there's our catastrophe

In reality, Bolt’s a talented prose writer, adept in the tabloid genre. He’s a powerful speaker (as anyone who has seen him ruthlessly destroy academic critics in public debates would know) and an extraordinarily effective populariser of ideas. Andrew Bolt is conservative and many of his ideas are repellent. But it’s ridiculous to call him stupid on the basis of how many university degrees he does or doesn’t possess.

Now compare Simmonds’ description of Australian academics.

“Academics may also not want to enter public debate. And I can understand why. Firstly, they receive no rewards in terms of career advancement for writing for the public. And secondly, many may not want to engage with a knife-drawn public prone to Goldstein-style Two-Minute Twitter Hate Rituals. Academics are often timorous folk who specialise in showing the complexity of issues, not offering tweet-sized solutions. Social media doesn’t democratise debate. It limits it to the resilient. Snark triumphs over insight, and commentary is reserved for those with voluminous folds of scar-tissue. Sensitive thinkers rarely fit this bill.”

Academics don’t want to engage with public debate because it won’t advance their careers – and also because people might say mean things about them. They’re sensitive, don’t you know!

Does this not perfectly exemplify the problem with the liberal Left? Rather than fighting the Right, liberal academics want to be treated like philosopher kings: protected from snark and richly rewarded any time they deign to comment on public events.

Instead of dismissing polemicists like Bolt, the Left might do better to ask why we lack anyone of a similar calibre. Simmonds praises Slavoj Zizek. But, in the public sphere, what distinguishes Zizek is not his scholarship about Hegel and Badiou but his persona as a provocateur and his willingness to fight for his beliefs – in, dare we say it, a very Bolt-like fashion.

It’s a tradition that the Australian Left seems to have entirely lost. Think back to Hazlitt and his condemnation of “sensitive thinkers” who refuse to battle for ideas that matter. “They betray the cause by not defending it as it is attacked,” he says, “tooth and nail, might and main, without exception and without remorse.”

Zizek gets that. How many Australian academics do?

I HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR YONKS that Žižek is the Bolt of the left and I mostly mean that as a slam but ngl, I appreciate his commitment to taking clear positions and going h.a.m., it’s actually the best thing about him and even though I hate a lot of what he says, I hate it more when his fans are like “what he really meant was [less provocative statement]”, like, no, commit or get the fuck out

it’s similar with Socialist Alternative: their positions are terrible, their tactic of intentional polarisation is often pursued in a reprehensible and opportunistic fashion, they are critically lacking in nuance, but they accept that if their ideas are challenging anyone in any way they’ve gotta come out swinging, they see conflict as a necessary thing, they train their new recruits in public speaking and how to emotionally deal with being yelled at by irate ideological opponents

I mean I don’t take back anything I’ve ever said about the importance of being good and kind and approachable to people as much as you can, this “don’t be a philosopher king” thing is really really different from hanging out with your friends and snarking on everyone else’s bad politics, it’s really different to a position of total rejection of the impure, these are also ultimately positions of nonengagement

it’s about how honestly engaging with people will sometimes entail honest disagreement, which can feel really scary, but there’s not really any way out of that