With this background, I am—perhaps understandably—hypersensitive to the emerging far Left in Western politics. I can’t help noticing similarities in the rhetoric about “eradicating inequality,” “smashing the class system,” and a new age of “radical egalitarianism.” And when I do, I shudder.
I shudder because such people no longer appreciate what they have in the West: one of the most prosperous, free, fair, equal, tolerant, peaceful, and open societies not just in the world today but in the entire history of our species. This isn’t an abstract point about the ungrateful youth of today, it’s a reminder of the unforgiving reality that those who don’t realise how good they have it, or take their lives of plenty for granted, are vulnerable to demagogic ideologies that promise to tear it all down to build a ‘better tomorrow’ just as the founders of the Soviet Union did before them.
I shudder because I know that an environment in which anyone who does not hold the correct political views is ostracised can eat away at the heart of what makes Western society a beacon of hope to the rest of the world: the fact that we value free speech and individual autonomy above anything else, including material or practical considerations.
*And anyone who insists "That wasn't REAL Communism/Socialism" can go sit in a corner with a superglued-on dunce hat
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