The Uniparty Declares War on Free Speech

Texas Governor Greg Abbott shares the same totalitarian impulse as Antifa.

Photo by AP

Earlier this month, the Belgian offshoot of Antifa—with the backing of the local mayors of Brussels—attempted to shut down a gathering of National Conservatives (NatCon), whose views in support of Israel and against mass migration it considered outside the ever-nebulous “Overton Window”. This week Texas Governor Greg Abbott unleashed the might of Texas State Troopers to crack down on and arrest student protestors at the University of Texas Austin, whose anti-Israel views he similarly deems outside acceptable political discourse, namely because they contradict his stance on the Gaza War.

These two seemingly disparate episodes occurring days apart on both sides of the Atlantic are both revealing and especially alarming as they show how the Woke Left and liberal Establishment politicians like Greg Abbott and Adam Schiff are unwitting allies against free speech, ostensible opponents engaged in a multi-front assault against our civil liberties and part of the same Schmittian dialectic that characterizes our zeitgeist.

They represent competing factions in the same elite power structure and subscribe to a similar exclusionary political ideology and authoritarian tendencies: reward friends and punish enemies. Their shared goal is the erosion of Free Speech protections in Western societies, and they are all too willing to use force and intimidation to achieve it.

Antifa’s False Consciousness

Antifa is a strange phenomenon because it represents itself as the antithesis of something that, if it even exists, lacks actual political power. It is not as if organized paramilitary units sporting brown shirts are stalking the streets of Europe and America. On the contrary, this self-claiming anti-fascist movement operates in an environment where such ostensibly anti-establishment, regime-threatening “fascists” are conspicuously absent.

As pro-Antifa academic Jonathan Arlow has observed, Antifa can function “in the absence of effective extreme right forces”, because “anti-fascism acts as a form of prophylactic action” to prevent or preempt the emergence of a potentially “far-right movement” in the future. As such, the purpose of Antifa activism would be “to deny political space to extreme right micro-groups before they become a popular force or a more serious political threat,” or so goes the rationale.

Preventing the mutation of a non-existent political movement into one that exists as a “popular force” is a performative exercise. Its righteousness is communicated through the hysterical practice of a politics of fear that is driven to raise the alarm constantly. Like superstitious societies that adopt rituals to ward off evil, the international Antifa movement continually insists that its intimidatory practices are designed to prevent the emergence of a malevolent political force.

The Woke Left and the Woke Right represent competing factions in the same elite power structure and subscribe to a similar exclusionary political ideology and authoritarian tendencies.

As it happens the activism of Antifa does not require the presence of genuine fascists. Yet Antifa continually conveys the impression that fascism constitutes a clear and present danger. This is because it has arrogated to itself the authority to expand the meaning of “fascism” and “the far right” to cover anyone and any movements that it dislikes—from protesting farmers fighting for their livelihood to gender-critical feminists concerned about the future status of women. In this respect, it benefits from a cultural climate in which political and social movements that question the cultural and political outlook of the ruling elites are invariably assigned the label of far-right or fascist.

It is therefore not surprising that scaremongering about fascists and the far right has become a normal feature of the political and cultural landscape of the Western world. Such labels are not only routinely applied to describe conservative parties but also to pathologize any group that challenges the normative assumptions and the general worldview of the ruling elites.

Antifa and its supporters justify their crude rhetoric and incitements on the basis that anti-fascists supposedly possess the moral high ground, allowing them to do whatever it takes to crush their enemies. Earlier this month, their contempt for democracy was on open display during their collective campaign to prevent the National Conservative (NatCon) conference in Brussels from taking place. As the Belgian League of Human Rights, an organization that worked hand-in-glove with Antifa, stated:

Freedom of speech may indeed apply to everyone, within the limits of the law, but that does not mean we have to open our home to the far-right.

For those who apply the concept of “human rights” selectively, the mere reference to the “far-right” serves as a justification for denying people the freedom of assembly.

Liberal Authoritarianism and the American Uniparty

A similar phenomenon can be observed by the liberal establishment politicians seeking to protect the bipartisan status quo in the United States—only here the specter of the “far-right” is replaced by “hate speech” and “anti-Semitism”. Similar to the dishonest tactics employed by Antifa International or the BLM to demonize all their opponents as the “far-right” or “white supremacist”, U.S. establishment politicians justify their violent crackdowns against peaceful student protestors on the grounds of the alleged “anti-Semitism” or “racism” of dissidents.

The Establishment's push to create a false equivalency between any criticism of the state of Israel and advocating violence against America’s Jewish citizens is not a new development. It also marks the further entrenchment of Diversity and Inclusion policies usually associated with the woke progressive Left—as evidenced by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ decree that created a special category for Jewish students which parallels the Left’s penchant for conferring privileged status on the People of Color or non-heterosexuals. This is the Conservative Inc.-liberal corollary to the victimist narratives generally perpetuated by Left-liberals.

Pro-Antifa voices and the Uniparty-champion Greg Abbott both promote the authoritarian ideals of quasi-Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse and his contempt for tolerance.

In instrumentalizing the specter of “anti-Semitism” or even “anti-Zionism” for more administrative controls, the woke Right has thus found a more mainstream form of identitarianism (in contradistinction with White racialism brewing on its online fringe) with which to justify its censorship regime, matching the woke Left’s gender and race-fueled cancel culture. Supposedly this charge alone is enough to strip them of their rights as American citizens, permitting state administrators to deny them the right to free speech and free assembly, recalling the brutal crackdowns against anti-Vietnam War campus protests of 1968. By weaponizing language in this way, the ruling elite (from both parties) thus dehumanizes its opponents, rejects all dissension as hateful insurrection, engages in Schmittian politics of us and them, and explicitly violates the founding principles of democratic politics.

Sadly, the ruling class’s contempt for freedom and democracy mirrors not only Antifa’s but that of the historical totalitarians of the 1930s. As the academic and defender of Antifa Mark Bray recently wrote: “Antifascists and fascists have one thing in common: an illiberal disdain for the confines of mainstream politics”. In practice, however, the woke elites’ and the liberal political establishment’s true aim is to exercise total control over language and the boundaries of mainstream politics, to the exclusion of dissenting opinions. As such, both movements fundamentally despise republican constitutional principles and regard its minority protections, a pillar of democratic decision-making, with contempt.

In instrumentalizing the specter of “anti-Semitism” for more administrative controls, the woke Right has found a more mainstream form of identitarianism with which to justify its censorship regime.

To put it more plainly, both movements are as one in possessing a contemptuous attitude toward democratic politics, something they share with totalitarian movements of the 20th century. They are hostile to the liberal ideal of tolerance and free speech. The crux of this anti-democratic attitude is the rejection of historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s line (often misattributed to Voltaire): I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. From this perspective, opponents are perceived as enemies who must be crushed and stripped of the rights enjoyed by their compatriots in a democratic polity.

The woke progressive and liberal establishment’s contempt for free speech and tolerance also echoes the sentiments expressed by Herbert Marcuse, the quasi-Marxist philosopher of the 1960s Counter-revolution. In his critique of what he characterized as “repressive tolerance”, Marcuse leaped effortlessly from denouncing capitalist cultural domination to advocating the suppression of views that he found objectionable. Indeed, he explicitly called for “the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements” that spread “aggressive policies” or “discrimination on the grounds of race and religion”. It is plain to see how the pro-Antifa Bray and the Uniparty-champion Abbott both promote the authoritarian ideals of Marcuse.

Unfortunately, Antifa’s rejection of the ideal of tolerance and free speech is widely shared by many of the dominant cultural and political institutions in America, including establishment politicians like Republican Greg Abbott and Democratic Congressmen Adam Smith and Adam Schiff. Policing speech has become common and widely institutionalized, and it is increasingly normal to censor dissenting opinions—using the pretext that they are “offensive”, constitute “hate speech”, or mask foreign propaganda. Both the supporters of Antifa and liberal establishment politicians now regularly reject our constitutionally-protected speech based on the recurrent paranoia that such discourse helps to hide hate speech, foreign election interference, or fascism.

The existence of Antifa and Woke politics depends on the present Establishment itself—one that creates a dialectic within which the status quo is sustained and genuine challengers are either silenced or excluded entirely.

The widespread influence of such intolerant sentiments has created a climate where anti-democratic attitudes enjoy formidable support, represented both by establishment politicians and their woke challengers. That is why contrary to appearances Antifa lacks the genuine radicalism usually associated with anti-establishment political movements. On the contrary, the existence of Antifa and Woke politics depends on the present Establishment itself—one that either overtly supports the former’s overarching ideology or engages in similar tactics to silence free expression, thereby creating an ersatz or performative cultural and political dialectic within which the status quo is sustained and genuine challengers are either silenced or excluded entirely.

Fascisto-liberals: Antifa’s True Other

While Antifa serves as the cultural stormtroopers of the progressive elites, the liberal political establishment has openly abandoned its customary lip service to free speech and endorsed full crackdowns on dissenting protestors under the garb of fighting “hate speech”, “anti-Semitism”, “disinformation” or even Vladimir Putin. In doing so, liberal administrative elites from New York to Los Angeles to Austin have revealed their affinity for and symbiotic relationship with the woke, progressive elites, even as they are engaged in a public struggle against them over the level and nature of American support for Israel.

But lurking beneath the fight over the ceasefire in Gaza is an internal power struggle within the professional-managerial class to control the machinery of the state and over the correct (progressive or conservative) interpretation of liberal ideology.

By weaponizing language, the ruling elite dehumanizes its opponents, rejects all dissension as hateful insurrection, engages in Schmittian politics of us and them, and explicitly violates the founding principles of democratic politics.

Almost a century ago, British author H.G. Wells dreamed of a totalitarian form of liberalism that could be as ruthless as fascism in rejecting the “dilatory indecisiveness” of democracy for effective organization, but retain the utopian and melioristic elements of liberalism and its desire for the full transformation of society—utilizing the modern state to cultivate its new man:

I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis…They must begin as a disciplined sect, but they must end as the sustaining organization of a reconstituted mankind.

The nationwide crackdown on student protests led and supported by many members of America’s bipartisan Establishment, or the Uniparty, to suppress speech in clear violation of the First Amendment, indicates both that H.G. Well’s enduring aspiration for liberal fascists is nearly at hand and that the woke Antifa is finally getting its long-awaited fascistic Other.

Antifa’s role in the current zeitgeist is to create a climate of fear to justify mobilization against the supposed threat posed by the “far-right”. In the past, Antifa’s efforts at canceling or silencing its opponents were, often ostensibly in the interest of public safety, aided and abetted by a political establishment equally fearful of hearing opposing views. The Uniparty’s reaction to these protests is indeed dangerously reminiscent of how the Neocon and internationalist establishment exploited a politics of fear to target the Left-Right anti-war voices in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

The securitization of language and the mass mobilization of riot police against peaceful, albeit strange and performative, student sit-ins in American colleges shows that even the woke progressives can become a target of the wrath of the modern state when the liberal establishment comes to fear its future hold on power.

Lurking beneath the fight over the ceasefire in Gaza is an internal power struggle within the professional-managerial class to control the machinery of the state and the correct interpretation of liberal ideology.

And here, as was the case in the Brussels mayors’ campaigns to cancel NatCon, it is the fabricated threat to safety and public order that masquerades the political project of silencing dissident views. Even when they find themselves on different sides, the Antifa and their Fascisto-liberal counterparts represent different arms of the same force that is waging total war on free expression and viewpoint diversity—both using a very similar playbook and believing it just, and even moral, to censor the dissenting voices they wish did not exist.

In Defense of Free Speech Absolutism

Defending the civil liberties of all, without compromise and to its full extent, is the only way to ensure that Western societies remain true to the ideals of constitutional government. This is only possible by cultivating tolerance of alternative viewpoints as a foundational value for Western societies. Some might use the chaos and ugliness of protests or their alleged risk to public order to rationalize shutting them down. But as Aldous Huxley observed, “The Will to Order can make tyrants out of those who merely aspire to clean up a mess. The beauty of tidiness is used as justification for despotism.”

The Uniparty’s securitized reaction to student protests is dangerously reminiscent of how the Neocon and internationalist establishment exploited a politics of fear to target the Left-Right anti-war voices in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

With the eruption of student protests in the United States and the heavy-handed response from the police and state authorities, we are treated to the spectacle where Antifa’s censorship from below converges with the State’s authority from above. Some may argue that the same people who have demanded the censoring of Zionist voices and the so-called “far right” in the past are now suffering the consequences of their own intolerance against others, as the authorities block their right to voice their criticism of Israel.

But this should be a timely reminder to all sides that once civilian rights are forfeited and the power of suppression and totalitarian controls are given to the state, it will be near-impossible to rein in the state’s exercise of its new powers regardless of one’s political loyalties.

That Antifa represents a threat to our right to free speech and assembly is not in doubt. But the threat to freedom is not confined to these overzealous activists. Antifa’s playbook is based on an increasingly authoritarian script devised by intersectional theorists, legal scholars, and many elites of the Anglo-American political establishment. These folks have developed and institutionalized arguments asserting that freedom needs to be regulated to protect those groups, which at any given time, the state might deem “vulnerable”.

They invented the concept of “hate speech”—as they did “disinformation”—to allow for the systematic policing of language, narrowing the range of acceptable opinion. Now there is even talk of federally-mandated “speech monitors” at U.S. universities to combat anti-Semitism. Once the policing of speech is accepted as the new normal, it is only a matter of time before the freedom of assembly too is abridged by the forces of law and order.

If these draconian measures against our civil liberties become precedent and are placed in the hands of the state bureaucracy, we could enter a dystopian, Orwellian world of doublespeak in which free speech is “hate speech”, protest is “insurrection”, and normal democratic deliberation is “foreign disinformation”. The ultimate result will be to cast, even celebrate, our new slavery as freedom.