Why Smart Friends May Don Red Hats
How a New Left ideology upends core beliefs about the world
As poll after poll shows unswerving support for Donald Trump’s reelection, it’s easy for me to understand why secular right-wing extremists support him. He feeds them dog whistles in every speech. However, it is much harder for me to understand why top-notch friends and family I admire support him.
In today’s newsletter, I want to sketch my current theory about why well-meaning Christians may discount the extraordinary flaws they acknowledge in Donald Trump. In short, they will support any candidate who will stand firm against an ideology that upends long-settled premises about how humans flourish.
In reflecting on right-wing Christian movements, it is helpful to recall that "The Left" denotes social movements prioritizing emancipatory politics. "The Right" signifies social movements prioritizing the preservation of received structures and values. To what are today’s right-wing Christian groups reacting?
Historically, the American Left has analyzed politics through the lens of class struggle. However, in the 1960s, new emphases gained influence that reflected on politics through the lenses of race, gender, and sexuality. When the Berlin Wall fell in the 1990s, class struggle diminished in influence. The American Left increasingly analyzed politics through the lenses of culture and identity.
Inspired by the work of thinkers like Michael Foucault, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Derrick Bell, and Kimberlé Crenshaw, the last four decades saw the construction of academic centers and departments committed to analyzing identity through the lenses of race, gender, and sexuality. Concepts generated by postmodernism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory converged to forge a new post-liberal Left ideology. This ideology rapidly gained dominance among scholars and administrators at America's top universities.
By 2010, due to its influence at top schools, it became similarly influential at America's leading corporations, especially non-profits and NGOs. Widespread popular distortions - often contradicting the ideology's generative thinkers - became prominent among Americans active on Twitter. Consequently, some scholars of social movements, noting the popular version's contrast with liberalism, dubbed it the "Cyber Left." Adherents called themselves "Woke."
The new Left ideology generated resistance on the Right and Left. With Donald Trump's rise in 2016, "anti-wokeness" became a performative virtue for the Right's presidential contenders. On the Left, numerous liberal intellectuals - including Michael Walzer,1 Susan Neiman,2 Greg Lukianoff,3 Alan Dershowitz,4 and Yasha Mounk5 - published critiques that decried its rejection of fundamental liberal values. Mounk, seeking a respectful name for an ideology birthed on the Left but rejecting some of its core commitments, named it the "Identity Synthesis."
Mounk helpfully described seven themes that characterize the Identity Synthesis.6
There is no such thing as objective truth. There are only viewpoints. Appeals to objective reality conceal the ways those with hegemonic power oppress others.
We best resist hegemonic power by changing people's language to describe the world. Our received language contains subtle biases, micro-aggressions, and cultural appropriations. We must invent new neutral vocabulary to render language more inclusive.
Though identity groups are merely social constructions, it is strategically essential to strengthen them as a means of resisting domination by hegemonic power.
Any appearance of progress in emancipatory politics is an illusion.
Legislation should not be colorblind, gender-neutral, or in any way fail to distinguish citizens based on ascribed identities. Rather than treating everyone equally, equity requires that governments differentiate between citizens based on whether they are part of historically dominated groups.
Intersectionality means that institutions and people should defer to the claims of organizations putatively representing identity groups, embracing their positions on topics that matter to them. Good standing depends on adherence to orthodox views determined by putatively representative organizations.
Members of different identity groups cannot hope to understand each other. You have your truth, and I have mine. You have no right to question my view. Moreover, since there is no such thing as objective facts or universal truths, someone from a historically dominant group never has the right to challenge the truth of someone from a historically oppressed identity group.
Some readers will recall when these themes entered the public square. Many will nod their heads, affirming themes as they read about them. Yet liberals on the Left and conservatives on the right have raised significant concerns with this ideology.
It is beyond my scope to recount liberals' objections to the Identity Synthesis. However, it is helpful to note that several of these themes challenge those prioritizing the preservation of received structures and values. I'll highlight a few that telegraph why right-wing Christian movements might feel threatened by the Identity Synthesis ideology.
Christians find it difficult to reconcile the claim that there is no objective truth with the ultimacy they attribute to God. Many of the other themes derive from that claim.
Christians believe that sin obstructs and sometimes negates progress in emancipatory politics. Nonetheless, they believe the superior power of God's love that drives history toward its fulfillment justifies and summons Christians to hope.
Christians believe God acts in history to transcend differences without erasing them, enabling people who speak different tongues to comprehend each other despite radically different social locations.
Many Christians treasure the Great Society's civil rights settlement that established the hope for the rule by law that treats all citizens equally.
Conservative Christianity is not a monolith. In future newsletters, I will show how right-wing Christian movements react in diverse ways to the challenges raised by the rapid mainstream acceptance of the Identity Synthesis. And I will also explain why I think that diversity requires tailored responses to right-wing Christian movements.
Walzer, Michael. 2023. The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On “Liberal” as an Adjective. Yale University Press.
Neiman, Susan. 2023. Left Is Not Woke. 1st edition. Polity.
Lukianoff, Greg, and Rikki Schlott. 2023. The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution. Simon & Schuster.
Dershowitz, Alan. 2020. Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process. Hot Books.
Mounk, Yascha. 2023. The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time. Penguin Press.
Mounk, 2023, 63-75.