The moral bankruptcy of collectivist identity politics - John Dowland

I was in my early twenties when I was studying for a higher degree at a university in the north of England. I read the books, attended the lectures and seminars, wrote the essays and took the exams, but one way or another perhaps having said the wrong thing at the wrong time, I was bullied and I fell to pieces, suffering a traumatising and agonising breakdown. I got the degree but it was definitely a pyrrhic victory. Over the next few years, I spent time in several institutions feeling like a caged animal. The truth be told, I spent what were probably the best years of my life sat in the study of my parent’s home filling out online forms and sending out emails. I had very few responses from anyone and I was rarely given an interview. The village where I was living became a kind of prison for me. I had very little social contact at that time and as if to put nails into a coffin, the two local pubs closed and a little village primary school shut down.

Perhaps like some kind of wounded migrating creature, I moved away to North East London. I began living in house-shares and I did my best to get on with people, but I was evicted several times and once by the Police. I was most memorably house-sharing with several Polish people, most of whom did not speak English at a time when we had to deal with an infestation of rats at an address in Tottenham. Not pleasant.

Time passed and I began to live with a girlfriend in East London for the best part of ten years whilst looking for work. A couple of years ago we moved to a different part of London and I got a job. I began to work in a team made up of a large number of people from all over the world. There were people from Hungary, Morocco, Wales and India. There were Hindus, Christians, atheists and Muslims. I had to adapt to survive in terms of my perspective on life. Fast forward to today, I am still happy to have found work and I do my absolute best to work hard and respect everybody, but I still find the job occasionally difficult and my fellow employees are sometimes hostile.

To address the protests in Oxford, Bristol, Portland in the US and in other places across the world, I absolutely believe that black lives do matter and that racism is wrong. However, I also think that a homicidal frenzy and the toppling of monuments and historical statues is threatening and divisive. I think that dialogue would create a more workable future, rather than far-Right and far-Left wing mobs creating a war zone where no business can be conducted and in which the pandemic can only compound people’s misery. For me, the way that political violence is condoned by society seems to suggest a disingenuous aspect of the debate. Is this about correcting past injustices? Do people just want a fight? Perhaps there is some kind of narrative to this struggle that is not immediately obvious? A Leftist plot? Andy Ngo in his work, chronicling his observations of Antifa in Portland, has shown beyond doubt that apparently morally righteous campaigns such as that of BLM are being infiltrated by dangerous, violent and ideologically extreme anarchists. Who needs to address past injustices when you have guns, knives and a copy of a book by Enrico Malatesta in your rucksack?

I find that vilifying people because of their background (because of things that they cannot change) to be wrong. Having said that, I am always on the lookout for people who will stand up for my interests, as is everyone all over the world. I understand the concept of “white privilege” but I have never really experienced it in my own life. It is always displayed in fictional television adaptations of classic novels or shown during royal weddings. Ideological hate and envy seem ludicrous to me though. If someone works, plans and then reaps the benefits of their actions, while always being objective and responsible, then how can it be right to steal and give away the fruits of those achievements? Stealing from someone who has achieved personal success does not lead anywhere good. If someone loses their incentive to improve their own life, what are you really doing to them? Who are you asking them to make a sacrifice for exactly? The sacrifices made for the collective group never lead to the happiness that past dictators have promised – from Joseph Stalin’s Holodomor in Ukraine, to Pol Pot’s Killing Fields in Cambodia, to Hugo Chavez’s disaster in Venezuela, to the chaotic mess created by Juan Orlando Hernandez in Honduras that displaced millions marching north to try to escape the reality of the socialist planned economy.

Socialism and Communism are disasters waiting to happen, whether imposed from the top down or from the bottom up – I don’t need a condescending university professor to tell me otherwise. You cannot legislate for all of the infinite complexity of the endeavours of humankind. A healthy economy is the result of decades of struggle and the risks taken by generations of entrepreneurs and business owners. It is not the will of a totalitarian nanny-state dictator or his apologists. When people begin to see the rights of the individual as sacrosanct and see the ethical justice of private property order, then irrelevant and divisive collectivist categories can be dispensed with. Surely, a dialogue is a more civilised way of addressing the problem than rioting. The very foundation of racist thought is the denial of a person’s rights as an individual.  As the great Friedrich A. Hayek wrote:

“If in the first attempt to create a world of free men we have failed, we must try again. The guiding principle, that a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy remains as true today as it was in the nineteenth century.”                   

I find myself listening to Leftist politicians espousing their bromides, giving lip service to anti-racist initiatives, all the while creating an awful environment for young Jewish students on university campuses in the UK. Outright bullying and even violence against students is surely exactly the kind of thing that ‘Antifa’ activists should be against, yet their categories and their caricatures make enemies of people they do not know.

I think that all people can see in each other a common humanity. Sometimes, when working with people that I would normally not speak to outside the workplace, I share interests, I problem solve, and as a group, we voluntarily struggle together towards common goals. From my own experience, I would say that society should not give up on some people who are struggling to find their feet. By ‘society’, I am not necessarily talking about the state or the government. I am referring to a person’s community, the people around whom a person lives. This recognition has nothing to do with what category a person may belong to. Many people in our society are cancelled and ignored when they have potential and if those in authority would only take the trouble to give them another chance, they would prosper. Through the peaceful development of business and culture and enlightened self-interest, people will make an inclusive and resilient society. The ‘great reset’ of the far-Left will bring civil war to our very doors.      

By John Dowland