So there I was, scrolling through my RSS feeds, when I ran across a little gem of an article from the Epoch Times — you know, the Trump-besotted newspaper run by a literal cult. I was drawn in by the title “We Live in the Era of the New Conformists.”
The article, by Roger L. Simon, didn’t disappoint.
[T]he left and the semi-left, progressives and liberals, masses of them in our country from the corporate world to the media to the academy to entertainment, are the New Conformists.
Well, not completely new, but conformists beyond doubt. Hardly ever an original thought among them.
A forceful argument! But it seems rather … familar. Where have I heard this before?
How about this article from, well, also from The Epoch Times? In it, self-described “heterodox” writer Rikki Schlott highlights what she sees as “the Peculiar Conformity of Modern Radicals.”
Social affirmation abounds in these ideological echo chambers. Friends and acquaintances post the same activist Instagram stories and attend the same protests and demonstrations. They might even have the same unique and quirky tattoo. In the realm of collective values, a peculiar phenomenon has occurred: The radical non-conformists have become the greatest conformers, after all. …
If every person and every institution in one’s orbit reinforces the same orthodoxy, are they truly thinking for themselves? Are they really a radical in any meaningful sense of the word?
Good question. Let’s look for answers in yet another Epoch Times article. In it, Rikki Schlott — wait, that’s the same person we just read — declared that in the contemporary world,
Pressure to conform comes from all social and institutional corners, leaving many feeling like thought criminals going along to get along in an age of conformity. When friends, family, and even livelihoods hang in the balance, it often feels as though one has everything to lose.
The Epoch Times isn’t the only publication devoted to this particular narrative. No, in fact, to borrow a line from art critic Harold Rosenberg, there’s a vast herd of independent minds in the conservative press, calling out their ideological enemies as a bunch of conformity-pushing conformists.
There’s the American Thinker blog decrying sef-described progressives for having
effectively killed creativity, rewarded mediocrity and dumbed down our society to maintain control through mandatory, unquestioning conformity.
The Washington Times weighed in with a piece by talk-radio host Tammy Bruce accusing critics of Republican senator Tim Scott and Caitlyn Jenner of offering an “unhinged reaction” to these
two high-profile people refusing to be compliant and conforming, and instead honoring the power of individualism and the American civil rights movements by daring to be themselves, no matter what the mob may demand. …
[T]he bigoted left … expect conformity and insist all Black people, gay people and transgender people think the same. That is what explicitly destroys the power of the individual, and the left reveals their putrid lie every time they condemn someone who acts on their truth.
There’s an anti-mask rant on LewRockwell.com taking aim at, among other things, “crowded cities” for “pil[ing] the Morons atop one another, engendering even more conformity.”
Townhall.com offers an equally strange rant about the Oscars, declaring that
Freedom and creativity are the enemy of the progressive political philosophy, where conformity is required or else. … That’s what Hollywood is now: a conformity factory.
White nationalist site Counter-Currents fumed that
The phrase “Liberal hivemind” is a familiar one. It is, also, unfortunately, the main clue as to why the Left has such crushing control over Western culture. They not only think identically, but they have also put in place a proxy social credit system that can enforce this conformity.
I could multiply examples almost endlessly but I’ll stop with this last one, in which anti-PC propagandist Roger Kimball offered a dire assessment of the world in a piece with the artlessly unsubtle title “Slow Suicide of the West.” He declares,
If being offended is grounds for interdicting speech then the goal is not tolerance, comrade, but conformity. And it is a short step from that realization to a bureaucracy whose primary aim is the enforcement of that conformity.
Kimball, best known as the author of a book-length polemic called Tenured Radicals, has been making this same argument over and over and over again for decades now.
Back then, instead of lambasting “woke conformists” Kimball and his comrades bashed the so-called “politically correct,” who were always supposedly on the verge of destroying higher education forever.
The words may have changed a little but it’s the same old tune. Get some new material, you conformists!
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This describes conservatives sooo much better than it describes the Left. So much projection…
Anyone who thinks the Left agree on everything has never spent 30 seconds with any actual leftists, that being about how long it usually takes before we start reenacting The Life of Brian.
It’s pretty difficult not to be conformist and also have a social life. Purely non-conformist groups don’t usually last long; people get irritated by a lot of the others and leave, and the remainder tend to be the most similar. Practical non-conformity means ignoring what the larger society tells you to do and instead do what’s right for you (when possible, and within ethical limits), and get involved with people who have similar preferences/needs/desires. That produces its own conformity within groups, but creates a greater diversity of groups.
That said, I think there’s a bit of difference of definitions here. “Non-conformity” as it’s being used means “failure to conform to the universal truth”, as if there were such a thing even among conservative groups.
The weirdest thing about this to me is the implied notion that beliefs can never be sincerely held. If two leftists believe the same thing, it’s because they’re trying to fit in and not because they’ve reached the same conclusion.
These are the same people who think Saul Alinsky is a major influence on the Left.
If beliefs can be sincerely held, and independently arrived at based on actual data, then conservatives can be proven wrong, and they can’t have that, now, can they?
@jsrtheta
Right? If it weren’t for my academic specialty, I’d’ve never heard of the dude. Most leftists I know couldn’t tell you who Saul Alisnky was if their lives depended on it.
You know what I love about feminist spaces? No one ever disagrees with anyone else. Trans spaces too. You never have one trans person disagreeing with another trans person. It just never happens. It’s soooooooo relaxing. I just can’t imagine how I could tolerate my life without this level of conformity.
This just in: Leftists all conformists, while right welcomes diversity of opinion. Meanwhile, polling numbers continue to show the right wing vote swinging behind the Tories while the left vote remains evenly divided among the People’s Liberation Front, the Liberation Front of the People, and the Front for the People’s Liberation, whose party leaders are all accusing each other of being insufficiently or insincerely left …
*sigh*
I’m reminded of this Key & Peele sketch.
Anyway, if we were such a Hive-Mind we would have taken over the world by now.
It’s sad that The Epoch Times are turning to skeptic bullshit when there are legitimate threats to China’s minorities and dissidents (and the same worldwide) that need addressing.
Sure, I think they do (read quickly some article about how Britain and Germany apparently were too influenced by and dependent on Beijing), but being “anti-woke” and living life to “own the libs” unfortunately has its supporters who engage in anti-Asian racism and does nothing to fight for freedom.
It should be noted conservative often get hysterical at the notion of immigrants or certain ethnic groups not conforming to fit in even the most aesthetic ways, cry about when cis men wear dresses and get horrified at the thought of many women not going the way of the housewife.
To be clear conforming or not conforming isn’t good by itself. Literal pedophiles can say they’re non-conformist in their desire to tuck children. Doesn’t mean their stance on fucking children is admirable.
One of the thing I immediatly note is that it’s *much*, *much*, *MUCH* easier to be non conformist in a city than in a village. In my 100k inhabitant suburb, nobody really feel the need to ask me questions or small talks, so I can not have to justify my lack of TV, my “passion above work” ethos, or my political views. [not that I am truly non-conformist, just a little less behold to standard than the average]
(also, as say Snowberry, your social life will alway be with people at least somewhat compatible with your views. Internet make that easier tho)
And yes, the level of projection in theses pieces is rather staggering.
Hang on … I thought leftists were weak because we have no unity, unlike the mighty right?
Is this conformity thing another one of the endless series of right-wing talking points released into the Fox/OANN/Breitbart echo chamber by the Heritage Foundation?
Conformity noun
con·for·mi·ty | \ kən-ˈfȯr-mə-tē
\
plural conformities
Definition of conformity
Correspondence in form, manner, or character with stuff I don’t like or agree with: agreement behaved in conformity with the beliefs of others, not mine
Re: Alisnky paranoia.
I saw that on Ponychan once. They were basically afraid of the potential of the rules for radicals. Well-poisoning with something no one was talking about.
Might want to ask Liz Cheney if the right welcomes non-conformity. Because she’s a right wing extremist who voted with Trump pretty much always and is getting shunned right now for not being Trumpy enough.
@Brony
It’s clear these clowns have neve actually read the book in question. It’s about as applicable to the modern world as The Book of Five Rings.
I always confuse Lew Rockwell (ancap) with George Lincoln Rockwell (dead American Nazi), and occasionally confuse either of them with Porter Rockwell (thug for Joseph Smith and later Brigham Young).
@ mabret the virile maiden
I only know this one.
@Dalillama
Well-poisoning about people is a retrospective impression. At the time I couldn’t even get to the point of usefulness. It was just the idea of “bad because potentially useful tactics” without a reason, which, what? I could see they didn’t like the people and that’s it.
@Brony
It’s basically just an antisemitic dogwhistle, same as yelling about George Soros.
Does this Rikki guy know how demonstrations work? Cause… usually many people attend the same one. If everybody had their own unique individual little demonstration just by themselves, that wouldn’t do much?
@Victorious Parasol: Fascists need their enemies to be simultaneously weak and incredibly powerful.