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November 28, 2005
Tammy Bruce On The Psychology Of The Left
Over at Right Wing News John Hawkins interviews Tammy Bruce (hat tip: Italics Mine). Tammy proceeds to climb inside my brain and mirror my thinking on the psychological motivations of the Left:
Tammy Bruce:[...] I think, in actually coming from the left, (that the left is) a religion unto its self if you will. It is really the ultimate entity that looks for converts and then heretics. It is a dynamic where a complete submersion into the left, void of self, and erasure of the individual is required.
What I’ve found coming in from the left [is that] you can really only come to conclusions about individualism from the right. The left requires so much conformity and there is so much pressure and threat to not dissent that the idea of the individual almost cannot exist. It is like the epitome of a cult if you will.
On the right, on the other hand, you’re looking at a (different) framework because it’s based in the expectation of personal responsibility....It really is a much more conducive arena for a level of individualism that really harkens back, if you will, to the foundation of this nation and what makes us great.
John Hawkins: In the book, you said: "The feminist establishment wanted people to be like stupid, submissive, noisy parrots." You pretty much confirmed that just now. Conservatives can be individuals; the left can’t. Why can’t you be an individual on the left?
Tammy Bruce: Well, it is as the left has done and has shown us historically; it is a basis of an existence of collectivism. That is what all of the energy is put into. It requires massive numbers of people to march lock-step within a certain framework for a certain goal.[...]
John Hawkins: Is that what you mean when in the book you said, "I spent the whole of my activist career compromising myself, my individuality, and my sense of right and wrong in order to belong."
Tammy Bruce: Yeah, and my experience is not unique. Ultimately what you have is the left appealing to people who have had difficulties or sometimes victimhood in their (youth), and telling those people that it is their empowerment, and then maintaining those people in that victimized framework.
The biggest threat, of course, on the left, ...is the threat that if you do not compromise, if you do not conform, if you are too much of a lone wolf or an individualist, you’re going to be shunned, and...when you’re looking for family, as I did for years -- that becomes a very potent threat.
John Hawkins: Now at one point in the book you said something related to that. You said victimhood is the cornerstone of the identity of many liberals and for that reason, it's very difficult for many of them to give it up. Why do you say that?
Tammy Bruce: ...With an identity that’s based in victimhood, if you find either that you’re not a victim or you find personal independence and power, it literally becomes a threat. (If) your identity (is) based in victimhood (and) that is removed, it literally strikes at the core of the identity of that person.
This has long been my private theory about the motivations of the Left: it is quasi-religious, based on faith, substantiated by personal victimhood, and intolerant of dissent. Logic, reason and individuality are suppressed because they are death to the collective dogma; and those individuals that leave the cult are subject to unimaginable vilification.
Bruce is dead on target when she observes that--since Leftist beliefs are in reality a religion, i.e. based on faith alone--the reason it is so hard to renounce Leftist political beliefs is that it requires a reordering of one's very sense of self, one's own personal sense of identity. That's why is so useless to try and debate a Leftist--the revelations required to change his or her mind must come from within.
Tammy Bruce has that admirable quality of being able to speak extemporaneously, not in complete sentences, but in complete paragraphs. And her prior experience in the Leftist camp gives her a special kind of authority.
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