Noah Berlatsky is a freelance writer; he lives in Chicago.
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Liberal centrists are fond of horseshoe theory—the idea that the political spectrum is curved, so that if you go far enough left, or far enough right, you end up in the same place of totalitarianism, intolerance, and violence. Horseshoe theory is misleading though. Fascists make efforts to recruit across
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Everyone hates identity politics. Leftists like Walter Benn Michaels argue that antiracism, feminism, and LGBT rights movements divide and undermine the real liberatory battles by emphasizing individual identity rather than universal working class solidarity. Liberals like Mark Lilla, meanwhile, make much the same argument, fretting that identity politics emphasizes difference
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“I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it,” Beatrice Evelyn Hall wrote in her 1906 biography of Voltaire. Her words conveying Voltaire’s attitude have become one of the most quoted, and most valorized, summations of liberal principles. Unfortunately, the statement