Intersectionality has been a buzzword used by the hard Left to slyly erase inconvenient differences in their chaotic movement. It was the ameliorator of unresolvable dilemmas. Now it has become an unspoken doctrine of the self-appointed right-leaning Twitterati and the supercilious, tolerant (read ‘Lib-Dem in disguise’) Tory elite. If you are one of these—lower your eyebrows, stop liking that annoyingly funny meme posted by Elon Musk, cease fawning over Liz Truss’s latest piece of soon-to-be-reduced-in-Waterstones literature—and read on. Simply put, self-proclaimed conservatives will now accept bedfellows of the strangest kinds, based on their mutual attachment to basic beliefs.
Here I am not referring to the diplomacy of accepting new converts to the political conversation. I am talking about the blind desperation for alliance in a world of untrue truths and transient ideologies—a world where companionship follows the hoof-marks of a rare and ill-defined beast that frequently rears its delinquent head in political circles: the often misappropriated ‘Overton Window.’
In substantial conversations about conservatism, we should hope to hear appeals to such tenets as goodness, truth, or beauty. We might hear plaudits for the greatest achievements of faith, reason, art, and architecture—all the positive characteristics of human ambition, tempered by a love for family.
Since the bloody turmoil of the early 20th century, a separate discourse began to take shape and form the minds of those who broadly believed in the name of conservatism. Across the globe, but perhaps most strongly in the American project, came the mistreated measure stick of economic prosperity. Great minds, which for a long time had considered goodness, truth, and beauty, turned instead to mercenary ambitions, with their suppressed conservatism still driven by a desire to do well for family. Faith gave up place to the god of Mammon. Instead of monuments to beauty, skyscrapers appeared in the financial districts. Thought changed from a focus on what was good to what was useful.
In our present era, there is a still nascent (yet very present) attempt to reconcile this century-old ideological failing with a desire for something much deeper and more meaningful. The so-called culture wars (which, of course, are wars predominantly in protest at discomfort rather than the defence of deep held convictions) have woken an instinct in us once more to do better for reasons other than the pursuit of cash.
Yet, awakened to the evil spirit of that apathetic clarion call, “It’s the economy, stupid,” spiritually awakened conservatives are realising that they don’t really know how to build much else except economies. And even those they cannot build too well.
In this pathetic lack of possibility, inclined by a certain desire to create but without a driving force telling them why (once the job of religion), conservatives often look to outsource their creativity. That is when they choose to intersect with those who are not conservative—those who, deep down, are not even equal to the Mammon-serving sellouts of the post-war pecuniary predicament.
Log into Mr. Musk’s technocracy, or enter Rowling’s world of slightly odd, badly written fantasy (we’ll give her grammar and her Wiccan oddities a pass, if she can tell us what a womb denotes). Plenty of unvetted ideas, creations, and novelties exist—candies laced with arsenic for our child-like selection. We pick them from the box all too often without checking the ingredients. Staggering along, guided by the false Guardian Angel of Enlightenment Values, unpresuming conservatives are beset by their innate desire to laud human achievement, without the formulated conscience necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff.
With welcoming smiles, the vacuous, porn-riddled world of Messrs. Tate and Tate is humoured by a galling number of forlorn right-wingers as common-sense conviction. Many know a Bugatti isn’t really their thing, but forgive the flash pimpishness in return for an unpolished roll-call informing them that a woman’s place is on her back and a man’s place is to wear dark glasses, playing chess whilst smoking a cigar.
Putin, to some poor devils, is a radiant conservative hero, whilst abortion rates in Russia merrily sit atop charted global highs. To others in the bedraggled throng of would-be ideologues, Islamists taking over our nation-states are “not too bad” if they fit neatly into a preferred position on the prosperity index.
For some religiously conservative thinkers, highlighting the plight of Armenian Christians is simply not worth the hassle of the debate whilst that country’s coldened relationship with Israel fails to fit accepted narrative. Conversely, Hamas being crushed in Gaza is to some a genocide, while Christian martyrs quartered by Jihad in Nigeria are a global footnote. Beyond this, and worst of all, to far too many, there is simply no ambition to do the right thing and promote the ultimate value of one true conviction over other, lesser points of view.
Thus we arrive at this strange point in history. Conservatism without conscience, moistened by the milk of unwitting naivety, stoops to dabble in intersectionality. The plight of Rowling against the droning of the dysphoric acolytes rouses the maternal breast of conservative justice. The plight of the Tates against the anti-manhood mob provokes a defence of masculine tropes. The plight of Musk against censorious arbiters of truth demands unequivocal support of free speech, a blind eye turned to a ghostly ship set afloat in the lake of transhumanism. Lost in a right-wing fog of—yes—social justice are the merits of truth, beauty, and goodness that once tempered our divination.
Ms. Truss, a Tory-lite economic hero for a day, may candidly deride the terrors of the Deep State, despite consulting pro-Stonewall activists and enforcing eco-zealotry mere months before her radical conversion. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, her new adherence to the Gospel of clicks and views is one of which most true conservatives would perhaps be wary. Yet in the world of conservative intersectionality, where Michael Gove’s defence of the Divine Right of Kings buys him a respite from a keener scrutiny of his social liberalism, forlorn conservative intersectionality limps on.
As long as there is a reason to support the social struggle of weak-willed semi-centrists, or to champion a shared belief of otherwise left-leaning individuals, our misguided troops will too often play a false alliance in pursuit of Pyrrhic victory. What then, is the solution? Goodness, truth, and beauty, used as metrics, did not slip into social parlance by accident. We defined them on the basis of a Christian moral value that taught nations and empires to rely on something deeper than mere prosperity or defiance of social diktat.
As Viktor Orban said during the recent, widely covered National Conservative Conference in Brussels, too many of the younger generation have ceased to care about what happens when the human body dies or to ponder the meaning of life. Perhaps if we conservatives all did that more often, starting today, we would start building our own, authentically conservative works of worth at double speed, instead of propping up cheap imitations.
