The extreme left and extreme right who continue to
dominate the headlines may be extremely opposed in viewpoints, but they are
highly alike in terms of instincts, temperament, and having the same blind
spots. They may hate each other, but they are similar in their underlying
psychological style and the way they process social reality.
To think of one or two examples off the top of my head, the extreme right displays a hugely disproportionate hostility towards immigration, whereas the extreme left is too soft, and in denial, refusing to acknowledge any challenges or trade‑offs at all. Another one, the extreme left tends to trivialise or overlook the complex structural and personal factors that leave people struggling financially, while the extreme right frequently lacks the empathy and attentiveness needed to understand the genuine pressures those same people face. And another, the extreme right tends to idealise tradition by demanding conformity, and trivialising diversity in ethnicity, culture and identity, whereas the extreme left tends to idealise equality by demanding conformity, and trivialising diversity in skill, talent, effort, competence, and risk. It would be easy to think of many more examples.
The upshot is that neither side is a healthy one to be on, because both approaches misunderstand more things than they illuminate. Both overlook the complex structural and personal factors that shape people’s circumstances and constrain their choices; both misunderstand the complexity of how people reveal their preferences, and form meaning and belonging; and both extremes build their politics on half‑truths, oversimplifications and extremities that don’t map onto the highly complex, multifaceted lived reality of society
Beneath the bluster, each extreme is animated by the same moral certainty and ideological intransigence, leaving little room for humility, revision, or the possibility that the world is more complicated than their beliefs, policies and slogans allow. And any politics that forgets that will always get the world more wrong than it does right.
