Shouldn’t progressives be in favour of people wanting to speak their mind?

Where once the left fought the bosses in the workers’ name, today its loudest voices lobby bosses to police workers. If you are trying to understand why this section of the left is hated, its authoritarianism is a large part of the answer. In the popular imagination, “progressives” are people who tell you what to say and how to say it and will demand your employer fires you if you refuse. The bossy left has become the bosses’ left.

Their predecessors had a trade unionist mentality. They instinctively sided with the employee against the employer whether they agreed with the employee’s politics or not. The new left understands that real power lies with management in societies such as the UK and US, where unions barely exist in the private sector. Their emblematic radical is not a strike leader or a feminist agitator but a diversity consultant who convinces HR to pay her or him to berate staff who cannot argue back.

It’s a cliche to say that modern institutions live in fear of the “woke mob”. I’m sure the fear exists, but it is hardly debilitating. Progressives pay the corporate elite a compliment by acknowledging that power lies with CEOs. Indeed, they heighten corporate control by giving managers a new right to regulate political beliefs and minor linguistic failings.