"A map of the world that does not include Utopia," said Oscar Wilde, "is not worth glimpsing at." A noble sentiment. The ideal of egalitarianism, so distant and vague in the year 2007, likely rests in the minds of everyone who still clings to the unfashionable notion that the world can be changed for the better.
The problem with such a worldview — one that I subscribe to, by the way — is its tendency toward a dangerous combination of self-righteousness and dogmatism. The history of the 20th century, as our opponents love to point out, is littered with the refuse of failed, grand social experiments of the utopian sort for which Wilde longed.
I could write for pages on why the Soviet Union degenerated and how this had more to do with difficult historical conditions than human nature, but the fact would remain that well-meaning people created about as obscene a system as humanly possible. The Soviet model was emulated by underdeveloped nations that underwent revolutions of their own, and the results only differed in their degree of ugliness.
Perhaps even uglier, from our comfortable Western perspective, is the support such regimes received from Western intellectuals. Even as these leftists were fighting for civil rights and against imperialism in their own societies, they couldn't bear to criticize gulags or purges. Such criticism, contradicting their righteous faith in human progress, would have been impossible.
To the true believers, the truth is either ignored or hidden. The sometimes dirty means of their worthy ends are to be forgotten in that closet of junk. The Jena Six may have beat the shit out of a 17-year-old kid, but their importance as symbols in the fight against the omnipresent racial injustice in American society outweighs a real acknowledgement of their heinous act. Iran may be ruled by the worst sort of religious fanatics, but the struggle against American imperialism in the Middle East transcends the uneasiness felt by the nation's attempt to acquire nuclear weapons.
The brilliant Czech-French novelist Milan Kundera understands better than most what it means for a leftist to be betrayed by his own harsh, political calculations. Before exiling himself to France in 1975, Mr. Kundera was twice expelled from the Communist Party of his native Czechoslovakia. He lived through the Stalinist conquest, the ensuing totalitarianism, the Prague Spring of 1968 — called "socialism with a human face" — and the reversal of its gains by invading Russian troops. The horrors he experienced were largely carried out by people who truly believed their cause was just.
In his masterpiece, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," published years after leaving his homeland, Mr. Kundera articulates the unsavory side of leftist politics with rare honesty. In his discussion, he makes use of a German word kitsch which he translates as, "The absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence."
While every belief system, political or otherwise, makes use of kitsch, it plays a unique role in leftist politics. Unlike political conservatism, leftist ideologies do not see human beings as inherently debased. Rather, they stress the human potential for good conduct, even where environmental conditions have thoroughly degraded the individual.
Leftist kitsch, according to Mr. Kundera, takes the form of the "Grand March," or a "splendid march on the road to brotherhood, equality, justice, happiness; it goes on and on…" On this sublime path to human perfection, what room does shit have? The left, comprised of fallible human beings, must defecate after all. This is where kitsch makes its appearance. On the Grand March, the reeking product of the left's digestive tract — their sins, if you will — are quickly kicked to the side of the road.
Metaphors aside, how does the left dispose of its shit? As the anti-Stalinist socialist, George Orwell, points out in his essay "Politics and the English Language," the euphemism can be of great use to the propagandists. It is a way of acknowledging a crime without acknowledging it. Siberian death camps became "the elimination of unreliable elements," and the murder of peasants became "pacification."
In our time, the tactic is the same. The misnamed partial-birth abortion procedure becomes "a woman's right to choose," and the denial of a qualified white student from college becomes "increasing diversity."
Second trimester abortion rights and affirmative action are undoubtedly causes worth fighting for — unlike anything that was going on in the USSR — but concealing their dirty underbellies, or making use of kitsch, is a dangerous path to travel. It is blinding and enslaving. It causes one to forget the real reason why he or she is a progressive in the first place.
The commitment to truth must be paramount. In my experience, this leads one to leftist conclusions anyway.
Kyle Szarzynski ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in Spanish and history.
