It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least in certain circles, that real history is the story of power, oppression, voices that have been silenced. It is also a truth, though less universally acknowledged, that those who claim to speak for the voiceless can be just as guilty of selective amnesia as those they constantly critique.
Eric Heinze, Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary University of London, takes aim at this very contradiction in his new book, Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left. His argument is simple, and may even have been on the tip of your tongue, waiting for Heinze’s clear and spirited articulation: while the progressive movement has made a political industry out of scrutinizing the sins of Western civilization – its colonialism, racism, patriarchal structures – and this is a good and useful thing – it has proven utterly incapable of applying the same forensic analysis to its own ideological history.
The Left, Heinze argues, demands that society recognize its past injustices as structural and systemic, but when faced with the authoritarian and murderous legacies of Socialism and radical Left-wing movements, it will always plead innocence. The abuses of Stalin, Mao, or the ideological zealots of today’s identity-obsessed politics are brushed aside as mere accidents – “not real socialism,” “not representative of our movement,” “just a few bad apples,” or even just “Clumsy”. This is the Left’s great hypocrisy: it will connect the dots when it suits its narrative and suddenly lose sight of behavioural patterns when it does not.
This blind spot is more than just an intellectual failure – it is a political liability.
Nick Hanne, the interviewer in Heinze’s recent NZ Free Speech Union podcast appearance, raised a crucial question: what incentive do radical activists have to self-reflect when they have successfully captured so many key cultural institutions? The current climate, Hanne suggests, does not reward introspection – but ideological domination. The Left’s increasing insistence that “It’s our turn now” (to dictate discourse, to set the terms of historic enquiry, to determine what speech is acceptable) is eerily reminiscent of the very power structures it claims to oppose.
This, Heinze argues, is where the Left has lost its way. Instead of genuinely challenging authority, it has become the new orthodoxy. Instead of questioning dominant power, it has become obsessed with wielding it. And, most damningly, instead of valuing free thought and democratic discourse, it has embraced the illiberal tactics of suppression and censorship, whether through campus speech codes, media bias, or outright legal restrictions.
One of Heinze’s sharpest critiques is reserved for what he calls the purity narrative. In theory, Leftists champion self-examination. In practice, this self-examination is curiously one-sided. Heinze illustrates this with the example of British journalist Owen Jones, a vocal critic of Western injustice and a fervent supporter of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. When allegations of anti-Semitism engulfed Corbyn’s leadership, Jones did what any serious Leftist intellectual should: he acknowledged that a problem existed. But then, instead of applying the same structural and systemic analysis he might use for, say, institutional racism or colonialism, Jones treated the anti-Semitism scandal as a series of unfortunate blunders – mistakes, missteps, isolated incidents, never indicative of a deeper ideological rot. But, of course, anti-Semitism on the Left never started with Jeremy Corbyn. It didn’t even start with the Soviets. So, why no connecting of the dots? Why wouldn’t this phenomenon also be viewed as systemic?
This pattern, Heinze argues, is everywhere on the Left. When a Western nation commits a crime, it is evidence of a corrupt system. When the Left does it, it is an anomaly. Such double standards erode the Left’s moral authority and fuel the current backlash we’re living through.
So how does the Left recover? Heinze offers a striking metaphor: a tale of two lovers.
Lover One says, “You always leave the dishes in the sink and your socks on the floor.”
Lover Two says, “You always leave the dishes in the sink and your socks on the floor, but I admit that I waste money and forget to turn off the lights.”
Who is more credible?
The answer, of course, is Lover Two. Criticism is far more powerful when it is accompanied by an acknowledgment of one’s own flaws. If the Left wants to reclaim its credibility, it must stop pretending to be Lover One. It must acknowledge that its own ideological tradition has produced not just utopian dreams, but authoritarian nightmares. It must scrutinize its own role in suppressing free thought, silencing dissent, and undermining the very democratic principles it claims to defend.
This is not a call for surrender, it is a long overdue call for integrity.
