The progressives demonising Roger Scruton are nothing but power hungry Philistines
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Roger Scruton is used to witch-hunts. In the 1980s, as a lecturer at Birkbeck College and the editor of the Salisbury Review, he was pilloried for publishing a controversial article by Ray Honeyford, a headmaster in Bradford, questioning the benefits of multicultural education. Very quickly, his conservative opinions and his editorship put a term to his academic career.
For a few days now, Sir Roger Scruton (as he now is) has been subjected to another of those left-wing human hunts. Recently appointed by the government to lead the new government commission on “building beautiful” homes, he has been suddenly deemed unfit for the job by an army of progressive bien-pensants, who, discovering texts he had published years ago, denounced him for thought crimes: Islamophobia, homophobia, sexism, and anti-Semitism.
Today’s episode is interesting because it follows the usual pattern — and is yet new. What hasn’t changed is the fact that those progressives are intolerant. They don’t see any contradiction in the fact that they praise tolerance all the time, but of course never apply it when it comes to dealing with their ideological opponents.
Some other things have changed, though. Back in the 1980s, progressives were not so sensitive; today, they feel constantly hurt and offended by conservatives. Dubbed “snowflakes” by some commentators, they seem to be so thin-skinned for many reasons – one being, as demonstrated by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in their excellent new book The Coddling of the American Mind, that younger generations have grown up in a very protective environment. This over-protection has made them much more sensitive to various life’s circumstances, including the encounter with new ideas. The less they are exposed to views that diverge from theirs, the more their feelings may be hurt by them. This is a vicious circle.
There is something else in Scruton’s persecution: like many others, it has been orchestrated by a digital army. On social networks, activists keep waiting for the next victim, whose past statements can be excavated at the very best moment. Then they gather very quickly and at a very low cost, growing almost instantly into a powerful mob. It is not the expression of spontaneous outrage: it is a powerfully staged and organised campaign.
That’s why the commentators who interpret these witch-hunts only as “snowflake” hysteria miss another dimension: ideological witch-hunts are mainly a means to gain power. If progressives go after conservatives much more than the other way around, it is because progressives are much more confident in their worldview. Not only do they have more power than conservatives in virtually all aspects of public life, but digital tools give them the means to use it in a peculiarly destructive way. That’s why, when conservatives are attacked, they don’t fight back but retreat or apologise. That is also why, when conservatives don’t retreat, they gather enormous support – look at Jordan Peterson. We need to stop considering the progressive activists only as a bunch of poor sensitive people who cannot bear dissent because they are vulnerable. Of course they are, but it is only one side of the story. We need to see them for what they are: people striving for power.
Last but not least, and very strikingly, Scruton’s opponents seem to be much more ignorant than their leftist predecessors. The politicians and journalists who have condemned Scruton have quoted sentences from his texts completely out of their context, sometimes making gross misinterpretations. They haven’t read any of his books, and they don’t seem able to understand them at all. Those people seem to consider books as an accumulation of tweets that can be picked randomly and republished as “statements”. Well, big news: a book is not a collection of tweets, but an argument. It takes time to write and read, and it is an invitation to dialogue, not to shut others up. Although Roger Scruton is one of the most brilliant conservative philosophers in the Anglosphere, his opponents are unable to grasp it, because they conflate the quality of an argument and the ability to agree or disagree with it. In a word, they are Philistines.
Their outrage is all the more incredible as they don’t realise how much Scruton’s thought matters, not only in this country, but on a global level. Scruton is not the Little Englander people would like to see. He has strong links with France, Eastern Europe, and the US. He has a vast knowledge of the philosophical, cultural and political history of Europe. And I bet that he knows this Continent much better than most of the people who have decided to take him down, although they pretend to be much more open minded and tolerant than he is. Today, Scruton is a source of inspiration for many European thinkers, including French ones. In France, in recent years, he has helped revived conservative thought. You can obviously disagree with him on some or many topics, depending on your own views, but you cannot treat him as a bigot.
Among my favourite Scrutonian arguments is the idea that people who demonise Western civilisation rely enormously on that civilisation to be able to do so, because it protects and cherishes freedom and dissent. Similarly, the very people who demonise Scruton don’t know how much their country and their culture – both British and European – owe him. The worse sin they commit is not their will to power or their ignorance, but their ingratitude.
Today’s activists, though, don’t seem to realise with whom they are dealing. Roger Scruton is an extraordinary man, who has a skin thicker than they will ever have. He proved it in the statement he published on Wednesday, explaining that he was the one who was offended by the accusations made against him. In doing so, he used the very weapon that the supposed snowflakes like to use: offense. It was a very Scrutonian move, both assertive and ironic. But it was more than that; it was welcome advice to every honest conservative under wrongful attack: never surrender, never retreat, never apologise.
