The Fascism of the Left

Many instruments of the fascist state are already in place.

All we await now are show trials.

‘If liberty means anything at all

 it means the right to tell people

 what they do not want to hear.’

- George Orwell

[This was written during the civil unrest that followed the death of George Floyd, 2020. It has not been updated]

When I was schoolboy, our history teacher said this: 'The political movements of the twentieth century described as "Far Right" were actually created by the Left.' I found it amusingly ironic: why were fascist thugs always labelled 'Right-Wing'? This remark lay dormant in my mind for many years, but recent events have caused it to resurface, and I have thought about it a great deal. I would like to tell you what I now believe. I must warn you, also, that unless we respond vigorously, our future is bleak.

I will say first of all that I believe in liberty, which, I propose, makes me a Libertarian. Now Libertarians live by three fundamental tenets. First, I believe that everyone has a right to their opinion, and that everyone has the right to express that opinion. Second, when someone expresses an opinion which I dislike, I still defend their right to express that opinion. (The third tenet I shall return to later. I should also say that threats are not covered under free speech; they are already criminalised - that is a common misconception.) Those who reject these principles are Authoritarians. They tell me what I should say, and, by inference, they tell me what I should believe. Authoritarians do not accept that you have a right to your opinion, and, if you try express your opinion, then they use various tactics to shut you up.

I therefore see four types of political viewpoint: Libertarians on the Right; Authoritarians on the Right; Libertarians on the Left; Authoritarians on the Left. But these four groups are not equally populated. Authoritarians on the Right are, nowadays, almost extinct - they have been driven out of mainstream culture, probably rightly so. Right-wing politics are, nowadays, overwhelmingly dominated by Libertarians. There are also Libertarians on the Left, but they are getting ever-scarcer. Libertarians on the Left face a bleak future: if they speak up, they are bullied into silence by the Authoritarians on the Left. If they stay silent, then their opinions are unheard. Sometimes they join the Libertarians on the Right. And sometimes they leave politics entirely, in which case they are rendered stateless, politically speaking. Viewed thus, the civil strife currently plaguing the free countries of the world is not caused by Left versus Right. It is caused, rather, by a struggle between Libertarians and Authoritarians.

I point to the massive corpus of literature devoted to the protection of free speech: this literature is written entirely by Libertarians on the Right. In Leftist circles, free speech is never mentioned. Left-wing politics are concerned, mostly, with what we must not say. In other words, Authoritarians of the Left are currently shutting down many areas of free speech. The only free speech that they want is free speech that they endorse.

When political correctness arrived in the 1980s, it seemed to start with good intentions. We dislike causing offence: this policy is just good manners. And to avoid causing offence, we must pay careful attention to what we say. But even then, I saw that political correctness contained within it the seeds of Authoritarianism: it controlled speech; it constrained it. It is not uncoincidental, therefore, that political correctness can be traced to the Soviet Union in its early days. For this reason, I was wary of it. By the 1990s I had recognised a strange parallel with the USA of the 1950s: there is an irony in that McCarthyism was driven by Authoritarians on the Right, political correctness by Authoritarians on the Left. (And just as McCarthyites saw communism everywhere, political correctors see racism everywhere.) The area of language that is now proscribed, according to the diktats of political correctness, is now very large indeed. It has grown by snipping away at free speech, one little bit at a time. And it is still growing. Each year that passes, there is more and more that we cannot say. Political correctness began by substituting one word for another. But today, we are told that certain views cannot be expressed: they are offensive. Whenever some controversial topic comes up, I have a useful test: does political correctness run counter to factual correctness? Yes, it usually does. When this happens, political correctness suppresses factual correctness – in other words, it suppresses the truth. The truth can be 'offensive'. In fact it usually is - to someone.

What tactics do Authoritarians on the Left use to suppress opinions they dislike? Well, their first resort is to stigmatizing words. Over many years I have watched - with mounting consternation - how the word 'racist' has gradually shifted from a legitimate usage to a shaming usage. Originally, it meant the belief that one human race is superior to another - a belief now exiled from mainstream culture, and rightly so. But today, Authoritarians on the Left will scream this word as a shaming tactic, whenever they encounter someone they disagree with: they want to suppress debate; to silence criticism. The Authoritarians on the Left have amassed a remarkably wide lexicon of these shaming words: sexist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, biphobic, ableist, ageist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, white privilege, white supremacist, far-right, alt-right. Oh yes, and Nazi, and fascist. Although anti-Semite appears on their increasingly long list, for some reason they rarely scream it. (Judeophobic is never used either, even though, unlike anti-Semite, it is more consistent with the shaming lexicon).

The Authoritarians of the Left have now adopted a very dangerous policy with their shaming words. They believe, for example, that Leftist politics encompass everything that is not racist. If they disagree with you, you must be a racist, and since racism is unacceptable they are right to shut you up. The same can be said of all their other shaming words. This policy is dangerous because there is no longer any room for nuance: they are right; you are wrong. And since there is no nuance, no room is left for any discussion. But life's problems are complex and many-sided, so Authoritarians of the Left will solve no problems with their single-minded approach. They are not interested in solving problems, however, because what they want is a single-minded society. Authoritarians believe that if you disagree with them, that makes you a bad person, so if your friend is an Authoritarian of the Left, he'll defriend you on discovering your politics are on the Right. That is how you spot an Authoritarian. They do not see your politics as different. They see them as evil, immoral, unethical, unjust. Only Leftist politics are good, moral, ethical and just. This attitude is a cancer to our democracy, and it is starting to metastasize.

Authoritarians of the Left think in a strictly polarised fashion: life is a battle between 'victims' and 'oppressors', good and evil. But they are not all of the same type: they are composed of various tribes, the boundaries of which are defined by the 'oppression' they perceive all around them. There is the feminist tribe (women oppressed by men); the sexuality tribe (homosexuals oppressed by heterosexuals); and the racial tribe (sundry ethnicities oppressed by Whites). This mind-set must also accommodate cognitive dissonance. Feminists are allied with cultures that regard women as inferior; gays with cultures that believe homosexuality should be criminalised. (We can now understand why Leftists have a long history of fighting among themselves.) The alliance is currently under one obvious strain: feminist ideology and trans ideology are, if we are honest, incompatible. This is because feminists believe in a boundary between men and women, whereas trans-activists tend to reject any such boundary.

Of course, if the Authoritarian Left could coalesce, every last vestige of free speech would be shut down, and the number of things we cannot say would fill an encyclopaedia. We must therefore face up to the peril that confronts us.

The Authoritarians of the Left will tell you that everyone among them is equal. The 'oppressed' tribes are nonetheless encouraged to vie with one another in a hierarchy of victimhood and oppression: to be top dog. This struggle, which might be styled an Oppression Olympics, reminds me of Monty Python, in which a group of Yorkshiremen argue with one another, each claiming to have had the most impoverished childhood. I am a Yorkshireman myself, and each time I watch this sketch, I cannot avoid laughing. I am of course aware that this sketch portrays, and therefore reinforces, a stereotype. I can also recognise my own white working-class ancestry. Of course, serious impoverishment is seriously unfunny. My grandparents never used pawn shops: but that is because they owned nothing worth pawning. And when my grandmother was growing up, she often saw her own mother in tears, for there was no food in the house, nor any money to buy it. (I am unable to ascertain the precise point at which my white privilege began.) But I am a tolerant, reasonable person with a sense of humour. I have not spent forty years claiming that I am a victim of Oxbridge-educated Southerners writing television comedy that lampoons my culture. And I do not leap on any tiny little thing, say that I am offended by it, and try it get it banned.

It is now clear that many of our universities are overrun by Authoritarians of the Left. We know this because 'no-platform' policies are specifically designed with one goal, and one goal only: to suppress any views on the Right. The university is bullied into cancelling the event. If it is not cancelled, then the audience is not allowed to enter. If the audience is allowed to enter, then the speaker is continually interrupted by booing, shouting and clapping. If you ask the protesters why the speaker should not speak, they may well say: 'because he's a fascist'. These students supposedly represent the smarter section of our population; but they are suffering from a massive sense-of-irony failure. This sort of thing happens when students are taught what to think, rather than how to think.

Authoritarians of the Left are also scrutinising closely the thoughts and ideas expressed in books. They do this because those that offend them must be expunged. Some of these books were written long ago, and we cannot expect them to agree with the sensibilities of today. Even so, these books must be thrown off the syllabus. Once this process commences, why would it stop there? There will also be demands that books are thrown out of the library. Once these books are piled up at some convenient site on campus, we know what will happen to them. Before the match is struck, one last book will surmount the pyre: namely, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. The incineration of thought will then begin. There is every reason for this: Authoritarians of the Left do not believe in freedom of speech, unless of course it is their freedom of speech. Our students will study what the Authoritarians of the Left approve of. There is no need to study anything else. Well, some of us have seen this behaviour before. We know what types of people burn books, and we know what happens to those countries. Today’s protestors wear no brown shirts or armbands, but sensible people are not deceived.

The Authoritarians of the Left have also turned their attention to statues and monuments. As we now know, any discussion is unnecessary because only their viewpoint matters. If their demands are not met, then Authoritarians of the Left take matters into their own hands: they smash up or deface these monuments. In short, they want to destroy and dismantle our national heritage. From now on, our culture will be re-landscaped by roaming gangs that burn books, tear down statues and smash artworks.

Now I believe devoutly in some principles of policing: that our police must never take sides, they must never be political, and they must uphold the law. But these principles are now seriously imperilled. We are told that operational constraints meant the police could not prevent the despoliation of Edward Colston's statue in Bristol. But I am gravely worried. A police officer was filmed consorting with the crowd, saying that he understood how they felt: Colston was a slaver, after all. The police officer wore a lanyard around his neck displaying the LGTB colours – but this is a political symbol. Police officers have also kneeled before crowds of protesters – but this is a political salute. It is even suggested that, if our police officers do not kneel, they will be responsible for any violence that is meted out. Political symbols and political salutes have therefore been foisted onto our police. Such ploys and coercions would impress Joseph Goebbels. Our police have also been slow in responding to the violent acts carried out by BLM protesters; yet they policed with the greatest zeal anyone who wished to protect our national monuments. I fear therefore that our police are politically compromised. When I saw the police inaction in Bristol, it froze my blood, reminding me of mobs smashing up Jewish shops as the police stood around doing nothing or connived at it. The mob in Bristol carried out a mini-Kristallnacht; as a kind of dress rehearsal. Make no mistake, the mob saw the weak policing and it emboldened them.

The first signs of political policing are already here: I refer to the prosecution of comedians for telling the wrong sort of jokes. The fuzzy boundaries of 'hate speech' are expanding, while intent and context are inadmissible as a defence. There is a chain of reasoning from hate speech to speech crime, and from speech crime to thought crime. If we go on like this, the boundaries of joke-land will contract, and in the final moments we shall be left with chicken-cross-the-road jokes. But then an animal rights activist will complain, and, 'Pop!', no more laughter. There will be a Leftist, puritanical form of humour, of course, carefully controlled by the thought police. Comedians will submit their jokes to the authorities before a gig to obtain permission to tell them. This measure will be necessary, because comedians use parody, satire, lampooning, mockery and ridicule to criticise. Precisely for this reason, Authoritarians through the ages have been keen to silence comedians at the first opportunity. It is therefore very useful, if criticism is made a 'hate crime'. Comedians are like canaries in a coal mine. Just as a dead canary tells us of the first sign of toxic gas, so a silenced comedian is the first sign of political policing.

Our police used to concentrate on what we did; but they are now increasingly scrutinising what we say. There is a term for this type of policing: it is called a police state. There have been many police states in history and there are many today, around the world. Ask yourself whether any of the peoples living under these police states are happy. I think we need not ponder for long. We should be very careful indeed before we let our police loose on what we say. Moreover, who can say what is offensive and what is not? This judgement is entirely subjective. If a Twitter-storm ensues, then the speech is deemed offensive and must be proscribed. And if there is limited interest in the Twitter-sphere, then it is not offensive and so allowed. The boundaries of speech, therefore, are also being policed by a mob mentality. Libertarians should be worried by these trends. As I write, in the USA employees have been fired for doubting the existence of systemic racism. This injustice is excused by weasel words: 'he expressed views incompatible with our values'. In effect, a speech crime: an Orwellian society is beckoning.

In the USA there was a certain town in which Holocaust survivors had to accept a march through it by the KKK. It was understood that one group must not restrict the freedom of speech of another group, no matter how ghastly their views. If we protect X by restricting the speech of others, then Y will come along, using X as a pretext. And eventually, no-one will be allowed to say anything. We cannot afford to keep snipping away at free speech in this manner. We must pay a price for freedom of speech, but it is not a large one. We must accept that others say things that offend us; and because of that, others must accept that we might offend them. The need for this reciprocity is being rapidly forgotten. The Authoritarians of the Left believe that if something is offensive to them, then it must be banned, censored or suppressed.

There is also no way of knowing, for sure, whether someone is truly offended. They might just say they are offended, in order to control another's freedom of speech. This highlights the curious two-way property of the word 'offence'. Someone is 'offended'; they then use this offence offensively. In fact, this trend is now well established: is it not the very basis of Twitter? We hear so often, for example, that some wholly innocuous remark relating to race is 'deeply offensive'. (Nothing nowadays is just 'offensive', there is only 'deeply offensive'.) Although it is rarely admitted, we are living in an age of manufactured offence, synthetic outrage and artificial indignation. This trend is gathering pace, and it places free speech in mortal peril.

The repeated backing down by universities and municipalities, in the face of protestors offended by this and that, endangers all of us. The authorities know that if they give into demands, the complaints will not stop, but perhaps the protestors will go off and intimidate someone else. This is blatant moral cowardice. If you give in to threats, you get more threats, such is the nature of bullying. The British learned this hard lesson in the war against National Socialism. Now we must learn it again, while we watch attacks on the monuments which commemorate that very war. Winston Churchill had to fight appeasers before he could fight the Germans. If the appeasers had won, our country would have become an Authoritarian state that murdered its own citizens on an industrial scale. And protestors would easily enough be dispersed, but with bayonets. It is a grotesque irony that BLM activists abuse the freedoms that were won in the Second World War by urinating on the statue of Winston Churchill. They also deface the war memorials which commemorate the soldiers who gave their lives protecting the freedoms which those protestors abuse. And all along the Left excuse the angry crowd, very angry and very loud.

Libertarians who try to protect our cultural heritage are described by Authoritarians of the Left as 'Far Right'. This is a shaming tactic. It is easy to distinguish the genuine 'Far Right', but Authoritarian Left politicians - including mayors - ignore this unambiguous distinction for political reasons. I will state the distinction explicitly. The 'Far Right' believe that the Second World War was won by the wrong side. And we now have a bizarre situation in which the 'Far Right' want rid of Churchill's statue because he was not racist; and the 'Far Left' want the same goal, but because, they claim, he was.

'Far-Right' activists will of course show up to protect our monuments, but that is because they are political agitators and opportunists. ('Far Left' activists do the same at BLM rallies for the same reason.) Libertarians of the Right reject swastikas, Nazi salutes and jackboots. We do not want these thugs, because they do not recognise our right to our own opinion: they also expect us to agree with them. In other words, 'Far Right' activists behave more like the Authoritarians of the Left than like Libertarians of the Right. This is why when you go far enough left, you come around to the other side.

The Authoritarians of the Left are very, very keen on diversity: it is fundamental to their virtue signalling and makes them feel cosy and warm inside; saintly, even. But there is one type of diversity that they hold in the greatest detestation: diversity of thought. Oddly, the more they cry about the need for racial diversity, the more they suppress thought diversity. They do not want people to think for themselves: this might lead to dangerous, heretical ideas.

In a democracy, however, the Authoritarians of the Left face an enormous hurdle: they must get themselves elected. Their solution is to stoke a culture of victimhood. 'You are oppressed', they say. 'If you give us your vote, we will fight for you'. This is why the politics of the Left are so inimical and so enervating to ethnic minorities. The Authoritarians of the Left are not interested in fighting for ethnic minorities – they just want power, and so they tell ethnic minorities relentlessly that they are oppressed in order to obtain their votes. If any racial problem is ameliorated, their supporters may drift away. For this reason, they cannot afford to let racism go away. They are not like a legitimate doctor, who will say: 'you're not ill, go away', but more like a quack doctor who will never say that you are cured, that the treatment will continue for as long as you pay for it.

And so Authoritarians of the Left see racism everywhere; they twist and distort, so that innocent remarks can be deemed racist. They are the Grievance-Stoking Party. Thus I am now told that I am a racist, just because I am white. It matters not that I say nothing that is racist, for evidently I have 'internalised' my racism. The only white people who are never racist are found among the ranks of the Authoritarian Left. The truth is, they insist that I am racist just because I do not agree with them. This is part of their shaming strategy.

Now we are told repeatedly by the Left that we live in an evil, deplorable country in which ethnic minorities live in perpetual fear of racially-motivated violence. These claims are a wicked calumny against the British nation. We are a people who live together, mostly, in racial comity. There was systemic racism in the distant past, of that there is no doubt. But today? Really? There may be racially motivated violence, but it does not amount to anything systemic, and you cannot extrapolate isolated instances of racial violence to justify the belief in systemic racism. But as I have said, the Authoritarians of the Left are not interested in any facts or statistics. Their business is to stoke racial grievance – they want the votes. We are now in a good position to understand why the Left have become so obsessed with slavery: it is the biggest cog of all in their Grievance-Stoking Machine.

I will now ask a rather awkward question for the Left. If it is true that we are an evil, wicked country in which ethnic minorities are brutalised with impunity, and racist cops gun down law-abiding citizens on a momentary caprice, then I cannot understand why so many people risk their lives to get here. It seems to me that the Left, in seeking ever-more immigration, are doing these people a serious injustice! Why, precisely, do the Left encourage anyone to come to this evil, deplorable country? They should be discouraging them. They should be waving their arms and shouting 'Stop! Keep out! It's dangerous here!' I cannot recall any evidence that people were trying desperately to get into genuinely fascist countries. Instead they were trying to get out of course, and many of them came here, where they were accepted and led stable, prosperous lives. I suspect that the Left either do not know the real meaning of oppression, or they do not wish to know, because that is part of the Grievance-Stoking Machine. Readers might care to seek out online videos made my Mahyar Tousi. He is an Iranian immigrant who fled here from persecution. He loves his adopted country, and he knows what oppression truly is. Oppression is when women accused of adultery have their heads smashed in. Oppression is when gays are imprisoned or even executed. Mahyar Tousi does not complain that we are a racist country just because he cannot find sticking plasters matching his skin colour. Well, if Leftists want to learn something about oppression, they might go to North Korea, then, when arrested on some trumped-up pretext, tried before a kangaroo court and sentenced to death for saying the wrong thing, they will have earned their PhD in Oppression Studies.

I now come to the basest aspect of the Authoritarian Left: they see racism everywhere, except where it actually exists: among themselves. A number of black people on the Right have been drawing our attention to this. I invite my reader to watch the testimonies of Larry Elder and Candice Owens, their videos being available in the usual places. They tell us that the vilest racial abuse comes not from the Right, but from the Left. They are called Uncle Toms, coconuts, race traitors, Oreo cookies. There are other, far uglier epithets that I will not record. This type of racism is more advanced in the USA, but we now have it here, as our Home Secretary Priti Patel knows to her cost. The Left do not like to see a woman of her ethnicity on the Right. They have an oppressed designation for her in Leftist circles, and she is not in it. People of her ethnicity are supposed to express the views prepared for them: Leftist views. A generation ago, some used to point at her and say, 'You people are all like that.' And today, Leftists insist just the same! This is not the overt racism of the past, but the covert racism of today's Left. Is not judging by group identity rather than individual identity the very definition of racism? This Leftist betrayal of Martin Luther King's legacy is shameless. We can now see that the Authoritarianism of the Left, stripped bare, is at its core not only divisive, but also deeply racist. The Left are no longer bringing us together, but driving us apart. That is, Leftist politics are promoting tribalism.

But generalising across identity groups is never wise. 'You are a Yorkshireman, therefore you like brass bands'. The Left will generalise in a racist manner when it suits them politically: 'You are a Jew, therefore you hate Palestinians.' The British Left also like to generalise in a manner that is quasi-racist: 'You are an American, therefore you are ignorant and stupid.' Except Barrack Obama. He is not stupid, because he is on the Left. If he experienced an epiphany and switched to the Right, then the Left would throw their racial slurs at him with gusto.

If you still deny this Leftist racism then I point to the Guardian, that 'champion' of antiracism. Their cartoonist regularly portrayed George W Bush with simian features; but we know what would happen if any newspaper portrayed Barrack Obama similarly. When Serena Williams, a black sportswoman, was portrayed unflatteringly in a cartoon by the The Herald Sun, the Left had an apoplectic fit, claiming the depiction was 'racist'. On the other hand, when Priti Patel, a woman of Ugandan-Indian descent, was portrayed unflatteringly – and in the Guardian – the Left accepted it without demure, because she was getting her just desserts. We now see that 'racism' is not only a sword with which to slash the Right; it is also a shield with which to protect the Left. In other words, racism has become a tool to obtain power, and now has nothing to do with helping ethnic minorities. The Guardian, incidentally, which is now stoking racial animosity over slavery and calling for any vestige of British culture even associated with it to be incinerated, was founded by John Edward Taylor, a man with some iffy credentials himself. The Guardian should act on its own agenda and fall on its own sword, but of course it will not. The hypocrisy of the Left knows no bounds. Anything to obtain power.

Priti Patel is a hate figure, not just because she refuses to join her 'oppressed' tribe on the Left. She is also a hate figure because she became Home Secretary without quotas for women or ethnic minorities, and she refuses to use victimhood and grievance to secure promotion. In this, she has something in common with another hate figure on the Left, Margaret Thatcher. They had many reasons to hate her, but the germane one is this: her success proved that women are not oppressed by a patriarchy, and her very existence as Prime Minister undermined the victimhood culture that the Left so perpetuates. The Left stoke grievance over sexism, just as they stoke grievance over racism, by claiming that because of a clandestine 'patriarchy', women cannot advance their careers. But the Conservatives have now had two female leaders and two female Prime Ministers, whereas Labour has not had a single female leader in its entire history, despite their women-only shortlists.

The points raised above are never made by the mainstream media. Instead, the BBC continue to push a woke-ish, politically correct, unquestioning picture of the BLM protest/riot; for this is the Biased Broadcasting Corporation. In television interviews, questions are not particularly probing. When protesters or left-wing activists appear on television, the things they say are accepted uncritically, credulously, and unanalytically. When neutral 'experts' are interviewed, their partisan political activism is not disclosed, but must be exposed later by isolated individuals on social media. After twenty-seven police officers were injured, one of them suffering a punctured lung after a bicycle was thrown at her horse and she fell off, our BBC repeatedly described the protest/riot as 'mostly peaceful'. The BBC news website carried a cropped photograph: a protestor holding a blunt object above his head, threatening police officers, was removed. After a social media outcry, the BBC finally told us the truth; but only because they were caught out. There may well be other, unknown instances in which we have been lied to. At the BBC there is a statue of George Orwell, beside which there is a quote: 'If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear'. The BBC, our national broadcaster, is betraying the very principle they claim to endorse.

Now I must tell you something rather awful, which is this. You cannot afford to take the stability of your democracy for granted. If these Authoritarians of the Left get into power, then – besides the casual injustice they will mete out to all of us – we shall face an Orwellian dystopia. This is underway: the City of Seattle now tells white employees to work on ‘undoing their Whiteness’. Orwell’s Ministry of Love sowed hate; here is a Ministry of Antiracism that sows racism. Many instruments of the fascist state are already in place. Dissenting voices are silenced by shaming. Employees are fired for voicing their opinions. The police investigate us for what we say. Statues are torn down. Local authorities are bullied. Universities back down, fostering even more demands. Our police are politically manipulated. Civil unrest is fostered by stoking grievance against imaginary enemies. Meanwhile the Grievance-Stoking Machine of the Left runs at full throttle, turbocharged and intercooled, wickedly exploiting the tragedy of George Floyd. The Left want the votes of the aggrieved; they may one day get enough of them.

The power of the grievance-stoking machine should not be underestimated. The Nazis went around claiming that the Germans were shamefully treated after the First World War ('victimhood culture'), and that Jews posed a grave threat to Germany ('systemic enemies'). The Germans elected them to office in 1933, largely as a result. After this, there were no more elections. There was no point: the Nazis already had all the right ideas. This descent into the pit of Authoritarianism did not take long. Each time a statue is attacked with impunity; each time an apology is made for something done centuries ago; each time an employee is sacked for wrongthink; each time free speech is attacked to win virtue-signalling points; each time a comedian is pulled offstage for hate speech, the boat lists just a little bit more. Eventually the cargo will shift: these are cowards and opportunists, trying to save themselves by denouncing their former friends and colleagues. Finally the water enters the hold, and our democracy will capsize and sink. This is how the Nazis overran Germany.

I now turn to an amusing obsession of the Left – amusing in a sickening way, that is. I refer to the specious concept of 'cultural appropriation', which the Left really do not like. But it can be rather good. Did not jazz emerge when African rhythm met European melody? Will the Authoritarians of the Left demand that Louis Armstrong be banned? Or throw one of their hissy-fits over Duke Ellington? The Authoritarians of the Left have, as it turns out, appropriated much themselves. Joseph Goebbels is calling, and he wants his methods back. I am hopeful that the National Socialists of the Third Reich will negotiate with their socialist brothers in the United Kingdom. Rational debate and logical argument, on the other hand, which constitute the cultural core for Libertarians, will not be appropriated by Nazis – they prefer to debate with their fists. The Authoritarians of the Left see Nazis everywhere – except in the mirror.

I might end by reminding my reader of my opening remarks, in which I said that there are three principles of Libertarianism, of which I cited only two. Here is the third: Libertarians, although tolerant people, must be highly intolerant of one thing, and one thing only: namely, intolerance: and by that, I mean Authoritarians of either stripe. So let us hope that possession of the piece you are reading does not one day become grounds for police arrest. It does, after all, contain thoughts and ideas which Authoritarians of the Left find 'deeply offensive', or will soon contrive to.

Tolerance of other viewpoints goes hand-in-hand with uncertainty, just as intolerance of other viewpoints goes hand-in-hand with certainty. We need Libertarianism because no one can insist, if they are truly honest, that they are right. We must engage in rational discussion with others of a different persuasion, if we are to confirm our beliefs. That is the only route to a healthy society. We must have a free market of ideas, because free speech is a corrosive acid to bad ideas. As soon as the Authoritarian of the Left realises that you hold a different opinion, you will notice a look of righteous indignation. If you persist, you will find that he does not comprehend the difference between an assertion and an argument to support that assertion: all you will get are more assertions. You might get an isolated statistic now and then, but he will not know where it came from: it has just been bandied about, unquestioningly and uncritically. And if you press your case any further, he will shout that you are a racist or a Nazi or a sexist or a bigot. These people are very dangerous to our democracy, and I regret that there are many of them.

The reason why Authoritarians of the Left must shut down freedom of speech is this: words frighten them. Words are dangerous: they can be used to construct and articulate a coherent argument, and thereby refute falsities.

If the Left fought racism and won the battle, they are angry for precisely that reason: they have kicked away a cornerstone of their own existence, so they must 'discover' more oppression, by manufacturing it with their Grievance-Stoking Machine. But by stoking grievance they are driving us back into tribalism, in which we are judged by the colour of our skin and not by the content of our character. We once had the 'progressive' Left; we now have the 'regressive' Left. The Left that fought racism has become another monster.

It is unlikely my history teacher is still around. But, even if posthumously, I must thank her for her passing remark. That is the power that teachers have, and that is why we must teach our children and students Libertarian principles, not Authoritarian ones.

The safety and prosperity of all of us depend on it.

Bibliography

Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism - The Secret History of the Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Penguin (2007).