Why The Term Far Right Has Become Corrupted By Media Fantasists

Far Right has become an all-purpose term of abuse that is liberally applied to any movement that threatens the hegemony of the ruling elites. The politics of fear in action No sooner did Europe’s farmers launch their protest before the mainstream media and centrist political commentators raised the alarm about yet another threat from the ‘far right’. ‘Brussels struggles to placate farmers as far right stokes protests’ notes The Financial Times. Adopting a similar tone, Politico warned about ‘How the far right aims to ride farmers’ outrage to power in Europe’. France24 asks ‘as far-right harvests farmers’ anger across EU, can green reforms “include farmers in conversation”’?. And when it comes to scaremongering about the existential threat posed by the far-right, the BBC is never far behind. Raising the alarm, it stated ‘Germany’s far right seek revolution in farmers’ protests’. If the mainstream media is to be believed behind every protesting farmer is an outside external far-right agitator. According to the reporters from the FT, ‘EU farmers egged on by the far right have taken to spreading muck outside government buildings, barricading roads and creating widespread havoc as Brussels fights to keep the agriculture sector on board with its green transition.’[ Do these reporters really believe that Europe’s angry farmers need to be ‘egged on’ by malevolent far-right agitators? Are they so out of touch with the predicament facing rural community that they cannot comprehend the fact that many farmers are literally fighting for their way of life? Whatever drives the anti-farmer propaganda it is evident that the fantasy of the spectre of the far-right haunting Europe has captured their imagination. Fear mongering about the far-right is omnipresent and often acquires the form of a carefully cultivated political hysteria. The media can continually rely on a cohort of academic experts to provide content for the promotion of its politics of fear. ‘Farmers’ anger has become a major issue for the far right across Europe’, stated Kevin Cunningham, a political scientist studying support for the far right for the European Council on Foreign Relations[vi]. Just listen to Léonie de Jonge, a political scientist at the University of Groningen who is an ‘expert’ on the far right. She claims that ‘farmers’ issues can lend themselves to far-right ideology through nostalgia for the past’ and ‘”blood and soil” themes’.[That’s another way of saying that farmers’ protest effortlessly mutates into the politics associated with the Nazi slogan of blood and soil. Evoking the memory of the venomous 1930s ‘blood and and soil’ ideology serves to create the impression that the far right constitutes a clear and present danger. Notwithstanding the fact that supporters of this ideology are conspicuous by their absence, the ‘just like the thirties’ idealogues are constantly highlighting the imminent threat posed by the far-right. Like all fantasies, this one does not have to bear the burden of proof. Indeed, the term far right has become a throw away word used to slander opponents. The designation far right serves as a mark of evil. Share The invention of the narrative about the threat posed by the far-right is modelled on a caricatured version of 1930s political violence in Europe. Invariably the term far-right has become detached from its specific historical context and has become a free-floating expression of abuse that can be casually attached to any target. Historically, this designation referred to violent anti-democratic, authoritarian and xenophobic movements. In recent times the term has become subject to a form of concept creep so that viewpoints that were previously not considered far-right are now associated with it. The Encyclopedia of Politics: The Left and the Right asserts that far-right politics include ‘persons or groups who hold extreme nationalist, xenophobic, racist, religious fundamentalist, or other reactionary views¹’. The reference to ‘religious fundamentalist or other reactionary views’ is significant for in principle it can refer to a wide variety of anti-modernist sentiments. Equating far right with reactionary means that anyone with strong conservative views can be re-invented as a violent extremist. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a reactionary is a person ‘who is opposed to political or social change or new ideas’ . Thw possession of such views does not make proplr far right. The constant semantic expansion of the term far right means that it is only a matter of time before anyone right of anti-fa can be rebranded by it. That the term far right lacks clarity and precision was demonstrated when Lord Pearson asked a Parliamentary Question in June 2023 demanding to know whether the British Government has “adopted a common definition of ‘far-right’; and if so, what it is.”² Replying on behalf of the Government, Lord Sharpe, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department cited an Intelligence and Security Committee report which defines Far Right as ‘an umbrella term to encapsulate the entire movement which has a Far-Right political outlook in relation to matters such as culture, race, immigration and identity. . Apparently, the British Government uses the above tautological ‘definition’ of far-right. Except that this is not a definition but a statement of evasion. The definition of Far Right as a movement that has a Far Right political outlook merely repeats the banal statement that the Far Right is the Far Right. One of the consequences of the invention of the threat posed by the far right is to erode the distinction between itself and the classical right. In this vein a group of academics assert that with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in 2016 the ‘far right has become a mainstay’, leading to the ‘blurring the boundaries between mainstream and far-right politics’. The erosion of the boundary between right and far right is not an act of nature. It has occurred because of the constant recycling of propaganda that has aimed to cast the political right into the role previously occupied by the far right. In this way anyone holding strong conservative convictions risk being rebranded as far right. The claim that the ‘far right has become a mainstay’ is motivated by the recognition of the fact that the political and ideological hegemony of the centrist technocratic elites is fast unravelling. In previous times the political establishment could place dissident voices under a quarantine. But now, in Europe, the voices of populism can no longer be ignored. Hence the invention of the supposed menace posed by the far right. That is why one commentator warned about ‘the mainstreaming’ effect of far-right discourse on key issues such as immigration in global politics, particularly by ‘mainstream’ centre right parties’. It is precisely because a democratically inspired populist outlook has placed mainstream centre right parties under pressure that the term far right has been mobilised to discredit this development. It is important to realise that the use of this term is not merely designed to slander opponents. In effect it aims to render widely held views on national sovereignty, tradition, immigration, relation between men and women or net zero, illegitimate. It is integral to a project of semantic engineering that seeks to isolate and criminalise the outlook of political opponents. It is possible that some commentators have genuinely internalised the fantasy surrounding the menace represented by the far right. In an age of intense political polarisation where members of the media and other cultural institutions only talk to people like themselves many will be drawn towards a distorted representation of reality. The ease with which words of condemnation like racist, homophobic or fascist are hurled at people whose only crime is the possession of an opposing view shows just how much the language of politics has become corrupted. However, regardless of whether or not the promoters of the politics of fear believe the story line they concocted what is at stake is the struggle to gain control of language. Whether the words that are used to describe different political outlooks convey a negative or a positive meaning really matters. If the vocabulary that seeks to discredit views widely held in society acquires a dominant influence than those holding such sentiments can become wary of expressing them, Casting the current protest of European farmers under the shadow of the far right aims to undermine the public’s support for their cause. Thankfully you can only cry wolf so many times and people will soon begin to see through the scaremongering rhetoric about the far right. In the meantime, it is necessary to go on the offensive and challenge the corruption of our political vocabulary by anti-democratic semantic engineers. At thr very least those who promote the fantasy of an omnipresent far right should be taken up for their political illiteracy. They should also be exposed corrupters of our political vocabulary. Upgrade To Paid 1 Carlisle, Rodney P. (2005). The Encyclopedia of Politics: The Left and the Right, Volume 2: The Right. Sage Publications, p.694 2 See Time Dieppe ‘Who exactly is “far right”? in https://thecritic.co.uk/who-exactly-is-far-right/ Hope you are enjoying Roots & Wings with Frank Furedi. © 2024 Frank Furedi 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Roots & Wings A Reply To The European Parliamentarians Supporting The Subversion Of The Continent's History

Why has the European Parliament Voted To Support A Crusade Against The Past? Darkening Europe’s Past In a recent vote, the European Parliament voted to affirm a report titled ‘On Historical Consciousness’ from its committee on culture and education[i]. The aim of the report is to represent Europe’s past in the worst possible light. Through framing the past in the form of a cautionary tale, its authors seek to use it as a resource for the promotion of what it characterises as a ‘negative foundational myth’. At first sight, the term ‘negative foundational myth’ comes across as paradoxical one. After all, why would a negative foundation serve as the ground for promoting the EU? The supporters of this report believe that it can play this role by providing the EU with the justification to break with the past and presenting itself as the positive alternative to the bad old days. As the authors of the Report explain, they recognise ‘that the horrors of the past serve as a “negative foundation myth”’, which provides ‘a strong sense of purpose for the European peace project’. Upgrade to paid The Report’s representation of European history as a story of shame is achieved through communicating it in the language of contemporary identity politics. That is why they stress the need for what they describe as ‘intersectional history’. From this perspective they can claim that ‘gender-, belief- and ethnicity-based injustices have been embedded in European history over many centuries, including in the form of antisemitism and antigypsyism’ and that these injustices have had ‘consequences for Europe and the rest of the world’. The Report’s commitment to intersectional history is justified on the ground that it considers ‘chauvinism, gender-stereotypes, power-asymmetries and structural inequalities to be deeply rooted in European history, and regrets the lack of a sufficiently multicultural and gender-sensitive approach in the teaching of history; deems it vital to address the marginalisation of women and other underrepresented societal groups in history, and calls on the Member States to provide for a stronger corresponding focus in national curricula’ Through reading history backwards, the past is turned into the source of society’s contemporary problems. The Report’s obsession with identity related themes are imaginatively recast as ‘deeply rooted in European history’. From this perspective the settling of account with the injustices of the past must underpin the form of historical consciousness promoted by this report. Share The quest for legitimacy The aim of the memory politics advocated in this Report is to endow EU with the legitimacy of the past. Normally the transformation of the past into a negative foundational myth would undermine its capacity to serve the role of a legitimator. However, since the pathologisation of the past is directed at a history that was rooted within the nation, it does not harm the claim of a transnational body like the EU to moral authority. It is the past of European nations that stands indicted. That is why the report insist that the EU’s version of historical consciousness should be transcend the nation and become European or global. In this vein it ‘acknowledges the array of past and present initiatives at European level to foster a common European historical memory’. Furthermore it ‘Stresses the vital role of education and calls on the Member States to update current curricula and teaching methodologies with a view to shifting focus from national towards European and global history and in order to allow for more emphasis on a supranational historical understanding’. It proposes a school curriculum that highlights the ‘vital importance of learning about European integration, the history, institutions and fundamental values of the Union and European citizenship for a European sense of belonging to emerge’ and ‘calls for the teaching of European history and European integration, which needs to be regarded in a global context, and for European citizenship education to become an integral part of national education systems’. In another words the Report’s negative myth of the past serves to refocus history teaching from the nation to the EU. In this way it hopes to cultivate a ‘European historical consciousness’ at the expense of a national one. Targeting national history The Report, ‘On Historical Consciousnes’ is the latest example of a genre of anti-national and anti-sovereigntist attacks on national history by EU federalist idealogues. It was in the 1980s that powerful anti-national currents acquired a commanding status in western European historiography. From the 1980s onwards even the slightest interest in national history was treated with suspicion and in some circles ‘national history’ was condemned as an accomplice to xenophobic politics. ‘We, historians, need to reflect on how to deal with national histories especially after they have demonstrated to be so dangerous in the past by legitimating wars and genocides’ argued one of its opponents[ii]. Historians like Stefan Berger portrayed national histories as a dangerous virus that needs to be contained. He has argued that such a containment strategy demands that the ‘naturalisation’ and ‘essentialisation’ of national narratives should be forcefully ‘denaturalised and ‘de-essentialised’ in order to reduce the harms they can cause. He also asserted that the threat posed by national history should be limited by the creation of ‘kaleidoscopic national histories’ that recast national memory into multiple diverse fragments[iii]. Some of the supporters of the project of the construction of a shared European memory explicitly acknowledge the instrumental and artificial character of their scheme. The French EUphile political scientist, Fabrice Larat, an enthusiastic proponent of this endeavor wrote that the ‘instrumentalization of the past for means of legitimization and community-building is not restricted to nation states’[iv]. For Larat the instrumentalisation of the past is an essential precondition for ensuring that all members of the EU sign up to what he characterised as an ‘Acquis historique communautaire’; that is a shared historical memory that communicates ‘a shared belief about the historical purpose of the common system of governance that is now the EU’[v]. The objective of an acquis historique communautaire was to ensure that the values of the project of European unification are underpinned by a common narrative of the past. The instrumentalisation of the past by the partisans of a shared European memory is essentially an administrative exercise conducted through technocratic and public relations practices. This is a public relations campaign, which Chris Shore well described as ‘characteristically top-down, managerial and instrumental approach to “culture building”. He rightly questioned ‘its assumption that “European identity” can somehow be engineered from above and injected into the masses by an enlightened vanguard of European policy professionals using the latest communication technologies and marketing techniques’[vi]. The project of Europeanising memory has relied on administrative fiat and the re-writing of history. The promotion of the Europeanisation of memory does not depend on the elaboration of a sophisticated or subtle historiography. Its influence relies in its institutional power to subject EU member states to political and cultural pressure to de-nationalise their past. The implication of the acquis historique communautaire is that the nation no longer possesses the authority to decide how it wishes to memorialise its past. According to the vision projected by partisans of the Europeanisation of memory -in all but name - the interpretation of the past becomes a shared enterprise in a post-national Europe. Their aim is to underwrite economic and political harmonisation with the co-ordination of historical memory. Attempts to promote common memory laws on Holocaust Denial or the denial of the Armenian Genocide illustrate some of the initiatives undertaken to institutionalise the Europeanisation of memory. Schemes designed to re-write history textbooks and to promote transnational historiography at the expense of national ones are regular themes in the EU’s memory war. The European Commission’s financial support for historical research is influenced by its political objectives and consequently, as one recipient of its largesse noted, ‘academic selection criteria were not strictly applied’’[vii]Oriane Calligaro’ s study of the EU’s research policy concluded that this institution ‘actively encouraged de-territorialised and teleological histories of Europe while simultaneously worrying that by doing so it replicated the efforts of so-called ‘totalitarian’ states to rewrite history’[viii]. Since the 1980s anti-sovereigntist, de-territorialised history has merged the outlooks of identity politics to provide an intersectional account of Europe’s past. In this way contemporary concerns about issues such as the politics of gender and decolonisation become eternalised and recycled as a negative foundational myth. That idealogues promoting EU federalism rely on a negative foundation for its institutional authority underlines its fragile basis. The darkening of Europe’s history may serve to dispossess people from their cultural legacy but it will do little to endow the EU with authority. That is why the is project of Europeanising memory is unlikely to inspire the people of the continent. \ Upgrade To A Paid Sunscription [i] chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-9-2023-0402_EN.pdf [ii] Martín-Arroyo, P. (2014) ‘Histoeuropeanisation’: Challenges and Implications of (Re)writing the History of Europe ‘Europeanly’, 1989–2015, College of Europe Natolin Campus: Warszawa, p.45. [iii] Berger, S. (2007) ‘Writing National Histories in Europe: Reflections on the Pasts, Presents, and Futures of a tradition’, in Jarausch, K.H. & Lindenberger, T. (eds), Conflicted Memories: Europeanizing Contemporary Histories, Berghahn Books: Oxford. pp. 65-66. [iv] Larat, F. (2005) ‘Presenting the Past: Political Narratives on European History and the Justification of EU Integration’, German Law Journal, vol. 6, no.2, p.273 [v] Larat (2005) p. 287. [vi] Shore, C. (1999) ‘Inventing Homo Europaeus: Cultural Politics of European Integration’, Ethnologia Europaea. Journal of European Ethnology, vol. 29, no.2, p.31. [vii] Cited Klinke, I. (2014) ‘European Integration Studies and the European Union’s Eastern Gaze’, Millennium Journal of International Studies, vol. 43, no.2,. p.575. [viii] Calligaro is cited in Klinke (2014)p.574. Hope you are enjoying Roots & Wings with Frank Furedi. © 2024 Frank Furedi 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Diversity – the foundational value of the New Authoritarians It runs in parallel with the normalisation of intolerance

Diversity – the foundational value of the New Authoritarians It runs in parallel with the normalisation of intolerance FRANK FUREDI JAN 20 Historically discussions about the relative merits of diversity or homogeneity did not refer to the realm of values. It is only during the past 4 or 5 decades that a diversity came to be seen as a value in and of itself. Public and private organisations now insist that diversity in integral to their practice. The DEI triad of diversity, equity and inclusion has become institutionalised throughout the Anglo-American world. International organisations and NGOs have literally endowed diversity with a sacred status. UNESCO insists that ‘diversity is the very essence of our identity’. In businesses, diversity trumps competence and achievement. In higher education diversity has become a first order value that is represented as more important than academic ability and academic freedom. To grasp the quasi-religious transformation of diversity into a taken-for-granted dogma it is useful to explore its historical evolution. A word of warning! It is always tempting to respond to the dogmatic affirmation of diversity as a sacred value by an equally one-sided assertion of homogeneity. We believe that its is far more fruitful consider the relationship between diversity and homogeneity as one that must be assessed in relation to the context within which it arises. Share The paradox of diversity Today the promotion of diversity and difference is usually associated with movements that are generally associated with leftish, liberal or woke interests. In contrast an emphasis on homogeneity and unity is generally is linked to conservative and right-wing ideals. This ideologically polarised state of affairs is of relatively recent vintage. Indeed, historically conservative thinkers tended to celebrate difference and cultural distinctions whereas those of radical disposition opted to uphold similarity and universalism. The Enlightenment’s affirmation of universalism often provoked a conservative reaction that championed the unique qualities of the local and the particular. The conservative Romantic movement in Germany emphasised the importance of cultural differences and claimed that identities founded upon it were more authentic than an abstract attachment to universalism. Such sentiments were, in part, a response to the growing influence of the rationalistic and universalistic ideals of French Enlightenment thought on European societies. The German Romantics favourably contrasted authentic Kultur to the abstract spirit of French Enlightenment universalism. German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) forcefully captured the particularist spirit of the new Romantic worship of cultural identity. He claimed that it was culture that defined each people – the Volk – endowing them with their own distinct identity and spirit. In contrast to the particularist emphasis on diversity, radicals and liberals tended to focus on the common qualities of people. English liberals from Hume onwards tended to emphasise the common qualities of human nature. From this standpoint, Thomas Paine developed his commitment to universal human rights. For the 18th century philosophes and radicals the pursuit of unity and the advocacy of a common human nature was an integral to their world view. Abbé Sieyès, a political theorist of the French Revolution was deeply concerned about what he saw as the chaos of local custom. Ridding France of cultural diversity was a key objective of the revolutionary regime. At the risk of generalisation, it can be said that radicals were often zealous supporters of centralisation whereas conservatives were decentralisers. The pursuit of unity and the assertion of a common human nature were characteristic of the radical mindset. Radicals wanted uniformity and conservatives defended difference. Radicals were committed to sameness whereas conservatives responded by supporting diversity and cultural difference. In the 19th century the discussion on the tension between uniformity and difference was far more nuanced than today. The French liberal philosopher Benjamin Constant personified a mature aspiration for both unity and difference. As a liberal he regarded uniformity as a mark of rationality. But Constant was something of a libertarian- conservative and he therefore appreciated the need to defend local customs and communities. He combined a criticism against unjust customs such as those that supported slavery with an appreciation of the need to maintain the distinctions between diverse communities. According to a study written by Bryan Garsten, Constant ‘argued that slow processes of local social development would be, in general, more effective and ultimately more progressive than uniform regulations imposed from above’ – more likely to discover a “sentiment of liberty” in communal settings and ‘more robust forms of patriotism were rooted in local allegiances’¹. Constant supported diversity on grounds that would today be perceived as conservative. He argued against the project of liberating ‘individuals from local ties and prejudices’ on the grounds that it would undermine freedom and the state. ‘How bizarre that those who called themselves ardent friends of freedom have worked relentlessly to destroy the natural basis of patriotism, to replace it with a false passion for an abstract being, for a general idea deprived of everything which strikes the imagination and speaks to memory’, he wrote. Constant believed that local patriotism was foundation of freedom and for that reason was worried about the imperative of statist uniformity that sought to detach individual with their organic link to community. It is worth noting that in the contemporary era local patriotism has become the bitter target of diversity entrepreneurs on the ground that it excludes people from a clearly bounded homogenous community. Yesterday’s celebration of diversity is fundamentally different to the use to which it is put today. 19 century English liberals also possessed a balanced and nuanced understanding of the relationship between diversity and sameness. Though they adopted a belief in universalism and a common human nature they were often drawn towards a pluralist orientation toward social issues. J.S. Mill’s On Liberty serves as an exemplar of the 19th century liberal view of diversity. In this text Mill criticised the adverse consequences of advancing similarity, which he feared would impose a culture of unthinking conformity on society. Yet at the same time and in different contexts, Mill adopted a stance that advocated the benefits of unity and solidarity. In his essay Utilitarianism (1861), Mill attached great significance to unity, noting that with ‘an improving state of the human mind, the influences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest’.² As Michael Levin noted, Mill ‘wanted both difference and unity’³. During the 19th and the first half of the 20th the debate on diversity and unity did not preclude commentators from understanding that the tension between these two poles could not be resolved through rupturing the relation between them. On balance diversity played an important role in countering the centralising impulse unleashed during the course of the modern era. Its affirmation of local patriotism helped to protect the legacy of the past from the statist project of subjecting society to the impulse of uniformity. 18th and 19th century proponents of diversity sought to counter the homogenising tendency to impose uniformity on thought and behaviour. At this time opponents of the uniformalising tendency of modernity sought to open a space for discretion and judgment. It is evident that the meaning of diversity has fundamentally altered during the past 250 years. In the past the affirmation of difference ran in parallel with the celebration of the organic bonds that tied communities to their ancestors. Diverse local customs and practices were historically rooted and reflected the taken for granted values that prevailed in local communities. The current version of diversity is abstract and often administratively created. It is frequently imposed from above and affirmed through rules and procedure. The artificial character of diversity is demonstrated by its reliance on legal and quasi-legal instruments. There is a veritable army of bureaucrats and inspectors who are assigned the role of enforcing diversity related rules. The unnatural and artificial character of diversity is illustrated by the fact that it must be taught. Special courses and workshops – in many cases obligatory – are designed to ‘raise awareness’ about the necessity for upholding diversity. Today’s administratively imposed diversity is also different to its original version insofar as its acceptance is obligatory and non-discretionary. As noted earlier 19th century diversity was closely linked to the practice of making distinctions and valuing discretion and judgment. Since its emergence as a foundational value, diversity is frequently represented as an antidote to discrimination and discretion on the ground that these acts are exclusionary and wrong. It was in the 1950s that diversity was instrumentalised as a weapon with which to counter the tendency to judge, discriminate and draw distinctions. Psychologist often represented an inclination towards diversity as the moral opposite to prejudice. In well-known 1950s classic, The Authoritarian Personality, the authors drew a moral contrast between the ‘readiness to include, accept, and even love differences and diversitie (sic)’ with ‘the need to set of clear demarcation lines and to ascertain superiorities and inferiorities’. Those who insisted on drawing lines and borders and refused to love diversity were diagnosed as possessing an authoritarian personality. They were represented as morally inferior to their inclusive peers⁴. It was in the late 1960s and early 1970s that diversity acquired an ideological significance. The main driver of this development was the politicisation of identity. The erosion of a mood of national unity and of solidarity created the condition of social fragmentation. In this new fragmented social landscape different groups of minorities sought to legitimate themselves through politicising their identity. Identity politics developed a parasitic relationship with the prevailing trend towards social fragmentation. Through the idealisation of diversity they were able to demand inclusion. In this way they could strengthen their identity and gain access to resources. The politicisation of diversity turned it into a dogma that could not be questioned. Any critique of diversity courted the charge of discrimination and prejudice. The philosopher Christopher Lasch was one of the first to grasp the corrosive and authoritarian dimension of the ethos of diversity. Back in 1995 in his essay on the ‘Democratic Malaise; he wrote: ‘In practice, diversity turns out to legitimize a new dogmatism, in which rival minorities take shelter behind a set of beliefs impervious to rational discussion. The physical segregation of the population in self-enclosed, racially homogeneous enclaves has its counterpart in the balkanization of opinion. Each group tries to barricade itself behind its own dogmas’⁵. Lasch’s concern with the way that a politicised diversity breeds segregation and the balkanisation of opinion has proved to be prescient. Diversity has proved to an enemy of tolerance. Its rejection of discretion represents a hostility to a culture of debate. It demands conformity with its ideals and has no hesitation about constraining the exercise of freedom, particularly that of free speech. Upgrade to paid Free Speech-Diversity Trade Off It is within institutions of culture and education that the authoritarian dimension of diversity is most striking. One of the most important developments in campus culture is the growing tendency to represent free-speech and diversity as contradictory values. PEN America’s report ‘And Campus for All: Diversity, Inclusion and Freedom of Speech at U.S. Universities’(2016) highlighted a disturbing development, which was that amongst younger members of faculty and students the value of free speech is trumped by that of diversity. It noted that ‘at times’ campus controversies ‘have led some groups of students to question the value of free speech itself’. That was in 2016. Today many campus activists do not merely question the value of free speech but also condemn it as a tool of white supremacy. Free Speech is frequently denounced as Hate Speech. Since the turn of the century, universities have come under great pressure to balance the apparently competing claims of diversity and free speech. Some university leaders have gone so far as to suggest that free speech and diversity may be contradictory values. Many university administrators regard free speech as a threat to diversity. They argue that free speech constitutes a risk to the welfare of new groups of non-traditional and minority students. Michael Roth, head of Wesleyan University, wrote that in the past campuses were ‘far less diverse places than they are today’ and consequently ‘there were many voices that none of us got to hear’. The implication of Roth’s statement is that the exercise of free speech in the past was in some sense responsible for silencing the voices of minority groups. It therefore negates inclusive practices promoting diversity. The idea that freedom of speech and diversity are mutually contradictory values exercises a significant influence on campus culture. Defenders of safe spaces contend that freedom needs to be ‘balanced’ or ‘traded off’ against diversity. ‘I definitely think it’s a balancing act,’ observed Gale Baker, university counsel for California State University. She perceives ‘open and frank discussion and free expression’ as ‘competing’ with the ‘value of wanting a diverse and inclusive community’. In the current climate, the exhortation to ‘balance free speech and diversity’ invariably leads to the conclusion that the former must give way to the latter. University leaders increasingly presume in favour of diversity and in many cases attach little value to free speech. That free speech has been made subordinate to diversity is strikingly illustrated in the way universities frame their mission statements and declarations. Take the statement made by Chancellor Ronnie Green of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln welcoming new students to campus for the 2016-17 academic year. Though it mentions free speech in passing, it is devoted to celebrating the value of diversity. For Green, belief in the value of diversity is not an option: it is absolutely compulsory. As he puts it, ‘our beliefs on diversity and inclusion’ are ‘not-negotiable’. His call to conform or else echoes the illiberal and authoritarian temper that traditionally characterised medieval seminaries. No one is free to disagree with ‘our beliefs’. green printer paper Photo by Brittani Burns on Unsplashed They welcome All everything but not All viewpoints! Once diversity becomes sacralised to the point that belief in it is non-negotiable it is only a matter of time before intolerance is transformed into a legitimate standpoint. Intolerance of dissident view is one of the principal features of the 21st century ideology of diversity. That is why there is no question of diversity applying to the realm of ideas and viewpoints. On the contrary, the demand for more diversity is coupled with the demand for curbing free speech and free thought. Diversity is often presented as a medium for being sensitive to the feelings and needs of different groups of people. However, there is nothing remotely sensitive about a non-negotiable attempt to enforce a dogma on society. Diversity is about exercising control, which is why it has become the foundational value of the New Authoritarianism. Upgrade to a paid subscriptionn In a future essay we will explore how diversity undermines excellence and encourages a culture of incompetence. 1 Garsten, B. (2017) ‘From popular sovereignty to civil war in post-revolutionary France’ in Bourke, R & Skinner, Q, (2017) (eds) Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective, Cambridge University Press : Cambridge, p.255. 2 Cited in Levin, M. (2004) Mill on Civilization and Barbarism. London : Taylor and Francis. 3 Levin (20040. 4 Adorno, T.W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D.J. and Sanford, R.N., (1969) The authoritarian personality, W.W. Norton & Company : New York., pp485-486. 5 Lasch, C., 1996. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. WW Norton & Company : New York, P.17. Hope you are enjoying Roots & Wings with Frank Furedi. © 2024 Frank Furedi 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104