Regressive left

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Nawaz during the event A Global Culture to Fight Extremism . He uses the term left-wing people to criticize who, in his view, give Islamism too much space in the name of cultural tolerance .

Regressive Left is a political catchphrase in the English-speaking world that is used as a pejorative against certain left-wing politicians and activists. The so-called persons are accused of seeing people not as individuals, but as group members separated by race, gender, etc. through identity politics and of wanting to restrict the right to freedom of expression in favor of multiculturalism and cultural relativism and thereby illiberal principles and ideologies such as e.g. B. To tolerate Islamism .

The catchphrase is u. a. Used by activist and former British Liberal Democrat politician Maajid Nawaz , American television presenters Bill Maher , Dave Rubin , Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins .

Significance and origin

The expression goes back to Maajid Nawaz . He targeted leftists who, in his view, defended reactionary views and practices in Islamism out of a misguided need for cultural sensitivity. Other liberal intellectuals such as Richard Dawkins and Nick Cohen have used the term to defend Enlightenment values such as secularism and freedom of expression , which they believe are under pressure from a culturally relativist perspective. These arguments presuppose a linear perspective of progress from a religious past into a secular present, which is currently threatened by a retrograde (regressive) privilege of religious beliefs. In this way, these users of the term attempt to continue to claim the attribute 'progressive' for themselves by marking others who also describe themselves as progressive as retrograde.

The meaning of the term is complicated by the fact that it was taken up by forces from the so-called Alt-Right , especially in the USA , to attack anti-racist and feminist forms of politics as violations of freedom of expression. According to the judgment of the British political scientist Emily Robinson, this secondary use is located more in the anti-liberal discourse, so it has a significantly different tongue than it is the case with the liberals who coined the term. She writes: "Instead of resorting to a strong conception of progressive humanism, this use is largely directed against those aspects of modernity that are considered achievements in the linear progress narratives."

In 2007 Maajid Nawaz broke away from the radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir and turned to secular Islam. He is co-founder and chairman of the Quilliam Foundation , a London-based anti-extremism think tank . Nawaz created the term regressive left to describe left-wing people who, in the name of cultural tolerance, give Islamism too much air in his opinion , although Islamism wants to prescribe a certain radical interpretation of Islam as a law everywhere and everyone, which in his opinion is one represents a fundamental violation of fundamental human rights.

Because these left-wing people call themselves progressive but at the same time support curiously illiberal positions and thereby abandon the most vulnerable members of the Muslim community - women, homosexuals and apostates - to the sword of Islamist totalitarianism, he gave them the name Regressive Left (English for regressive left ).

Identity politics

The regressive Left is accused of seeing only group interests because of their identity politics , but not being able to approach people who do not fit into the scheme. The guiding principle of identity politics from the critical point of view is that inequality is the result of the oppression of social groups by white men. It is true that oppression is real, especially in past societies. For the regressive left, however, regardless of the facts, suppression is the universal explanation for all observable differences in performance, because the universe would not allow something as injust as inequality to arise naturally. As a result, they are very generous with allegations such as “white supremacy”, “Islamophobia” and “misogyny”. Identity politics is identified by observers as a major reason for the heavy loss of Democrats among the working class in the 2016 US presidential election . Nevertheless, this led representatives of the Regressive Left to vehemently defend this policy.

The researcher for International Relations Elliot McArdle writes that is supported in these circles who passe as a homogeneous and oppressed group in the narrative of Muslims. Muslim apostates like Nawaz and liberal Muslims, on the other hand, would be viewed as "traitors" or "fake Muslims" because they did not fit into the narrative. This leads to attempts to be delegitimized and silenced, e.g. B. by building pressure to remove them from discussion events and, if this is unsuccessful, to disrupt their speeches.

Cultural relativism

For Geoffrey Hodgson , cultural relativism and the tolerance of reactionary religions and dictatorial regimes are characteristic of the regressive Left. According to Nawaz, the notion that Muslims cannot deal with criticism or ridicule of Islam and can only react violently is a "patronizing, self-pitying and effeminating" thought. This "racism of low expectations" lower moral standards and excuse chauvinism, bigotry or anti-Semitism . It does not help Muslims to emancipate themselves if expectations of civilian manners and aggression control are lowered.

According to investigations by the Times of London , a gang in the medium-sized town of Rotherham was able to sell 1,400 underage girls to child molesters undisturbed for 16 years ( Rotherham abuse scandal ) because the police and administration did not follow up on victim reports and information from social workers. Because the perpetrators were of Pakistani origin, there was a culture of looking the other way, because superiors didn't want trouble with multicultural activists of the Regressive Left. "Political correctness" was valued higher than protecting children. Police who investigated complaints have been threatened and even fired.

Nawaz explains that the Regressive Left believes that “authentic Muslims” are somehow always susceptible to bloody theocracies and should reject liberal democracies. Because liberalism is a Western construct, liberal Muslims can only be illegitimate, inauthentic interlocutors. Based on this logic, the Regressive Left would abandon the most vulnerable members of the Muslim community - women, homosexuals and apostates - and abandon them to the Islamists. Quilliam's executive director, Haras Rafiq, believes that some leftists tend to apologize for Islamism: “We have failed to get a grip on the symbiotic relationship between Islamism and right-wing extremist hatred. And the regressive left is ready to excuse Islamism. "

Suppression of free speech

For Sam Harris, the most dangerous aspect of the regressive left phenomenon is that they are willing to give up freedom of expression out of fear of harming minorities. As an example, he cites Glenn Greenwald's initial attempt to relativize the attack on Charlie Hebdo with the alleged racism of the cartoonists.

The President of the University of Maryland College Democrats Matt Teitelbaum wrote, referring to riots in February 2017 at the University of California, in which students prevented Milo Yiannopoulos, who had been invited to a discussion event on campus, from speaking by shouting and physical violence and property damage is a phenomenon known as regressive left. People who believe they have to silence everyone whose views they do not share and by whom they feel offended are a disgrace to the progressive movement and the antithesis of true liberalism. Richard Dawkins describes student initiatives that aim to subsequently unload speakers of ex-Muslims from campus discussions as "a betrayal of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s".

use

In 2006, six years before Nawaz the term regressive Left used to convey a point of view within a dialogue on multiculturalism, the writer and trailers used the new atheism , Sam Harris , the phrase "head-in-the-sand Liberals" in an article in the Los Angeles Times . In doing so, he described leftists who “despite much evidence to the contrary” turn a blind eye to the truth and “continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism arises from economic desperation, a lack of education and American militarism”. Harris went on to say that “Leftists should be particularly sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they are not ”.

In an interview in October 2015, Nawaz hypothesized that part of the left was waging an intellectual war against neoconservative and neocolonialist foreign policies of Western governments, entering into alliances with the “most backward, theocratic and murderous regimes and organizations” and therefore more theocratic acts of violence Extremists would not equally condemn. So have z. For example, the leader of the British Labor Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has in the past had close contacts with supporters of Islamist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah . In Nawaz's view, it is possible and right to denounce both neoconservative foreign policy such as the Iraq war and theocratic extremism, but the regressive left does not.

In October 2015, the Washington Times reported that American comedian and presenter Bill Maher and British biologist and author Richard Dawkins complained about regressive leftists who fail to understand "that they are anything but left when it comes to Islam". Maher showed a willingness to criticize everything but Islam, excusing it as "their culture," to which Dawkins replied, "Well, to hell with their culture".

In November 2015, on the radio talk show The Humanist Hour, author and philosopher Peter Boghossian defined the term as derogatory to describe those leftists who are the “strangest bedfellows” of the Islamists. According to him, the word regressive is used to contrast the word progressive . Boghossian also believes that regressive leftists have become “hyper-moralists”. He cites historical wrongdoings such as slavery in the United States and colonialism as legitimate concerns that have caused distrust of all things Western and capitalist. He also added that “there are people who have suffered and are still suffering from cases of racism and homophobia . The problem is that every time the word racist is tossed around like that, that word loses its meaning. It should hit pretty painfully. It should be a terrible word ”.

At the end of 2015, talk show host Dave Rubin held discussions on regressive leftists in several " The Rubin Report " sections . He describes the regressive left as the "left version of the Tea Party " and says that the regressive left will damage the Democratic Party in a similar way that the Tea Party will damage the Republican Party . Political commentator David Pakman endorsed the term on his talk show by saying that there are “leftists who use cultural relativism and dislike of US foreign policy as a pretext to defend - or at least minimize - violence and injustice against injustice, which they would normally oppose anyway. ”Pakman has distanced himself from the term, saying that it is being used by conservatives to insult all leftists. Pakman believes that regressive leftists are those politicians who use authoritarianism to impose progressivism .

criticism

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In November 2015, psychiatrist Khwaja Khusro Tariq classified the term as an unfounded ad hominem attack in the Huffington Post and wrote that the harshest critics of Islam in the United States were being wooed by left-wing and conservative media. Khusro also suggested that the term was directed to Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky , whom he says they never condone the violence in the teaching of Islam. He claimed that there is no real reluctance to speak out against religion.

According to Joseph Bernstein , a BuzzFeed reporter, the term is now "a collective term for every element of the dominant new media culture that the anti- SJW Internet does not like", instead of "criticizing excessive cultural tolerance". He also claimed that although the term can be traced back to more left-wing commentators such as Nawaz, Maher and Dawkins, it is currently used heavily by the Alt-Right and other anti-SJW groups on internet forums and social media as part of their rhetorical warfare .

literature

  • Emily Robinson: The Regressive Left . In: Emily Robinson: The Language of Progressive Politics in Modern Britain . Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2017, pp. 258-259.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Chatterton Williams: Maajid Nawaz's Radical Ambition . New York Times Magazine . March 28, 2017. Accessed January 21, 2018.
  2. ^ Hemant Mehta: Activist Maajid Nawaz Criticizes the "Regressive Left" for Allowing Bigotry in Religious Contexts . Patheos . November 9, 2015. Accessed January 21, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b Kellan Howell: Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins blast 'regressive liberals' giving a 'free pass' to Islam . The Washington Times . October 3, 2015. Accessed January 21, 2018.
  4. ^ Gay Alcorn: Conservatives love to hate political correctness, but the left should rail against it too . The Guardian . April 26, 2016. Retrieved January 21, 2018.
  5. ^ Mark Dunbar: Review of Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue . theHumanist.com . December 22, 2015. Accessed January 21, 2018.
  6. ^ Emily Robinson: The Language of Progressive Politics in Modern Britain . Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2017, pp. 258f.
  7. ^ Emily Robinson: The Language of Progressive Politics in Modern Britain . Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2017, p. 2589.
  8. ↑ Maajid Nawaz: Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism . WH Allen, 2012, ISBN 9781448131617 , p. 210 (Retrieved January 1, 2016).
  9. ↑ Maajid Nawaz (Quilliam) . Quilliam. Retrieved October 16, 2017.
  10. ↑ Maajid Nawaz: Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism . WH Allen, 2012, ISBN 9781448131617 .
  11. ^ A b Maajid Nawaz: The British Left's Hypocritical Embrace of Islamism . In: The Daily Beast . August 8, 2015. Archived from the original on April 9, 2018. Retrieved on November 23, 2015.
  12. ↑ Tony Jones : Lateline: An atheist and a Muslim on the future of Islam . In: Lateline . Australian Broadcasting Corporation . October 28, 2015. Accessed November 23, 2015.
  13. ^ Brian Stewart: A Liberal Atheist and a Liberal Muslim Discuss the Problems of Contemporary Islam Archived from the original on August 2, 2017. In: National Review Online . October 7, 2015. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
  14. ^ The Daily Wire, Elliott Hamilton, Liberals Are Starting To Reject Leftist Identity Politics. Time To Unite Against It , November 30, 2016
  15. ↑ Quilette, What the Old Right and Left Regressive Have in Common , 23 March 2018
  16. ^ The Daily Wire, Elliott Hamilton, Liberals Are Starting To Reject Leftist Identity Politics. Time To Unite Against It , November 30, 2016
  17. ↑ Spiked, The liberal racism faced by ex-Muslims , December 4, 2015
  18. ↑ Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Wrong Turnings: How the Left Got Lost , University of Chicago Press, 2018, ISBN 9780226505916 , p. 218
  19. ↑ Maajid Nawaz: Je Suis Muslim: How Universal Secular Rights Protect Muslim Communities the Most . Big Think . November 18, 2015. Accessed November 23, 2015.
  20. ↑ The London Times, Brenda Power, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/theres-no-stopping-criminals-when-the-regressive-left-is-on-their-side-96swcgt3d There's no stopping criminals when the regressive left is on their side , December 17, 2017
  21. ^ The Washington Post, Political correctness about Muslims may have led UK officials to ignore reports of sex abuse , Aug. 28, 2014
  22. ^ Brian Stewart: A Liberal Atheist and a Liberal Muslim Discuss the Problems of Contemporary Islam Archived from the original on August 2, 2017. In: National Review Online . October 7, 2015. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
  23. ^ Adam Lebor: Donald Trump: The America Stereotype Europeans Love To Hate . In: Newsweek . December 14, 2015. Archived from the original on October 4, 2018. Retrieved October 16, 2017.
  24. ↑ Chris Beck: Sam Harris Unloads on the Regressive Left . In: Splice Today . Russ Smith. October 21, 2015. Archived from the original on October 5, 2018. Retrieved November 23, 2015.
  25. ↑ Sean Illing: Sam Harris talks Islam, ISIS, atheism, GOP madness: "We are confronting people, in dozens of countries, who despise more or less everything that we value" . Salon.com. November 25, 2015. Archived from the original on August 6, 2018. Retrieved October 16, 2017.
  26. ↑ Bruce Cook, Handbook of Research on Examining Global Peacemaking in the Digital Age , IGI Global, 2017, ISBN 9781522530336 , p. 329
  27. ↑ National Review, Ericka Andersen, WATCH: Liberal Student Stuns Everyone by Standing Up For Milo Yiannopoulos , February 10, 2017
  28. ↑ Tyler Kingkade: Richard Dawkins: College Students Are Betraying The Free Speech Movement . In: Huffington Post , October 3, 2015. Archived from the original on February 7, 2016. Retrieved January 3, 2016. 
  29. ↑ Sam Harris: Head-in-the-Sand Liberals: Western civilization really is at risk from Muslim extremists . In: Los Angeles Times . September 18, 2006. Retrieved January 12, 2016.
  30. ^ Maajid Nawaz and Dave Rubin Discuss the Regressive Left and Political Correctness . In: Rubin Report , October 2, 2015. Retrieved January 3, 2016. 
  31. ↑ Kellan Howell: Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins blast 'regressive liberals' giving a 'free pass' to Islam . In: The Washington Times , October 3, 2015. Archived from the original on October 19, 2018. Retrieved November 23, 2015. 
  32. ↑ Real Time with Bill Maher: Richard Dawkins - Regressive Leftists (HBO) . In: Real Time with Bill Maher . HBO. October 2, 2015. Accessed November 23, 2015.
  33. ^ John Worthing: 'To hell with their culture' - Richard Dawkins in extraordinary blast at Muslims . In: The Independent , October 27, 2015. Archived from the original on September 29, 2018. 
  34. ↑ Bo Bennett, Kim Ellington: The Humanist Hour # 175: The "Regressive Left" and Safe Spaces, with Dr. Peter Boghossian. In: The Humanist Hour. November 4, 2015, archived from the original on August 28, 2017 ; accessed on November 18, 2018 .
  35. ↑ Milo Yiannopoulos and Dave Rubin Discuss Gay Rights and Cultural Libertarians . Ora TV. Retrieved October 8, 2015.
  36. ^ Dave Rubin: Regressives are the Left's Tea Party . In: The Rubin Report . October 7, 2015. Retrieved November 25, 2015.
  37. ↑ David Pakman: Would David Appear on Drunken Peasants or Illiberal Podcasts? . 11th September 2016.
  38. ↑ David Pakman: The Truth About the Regressive Left . April 14, 2016.
  39. ↑ David Pakman: Authoritarian Leftism: The Actual "Regressive Left" . June 21, 2016.
  40. ↑ Khwaja Tariq: "Regressive Liberals": The New Mantra of Islamophobia . In: Huffington Post , November 11, 2015. Archived from the original on August 15, 2018. Retrieved January 9, 2016. 
  41. ↑ Joseph Bernstein: The Rise Of The #Regressiveleft Hashtag . In: Buzzfeed , March 16. Archived from the original on June 25, 2018. Retrieved April 12, 2016.