On Sunday, I attended the Battle of Ideas (BoI), the annual UK festival which features debates between famous intellectuals; this year, Peter Boghossian, Matthew Goodwin and Kathleen Stock spoke. BoI is predicated on the view that mainstream politics and media excludes important perspectives, related to problems with freedom of speech. Let us call this the heterodox movement, though others call it the intellectual dark web or anti-wokeism.
I see this a lot in Substackistan. Someone writes something quite familiar, which doesn't conform to a liberal progressive paradigm, to much applause for their brave truth-telling. In fact you're more heterodox, in the true meaning, than any of the people you mentioned, for questioning all sides.
It's an issue. You can see that the Daily Sceptic has gone the same way. Despite starting in 2020 as Lockdown Sceptics and now literally calling itself a sceptical publication, it has drifted from its original position of arguing with the ruling classes to now just strongly agreeing with them (on Israel/Palestine). The owners don't seem to know if they want sceptical takes, or just to be another right wing newspaper.
Nonetheless I suspect the problem is quite simply that the liberal left would refuse to turn up if invited. They aren't fans of debate, to put it mildly, and being associated with people they think of as evil, even less. Their tribe routinely cancels them just for not damning such people strongly enough on Twitter, what do you think would happen if they "legitimize" these views via civilized debate? Nothing good! And anyway, the liberal/Remain "case against populism" would be what exactly? A first-principles defense of dictatorship? Such people do exist (e.g. Moldbug) but they aren't going to be classed as liberal remainers. Someone demanding a second referendum? They all gave up already. I'm trying to imagine what sort of person and position would be taken there, but it's tough.
> Whilst causes such as Brexit and lockdown opposition can have libertarian rationales, support for them is associated with authoritarian values. Famously, support for Brexit is highly correlated with support for the death penalty. Historically, authoritarians are intolerant towards different viewpoints
This paragraph suffers from several issues:
1. It claims that opposing lockdowns "is associated with authoritarian values", a claim that is absurd on its face - lockdowns were textbook authoritarianism! - and then supports this claim via a reference to a different political issue. So it's just a totally unsupported claim.
2. It is strongly viewpoint dependent. It could also be written like this and mean the same thing: "Famously, support for the EU is strongly correlated with tolerance of violent crime".
3. "Historically, authoritarians are intolerant towards different viewpoints" is a tautology.
4. I don't think Brexit supporters believe that people with different viewpoints should be executed, although this passage could be read that way.
As I wrote in the piece, libertarian rationales can underpin support for Brexit and opposition to lockdowns. Yet the claim that these positions are associated with authoritarian values is very well supported by evidence. Over decades and long before Brexit/Coronavirus, scholars have developed scales which measure authoritarian values. Altemeyer’s authoritarianism index and the scale in the World Values Survey are good examples and these ask respondents about topics as diverse as disciplining children and attitudes towards authority.
Testing support for Brexit/opposition to lockdowns using survey data, scholars find a high correlation with authoritarian values. Given that such scales are longstanding and have high validity, it's difficult to dismiss this finding.
Not sure that the passage could be read as asserting that Brexiters favour the death penalty for those that disagree with them, but on 2., yes, such an association could be phrased like that.
So people who opposed government authority on Brexit, and then again on lockdowns, are all secretly craving the firm hand of the state? This is an extremely counter-intuitive claim which, having encountered academic output before, makes me suspect these scholars are just using a stupid definition of authoritarianism. Now I'm curious though so let's dig in.
First stop, the Altemeyer scale. It's actually called the Altemeyer "right wing authoritarianism scale" (you didn't mention that part), because apparently psychologists do seriously argue that left wing authoritarianism doesn't exist at all, lol 😂 Supposedly Altemeyer tried to find one once but after surveying over 2000 people had not managed to locate a single left wing person in favor of submission to strong government power. China, North Korea, the USSR ... all hotbeds of free wheeling anarchists thumbing their nose at weak-willed governments, apparently! The scale has been criticized by John Ray who argues that it's actually just a measure of conservatism, and ...
"there is evidence showing that there is no such thing as a consistent or overall attitude to authority -- not even to conventional authority (Ray, 1972; Ray & Lovejoy, 1990)"
Whatever. Moving on. You didn't mention what survey you had in mind, or what scholars, but I did a quick search and found Ramirez & Wood 2023. From the abstract sounds exactly like what you're referring to. The paper is (urgh) not open access but fortunately the supplemental material is.
They aren't using a fancy scale to measure authoritarianism - they use literally one question on what qualities the person likes in children. That's it, it's not even a question about authority! From whether someone prefers "curiousity" or "good manners" in a child, someone's entire political philosophy is extrapolated.
It gets worse though (of course it does). Check out page 5 where they define how they bucketed the "religion" category they regressed against various things.
"Categories, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 show a bivariate correlation with authoritarianism. These categories are combined in the religion variable (religion=1) and contrasted with the remaining categories (religion=0). "
For some reason Americans get a much smaller list to choose from than Brits, but whatever. There are 7 answers (categories) to the question about what religion you are. So any answer except 1 or 5 gets you marked as religious, if you're American. Problem: category 1 is Protestantism and 5 is Muslim. Category 6 is None. So it appears that people who literally answered "Religion: None" got marked as religious and people who answered "Religion: Muslim" got marked as non-religious. WTF? I can't even read the paper but how reliable can it possibly be with nonsense like this in it?
The sad thing is that I didn't have to check the appendix to know this study would be crap. Anything coming from academia that involves ideology or politics in any way is always conservative-hating pseudoscientific propaganda, without fail. It's all so tediously predictable. Social science needs to be defunded post-haste and in a just world, quite a few practitioners would be prosecuted to recover the funds they defrauded the taxpayer.
Thanks for these interesting points! There's a lot to get through here, so allow me to make a few comments over the space of the next day or two.
I don't doubt that BoI might have found it difficult to find left-liberals, but I can't believe that none could be found! There are thousands of British academics/journalists who hold this position and many are prepared to debate with opponents. Even if these people didn't have a reputation equivalent to Frost et al., their presence would have enriched the panel.
On the Remain/liberal case against populism, the short Muller book (linked in the piece) is worth reading. Crucially, Muller defines populism as the belief that opponents aren't really part of the people, i.e. they're traitors/metropolitan elites/non-natives etc. Not all Brexit supporters held such positions, but some did. And not all opponents of Brexit supported the second referendum. I didn't and agree that such a referendum would have been undemocratic.
1. I agree a genuine argument would have been useful at times. I was on another panel, on net zero, where John McTernan provided actual opposition. It was a good discussion and it turned out we both agreed that there had not been enough honesty about net zero costs and that nuclear power was a big part of the solution. We wouldn't have learned that if we had all been of the same mind.
2. On the populism panel, I took the debate as being as much about populism's different manifestations in different countries as about populism v elitism. I'm certainly well aware of the voluminous and usually extremely dull academic literature opposing populism and Brexit, but in a 5 minute intro one can't cover everything!
I see this a lot in Substackistan. Someone writes something quite familiar, which doesn't conform to a liberal progressive paradigm, to much applause for their brave truth-telling. In fact you're more heterodox, in the true meaning, than any of the people you mentioned, for questioning all sides.
Thanks! Yes, this is definitely a problem on Substack!
It's an issue. You can see that the Daily Sceptic has gone the same way. Despite starting in 2020 as Lockdown Sceptics and now literally calling itself a sceptical publication, it has drifted from its original position of arguing with the ruling classes to now just strongly agreeing with them (on Israel/Palestine). The owners don't seem to know if they want sceptical takes, or just to be another right wing newspaper.
Nonetheless I suspect the problem is quite simply that the liberal left would refuse to turn up if invited. They aren't fans of debate, to put it mildly, and being associated with people they think of as evil, even less. Their tribe routinely cancels them just for not damning such people strongly enough on Twitter, what do you think would happen if they "legitimize" these views via civilized debate? Nothing good! And anyway, the liberal/Remain "case against populism" would be what exactly? A first-principles defense of dictatorship? Such people do exist (e.g. Moldbug) but they aren't going to be classed as liberal remainers. Someone demanding a second referendum? They all gave up already. I'm trying to imagine what sort of person and position would be taken there, but it's tough.
> Whilst causes such as Brexit and lockdown opposition can have libertarian rationales, support for them is associated with authoritarian values. Famously, support for Brexit is highly correlated with support for the death penalty. Historically, authoritarians are intolerant towards different viewpoints
This paragraph suffers from several issues:
1. It claims that opposing lockdowns "is associated with authoritarian values", a claim that is absurd on its face - lockdowns were textbook authoritarianism! - and then supports this claim via a reference to a different political issue. So it's just a totally unsupported claim.
2. It is strongly viewpoint dependent. It could also be written like this and mean the same thing: "Famously, support for the EU is strongly correlated with tolerance of violent crime".
3. "Historically, authoritarians are intolerant towards different viewpoints" is a tautology.
4. I don't think Brexit supporters believe that people with different viewpoints should be executed, although this passage could be read that way.
Cont...
As I wrote in the piece, libertarian rationales can underpin support for Brexit and opposition to lockdowns. Yet the claim that these positions are associated with authoritarian values is very well supported by evidence. Over decades and long before Brexit/Coronavirus, scholars have developed scales which measure authoritarian values. Altemeyer’s authoritarianism index and the scale in the World Values Survey are good examples and these ask respondents about topics as diverse as disciplining children and attitudes towards authority.
Testing support for Brexit/opposition to lockdowns using survey data, scholars find a high correlation with authoritarian values. Given that such scales are longstanding and have high validity, it's difficult to dismiss this finding.
Not sure that the passage could be read as asserting that Brexiters favour the death penalty for those that disagree with them, but on 2., yes, such an association could be phrased like that.
So people who opposed government authority on Brexit, and then again on lockdowns, are all secretly craving the firm hand of the state? This is an extremely counter-intuitive claim which, having encountered academic output before, makes me suspect these scholars are just using a stupid definition of authoritarianism. Now I'm curious though so let's dig in.
First stop, the Altemeyer scale. It's actually called the Altemeyer "right wing authoritarianism scale" (you didn't mention that part), because apparently psychologists do seriously argue that left wing authoritarianism doesn't exist at all, lol 😂 Supposedly Altemeyer tried to find one once but after surveying over 2000 people had not managed to locate a single left wing person in favor of submission to strong government power. China, North Korea, the USSR ... all hotbeds of free wheeling anarchists thumbing their nose at weak-willed governments, apparently! The scale has been criticized by John Ray who argues that it's actually just a measure of conservatism, and ...
"there is evidence showing that there is no such thing as a consistent or overall attitude to authority -- not even to conventional authority (Ray, 1972; Ray & Lovejoy, 1990)"
Whatever. Moving on. You didn't mention what survey you had in mind, or what scholars, but I did a quick search and found Ramirez & Wood 2023. From the abstract sounds exactly like what you're referring to. The paper is (urgh) not open access but fortunately the supplemental material is.
https://sage.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Supplemental_Material_-_Authoritarian_Opposition_Authoritarian_Disposition_and_Resistance_to_Public_Health_Mitigation_Strategies_During_COVID-19/24224518
They aren't using a fancy scale to measure authoritarianism - they use literally one question on what qualities the person likes in children. That's it, it's not even a question about authority! From whether someone prefers "curiousity" or "good manners" in a child, someone's entire political philosophy is extrapolated.
It gets worse though (of course it does). Check out page 5 where they define how they bucketed the "religion" category they regressed against various things.
"Categories, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 show a bivariate correlation with authoritarianism. These categories are combined in the religion variable (religion=1) and contrasted with the remaining categories (religion=0). "
For some reason Americans get a much smaller list to choose from than Brits, but whatever. There are 7 answers (categories) to the question about what religion you are. So any answer except 1 or 5 gets you marked as religious, if you're American. Problem: category 1 is Protestantism and 5 is Muslim. Category 6 is None. So it appears that people who literally answered "Religion: None" got marked as religious and people who answered "Religion: Muslim" got marked as non-religious. WTF? I can't even read the paper but how reliable can it possibly be with nonsense like this in it?
The sad thing is that I didn't have to check the appendix to know this study would be crap. Anything coming from academia that involves ideology or politics in any way is always conservative-hating pseudoscientific propaganda, without fail. It's all so tediously predictable. Social science needs to be defunded post-haste and in a just world, quite a few practitioners would be prosecuted to recover the funds they defrauded the taxpayer.
Thanks for these interesting points! There's a lot to get through here, so allow me to make a few comments over the space of the next day or two.
I don't doubt that BoI might have found it difficult to find left-liberals, but I can't believe that none could be found! There are thousands of British academics/journalists who hold this position and many are prepared to debate with opponents. Even if these people didn't have a reputation equivalent to Frost et al., their presence would have enriched the panel.
On the Remain/liberal case against populism, the short Muller book (linked in the piece) is worth reading. Crucially, Muller defines populism as the belief that opponents aren't really part of the people, i.e. they're traitors/metropolitan elites/non-natives etc. Not all Brexit supporters held such positions, but some did. And not all opponents of Brexit supported the second referendum. I didn't and agree that such a referendum would have been undemocratic.
More comments to come...
A couple of points, since I get a mention!
1. I agree a genuine argument would have been useful at times. I was on another panel, on net zero, where John McTernan provided actual opposition. It was a good discussion and it turned out we both agreed that there had not been enough honesty about net zero costs and that nuclear power was a big part of the solution. We wouldn't have learned that if we had all been of the same mind.
2. On the populism panel, I took the debate as being as much about populism's different manifestations in different countries as about populism v elitism. I'm certainly well aware of the voluminous and usually extremely dull academic literature opposing populism and Brexit, but in a 5 minute intro one can't cover everything!
Points taken! Many thanks for commenting.
Good article. Very fair. Goodwin's descent into silliness is a shame. Although at least he hasn't gone mad like James Lindsay etc.
Thanks Mark!