i have a special level of dislike for ezra levant, but chomsky is legitimately dancing around the questions. on the one hand, you have to understand that if you're noam chomsky then the only reason you even consider talking to ezra levant is to plug your book to a different type of audience. noam knows he can't get through to this audience over the course of an interview. he's a smart guy. and he does his research. but the real reason he's skirting the questions is that they necessitate a two hour lecture to address. he often tries to ignore questions, and that's almost always the reason: he knows he can't even begin to address it in five minutes.

but, the short answer is that the people levant are calling leftists are, in fact, not leftists.

in america, this kind of "left" has two sources - one organic and the other academic. the organic source is the progressive/populist movement, which is often referred to as leftist but is actually extremely hard to understand as leftist if you scratch the surface a little. these were essentially evangelical puritan movements, but they were spliced with socialism. canadians might say they're socially conservative and economically liberal. and, we have a history of this in our western provinces; the ndp is a consequence of it. the result was something that is almost impossible to categorize in our current spectrum. these people supported unions, fought for alcohol prohibition, supported women's suffrage and were often openly racist. they get placed on the left due to the mainstream's tendency to classify things by economic system. but, that logic also places hitler on the left. if we were to classify these movements based on their social opinions, they would be on the far right.

these movements faded in the 40s, as new deal liberalism took over the left and steered it towards oldskool academic liberalism. and, frankly, it's no coincidence that the replacement of populism with liberalism happened at the same time as the normalization of post-secondary education. but, deeply rooted political attitudes can die hard and these ideas started coming back in the 70s - not coincidentally as higher education began to be commodified, and it became the reality that anyone with a pulse could get a university education.

if you argue with these people on the ground, they will generally sound like the evangelical puritans of the progressive and populist days, because that is what they truly are. but, they will often cite a canon of literature that has a french philosopher by the name of michel foucault as it's patron saint. now, chomsky's interaction with these people is a matter of the public record, and it's not collaborative. he's stated that he has more respect for foucault than he does for foucault's contemporaries, but that is far from an endorsement and the truth is that the feeling was never mutual - foucault always hated chomsky. where does foucault stand on the spectrum? is he a leftist?

the truth is that this has been an open question for many years. habermas referred to him as a "young conservative" - that is, a member of what at the time was called the "new right". that's one of many examples. but, my own feelings is that he's really an old fashioned burkean conservative. and, these kids out there that are running around calling themselves leftists and trying to police people's thoughts by quoting foucault like it's the koran are really social conservatives in disguise, trying to enforce their concept of objective morality.

deathtokoalas
+C MM foucault is just the one they always cite. or, at least, it is in my experience.

i want to point out, though, that i didn't say "like the koran" arbitrarily, or out of some bias or something. i meant to draw attention to foucault's support for the iranian revolution, which was a student movement.

now, you need to put that in context with the shah and everything. something clearly had to change in iran. and, foucault stepped back from that after he saw the results. but, he drew a connection with the revolution to his writings. and, i consequently think it's something to keep in mind when you're analyzing what these kids are really saying. it very well might be what the outcome is, if they get their way.

i think that when you analyze his analysis of power, what comes out are very strong parallels to the old conservative idea of "class harmony" through strict adherence to arbitrary systems of hierarchy. this idea that if everybody knows their place, we will have a society at peace with itself. the analysis may have been designed to counteract this, but if you hang out with them for a bit you'll see very clearly that the application tends to reinforce rather than collapse it. and, i think that if you read foucault very carefully, it becomes an open question as to whether he's upholding the burkean system or deconstructing it.

you can find essays that explore this point if you search around the internet a little. you could maybe say something about left and right meeting, or whatever. and, i'd argue that if you read marx himself carefully, you get the same questions - he seems to be more into the then contemporary idea of "enlightened despotism" and was trying to derive a formula for it that was less aristocratic. he tended to often side with the right in typical liberal-conservative debates. but, in the end, i find it hard to disentangle their viewpoints from what you'd call a "classical conservative" one and, all the intellectual debates aside, i think that's the more important observation, on the ground.

and, no, of course they don't really realize it. i've brought it up more than once and you just get blank stares. nobody reads burkean conservative philosophy, anymore.

to be a little more specific, and a little more concise, it's two primary points:

1) the skepticism of rationality. that's not to uphold homo economicus - there's some big problems, there. but, they tend to follow foucault back to burke in rejecting logic altogether. you'll hear statements like "empiricism is a white supremacist philosophy" and "logic is inherently intertwined within heteropatriarchy". they will then wilfully argue points they agree are irrational.

2) the way they enforce hierarchy. orwell is probably important, here, because they claim they're fighting it. but, the way it happens on the ground reinforces it. an example - and i've seen this repeatedly - is a white male standing up and speaking for a female of colour, while she's biting her lip, because she supposedly cannot speak for herself due to the oppressive hierarchy - while she's standing in front of you, trying to speak for herself.

deathtokoalas
+C MM i think ezra was mostly talking about speech issues.

i'd label myself a left libertarian. i'm not quite as liberal on speech as chomsky, but it's a question of applying the harm principle rather than a difference in approach. chomsky's been pretty clear that he thinks speech can almost never cause harm, because people can determine the facts on their own. i'm a little more inclined to suggest that speech can cause harm, but only in very extreme circumstances; i wouldn't have a problem in shutting down a nazi march, for example, if it was really a nazi march. most of the examples we see in the media don't meet a stringent enough criteria for me to deduce that the speech is truly harmful. they will cite foucault on this, as well - stuff about language framing reality, and suppressing this being more important than allowing people to think for themselves, because we can't truly think for ourselves anyways (because individualism is just a capitalist myth).

but, i broadly agree with these kids about hierarchy on paper, anyways. what i'm getting at with the hierarchical thing is that, in practice, you get the exact opposite. if you track down any of these groups, they are almost without exception run primarily by upper middle class, white, male organizers.

they start off with these "anti-oppression" information sessions that establish what the hierarchy is. then, everything that happens in the context of the organizing occurs through the prism of this established hierarchy, as they imagine it exists rigorously in society. this is very much just old school conservatism. somewhere along the way, it may have initially been intended to break these divisions down and have people more aware of unconscious social biases - which i would again agree no doubt exist, albeit less dramatically than others would claim. but, as soon as you define the framework, people align within it. the white, wealthy men take control and the rest are relegated to "diversity", as a sort of public relations tactic to "broaden the movement". it's just out of an understanding that you're not getting anywhere nowadays if you're just a bunch of white dudes, and the pragmatic realization that you need a "minority strategy".

and, this - fwiw - is the reason the movements dissipate so quickly. within a few weeks, there's nobody left besides white men and masculine white women because nobody else gets listened to.

in practice, the example you used actually tends to get inverted. the woman of colour is given the chance to express her perspective, but that itself is seen as little more than a concession. people sit patiently, wait - and suppress the urge to yawn through it. and, when she's done, it still remains up to the wealthy, white male organizers to express the opinion she's expressing to others, because she's seen as unable to do it herself due to the social biases preventing her from doing so. the result is the enforcement of precisely the hierarchical relationship that is supposedly being deconstructed - she has to sit in the shadows and let others express her opinion, because they'd never listen to her, anyways. then, as mentioned, she gets up and walks out because nobody is actually listening to her.

but, i agree that i've taken this way off topic. i made this post some time ago. i didn't rewatch the video this morning. i just jumped to the broader connection to old fashioned conservatism. it does all go through foucault's analysis of power, and it's orwellian connections to burkean conservatism. but i got a little carried away.