THE Oscars ceremony once again highlighted the nauseating hypocrisy of the entertainment industry and the underlying agendas that it now unashamedly promotes. Following on from the Grammy awards in February, we were once again subjected to entertainment figures presented to us as people of wisdom whom we should listen to. I would argue that the leftist propaganda now spouted by the celebrities that attend these events is an excellent demonstration of exactly what the left now stands for: a cult of individualism, narcissistic psychopathy and attention-seeking grandiosity.
I have written before in TCW about the viral spread of narcissist behaviour in culture, society and in government itself.
Narcissism is no longer an individual quality but has infected society in general. Depressingly, as a recognised psychological and sociological aberration of our times, narcissism has found a welcoming home in the left and an influential platform through which to ‘personalise’ the imagined actions of myriad would-be persecutors. I would argue that leftist parties, rather than representing many of the worthy causes that they once did, now serve to represent the worst and most ugly characteristics of our society. This is world where there are no consequences for these people – only for their oppressors.
The demise of the traditional left, and its once clear alignment with a coherent political cause – class solidarity, material equality, and economic justice – began to shift as far back as the mid-1970s, when the Callaghan government was no longer able to uphold socialism in an era of ‘stagflation’ and mounting national debt. The party stood by helplessly as its voter base began to lose faith in the principles of socialism. Eighteen years in the political wilderness saw the Labour Party cut ties with the traditional left, embracing Tony Blair’s promise of political modernisation, embracing the consumer citizen, the redistribution of opportunity, not wealth and greater social mobility.
The alleged ‘class consciousness’ of blue-collar workers had actually been in decline since the 1960s. Marx’s ideas of ‘a class for itself’ slowly unravelled, this decline captured by research such as Goldthorpe and Lockwood’s study of ‘The Affluent Worker’.
Previously homogenised employment, low pay, and working conditions had begun to shift around an increasingly sophisticated division of labour, and social class stratification began to reflect these changes. The working classes began to split off into different factions, with some of the better-paid aspiring to lower middle class status, a process described by Goldthorpe and Lockwood as ‘embourgeoisement’. The Thatcher government encouraged this social mobility, bringing in new voters by offering ‘the new working class’ a chance to create a better quality of life, such as the right to buy their own homes.
The New Labour government carried on this position when it finally made it into power in 1997. Shifting its loyalties away from trades unions, workers’ associations and grassroots engagement, the left began to reinvent itself around an increasingly individualised society, which prioritised wealth, social standing and meritocratic opportunity. Many sought to distance themselves from their working-class roots, preferring greater autonomy, higher social status and greater material wealth. Higher earnings meant changing social values and political values.
The Labour Party’s rebranded idea of ‘social justice’ reflects this cultural shift, and has taken it to another level entirely. There is no longer any strategy, or even intention, to reduce the obscene levels of inequality that most indigenous citizens now face. The doctrine of the left is now about pandering to the kind of ‘cosmopolitan citizenship’ first espoused by Blair and New Labour, where structural issues no longer matter and it is individuals and minority groups who must take precedence – in both real and imagined oppressions and injustices. In fact, I would take this argument further in suggesting that the left has now become a highly influential platform for many pathologically or narcissistically inclined individuals to bring their own unhealed traumas, grudges and vendettas to the political stage, all under the banner of ‘social justice’.
Interestingly, an article in the New York Post has linked left-wing extremism to higher levels on the narcissistic/pathological spectrum. The article draws from a peer-reviewed study in the journal Current Psychology which argues that social justice has become a lightning rod for ‘the dark ego principle vehicle’. According to this hypothesis, ‘individuals with dark personalities – such as high narcissistic and psychopathic traits – are attracted to certain forms of political and social activism which they can use as a vehicle to satisfy their own ego-focused needs instead of actually aiming at social justice and equality’.
You only have to consider the actions of groups such as Just Stop Oil to get a handle on such claims. While Net Zero will potentially condemn many to a cold winter death, the climate lobby are busy glueing themselves to roads, throwing paint around in galleries or climbing on to snooker tables in the middle of professional tournaments. It was the left who took to the streets, both here and in the US in 2020, to dismantle or topple monument representations of slavery, racism and oppression during a time when they should have been protecting everyone from a deadly virus. While we are on this subject, let’s not forget that it was primarily individuals on the political left who at the height of the pandemic were suggesting that people should be held down and vaccinated or refused medical treatment for taking a stand on this medical experiment. Recently a school in Calgary, Canada, has banned students from eating in the canteen during Ramadan to avoid offending Muslim students.
While the Labour Government proclaims that progressive politics is the bridge towards a kind of ‘utopian citizenship’ that can be enjoyed by all, what they are endorsing in reality is a kind of insidious authoritarianism, driven by not just by individualism per se, but a victim culture where the main perpetrators are interested only creating ‘in-group, out-group’ hostilities, blaming, finger-pointing and playing the victim when it suits – all justified under a veneer of ‘concern’, ‘compassion’, and ‘virtuosity’. There is no room for negotiation or conciliation – they are right and anyone who dares question them is wrong.
