Know Your Left from Your Right
Whether an issue is progressive or reactionary has more to do with material reality than with the list of those who claim to support it.
In October 2022 I gave a speech in Tacoma, WA at a rally in defense of women’s rights and in opposition to gender ideology. Some were perplexed when I categorized gender ideology as “a sexist, right-wing attack”. The confusion arose because many groups seen as being part of the “left” enthusiastically support gender ideology. The disconnect arises from a philosophical mistake that is easy to make when thinking through contentious political ideas.
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How does one determine if an issue or position is progressive? How can we tell if a stance or narrative is unjust and reactionary? Many reflexively navigate this terrain by asking which groups support which issues. For example, if self-described conservatives support an issue, many assume the issue must be right wing. If liberals, progressives or leftists adopt a particular stance, many argue the stance must be inherently progressive. This framework couldn’t be more wrong.
A conservative can embrace some objectively progressive positions, and a leftist can hold some objectively reactionary positions. The nature of the positions themselves is determined not by who happens to promote them at any given moment but by material reality. That is to say, the nature of a political position – whether it is progressive or reactionary – is independent of who adheres to that position at any particular time.
So, what is the material basis for determining whether a position is progressive? Quite simply, whether it benefits and advances the interests of the 99% over the 1%. The 99%, broadly speaking, is the working class – those that live paycheck to paycheck and produce all of America’s wealth. The 1% is comprised of oligarchs that appropriate and live off the wealth working people produce. Paired with the oligarchs are the apparatchiks, bosses, enforcers and managers who help maintain our country’s distinctly undemocratic imbalance of wealth and power.
Freddie deBoer gets this mostly right:
There are many positions that are objectively progressive. Ironically, several of these find support among those who identify as “right” as well as “left”:
Freedom of speech
Freedom of assembly
Freedom of the press
Freedom from warrantless spying and surveillance.
Other provisions in the Bill of Rights
Opposition to online censorship
Support for labor rights and union organizing
Opposition to US imperial wars
Support for universal, single-payer healthcare
Opposition to discrimination based on race or sex.
If someone who identifies as conservative supports union organizing at Amazon or opposes US war moves in Ukraine, that doesn’t render those causes right-wing. It simply reveals that many people are politically heterogeneous, holding some right- and some left-wing views.
We all know that wealth and power in this country are distributed unequally. For the few at the top to remain in place, they must bathe the majority in propaganda to convince them that inequality doesn’t exist, or that it exists but is somehow justified, or that it exists and is unjust, but that nothing can be done about it. The most effective tools a minority can wield to disarm the majority are division and disorientation.
Division gets people fighting amongst themselves instead of uniting against their common oppressor.
Disorientation robs people of their ability to identify what is progressive and what is reactionary – what is in the interest of the majority and what benefits only the oligarchs. One disorientation technique currently in fashion is guilt by association. When Tucker Carlson of Fox News questions the sanity and morality of US war moves in Ukraine, pundits argue that this proves opposition to US policy in Ukraine is right wing. (It isn’t.) When “socialist” groups push for covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates, “experts” insist this demonstrates that lockdowns and mandates are left-wing, progressive positions. (They aren’t.)
The Democratic Party is not the left.
Then there’s the Democratic Party. The mainstream media routinely portrays the Democrats as a stand-in for “the left”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Both the Democrats and Republicans are wholly owned and controlled by Wall Street and the 1%. A Venn diagram of policy differences between the two parties could be approximated by a single purple circle. As Barack Obama essentially admitted, any discernible difference is in style not substance. But for those fooled by narratives linking the Democratic Party to the left, horrible policies like cheerleading for imperial war, applauding online censorship, opposing universal healthcare and more are erroneously painted as positions of the “left”.
When the Democratic Party pushes for online censorship and Fox News editorializes against it, this doesn’t make opposition to online censorship a right-wing issue; it shows the Democrats, once again, opposing a progressive position from the right. The same is true when Democrats (and some leftists) support US war and aggression in Ukraine.
Assessing Gender Ideology
One issue that gets erroneously painted as “left” is gender ideology. That is, the notion that people can be “born in the wrong body”; that any man who “identifies” as a woman is a woman and should have full access to women’s sports teams, bathrooms, prisons, hospital wards, rape shelters and affirmative action programs. This ideology hampers the 99% in their battle against the 1% in many ways:
It eviscerates women’s rights, and gay and lesbian rights, all of which are integral to building working class solidarity.
It promotes sexist stereotypes, insisting that non-stereotypical men and women are really the opposite sex.
It threatens children’s health and safety, steering vulnerable youth to medicalization and a life-long dependence on Big Pharma.
It undermines science, critical thinking, and freedom from religion, insisting that people must promote the subjective beliefs of gender ideologues above material reality. This, in turn, undermines people’s ability to think critically about politics and current events more broadly.
In a historic betrayal, a great many left groups – even many socialist groups! – support and promote gender ideology. Opportunistically or otherwise, many self-described conservatives oppose gender ideology. This strange lineup has led many to erroneously suggest that gender ideology – anti-working-class and reactionary to the core – is somehow a left issue.
[What follows is the text of the October 2022 speech I gave at the Tacoma rally. At the time of this speech, the rally was surrounded by aggressive hecklers who tried to shut the rally down and prevent anyone from speaking.]
Welcome to what they tell us is the “land of the free” and the “home of the brave”, where browbeating, bullying and censorship are alive and well.
We have to be clear: Gender ideology is a sexist, right-wing attack that must be resisted. Everyone has a stake in this fight.
To begin with, gender ideology is an attack on women’s rights. The unscientific belief that emotionally troubled, biological men can self-identify as women is a direct threat to women’s safety, private spaces, sports teams and affirmative action programs. Only in an Alice and Wonderland, topsy-turvy world is this not a right-wing reactionary ideology.
But the harm in gender ideology goes beyond the attack on women’s rights. It directly threatens gays and lesbians, who are admonished as bigots if they don’t jettison same-sex orientation in favor of same-gender orientation. If they don’t accept as partners people of the opposite sex who say they “identify” as the same “gender”.
This philosophy also threatens children, as it steers vulnerable youth, who are just beginning to explore their personality and sexuality, toward dangerous medicalization, drastic cosmetic surgery and a life-long dependence on big pharma.
And gender ideology threatens the democratic rights of everyone – men and women alike – by insisting that a subjective, anti-science, religious-like belief system must be worshiped and followed by all. No other religion in modern times has been able to get away with this.
Even if you think you’ve never been personally harmed by gender ideology, the fact is it threatens every one of us. As the labor movement has long proclaimed, an injury to one is an injury to all. Any political dogma that threatens the rights and lives of women, gays, lesbians and children leaves no one unscathed. Any philosophy that teaches people to ignore science and material reality while praising the emperor’s invisible clothes can easily be turned on labor fighters, antiwar activists and fighters for social justice in the one percent’s never-ending quest to disorient, divide and conquer.
For all these reasons, gender ideology represents a right-wing, reactionary assault.
Unfortunately, this picture gets muddled when so many who claim to represent the left – from socialist groups and self-described “progressives” to liberal political parties like the Democrats and the Greens, even the British Labour Party and the Scottish National Party – all of these are firmly on the wrong side of this issue. By denying material reality and dismissing the harms inherent in gender ideology, these phony “leftists” shame themselves and give left cover to this right-wing assault.
Everyone has the right to live, love and express themselves however they like. But one person’s right to swing their arms, as it were, stops at the tip of the next person’s nose. People can believe in astrology, religion or gender ideology if they choose, but they don’t have the right to impose those beliefs on others.
We’ve come too far in the fight for women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, children’s safety and democratic rights more generally to lose sight of the goal and drop the ball now.
We know from high school biology that sex is real. Gender and gender expression are nothing more than newfangled terms for personality. So, in the name of justice, sanity and material reality we must insist:
No conflation of sex with “gender” in law and public policy!
No men in women’s spaces!
No men in women’s sports!
No one is born in the “wrong body”!
For a discussion of how to take on the 1% and win, see:
For more background on gender ideology, see: