Am I really to the right of Genghis Khan?
Left and right are not necessarily opposites. By this I mean that to be an avowed opponent of communism and its sclerotic twin, socialism, Corbynism and other equally malign leftist manifestations, does not make someone right-wing. I have always believed this to be true, but I’m glad to say I now have independent, concrete proof.
In today’s world anyone who rejects left-liberal orthodoxy is de factolabelled a fascist. To be un-woke is to be a Nazi. For example, if you opine that Islam doesn’t altogether appear to be the religion of peace that its proponents claim it is, you are automatically branded a racist. Or if you remark that Greta Thunberg puts you in mind of some menacing child in a Stephen King horror story — a “Carrie” of the environmental lobby — and that she should stop hectoring us and get on with her schoolwork, you’ll be condemned as a shameless despoiler of the planet.
But even before the onslaught of all this deadening political correctness and the tyranny of the thought police, I’ve had to put up with lefties (almost all family members and most friends) telling me (only half jokingly) that I was “to the right of Genghis Khan”. Yes, that hoary old chestnut. They always decided, without much need for discussion, that to disagree with their so-called progressive views was to be a hopeless reactionary. Patiently, I would humour them. Genghis Khan, sure! I was born in Hungary, so the great invader is probably an ancestor, it’s in the genes. Oh wait a minute, maybe that was Attila the Hun…
Not long ago I was talking to a friend (alarm bell: she’s a Londoner who works in the media) and expressed scepticism about the many children nowadays who are “identifying” as a different gender to the one they were “assigned” at birth (even the nomenclature used is absurd). I bemoaned the ill-advised new gender-neutral public toilets and those Amazonian women, formerly big hairy men, who predictably thrash actual biological women in competitive sports.
But most of my scorn was reserved for the shrill, militant trans activists who attempt to silence anyone critical of them. I didn’t expect much sympathy from my friend, reckoning that she would probably put forward the usual left-liberal counter-arguments. Instead she peered at me with consternation and stated simply: “You’re pretty right-wing, aren’t you?” Sigh.
But that shouldn’t have surprised me. After all, this was the same friend who, on another occasion, when I spoke admiringly of a picturesque English cathedral city and said I could see myself living there, responded with a disapproving grimace and the words: “But it’s very white.” (She is white herself, by the way.)
Could you conceive of two black people discussing the desirability of living in a certain place and one of them slamming it for being “too black”? Or the same scenario played out between two Indians, two Chinese people or two Eskimos? Me neither. But white people aren’t supposed to inhabit a “too white” demographic environment these days. Not even accidentally, in a nominally white country. And my question is: how have we become so patently deranged?
While I am clearly no fan of the inane orthodoxies of woke-ism and the relentless obsession with identity politics, please don’t call me right-wing. I’ve always known I wasn’t and now I’m not the only one saying so. You see, I took the respected Political Compass test, that international test which, according to its mission statement, “profiles political personalities applicable to all democracies”.
It comprises a lengthy online questionnaire in which your views on social, political and economic matters are probed. Your answers are then analysed and you are placed into one of four categories: right authoritarian, left authoritarian, right libertarian and left libertarian.
Some of the questions didn’t need much thought from me. For example, in response to the proposition “Schools should not make classroom attendance compulsory,” naturally I ticked the “strongly disagree” box. No hesitation there. But I took my time and reflected carefully over some of the more intricate questions, determined to be as sincere as possible. At the end of it all, I was keen to learn where my opinions and values lay on the political compass.
Reader, they put me down as a left libertarian. I don’t mind admitting it came as a bit of a shock. I had never before been described as left anything. But there you have it — a clear demonstration that I am hardly an authoritarian right-winger. And that’s despite my ticking “strongly agree” to the notion that, for the most serious crimes, the death penalty should be applied. That’s right, in addition to Genghis I’ve also been lumped together with the 17th century “Hanging Judge” Jeffreys. Ah well, let the people have their little jokes.
