bundling what needs to be unpacked and distinguished. It is true that opposition to an ETS as a CO2 mitigation strategy is not anti-science. It is a bona fide argument over policy. One might favour any suite of strategies, arguing over their utility without being open to such charges. The problem is that some who raise objections to an ETS are doing so not because they think this is a poor strategy but because the ETS in their view presents an easier object to attack than does the goal which the ETS is supposed to advance. Plainly, if one succeeds in tainting and broadly discrediting all possible policy responses, then one can render the argument about the science moot. If one confuses the two issues, people will be inclined to confabulate the science with the standing of the policies attached to its inferences.
You continue:
Your use of the word “hijacked” is inappropriate. To begin with, the extreme left is not in charge of anything, and certainly not the “climate change issue”. There are some on the far left who have opinions on the matter, but that is hardly the same thing. There are also pleft social democrats like me who have an opinion, but again, the people running policy aren’t adopting our ideas either. In so far as there is a consensus, it embraces the centre-left and the certre-right (roughly the space between Obama on the centre left and Merkel/Sarkozy on the centre-right). For the record, since you raise it, Australia currently has a centre-right government, albeit one that is somewhat closer to the centre than it had prior to November 2007. Like the previous regime, it supports a polluter-friendly ETS. It supports star chambers for building unions. It supports elements of the old work choices regime. So it’s centre-right.
@smiths
Perhaps i should have been clearer smiths. I meant that anti-vaccine is anti-science, and distrust of big pharma is left-leaning thinking that bolsters the anti-science view of vaccines.
I find the discussion of “anti politics” by The Piping Shrike blog particularly interesting.
@derrida derider
An example of a =prominent= left-leaning commentator who endorses anti-science: the soapbox provided for anti-vaccine sentiment provided by Adrianna Huffington at Huffington Post.
@Roger Jones
You make the beginnings of a fair point Roger — which is I take it, that one should not confuse the object of study with the practice. Nevertheless, our language is sensitive enough to take account of context. Transference is common in English.
The word “text” derives from the word “textiles” — i.e. woven cloth. At one point in human history, important things were recorded on these textiles. After a while, the words “texts” began to refer not merely to the physical objects but to the substantive content recorded on them. These days text refers to symbols once recorded on such things.
So an agnotologist could both be someone like Proctor or Oreskes, who studies the cultural processes drving the production of ignorance and someone engaged in the work of producing the ignorance.
Compare for example scatology.
arianna huffington was formerly married to oil millionaire Michael Huffington, a family friend of the Bushes
he ran in 1992 as a Republican for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives which he won
He was a political conservative on most issues.
Arianna campaigned for her husband, courting religious conservatives, arguing for smaller government and a reduction in welfare
whilst i am not asserting she is a fraud and and a left wing gate-keeper,
i think you would do well to try and find a left wing personality with a cleaner record
The one point where I do agree is that much of the political right in the US has become increasingly insane, especially since the election of Barack Obama. I have actually had arguments on American conservative forums where many contributors are clearly beyond being reasoned with.
Although to my mind much of the wackiness on the American right simply parallels the wackiness on much of the left in most developed countries. And while most people here won’t want to admit it, the conservative commentariat in Australia is generally more reasonable than its US counterpart. At least the likes of Bolt, Devine, Ackerman, Albrechtsen don’t promote the kind of bible-bashing fundamentalism, gun-toting, creationism, abortion-is-murder etc. etc. nonsense you get from the American right. The closest we have is perhaps Christopher Pearson.