Who is permitted to offer an opinion outside of the Overton Window?

Do the little people get a say? Or are they just meant to do and die, and not bother their betters with any impudent queries in the meantime?

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

This [an op-ed Szeps authored questioning the relevance of WorldPride being spiked] is taking place at a time at which the ABC is the official broadcast partner of pride, at which the lobby is festooned with rainbow flags, at which every other promo on the network is tune in for the pride parade; in which every other presenter on the station, all of them straight, have their shows replete with diverse gender guests, all talking about how great pride is. But the one gay presenter is not allowed to pipe up and question this orthodoxy because to do so would be to express an opinion about a controversial cultural event. That was when it was apparent to me that it’s not that you can’t express an opinion, it’s that it has to be management’s position.
Josh Szeps, quoted by Christine Middap, The Australian, 23/8/24

Who gets to decide what’s offensive?

We know who gets to decide, of course. Elites do. At the moment, that means the clique of university-educated, cosmopolitan social-justice types who set the tone in the arts, media, HR, public policy and mainstream politics. In other words, people like me.

But we won’t be in charge forever. If the populist right that’s roiling Europe and Trumpland makes its way to Australia, offensive speech may no longer be defined as targeting migrants and trans people and people of colour. It could be defined as content that demeans white Australian history, contaminates cultural unity or attacks family values. It’s happened in Italy. It almost just happened in France. Brexit happened. Trump happened. These movements get their mojo by posturing against the censoriousness of the puritanical left. 
Josh Szeps, SMH, 24/8/24

Some years ago, when he was the age I now am, I interviewed Christopher Hitchens. He was promoting a memoir detailing his transmogrification from iconoclastic Marxist to bellicose neocon.

Especially in recent weeks, I’ve been wondering if I’ve succumbed to that form of political madness that often afflicts men during their fifties. In my darker moments, I take some small comfort in the knowledge there’s a growing collection of fellow heterodox thinkers. Many of whom are, inexplicably, not stale, pale, heterosexual males.

Szeps and I share some educational and occupational similarities. Up until six months ago, I even lived in the same Greens-voting, inner-city (Sydney) elitist neighbourhood as he does. But like some rather more high-profile unorthodox thinkers – Nellie Bowles, Tim Dillon, Andrew Doyle (aka Titania McGrath), Douglas Murray, Andrew Sullivan, Peter Thiel, Bari Weiss, Peter Whittle – Szeps isn’t straight. Neither does the self-described “gay Jew” appear to be pining for a lost Mad Men Eden where all straight white men – in other words, people like me – endlessly lorded it over every other group. (Apparently, all this unchecked patriarchal power didn’t come with any commensurately burdensome responsibilities – happy times!)   

Characteristically, Australia is lagging the pack but there’s a growing collection of free thinkers in the US, UK and Europe. Some of them, such as Szeps’ old mate Joe Rogan, are so popular and influential that it seems odd to describe them as countercultural dissidents. But that’s what they remain. No matter how many people listen to Rogan’s podcast, he is forever exiled to the disreputable Far Right/racist/homophobic/transphobic/anti-vax margins as far as respectable, if collapsing, legacy media outlets are concerned.

That’s because Rogan expresses views that haven’t been approved by management.

I believe in free speech… but
Fortunately, pretty much everyone claims to support free speech.

Unfortunately, there’s usually a “but” buried in there somewhere.

Even free-speech absolutists don’t believe in untrammelled free speech. Nobody sane is arguing people should be free to incite violence, for instance. But people – not least people on the Left – used to be much more comfortable with vigorous debate than they presently are.

There’s a narrow and predictable set of beliefs that educated individuals are now permitted to express, and a wide range of outré opinions that are very much verboten in polite society.

There’s no personal or professional cost you’re likely to incur as an ABC employee for, I dunno, suggesting Australia roll out the welcome mat for Gazan refugees few other nations want to take. (And some of whom may have expressed merely rhetorical support for Hamas.)

Likewise, you can write an AFR article advocating Australia quintuple its population and still go on to land a plum job at the national broadcaster. I suspect if you wrote an article suggesting Australia reduce its immigration intake by 80 per cent, your employment prospects would be rather bleaker.

Here are some piquant stats from an Ipsos survey released earlier this year:

·      A third (34%) of Australians believe ‘Australia would be stronger if we stopped immigration’. [This must mean stop it completely. At least half, and often significantly more than half, of Australians report wanting substantial cuts to migration] 

·      Half (50%) of Australians believe ‘our society is broken’ 

·      More than half (57%) of Australians agree that ‘traditional parties and politicians don’t care about people like me’

·      Two-thirds (65%) of Australians believe ‘the economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful’

·      Two-thirds (67%) of Australians believe that ‘Australia needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful’

As an aside, because Australians aren’t (yet) quite as despairing as their foreign counterparts, at least on some metrics, an Ipsos Australia Director cheerily proclaimed:

We are not as consumed by the idea of Australia being as ‘broken’ as many other countries, and we’re less likely to agree that our elected representatives do not have our interests at heart. We’re also less concerned than other parts of the world that immigrants are threatening our well-being. Both of these results are reassuring and speak to the health of our political system and economy. 

Members of the nation’s governing class may wish to consider if they have been living in a Potemkin Village. One that’s scheduled for imminent demolition.

Who’s got the conch?  
In a piece entitled Step One Is Still Admitting There’s a Problem, Oren Cass recently noted the Left “have become the institutionalists making the case to preserve the status quo ante”. As he reports:

Thoughtful, heterodox folks on the Left have a unique lament: You guys on the Right are lucky, they will say. There’s no ideological enforcement. You can actually have these fights out. On our side, step out of line and you get shot… don’t look for introspection, or rethinking, or any new direction. The ideology and policy proposals of leading Republicans would be unrecognizable to their counterparts just a decade earlier. The Democrats? Well, their convention may as well be happening in 2008.

Here’s Chris Uhlmann, in The Australian, 24/8/24:
So what does it mean to be Liberal in the 21st century and what kind of Australia does Dutton want to see?… Maybe it is time to dust off the liberal foundation stones and highlight the timeless ideas of individual freedom and personal choice… That everyone’s rights and dignity should be respected but robust free speech is central to a healthy democracy.

And Parnell Palme McGuinness, SMH, 25/8/24:
So to recap, having thrown some of the worst possible accusations at their political opponents – that they are prejudiced against others on account of their ethnicity, that they systematically intimidate and undermine others, and that they hate women – these proponents of a kinder, gentler politics would now like politics to become more civil, pretty please…

Ridicule exposes dimwitted proposals and knocks the foolish edges off imperfect plans. Only weak ideas and the intellectually ill-equipped seek protection from this process…

Politics doesn’t need to become more gentle; it needs to be smarter. Parliament doesn’t need to be kinder; it needs to be more ruthlessly devoted to exposing policy folly. The teals are right to demand better behaviour in Parliament House. Let’s hope they start with themselves.

What comes next?
This humble blog largely concerns itself with two groups who’ve done rather well out of the social and economic liberalism of the last four decades – Boomers and members of the professional-managerial class. (If you’re a PMC Boomer, well played to you, Sir/Madam – you appear to have won the historical lottery.)  

Members of both groups have a high opinion of themselves. I’ll resist the temptation to weigh in on whether that high opinion is justified. But I will note those of other generations and classes typically don’t believe it is.

If I had my business writer hat on, I’d say both cohorts have surrounded themselves with yes men, complacently underpriced risk, and are headed into a severe market correction (i.e. a once-in-a-half-century political realignment).

The only question now is how painful the ‘Far Right Populist’ reordering of Anglosphere societies is going to be for those demographics who’ve so heedlessly pursued their self-interest – be it with housing markets or mass migration/asymmetrical multiculturalism – for so very long.

Rota Fortunae
Szeps is right about two things.

Since completing their long march through the institutions, PMC cosmopolitans have enjoyed overwhelming success in setting the tone, and then viciously policing that tone. One might even argue today’s culturally influential progressives have long been enforcing an orthodoxy just as stifling as the one they still imagine themselves to be heroically rebelling against. 

But as Szeps observed, no political victory or defeat is ever final. If that were the case, we would have long ago reached the End of History. Long-venerated belief systems are often abruptly hurled on the ash heap of history. Especially when there is a circulation of elites.  

If bobos and Boomers do find themselves on the outs after the transition from neoliberalism to neopopulism, they’ll soon discover free speech is especially important for those marginalised groups that rarely get to set the societal tone. Here’s hoping they will still have the right to voice a contrarian opinion if the time ever comes when they want to.