There’s a reason that Mark Latham’s leadership was the last time I voted Labor. “Latho” was the last gasp of working-class orneriness in a supposed “party of the worker” that had transformed into the party of the Arts-Law graduate. That blue-collar larrikin streak is also what has made Latham a perfect fit for the rejuvenated One Nation party.
It also sets Latham square against the modern-day ruling class, the “Woke Bourgeoisie” of the green-left elite.
Karl Marx was right about one thing. Throughout history, the ruling ideas of society have been the ideas of the ruling class.
As Latham says, though, from the 18th century on, the ruling class largely had the right ideas: free thought, free markets and liberal democracy.
Not any more.
A new ruling class [has] emerged with the wrong ideas, fanatically pursuing renewable energy, corporate wokeness, identity politics and cancel culture.
Let’s call them the Bourgeois Left, this unholy alliance of corporate executives and wealthy political ‘progressives’ in the media, universities and parliaments.
The Bourgeois Left have almost entirely captured the institutions of public life, in a relentless “Long March through the institutions”.
Recently a friend fighting the culture wars told [me] he was so depressed by our situation he was ready to retire down the coast into a library annex, spending the rest of his days re-reading the classics of English literature.
I responded, “Why are you so pessimistic? The new ruling class and their ruling ideas only have the support of:
• Big corporations
• All universities
• Most school teachers
• The ABC/SBS
• Most commercial media
• New activist websites
• The Greens
• Labor
• The Left-wing of the Liberal and National Parties
• Federal and State bureaucracies
• The Indigenous and multiculturalism industries
• The medical and legal professions
• And some church leaders.”
Most of these are proof of O’Sullivan’s Law that any organisation or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time. But how to explain the Liberal-National Coalition parties? They are supposed to be right-wing.
How did these erstwhile conservative parties end up with dominant Left-wing groupings, thoroughly dedicated to saving, among other species, solar-powered gay whales?
[…]It’s a case of what I call ‘externalised identity oppression’. Let me explain.
Latham argues that as more gay and female MPs emerge in the Coalition ranks, they tend to project their personal struggles onto society at large. “The personal is the political” was once the rallying cry of feminism, but it has since infested politics everywhere.
In many cases, these personal experiences have had a transformative effect ideologically.
A majority of gay and female Coalition MPs see themselves as progressive. They readily empathise with others who have had to fight for their rights and freedoms: the so-called minority groups of refugees, migrants, the LGBTIQ community and Left-feminists arguing for ‘gender equality’.
The perceived search for fairness in their own lives has bridged the formal party divide, carrying them into alliance with the Left.
One of the few politicians to transcend the personal-political paradigm is US President Donald Trump. Trump is the quintessential rich kid who’s cruised through life – yet he clearly empathises with and effortlessly pitched his campaign at working-class voters, as even die-hard leftist Michael Moore grudgingly acknowledged.
As affirmative action policies and employment quotas have propelled more women and gays into senior positions they, in turn, have employed more people in their own image – the runaway snowball of identity politics.
As is well-established by multiple strands of research, leftists, despite their vanities of “tolerance”, are thoroughgoing bigots. Leftists don’t just disagree with conservatives, they deplore them. Above all, they absolutely will not employ them. That’s why universities have become leftist monocultures: fair-minded conservatives hire leftists, who in their turn employ fellow leftists.
The same happens in institution after institution.
Worse, though, are the supposed conservatives in politics who try desperately to curry favour with the left. “If we’re only nice to them,” they seem to think. “They’ll stop hating us.”
Yet, no matter how often and predictable the result, these “cuckservatives” never learn.
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