Attorney General Pat Bondi recently set off a little political tempest by saying a sentence that I heard directly from the wokest college administrators I knew in 2020: "There's free speech and then there's hate speech." An immediate backlash ensued from people such as Tucker Carlson and Erick Erickson, and Bondi eventually indicated that she wouldn’t prosecute speech except in cases where it led to violence. I don't believe her. I think she'll prosecute whomever she thinks Trump might want her to.
Meanwhile, MAGA has turned, in particular with regard to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, against free expression, which was their gospel until recently. Threats from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr regarding Jimmy Kimmel's on-air claim that Kirk's assassin was on the right have led to Kimmel's suspension.
The left is understandably outraged. "To those claiming they're for free speech while punishing and silencing those for exercising that right: You're not pro-free speech," wrote Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on X on September 15. Free-speech enthusiast Omar, however, had long defended the cancel culture of the left, arguing that even if you have a right to say it, your employer (a television network or university, for example) has the right to fire you for it.
Republicans and Democrats have switched sides on free speech: each now takes the position that the other did last year. I think we should let that teach us something about what “Democratic” and “Republican,” or “left” and “right” really mean. The first thing to say is this: they don't mean much.
Kimmel, whom we may assume or know is a leftist of some sort, wanted to believe that alleged Kirk shooter Tyler Robinson was on the right. Like, for example, the historian and pundit Heather Cox Richardson, Kimmel just grabbed at any rumor or fabrication that made it look that way. Their ideological commitments precluded them from seeing what was there, much less giving any sort of plausible account. And having an identity as a leftist or rightist means pledging yourself to this sort of self-delusions.
Left and right are lenses through which reality is distorted or inverted, techniques for convincing yourself of falsehoods that make you and people like you feel better about yourselves. They’re self-esteem therapies, not political philosophies.
I wouldn't have taken Kimmel off the air. But I think he, Richardson and others need to reflect on the procedures by which they form beliefs. The techniques they’re using, we might say, aren’t truth-oriented. They’re oriented toward uniting their faction. For self-esteem enhancement and social exclusion, no principles are necessary. Real convictions are distractions to be jettisoned as quickly as possible. That's very quickly, it turns out.
Left and right are tribal and social identities, somewhat like Masonic lodges, sports teams, fandoms or middle-school cliques. They’re bound up with race and class and gender and region, but capture no principles and convey no real convictions, no matter how passionate, or violent, their partisans may appear. Both sides at any given moment are riddled with contradictions, but neither side cares about that; all they care about is whether taking a particular position gives them a club with which to bash their opponents, which makes them feel good about themselves.
I’d say that the essence of the left is the assertion that equality in the distribution of various goods is best achieved through extreme inequality of power, that is, by the continual application of state constraint and maximization of state resources. The left is full of egalitarian elitists. This is hard for anyone but themselves to miss.
On the other hand, the right’s characterized fundamentally as whatever is not-left. That puts fundamentalists, monarchists, fascists, and libertarians on the same side. But these people have as much or more reason to oppose one another as they do to oppose the left.
The left-right spectrum is descriptive of the self-understanding of various groups. Many people and factions and parties take themselves to be on the left or the right, declare that to be part of their identity. The Democrats and Republicans consider themselves distinct, compete with one another, and today really hate one another. In that sense, left and right are real. But as coherent and rival political positions, they don’t exist at all.
Whether it's the left or right that’s silencing you this week isn’t significant. But the silencing matters. We are, many are asserting, moving into an era of political violence. Commentators are even worried that we could be headed toward civil war. That would be terrible, not only because war’s terrible, but because the two sides wouldn't be fighting about anything real or sensible. If they can switch in six months on an issue as fundamental as free expression, they can switch on anything.
The left, as Omar shows, is pointedly accusing the right of hypocrisy about this. And the right is also accusing the left. Cancel-culture warriors are now free-speech fundamentalists, and vice versa. Each side's assessment of the other is the “element of truth” in their own ideology. The only sensible response to these mirrored hypocrisies is to hop off the spectrum and start again somewhere else.
You might take me to be a pessimist or cynic. But if there's hope, it's going to have to start by smashing the left-right spectrum and dismantling the corresponding tribes and their pitiable confusions. Otherwise, the near-future will feature more of this conceptually vacant destruction.
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @CrispinSartwell
