Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Tim Maudlin's avatar

    I think the extremely weird-sounding announced thesis of this piece arises from making a specific decision about how to use…

  2. David Wallace's avatar

    Let me recommend Eleanor Knox’s essay on IAI a few months ago for what I think is a much more…

  3. Siddharth Muthukrishnan's avatar
  4. V. Alan White's avatar
  5. Colin Marshall's avatar

    Thanks so much for this, Matthew. I hadn’t heard about UKALPP’s approach, but it sounds like an excellent model for…

  6. Matthew H. Kramer's avatar

    Thanks to Colin Marshall for an excellent document. The annual UK Analytic Legal & Political Philosophy (UKALPP) Conference now convenes…

  7. Colin Marshall's avatar

    Thanks for this comment, Alan. I think the point you make carries weight – especially for some younger philosophers, in-person…

Reader poll #5: the results for political ideology/outlook

Brian Leiter

So with not quite 1400 votes, here are the results:

Which best describes your political ideology or outlook?
Marxian left
   13%181
Social democratic left
   40%560
American liberal
   12%168
American moderate Democrat
   7%91
American Republican
   1%10
Burkean conservative
   4%59
Social/religious conservative
   3%43
Libertarian
   7%100
Fascist/Authoritarian Right
   3%39
None of the above
   10%140

I'm interested to hear how some of the "none of the above" would describe their political ideology or outlook.  I note the results aren't that different from a similar poll about 4 1/2 years ago–slight decline in fascist readers, though!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

16 responses to “Reader poll #5: the results for political ideology/outlook”

  1. Chris Bertram

    The absence of Greens and anarchists from the list is rather striking.

    Reply
  2. MA Student

    I think of myself as a Classical Liberal/Federalist, broadly construed. Classical liberalism (as I understand it) involves something of a mix of the views represented in the poll, and so I took "None of the above" to best reflect my position.

    Reply
  3. Anon Student

    There's a group of philosophers(*) working on Confucianism who believe it presents a plausible alternative to all of these outlooks:

    (*)Most notably Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont

    Reply
  4. Anon

    I chose none of the above. I'm sometimes agnostic about political matters. Other times I think there are many OK ways to do politics and that there is not one True way to do it.

    Reply
  5. Mark

    I vacillate between some variant of postanarchist and Kemalist.

    Reply
  6. S.T.

    Critical Marxist with no illusions about escaping the totalizing reach of late capitalism, yet maintaining a hope in some sort of Utopian negation of the repressive status qou.

    Reply
  7. G.S.

    Anarchist (why do the fascists get a slot but not us?)

    Reply
  8. Russell Blackford

    I checked off social democratic Left – which pretty much reflects my views on economic issues. But I'm more socially libertarian than that normally suggests. I don't think "American liberal" would have been a good fit, as I see a lot of creeping authoritarianism (draconian speech codes, etc.) from people who'd probably view themselves in that way.

    Reply
  9. DJL

    I would have voted for Libertarianism, but I was concerned that in American discourse that term means something very different from what most people here in Europe would take it to mean – i.e., anarchism rather than the form of extreme, right-wing neoliberalism it seems to mean in the US. Had I been given the choice, I would of course have gone for Anarchism.

    Reply
  10. M

    As noted in a different poll, something like one out of ten of your readers identifies as Roman Catholic. The sort of social and political outlook characteristic of traditional Catholicism does not fit well into any of these categories.

    Reply
  11. gg

    Georgist.

    Reply
  12. Jack Hughes

    So 39 readers of this blog are literally fascists? Is this a view that is seriously held in some contemporary academic circles? There certainly are relatively mainstream groups that are often justifiably described as fascists (e.g. BNP, Golden Dawn), but even they deny accusations of Nazism or fascism. Further still, these groups generally have stronger support amongst people of lower education than would probably be aware of the existence of, let alone read, this blog. It seems very strange to me that so many readers of this blog would hold fascistic views, let alone identify themselves as such. Frankly, these poll numbers suggest something similar to the 'Jedi census phenomenon' i.e. people answering the poll question with 'fascist' are joking or otherwise. More pernicious still is the possibility that these answers come from opponents of the PGR, who wish to discredit LR by showing that fascists read it.

    BL COMMENT: One hopes they're joking. But as I noted, back in 2010, even more readers chose the "authoritarian right" option, so I've scared some off in the interim.

    Reply
  13. PDG

    Maybe the fascists are "Black Notebooks" fascists? Not that it would be much less disturbing!

    Reply
  14. Anonymous

    Especially given your respect for Chomsky (at least as I recall it) the absence of Left Libertarian or Anarchist is puzzling. As a result I found my political leaning best described as the “None of the above”. If is so inclined, it would be interesting to hear if you considered these options and found them superfluous.

    BL COMMENT: I should have thought of this, but despite my admiration for Chomsky, I've always found anarchism hard to take seriously. But for purposes of this poll, it was a foolish omission.

    Reply
  15. Mark S

    Given the events of the last six years or so, and given that historical fascism (especially Nazism) was (at least ostensibly if not in practice) generally hostile to "finance capital", it wouldn't surprise me if there's a mild resurgence of academic interest in the views of people like Lawrence Dennis or Gottfried Feder.

    Reply
  16. Mark

    For really interesting developments in anarchist politics, one should really be watching what's going on among the Kurdish regions fighting the ISIS fascists (as this article points out, the parallels with the Spanish civil war–where fascists fought against various leftists including anarchists in Catalonia–are intruiging): http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/08/why-world-ignoring-revolutionary-kurds-syria-isis

    Reply

Designed with WordPress