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.
The Cowards are everywhere. They know exactly what’s happening, hate it, but will never say so out loud. They’re the sort who’ll text you “100% agree!” after you’ve been fired but somehow missed every opportunity to back you up before the True Believer called you in about your unconscious bias.
When Kathleen Stock was hounded out of Sussex University, the Coward thought it was outrageous right up to the moment they realised they could be next. Then they recalibrated the events in their mind and took a different view.
When the grooming gangs story was buried for fear of appearing racist, how many journalists knew what was going on but chose to stay silent anyway for the same reasons? We’ll never know. But we know they’re cowards.
When sanity returns to the culture, the Coward will loudly declare they were never part of it while retroediting every article and LinkedIn post that shows evidence to the contrary.
The Opportunists don’t care either way but have spotted the angles. Young, ambitious, and morally vacant, they add a dozen causes to their personal website and say things like “centring marginalised voices” without meaning a word of it.
The Opportunist will launch a DEI consultancy today and charge an HR True Believer ten grand tomorrow to tell a roomful of Careerists they’re racists. Or they’ll be the author who went from wellness influencer to decolonisation expert in 18 months and set up a podcast in between. It’s the academic who discovered that adding “queer theory” to their research proposal tripled their funding chances.
The Opportunist will fly business class to an anticapitalist symposium disguised as a climate conference and not see the contradictions.
The Fanatics think they’re True Believers except they dial it up to eleven. Pronouns and watermelon emojis in the bio, sure. But they also believe in decolonising logic and think the world is going to end tomorrow if we don’t do what they tell us. Every cause connects to every other cause, and all causes connect back to the same enemy.
It’s the student activist who screams at a Jewish classmate for three hours about Zionism, then files a complaint claiming she felt unsafe. It’s the protester who glues himself to a motorway, causes an ambulance delay, then calls the criticism “ableist”. The Fanatic cannot maintain eye contact except when talking about Palestine, at which point his eyes fix unblinkingly on yours, daring you to push back on his claims of genocide.
A frightening psychological archetype, the Fanatic would have felt right at home in the totalitarian nightmares of the last century. More to the point, they’ll be instrumental in the next one.
The system that protects them
Identifying these types isn’t an exact science, and they overlap to various degrees. The crucial thing to understand is that they need each other.
True Believers provide the moral authority, write the policies, and enforce the rules with genuine conviction. They absorb the ideology and give it form. Without them, it would all feel like a game of pretend (which it is).
Careerists provide the manpower. They actually implement the nonsense without stopping to think much about what any of it means.
Cowards provide the silence and the illusion of consensus, allowing the system to expand unopposed.
The Opportunists provide the raw energy, finding new ways to monetise moral exhibitionism because they see progressive orthodoxy as a business opportunity. Celebrity activists – indeed the whole entertainment industry – fall into this category.
Fanatics provide the threat. They’re the enforcers who make the Careerists think twice about cracking a joke since every joke has a victim. The Coward looks at them and thinks at least I’m not that person in an effort to assuage the sense of disgust at their own lack of integrity.
The system rewards all of them. True Believers get authority. Careerists get promotions. Cowards keep their heads down and Opportunists get book deals. Fanatics get the attention they crave, which is why we’re forever seeing clips of them in our social feeds waving Palestinian flags or throwing soup at Van Gogh.
What they all get – every single one – is protection from consequences.
Why? Because progressive orthodoxy is sustained by particular incentives. It's got nothing to do with the strength of the ideas, most of which are obviously terrible when examined under daylight. It's about the incentives that come with compliance and the costs that come with dissent.
This is why progressivism is so resistant to intellectual criticism – and in many cases strengthened by it. It operates like a protection racket, something we’ve seen again and again. Remember James Damore? He wrote an intelligent memo questioning Google’s diversity programme, along with citations and caveats. Google fired him and the press called him a sexist. The diversity programme went into overdrive shortly after.
The institutions never have to answer to the criticisms because the person raising them has been disgraced. The same people who create the threat (accusations of bigotry, social exile, career destruction) also offer protection from it – but only if you pay the price of compliance. Challenge the orthodoxy and you lose their protection. Comply, and you’re safe.
What comes next
The good news is that every protection racket collapses eventually – and progressivism will be no exception. The lawsuits will become too expensive, the backlash too loud to ignore. Those politicians who told us that men can be women will explain with a frown that these were “challenging times” rather than a gruesome display of moral cowardice. Pronouns in bios will become so mortifyingly embarrassing that those who had them will pretend, even to themselves, that they never dreamt of anything so silly.
We’re not there yet, not even close. But when that day comes, it won’t be because the progressive class had a sudden revelation or the weight of conscience became too much to bear, but because the status game will have played itself out.
Until then, breaking ranks will cost everything, while playing along costs nothing. Damore understood that. So did everyone who said nothing when he was fired.
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Thanks for reading!
I’m curious to know what readers would like me to cover next. I have pieces lined up on Islam, NGOs, Foucault, art, writing, AI, and more – all coming from the same philosophical position. I’d also be interested to hear which styles/modes you prefer – educational, satirical, topical/news, or something else. Any feedback is welcome, so feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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Add in “the terrorized.” Thinking of parents of trans- identified youths or wives of trannied-out men. They may be cowardly but they are too caught in threatening binds with too much at stake to be true cowards, imho. And the consequences they suffer for non-compliance can be enormous.