Five Progressive Types Behind the Racket
And why progressive orthodoxy runs on incentives, not ideas.
Maybe it’s because I spent years working in PR for a British institution that I can detect progressive orthodoxy in parts per million. I can pick it up in the throat-clear before a politician says “people who menstruate”. I know within seconds of meeting someone if they will use a word like “intersectional” unironically.
I can even tell which of five distinct types of progressive I’m dealing with. I’ll come to those in a moment.
If you’re still reading this, I suspect you have similar radar systems and defence capabilities – perhaps even a natural-born immunity to progressive groupthink. In any case, you’re likely equipped with that most dangerous of intellectual habits: thinking for yourself.
But while immunity to progressive orthodoxy is one thing, it also comes with side effects. In my case, a severe allergic reaction to gaslighting. Left-wing moralising brings me out in a rash. Institutional moralising is even worse, at one point making me so agitated I started The Gadfly. This is personal therapy, you understand.
I put these reactions down to a simple intolerance of sanctimony and instinctive hostility to the corruption of language. Like you, I didn’t sign up to be lectured by people who insist biological reality is a social construct or who spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about race.
Still, it’s comforting that so many of us can see the charade for what it is. The question, then, is why progressive ideology persists despite its obvious contradictions and distortions. Who benefits?
Here’s who.
The five types of progressive
The True Believers are the rarest and most dangerous type. Usually found in university admin or HR, they genuinely think that questioning any aspect of progressive orthodoxy constitutes harm. The moment they make eye contact with reality, their pupils dilate, and they assume a glazed, faraway look like someone’s talking to them through an earpiece only they can hear.
It’s the Tavistock clinician who dismissed parents’ concerns about rushing children into transition as “transphobia”. It’s the university administrator who considers “women” a radioactive word and the niqab an expression of female empowerment. It’s the civil servant who enforces unisex toilets because questions of “dignity” matter more than safeguarding.
The Careerists know it’s all nonsense but have mortgages. They privately roll their eyes at the latest pronoun updates but champion them in the board meeting with the enthusiasm of a North Korean newsreader.
Examples include the BBC editor who knows “pregnant people” is absurd but issues the apology on behalf of the female presenter who corrected the autocue to “women”. It’s the museum curator who rewrites exhibition labels to acknowledge “problematic legacies” to satisfy the demands of the True Believer, who controls the money.
