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Matthew Sutherland's avatar

I think some of the issue is in terminology. For instance Left is often a blanket for Democrat, leftist, progressive, and liberal (and vice versa at times). Yet leftists often think liberals are akin to fascists, progressives hold values antithetical to actual liberalism, people who call themselves (or insult others as) liberal have never heard of Mill, and nobody knows what the Democratic Party in the US even stands for. I wonder what percentage of writers (and readers) actually fall into the classical liberal category, where for instance I could see Hemingway or Bret Easton Ellis residing.

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Elana Gomel's avatar

As a bona fide professor of literature, I regretfully have to agree with this analysis - but also to disagree. I have taught critical theory, genre theory, and even postcolonial studies for many years, using them as a way to engage my students in critical thinking. But it is only in the last ten years of so that pressure of ideological conformity has become intolerable in American universities and colleges. I emphasize "American" because when ten years ago I gave a long and critical talk on communist utopias in China, nobody batted an eye. In fact, students came over to thank me! I suspect it would be different in China today, but even so, the ideological pressure in the US is worse than in many Third World countries. And the ideology in question is not merely left. It is specifically woke left, focused on race, gender (particularly queer theory), and disability - not class. And engaging in any kind of open debate about its premises means you are cruel. Words and arguments are now "violence" directed at the "victims", which is a way to stop any conversation in its tracks. Somehow, in the course of my career, critical theory that was supposed to foster an open and intellectually provocative discussion of literature, has mutated into an Orwellian monster.

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