the supposed "inevitability" of former left-wing idealists swinging to the opposite end of the political spectrum in later life

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also the "conservatism is the natural order of things" angle

― doorag (24 hour troubleshooter), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:27 (twenty-one years ago)

say it isn't the case

― forbidden or obsolete (24 hour troubleshooter), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:28 (twenty-one years ago)

please?

― forbidden or obsolete (24 hour troubleshooter), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Anthony Wedgewood Benn to thread.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Or Michael Foot

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:32 (twenty-one years ago)

It's not inevitable... it just happens quite a lot.

― Miles Finch, Friday, 11 February 2005 12:33 (twenty-one years ago)

maybe it only happens to artists/writers/entertainers?

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Hm. Famous examples:
Benit0 Muss0lini
J0seph G0ebbels
0swald M0seley
Michael P0rtill0.

There are probaly more, but that's who comes to mind immediately, so no, not just artists/writers/entertainers.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Melanie Phillips.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes, of course. There was something about her in NS this morning, I forget what exactly.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:40 (twenty-one years ago)

norman are you worried that mussolini might google himself & come here & strt some shit

― forbidden or obsolete (24 hour troubleshooter), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Also a lot of "left-wing idealists" tend to be political anoraks whose heads are easily turned by charismatic right-wing figures - Portillo being the most obvious example of this and he *still* appears not to have decided quite what he is.

One guy I went to university with claimed that over the space of four years he was a liberal, a Labour supporter, a Green, a Communist and a libertarian before finally settling down as a Conservative. (Maybe not in that order).

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Kingsley Amis

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 11 February 2005 12:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Hmmmmmmmmm. In the fifties there was a lot of talk about how 'extremes' of politics 'met' -- a handy visual metaphor but given undue weight: it was invented by a popularizer of psychiatry, Eysenck, I think, with scant evidence derived from science proper.

But there are indeed similarities between some fascist utopias and some socialist utopias (ie nation *as* state, massive state interventions at all levels of society), which explains Mussolini and Mosley -- and, conversely, the consistently anti-statist position that leads from Trotskyism to neo-conservatism (ie Christopher Hitchens).

People like Amis meanwhile tend to be somewhat emotional in their politics. I'm a bit like this. If we hate 'the state of things' we'll opt for some kindd of extreme contrariness in reaction to it. So Kingers was a Communist for about six months while at Oxford.

― Miles Finch, Friday, 11 February 2005 12:46 (twenty-one years ago)

R*b*rt K*lr*y-S*lk

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 11 February 2005 12:48 (twenty-one years ago)

blunkett?

― RJG (RJG), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Nah, it's a combination of force of habit, and some worry abt "the kind of person" who might type benito's name into google. I have, once, seen a bunch of hunt-in-pack right wingers come in and fuck over a forum.

Was kilroy silk ever a left wing idealist? I always got the impression that his guiding political philosophy was ME!!! ME!!! ME!!!

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:55 (twenty-one years ago)

He was always on the right flank of Labour during his original political career, as far as I understand - I know that he had to fight hard against Militant to retain his seat at one point.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 11 February 2005 12:58 (twenty-one years ago)

That happened to everyone in Liverpool apart from Eric Heffer ;-)

Vidkun Quisling made the left-right trajectory too. Everyone forgets him. Probably wise.

― Dave B (daveb), Friday, 11 February 2005 13:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Apart from Ricky Tomlinson, who else has made the reverse trajectory, i.e. from hard right to hard left?

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 11 February 2005 13:16 (twenty-one years ago)

hitchens calls himself a libertarian rather than a neocon

(this may be bcz he long ago got used to usin "neocon" as the genre-word for eg podhoretz-the-elder/kristol-the-elder etc, who were all kissinger groupies) (which the current group of ppl called "neocon" mostly aren't)

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 11 February 2005 14:09 (twenty-one years ago)

that's true (tho' his recent review of 'hippie' in the NYT is an interestingly erm 'post-libertarian' -- indeed agnew-esque -- critique of the sixties). i'm thinking more of the ex-trots who really did become neocons but i can't remember their names. alan milburn. no, hang on...

― Miles Finch, Friday, 11 February 2005 14:15 (twenty-one years ago)

julie burchill!

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 11 February 2005 14:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Ben Elton.

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 11 February 2005 14:23 (twenty-one years ago)

David Horowitz, James Lileks (Andrew Sullivan?)

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Friday, 11 February 2005 14:24 (twenty-one years ago)

horowitz wasn't a trot i don't think

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 11 February 2005 14:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Current Labour cabinet to thread.

― Crackity (Crackity Jones), Friday, 11 February 2005 14:35 (twenty-one years ago)

that d00d from the Baader-Meinhof

― fcussen (Burger), Friday, 11 February 2005 14:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Jack Kerouac

― Bnad, Friday, 11 February 2005 14:48 (twenty-one years ago)

It's not inevitable... it just happens quite a lot.
-- Miles Finch (poptha...), February 11th, 2005.

OTM!

(i know, i know, a lamb has just died)

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 11 February 2005 15:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Mussolini/Goebbels et al. are bad examples - I'm not convinced those sorts were ever actually believers in left-wing ideals of any sort, they were narcissists who worshipped power in and of itself.

I suspect this conversion is most common among reactionary leftists, people whose personal ideology is bound up in what they aren't, what they hate, what they oppose; negative beliefs vs. positive beliefs (leaving out the implied value judgements in neg/pos). David Horowitz is the best example - he was a nut as a '60s 'radical' and he's a nut as a modern paleo-con or neo-fascist or whatever he is. But then you've '60s radicals like Tom Harkin or even Weather Undergrounders (I'm thinking of the two current professors) who believed passionately in their ideals and remain relatively true to them.

Frustration may play a role - those who live and die on changing the world overnight get cranky and fed up with the world's refusal to get with it, then start mailing out letter-bombs to people...

Then there are simply middle-class people growing older. The comfort of a middle-class adolescence gives you more room to constructively rebel, but as you make more money and have more kids and have more responsibilities, you start thinking about you and yours first off. (But that transition is really a move from center-left to center/center-right, isn't it?)

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Friday, 11 February 2005 19:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I think in both cases they tend to be ideological 'thinkers' who don't like too much reality to skew their application of theory. They'd prefer to be the foremost authority of Gramsci or Fourier or Burkean Liberalism then actually formulate new social science. Because Liberalism vs. Socialism was such a fertile ideological battleground during the 19th and 20th centuries, many people who are raised with leftist ideology and later become disenchanted with it veer later to the source of the left's greatest critics.

― Michael White (Hereward), Friday, 11 February 2005 19:51 (twenty-one years ago)

God, David H0r0witz is such a prick. "I was an asshole Leftist, therefore all Leftists are assholes." Uh, no. And David, you're still an asshole.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 12 February 2005 17:34 (twenty-one years ago)

But yeah, I think the tendency is most pronounced among people who have an affinity for ideology and dichotomous views of the world. Much easier to reverse the polarity on the old black-white scanner than acknowledge that the whole dichotomy itself is false.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 12 February 2005 17:37 (twenty-one years ago)

then you've '60s radicals like Tom Harkin or even Weather Undergrounders

do you mean tom HAYDEN?

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Saturday, 12 February 2005 17:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Haha, yes.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Saturday, 12 February 2005 18:30 (twenty-one years ago)

PJ O'Rourke! Eldridge Cleaver... Chuck Eddy?;)

But it's definitely not inevitable. Noam Chomsky seems like the most obvious counter-example (of someone who stayed the course) to me. On the Canadian side, Tommy Douglas, Rene Levesque. I suppose Pierre Trudeau may have moved slightly right from where he used to be in the 80s but he certainly didn't swing all the way.

It is admittedly harder to think of examples of right-wingers who went left though... Neil Peart?;)

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Saturday, 12 February 2005 18:37 (twenty-one years ago)

David Brock.

― Stupornaut (natepatrin), Saturday, 12 February 2005 18:39 (twenty-one years ago)

milo wrong about it being an economic thing, at least from where I'm standing. I'm poorer that I've ever been and have grown increasingly 'conservative' over the years. But the thing is, like Miles said upthread, the utopian principles on both sides are strikingly similar, and those are usually the ones I respond to most. For example, I still believe in squatting, dumpster diving, etc, things one might view as inherently 'leftist' practices, but it's not s stretch to go from refusing to support the cattle industry and Wal Mart and refusing to pay income tax to a government who spends money on things you don't believe in, morally or otherwise. At heart, I'm still very much a libertarian, I guess. My primary problem with liberals is their overt self-delusion and social irrationality.

― Overbite City (Roger Fidelity), Saturday, 12 February 2005 18:43 (twenty-one years ago)

And my primary problem with libertarians is their 8th-grade conception of "liberty" -- "You can't tell me what to do!"

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 12 February 2005 18:52 (twenty-one years ago)

What's wrong with that?

― Roger Fidelity (Roger Fidelity), Saturday, 12 February 2005 19:00 (twenty-one years ago)

I guess I'm kind of a counterexample, in a way: raised in very liberal family (Buddhist vegetarians, peaceniks, etc.), and have stayed very liberal. I'm 35 and I don't see my general ideas, at least in the way that I conceive of liberalism (as opposed to the bizarro cartoons of "liberals" you find in the collected works of Limbaugh, Coulter, freeperville, etc.). What has changed is that I have much less use for ideology per se -- and part of what I like about liberalism (as opposed to communism or even socialism, both of which are often conflated with liberalism on the right in order to build straw men for the bofire) is that it has a built-in skepticism of ideology. The liberal tradition at its best is more interested in questions than commandments.

xpost: Roger, what's wrong with that? Nothing, for 8th-graders.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 12 February 2005 19:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Meant to say I don't see my general ideas changing.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 12 February 2005 19:04 (twenty-one years ago)

I've wondered about this. What's the Chruchill quote to that effect? A self-serving slogan, it being exactly what he did.

I think also a lot of people stay ostensibly (vocally) 'left' but unknowingly morph into honorary Tories over time. This is a particularly pitiable sight.

I've become a hell of a lot more radical in my 30s, but I suppose I have a contrary streak. Anyway, I don't think it's inevitable... thank goodness.

― _chrissie (chrissie1068), Saturday, 12 February 2005 19:28 (twenty-one years ago)

most people i know who were far-left when young just grew into lefties of a more moderate bent

― fcussen (Burger), Saturday, 12 February 2005 19:32 (twenty-one years ago)

michael white is pretty much otm

― fcussen (Burger), Saturday, 12 February 2005 19:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Goebbels was very much a genuine left-winger, I read a good bio of him some years ago. He came to IIRC Berlin as a young journalist, applied for, and failed to get work with various left-wing newspapers, none of whom saw much potential in his writing! He wound up working for the only place where he could get work, the rest of the story being very much "history". Imagine if he had got work for the main left-wing Berlin newspaper!

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 12 February 2005 20:20 (twenty-one years ago)

I suppose Pierre Trudeau may have moved slightly right from where he used to be in the 80s

By which I meant: In the 80s PT may have moved slightly to the right of where he used to be (in the 60s and 70s).

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Saturday, 12 February 2005 21:29 (twenty-one years ago)

i think that trudeau was too much of an autocrat to be a real leftist, even at his most socialist.

― anthony, Saturday, 12 February 2005 21:37 (twenty-one years ago)

PJ O'Rourke was never much of an left-wing idealist, he just played the game in the 70s cause it got him laid I'd wager.

And Kerouac never really shared the left-wing beliefs of his beat comrades. Always a conservative Catholic at heart, he just let it rip in the late 60s when he was old drunk & bitter.

David Horowitz is indeed a transparent asshole. Hitchens is a more complicated case.

In this case, Inevitability = Opportunism more often than not.

― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Saturday, 12 February 2005 22:10 (twenty-one years ago)

And Kerouac never really shared the left-wing beliefs of his beat comrades. Always a conservative Catholic at heart, he just let it rip in the late 60s when he was old drunk & bitter.

Burroughs wasn't exactly a leftie

― fcussen (Burger), Saturday, 12 February 2005 22:12 (twenty-one years ago)

"Yes, I agree. Public executions should come back. And now, uh, Bill, could you point that thing somewhere else?"

― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Saturday, 12 February 2005 22:17 (twenty-one years ago)

I actually have a book with the title: "The Case for Hanging Errant Public Officials". (I collect this sort of thing)

― Orbit (Orbit), Saturday, 12 February 2005 22:21 (twenty-one years ago)

actually, i could DEFINITELY see goebbels writing east german propaganda. les extremes se touchent, as the french say.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Saturday, 12 February 2005 23:34 (twenty-one years ago)

It's a catch 22 innit? I mean either you keep the same specific policies and ideals that were cutting edge and liberal for 20 or 30 years and they gradually become conservative and non-radical views to hold, or else you change your views and in order to retain the label of liberal.

― mouse (mouse), Sunday, 13 February 2005 00:20 (twenty-one years ago)

>PJ O'Rourke! Eldridge Cleaver... Chuck Eddy?;)<

What the hell? This is crazy; if anything my politics have totally moved to the left over the past couple decades. Even ask anybody!

― chuck, Friday, 25 February 2005 23:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Might it have anything to do with having children? My wife and I decided against having kids, as did most of our friends, and we are as left-leaning as we've always been. I always said that even though I truly think that I'd make a great parent, I know I would worry like shit ALWAYS about my kids, thus making me more apt to fall into the fear-the-world crap that might be common to many parents.

Just a thought.

― peepee (peepee), Friday, 25 February 2005 23:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Ha, I think I actually partially lean more leftward these days BECAUSE of my kids. (I'm way more conscious about fending against idiot fundamentalist fascists at the suburban schools they go to, for one thing).

― chuck, Friday, 25 February 2005 23:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Good for you Chuck! As a teacher, I wish there was more of ya.

― peepee (peepee), Friday, 25 February 2005 23:53 (twenty-one years ago)

It was a totally silly joke, Chuck. Just 'cause you, in your words, "switched from mostly writing about noisy post-hardcore bands to mostly writing about Debbie Gibson". I know these musical styles don't actually map onto political affiliations in the real world; I don't know anything about your personal political views other than what you just posted; I don't think it's a bad move even. Just being goofy.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Saturday, 26 February 2005 06:02 (twenty-one years ago)

I totally didn't intend to spread any Internet rumours about your actual politics and I'm really sorry if you believe it happened.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Saturday, 26 February 2005 06:03 (twenty-one years ago)

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