Liberal or Leftist?

Exploring the difference between being an actual liberal and being on the left.

The Internet has normalised intellectual dishonesty, and created a culture where certain words and terms are used incorrectly or to mean something else. This irks me a lot, because people who genuinely subscribe to these ideologies and stand for them know what they actually mean. People who do not subscribe to these ideologies, often don’t know what they mean, or misuse them.

Many people think feminism is just equality, nihilism is being negative, socialism is social democracy, and anarchism is chaos.

These are false definitions.

I consider myself culturally liberal, but liberal nowadays means something different to what liberal is supposed to mean. A lot of people use the term “liberal” to describe their political position, when what they really mean is left-wing.

Classical liberalism emphasises individual freedom, religious sceptism, humanism, and liberty. There is an emphasis on equality: we are all equal under the law, and should be treated as such. Emphasised by thinkers like John Locke and John Stuart Mill, classical liberalism bore out of the Age of Enlightenment. It was a reaction to the church and religious dogma.

In the 2010s, there was a “New Atheist” movement of intellectual classical liberals, comprised of thinkers like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and (my personal favourite) Christopher Hitchens. This informal movement was all about challenging religion in the name of reason and sceptism.

It is very unfortunate that people whose thinking align with this group are now either put in the category of “conservative” (by those on the left) or “woke” (by those on the right). They are not. More accurately, someone with classical liberal views is a centrist. That is the most accurate way to frame one who thinks like this, such as myself.

I believe in freedom of speech. I support secular humanism, and think religion should be kept out of politics. I am not anti-immigration, but think there should be tighter restrictions on immigration from religious theocracies. I think gay people have the right to get married, and adults who have been clinically diagnosed with gender dysphoria and psychologically assessed have the right to a sex change.

I do not support giving children puberty blockers, or think there should be restrictions around free speech on platforms like Reddit and YouTube.

This all aligns with someone who has classical liberal views and principles. Unfortunately, modern leftists (what I call neo-progressives) view people who think like me as “conservative”. This is highly inaccurate. I am far from conservative, especially economically. I think the British Conservative Party messed up this country, and the only good thing they did was legalise gay marriage (something unthinkable by US conservative standards).

And here’s another problem: we are using American political language to describe other countries, when the US political system is different from political systems in other countries.

I have heard some say that the American Democrats and Republican parties are the equivalent of the UK Labour and Conservative parties. This is not true. The American conservatives want abortion banned, whereas the British Tories wouldn’t dream of criminalising abortion. This is because American conservatism is largely tied in with Christianity, whereas in the UK, it’s not strange to be a left-wing Christian (I personally know some).

An actual conservative would talk to me about my political opinions and see that I’m not very right-wing at all. But a leftist? To them, anyone who thinks young children shouldn’t be transitioning genders is a neo-Nazi. This is ridiculous, and is why many who once called themselves left-wing are now abandoning the label.

I would love to reclaim the word “liberal” to mean classically liberal, not leftist. But it’s unlikely that will happen any time soon.

People on the left subscribe to neo-progressivism: the view that history should be examined through the lens of systemic racism, sexism, homophobia and white supremacy. All humans should be looked at through the lens of their hierarchical oppression, and this affects everything that people do, how we think, and what we say. This gives way to ideas such as feminism, critical race theory, intersectionality, social constructionism, deconstructionism, and other nonsense.

My novel Tic Tac Toe satirises this concept entirely, depicting a future society where everyone is categorised according to race, gender and sexuality. Check out the video trailer for it at the bottom of this article.

Economically, liberals and leftists couldn’t be further apart. Classical liberalism, economically, is pro-capitalism. It’s incredibly right-wing and laissez-faire. (I don’t subscribe to economic liberalism, by the way.) Leftists do not support capitalism, they are anti-capitalism and pro-socialism. Socialism (not social democracy, which is just regulated capitalism with social reforms) is a left-wing economic theory. Some far-leftists identify as communists. Marx actually used socialism and communism interchangeably, and viewed socialism as the gateway to communism. (We have never actually seen “true” communism implemented in any society, just socialism, which has always failed.)

Ultimately, to paint someone with liberal views with the same paintbrush as someone who holds leftist views is intellectually dishonest. Liberals are not left-wing. Culturally, liberals are centrist, and economically, liberals are right-wing.

The right-wing American YouTube channel PragerU made a fantastic video about this years ago, and I am glad someone actually understands this distinction.

I don’t like the right or the left. The right don’t represent my values (too anti-welfare and uppity), and the left don’t represent my values (too exhausting, whiny and narcissistic).

I will end by saying that I have had much better experiences in my life with people who identify as being moderately right-wing or centrist, than those on the left. People on the left, in my experience, subscribe to victimhood, personal grievance, and generally blame external factors for all their problems. They’re not solution-oriented, and certainly not evidence-oriented. They will say that climate change is a problem (which it is), but then say that gender is a social construct instead of a biological reality. A lot of people on the left claim to believe in facts, but then make ridiculous claims about things that are untrue.

Of course, the right suck too, but at least we’re allowed to condemn the right. Conservatives are not looked upon favourably as a group, especially not in the present day. But leftists like to claim themselves as “the good guys”, even when they are just as bad as the right, and in some cases even worse so.

Video trailer for my dystopian novel Tic Tac Toe: