Successor ideology is a controversial term coined by political writer Wesley Yang to describe an emerging ideology among left-wing political movements in the United States centered around intersectionality, social justice, identity politics, and anti-racism that the term's proponents argue may replace traditional liberal values of pluralism, freedom of speech, color blindness, and free inquiry. ^{[1] [2] [3]} Primarily used as a pejorative, it is sometimes linked to intolerance of differing opinion, cancel culture, " wokeness", " social justice warriors", and the far left; ^{[4] [5] [6]} Yang himself describes it bluntly as " authoritarian Utopianism that masquerades as liberal humanism while usurping it from within". ^[4]

Roger Berkowitz has linked the "successor ideology" to a broader retreat of liberalism, arguing that liberalism is simultaneously challenged from both the left in the form of the "successor ideology" and the right in the form of of illiberal democracy. ^[7]

Origins

The term was coined by political writer Wesley Yang in a 4 March 2020 tweet discussing affirmative action; Yang stated, "This successor ideology has been a rival to the meritocratic one and has in recent years acquired sufficient power to openly seek hegemony on campuses and elsewhere. ^[8] He expanded on the term in further tweets in May 2020, ^[9] at which point it was picked up by several other political writers and incorporated into published pieces.

Criticism

Sarah Jeong, writing in The Verge, has argued that there is no such thing as a 'successor ideology', saying the term "seems to only muddy the waters since the thing that [critics of the 'successor ideology'] are concerned about isn’t actually a concrete ideology but an inchoate social force with the hallmarks of religious revival". ^[2] She also takes issue with the reactionary connotations of the term, viewing it as a term meant to defend an "old paradigm" that "bred an irrational and incomprehensibly unjust society" which "tolerated the intolerant and treated dehumanization as a difference of opinion". Political writer Osita Nwanevu has likewise argued that the successor ideology is a reactionary concept. ^[3] He further contends that counter to the narrative laid out by those who criticize the 'successor ideology' that it is fundamentally illiberal, it is actually the people who ascribe to the 'successor ideology'—"the defenders of progressive identity politics"—who are the ones "protecting—indeed expanding—the bounds of liberalism", while it is its opponents—the "reactionaries"—"who are most guilty of the illiberalism they claim has overtaken the American Left".

References

External links

• The Successor Ideology — 2020 video by the Manhattan Institute featuring Ross Douthat, Wesley Yang, Coleman Hughes, and Reihan Salam