The rise of liberal misunderstanding

Last month, British social media erupted over the planned removal of Winston Churchill from banknotes in favour of pictures of animals. Given the site’s conservative leanings, many X users were offended by the move and angrily denounced it. As is often the case, many Bluesky users enjoyed mocking conservative anger.

Bluesky featured two types of reaction. On the one hand, radicals relished the change. Such people regard Churchill as a war criminal and advocate the radical takeover of the public sphere. Yet on the other hand, liberals could not be so cavalier. After all, liberals advocate a neutral public sphere and have a more nuanced opinion of Churchill. Therefore, liberals tended to mock conservative anger. Why, they asked, were conservatives so dismayed over a mere image on a banknote? How could pictures upset them so?

Few Bluesky users reflected on a scholarly consensus; symbols are foundational to political life. In the centre of my hometown Cardiff, there is a zebra crossing painted in Pride colours. If a Reform council painted over it, we may suspect that liberals would understand the value of symbols. Why should conservatives not be attached to symbols, just like other groups?

Given that this observation is basic – as I note above, scholars unanimously acknowledge the importance of symbols – our attention should turn to a fascinating phenomenon; the failure of liberals to appreciate this. Recently, such misunderstanding has been a prominent characteristic of liberalism. Sometimes, liberals misunderstand the motivations of opponents. When voters in low immigration areas make sociotropic (i.e. society-level) objections to immigration, loud scorn focuses on the lack of an egotropic rationale (‘There are literally no immigrants in your area!’). Yet if such voters were to make sociotropic arguments against (say) child poverty, liberals would understand immediately.

Sometimes, such misunderstandings extend to whole ideologies. Famously, many liberals refuse to acknowledge the existence of social justice ideology (or what others call ‘wokeness’). Despite the obvious differences with liberalism, many liberals merely regard woke as a conservative slur and do not consider it to be a distinct ideology.

Though all ideologies have dubious habits, misunderstanding seems unusually prominent in modern liberalism, not affecting other ideologies to the same degree. Conservatives have their own faults – many embrace a crude style and genuinely lack cognitive refinement – yet they seldom misunderstand intentionally. And as we will see, misunderstanding appears to have become more central to liberalism, compared to previous decades.

Others have observed this trend, remarking that liberals ‘play dumb’ or do not notice. Yet misunderstanding is a more formal term and covers a wider range of behaviours; therefore, I prefer it. To some extent, economic liberals (i.e. neoliberals) of the 1990s behaved in this way – they were famously dismissive of alternatives – but here I focus on liberalism in the cultural dimension of politics (e.g. immigration, patriotism, LGBT+ rights). After all, contemporary politics is primarily fought on this cultural dimension.

Often, people debate whether such misunderstandings are deliberate. However, this is something of a dead end; one can never establish this definitively and, in any case, this would vary from person to person. Therefore, evaluation of the functions of liberal misunderstandings is more appropriate. From an ideological perspective, such habits are examples of decontestations. As Michael Freeden argues, all ideologies decontest reality, i.e. assert that their concepts are the correct ones. The decontestations of sophisticated liberalism are more rarefied – for example, Rawlsian liberalism might decontest the nature of freedom and equality – yet popular ones achieve similar ends. When liberals on Bluesky mock conservative reaction to the banknote, the message is the same; ‘There is nothing to see here!’. Indeed, the habit has auxiliary functions. For example, several topics associated with social justice ideology divide liberals – transgender rights is the most notable – and misunderstanding prevents conflicts from coming to the surface.

The practice of misunderstanding is also consistent with the trajectory of liberalism. As an established ideology, liberal concepts tend to be institutionalized and widely understood. But in recent years, there have been (conservative and radical) challenges to liberalism. Given that the challenge is to liberalism, the challenger must define the relevant terms. Therefore, misunderstanding frustrates the progress of the challenge; explaining takes time, particularly to an opponent with raised eyebrows. Misunderstanding may be less effective in seminar rooms – here, there is more time and audiences are more sophisticated – yet it thrives on social media platforms with limits on the lengths of posts and the attention spans of users.

Of course, sophisticated and unsophisticated decontestations occur in all ideologies and are nothing new. However, there are three points which are notable about the liberal tendency to misunderstand. Firstly, liberal misunderstanding appears to be a symptom of ideological decline. Decades ago, the challenges to liberalism were confined to the fringes. The mixed capitalist economy was producing high returns, entailing greater confidence in liberal-democratic elites; limited immigration was successful; liberal democracy was buoyant and spreading. Certainly, liberalism had its challengers, yet their arguments were much easier to dismiss. And arguably, liberalism was less ambitious and evangelical than it would later become, this limiting the scope of potential attacks. Of course, a certain degree of misunderstanding took place, yet there was less need for it; with less difficulty, liberals could dispatch challenges to the ideology.

Today, liberalism must negotiate a much more difficult environment. As economic growth has slowed, discontent with liberal-democratic elites has grown; multi-ethnic societies have obvious tensions; transgender rights are a more difficult sell than LGB rights. All of these things (and others I have not mentioned) are considerable problems and, unlike the challenges to liberalism of decades ago, cannot be argued down with any great degree of ease. Misunderstanding them is easier. Therefore, liberals indulge in habits which, though not addressing challenges to the ideology in a meaningful sense, serve as sticking plasters. Sometimes, challengers to liberalism do not help themselves. For example, modern conservatism is associated with low formal education and many of its critiques of liberalism have a crude and swaggering character which makes them easier to dismiss.

But if such misunderstandings are so obviously unfeasible, how do they persist? This is inconsistent with the ‘marketplace of ideas’ interpretation of intellectual life, in which the ‘best’ ideas win out. Yet as readers of this Substack may know, I am sceptical of this explanation. Rather, ideas serve interests and are path dependent. Though the lower sophistication of contemporary liberals helps explain this phenomenon (see below), a second point is crucial; liberal misunderstandings are rooted in echo chambers. Our stratified societies have many of these, yet social media is the most notable. Recently, this characteristic of social media has become more pronounced; many liberals have left X for platforms such as Bluesky on which almost no conservatives are active.

Of course, liberal misunderstandings may characterize ideologically mixed platforms, such as the old Twitter. There were echo chambers on these old platforms, which defined themselves against ideological opponents who were present on the same platform. Nonetheless, there was greater chance of moderation on such a platform; moderates straddled the different sides and promoted restraint.

On a site such as Bluesky, there is little appetite for the correction of liberal misunderstandings; rather, the emphasis is on the demonization of opponents. Indeed, empathy with ideological adversaries can invite accusations of betrayal and few attempt it. In these circumstances, misunderstandings thrive.

Thirdly, liberal misunderstandings tell us something about the changing social base of liberalism. If one accepts the arguments of Marx and contemporary theories of cultural evolution, liberal habits are selected at group level and, therefore, maximize group efficiency. In turn, this raises questions about the constituencies of modern liberalism. As I have observed before on this Substack, the social base of liberalism has increasingly absorbed non-elites with lower levels of education and sophistication. Given the lower sophistication of such people, liberal ideas and habits have faced pressure to become less complex. To a certain extent, liberal misunderstandings resolve this problem; after all, many liberals find them satisfying.

We should not overlook the effect this has on elite liberals. Such elites are sophisticated enough to grasp the difficulties with liberal misunderstandings. However, the price of popularity on a platform such as Bluesky is the embrace of this style and many elite liberals are forced to go along with it. Perhaps I am being severe – many people would merely regard these practices as normal social media use – yet I think that they demean users such as academics; the primary duty of scholars is to the truth.

Liberal misunderstandings are fascinating. They have characterized the ideology for years and raise many further questions. In analytic terms, how should one conceive of such misunderstandings? What are their origins? How does the habit map onto the morphology of liberal ideology? And crucially, for how long are such misunderstandings likely to be part of liberalism?

Certainly, the relationship between social media and liberal misunderstanding suggests durability. As we have seen, such habits thrive in the echo chambers of social media and, for the foreseeable future, social media will define our times. Nonetheless, I am sceptical of claims of great longevity. Primarily, liberal misunderstandings seem to reflect the reduced circumstances of liberalism. In conditions of diminishing returns, liberals have incentives to misunderstand. Once conditions relent - and historically, the fortunes of liberalism tend to ebb and flow – these habits should become less prevalent.

But until then, we may be living in an age of liberal misunderstanding.

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