The Cultural Suicide of the Institutional Left Has Entered Its Final Stages

At the height of pandemic hysteria, a group of people who share none of my ideological priors began to sound a warning that struck me as being precisely on point. Writing in the field of “choice architecture,” public health scholars warned that shaming, shunning, threats, and emotionally framed demands directed at the unvaccinated made them much more likely to refuse the mRNA products that were being marketed as vaccines. What works to produce a desired behavioral outcome, they argued, is a mix of incentives and calm, reasoned argument: convincing, not coercing. YOU REPULSIVE ANTI-VAXXER TRASH, WHY AREN’T YOU DOING WHAT WE TELL YOU, DISGUSTING LOW-STATUS MORON weirdly turned out to not win a whole lot of converts.

The entire institutional left has fallen into that hole, and it’s dying. Rapidly. The cultural turn to coercion and shaming is nearing its apogee, which means that it’s nearing its absolute, irrecoverable collapse.

Now, I regard the American institutional left as more institutional than left — a set of entrenched postures and instincts aimed at preserving the privileges of the technocratic managerial class, rather than an ideological project aimed at restructuring the power relationships they play at attacking. I talk about “left” and “right” because that’s how the players line up on the field, but I see the limits of those terms in the current discussion. Consider those terms shorthand for a battle over rice bowls, and this observation sounds like my own thoughts repeated to me in more eloquent language than I usually manage:

Cartels using threats and coercion to protect the interests of the patrons and clients who organize around the fruits of the cartelization. ‘Merica!

But what’s astonishing to watch is the complete cultural collapse of the political cartels. If you don’t remember it, spend a few minutes searching up the “mainstream” messaging from April about that monster Pete Hegseth. He was done, finished, ruined, out. His departure from government was inevitable and imminent, without the slightest question. Any Democratic Party elected official you can think of, down to the local dogcatcher, posted their “Pete Hegseth must resign” video. Mark Warner posted a bunch of them, frantically.

Pete Hegseth MUST resign! We’re not taking no for an answer! He’s DONE! He’s OUT! He’s FINISHED! We DEMAND IT RIGHT N—

Anyway, Hegseth is still there. They’ve become very loud and entirely impotent. Currently, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is the most horriblest monster in the history of the universe, and he absolutely must resign right this moment or else. Check back on that one in a few months, because I know what bet I’m taking.

The institutional "left” is impotent because they’ve completely abandoned the language of persuasion and reason, instead embracing coercion, shaming, shunning, and thought-policing with a completeness that would embarrass an NKVD commander. They are ordering you to comply!

The dangerous and low-status far-right is currently pouncing and seizing on a crimethink-to-notice unfortunate incident, and this is a political maneuver that must not be permitted.

Citizen, this is not to be seen! It is far-right to seize upon this! Cease the consideration of this image!

Animals respond to the suffering of other animals. Watch your cat respond to the sound of a cat screaming in pain somewhere out on the other side of the screen door. Any random jackrabbit has more sense than an editor at the New York Times. This topic will not be narrative-enforced into disappearance. And so the narrative enforcement technique of declaring the murder of Iryna Zarutska to be a far-right concern has an enormous accidental effect, especially if you fit it into a long pattern of similarly framed incidents: If this causes you concern and dismay, you are not on the respectable institutional left. If this bothers you, you’re over there with those people! (pause) Wait, where are you going?

There is crime data that must not be released, because it will lead people to the wrong conclusion. There is public health data that must not be released, because it will lead people to the wrong conclusion. You must not think of this. You must cease this discussion. The far-right seizes on this!

Stop looking at data, obey the authorities!

You are watching an entire cultural model die. It’s a suicide. And the people who are carrying out that cultural suicide just keep trying to make it happen a lot faster. I have faith in their ability to succeed.