The Left Itself Does Not Actually Consider Itself Liberal

"Liberal" has often been equated with "left." Thus it is a significant change in our political rhetoric that the left itself has begun to impugn liberalism. Last August this blog noted that the radical protesters who disrupted a Bernie Sanders rally in Seattle condemned liberalism as such:

Marissa Johnson, one of the protesters, shot back, “I was going to tell Bernie how racist this city is, filled with its progressives, but you did it for me,” accusing the audience of “white supremacist liberalism.” (Emphasis added) - Seattle Times

Likewise some members of the mainstream media have begin to speak of "the illiberal left." That's Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine. Chait describes the left as assailing liberalism, and implies that this radical movement prefers a destructive revolution to democratic gradualism:(1)

It is the expression of a backlash on the left against liberalism — with all its maddening compromises and deference to the rights of the enemy — which fetishizes success as the by-product of cataclysmic struggle.

Chait rejects class warfare's assumption that citizens in "oppressed groups" have greater civil rights than citizens who are not, for example, minorities:(2)(3)

Liberalism sees political rights as a positive good — rights for one are rights for all. “Democracy” means political rights for every citizen. The far left defines democracy as the triumph of the subordinate class over the privileged class. Political rights only matter insofar as they are exercised by the oppressed. The oppressor has no rights.

Chait exposes the left's implicit justification of undemocratic violence. His article supports the conjecture that illiberal "progressive" class warfare leftism, despite its shrill proclamations, is a marginal movement existing mainly on some campuses and in the writings of the misguided "progressive" journalists who failed to notice that Ta-Nehisi Coates White Supremacist series constituted a wholesale condemnation of the liberal democratic principles of the Founding. Chait:(4)

Such a “victory” would actually constitute the blow to democracy it purports to stop, eroding the long-standing norm that elections should be settled at the ballot box rather than through street fighting. ...
But the campus was merely the staging ground for most displays of left-wing ideological repression because it is one of the few places the illiberal left has the power to block speakers and writers deemed oppressive.

Another fundamental difference: "A liberal sees Trump’s ability to deliver a speech before supporters as a fundamental political right worth defending. A radical sees this “right” as coming at the expense of subordinate classes, and thus not worth protecting."(5)

The conclusion to be drawn from Chait's article is, Always remind yourself, when you hear someone using the term "liberal" or the term "left," that you need to determine which is being referred to. They have nothing in common. There is, Chait argues, an "irreparable contradiction between two styles of politics. Does the future of the Democratic Party and the progressive movement lie in building a revolution, or in the continued work of (small-d) democratic liberalism?"

Finally, as argued in our article The Atlantic Revives Radical Chic: Ta-Nehisi Coates and the English Language, and several months later in Carlos Lozada's The Radical Chic of Ta-Nehisi Coates, leftism, in contrast to liberalism, is essentially radical chic. It is not practiced by working politicians of either American political party (with the exception of a vanishingly small fringe). How often do you hear a Democratic politician, let alone a Republican, advocate public policy in terms of protecting the oppressed from the oppressor? As radical chic, class warfare leftism is about pretense. A privileged elite pretends solidarity with people they don't socialize with in order to grant themselves absolution for benefiting from conditions whose solution is liberal democracy, not double standards, the denial of civil rights to people you don't approve of, violent censorship of opinions you're afraid to debate, an end run around the rule of law, and mob rule.

Michelle Goldberg notes the phenomenon of Leftists for Trump. "Increasingly, a vocal part of the left is marked by its contempt for liberalism."

This romantic-fantasy left functions mainly as a remedy for its practitioners' own psychological problems:

I recoil from a personality type—not uncommon in radical movements—that treats politics as a realm in which to enact revenge on society for its own alienation and to claim a starring role in history. (Emphasis added)

Because demolitionist left pretense has lost its earthly moorings, its wilful ignorance of its harmful effect is hardhearted:

There’s not a word in [Christopher Ketcham's] piece about the immigrants who would be rounded up and put into detention camps under Trump’s plan, or the people of color who would be terrorized by a total breakdown in the norms that make even an imperfect multiethnic democracy possible. This is not surprising. What is surprising is that Ketcham, as well as the likeminded people he quotes, are so forthright about seeing politics purely in terms of personal catharsis. (Emphasis added)

As we noted in You Say You Want a Revolution, 

One of the problems of "progressive" politics' underlying class warfare ideology, ... is that it can only work through revolution, not the "incremental reform" which is democracy's methodology. And the too-rapid change of revolution, as serious thinkers since Burke have concluded, wreaks catastrophic damage on society, particularly on its weakest members. ... Limousine liberals such as [Susan] Sarandon promote a "progressive" ideology whose hidden premise is "a populace that needs to suffer more in order to reach Sarandon’s superlative level of wokeness." Since democracy's tender-minded methods haven't worked, increasing the sufferings of the wretched of the Earth will produce an aroused angry mob which will sweep all the evil and corruption away, allowing a wonderful, paradisal world to flower in the ruins.

Such magical thinking is scary. The actual result of totalist revolution is, typically, real social harm. The revolution Burke meditated on eventuated in the Terror.

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(1) Point 9: Can only achieve its objective through revolution, not by leveraging the structures (elected representatives, the justice system) of the existing oppressive society. - Ten Points Against the Class Warfare Ideology

(2) See Point 1: Against political democracy, which by definition includes all the people. Proposes rule by the oppressed rather than government (not rule) by the people.

(3) See Point 6: [Class warfare] employs a double standard in many areas. For example, members of oppressor groups do not have the same rights as the oppressed. Discrimination by the oppressed against oppressors is approved, but oppressors are accused of discriminatory attitude and conduct.

(4) See Point 4: [Class warfare] arrogates to itself two things belonging to the justice system in civilized societies: Determination of guilt; and administration of punishment (Example: “Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here.”).

Re Ta-Nehisi Coates on "white supremacy":

White Supremacy is foundational to America. White Supremacy is not a bump on the road toward a better America. It is the road itself, the means by which America justified the taking of land and enslaving of humans, which is to say the means by which America came to be. - in Chris Bodenner's In the Wake of Baltimore: Your Thoughts

(5) See Point 3: [Class warfare] rejects the rule of law. Class warfare regards the supposed protections and rights of the existing body of law as hypocritical, benefiting only members of the oppressor class.