John Cleese has long enjoyed iconic status in the British entertainment industry, but when he tweeted that London ‘was not really an English city any more’, he was faced with an indignant outrage from the left that has traditionally been his political home. He was summarily labelled a racist and xenophobe but defended himself, tweeting
I suspect I should apologise for my affection for the Englishness of my upbringing, but in some ways I found it calmer, more polite, more humorous, less tabloid, and less money-oriented than the one that is replacing it.
Of course everyone outside the progressive bubbles knows that Cleese is not a racist. But by expressing a preference for English culture he fell foul of the moral relativism that prevails on the woke left. The modern, progressive doctrine is by some labelled as postmodernism, and is grounded in the postmodern rejection of the idea of objective, absolute moral truths or values. Postmodernists or moral relativists believe that morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and is not absolute.
As such, they refuse to criticise other cultures for behaviour they would find abhorrent in their own. This leads to the ubiquitous accusation of racism against anyone who do criticise. Disapproval of aspects of other cultures is interpreted as racism, because what else could be the cause? When Boris Johnson compares women wearing the Burka to letterboxes, he is a racist. Never mind that he in the same opinion piece directly supports the right of women to wear the Burka. Johnson is taking the traditionally liberal position of acceptance and tolerance, even of things you don’t agree with. He is attacking what many think is a symbol of patriarchal oppression. He is on the side of many traditional feminists. Besides the obvious political expediency, why is the left so outraged?
The paradox in woke moral relativism is of course that it doesn’t extend to the culture most of the liberal elite belong to themselves: Western culture. The criticism of Western culture has led some (most famously Professor Jordan B. Peterson) to label the postmodernists Cultural Marxists. Their doctrine is based on the philosophical school known as the Frankfurt School, a group of leftwing scholars who saw the overthrow of capitalism intrinsically linked to the fight against Western culture with its perceived hierarchies of race, gender, class and sexuality. Western culture’s sin is to rank at the top of the hierarchy of oppression, the arbitrary ranking of groups according to their perceived degree of victimhood. It divides groups along lines of oppressors and victims, with history seen as a power struggle between these groups and politics being the means to promote the victimized groups at the expense of the oppressors. Western culture, personified in the straight, white male, is the ultimate oppressor, tarnished by a history of imperialism and colonialism. The courtesy of being judged in historical context is not extended to Oxford benefactor Cecil Rhodes, George Washington or confederate statues – Western history is very much judged through the moral prism of 20th century wokeness. The consequences extend far beyond statues and history books. Witness the attacks on Joe Biden for his voting record or the broad support among Democratic Presidential candidates for reparations for slavery.
The radical left holds a view that the western world is inherently bad – that the US and the UK are based on immoral values and ill gotten gains. They may have bought into the postmodern idea that the demise of Western culture can facilitate the overthrow of capitalism, but there is a grotesque immorality in an ideology which has made criticism of various backwards cultures a sin and criticism of Western culture a virtue. Boris Johnson and John Cleese are on the right side when they express a preference for our liberal (in the European sense), open and tolerant way of life. Western culture – rooted in the Enlightenment and based on individualism, reason, free markets, capitalism and tolerance of other ways of life – should of course be recognised as morally superior to many regressive, backwards cultures elsewhere in the world. Those who prefer to live in Western culture should be lauded for their liberalism, not labelled as racists and xenophobes.