Political correctness is the enemy of freedom

Mario Vargas Llosa is in good shape. The Peruvian Nobel Prize for Literature laughs easily by explaining its theories on freedom and individual as it speaks of his new book “The title of the tribe” [Lalamada de la tribu], in which it argues in favour of liberal thought in reference to seven important thinkers: Adam Smith, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Friedrich von Hayek, Carl Popper, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin and Jean-Francois River.

These belong to a school of thought that you believe in the individual as an autonomous, responsible being, and freedom as supreme assets. They advocate democracy and power sharing as the best possible system to reconcile conflicting values within society. They promote a doctrine that rejects “the tribal” spirit that historically fosters fascism, Communism, nationalism and religious fanaticism. Fisss calling is also an intellectual autobigaff that takes the reader from the beginnings of Marxist and existential Vargas Lalosa to embracing liberalisation.

INT ERVIEST:

Why is liberal thinking so attacked?

LLOSA:

It has been attacked by ideologies who are enemies of freedom and who rightly view liberalisation as the strongest opponent. That's what I wanted to explain in this book. Fascism and Communism have attacked liberalism heavily, mainly by cartoonising and linking it to conservativeism. In early stages, liberalism had been attacked from the right. There were papal letters ʹ attacks by clergymen throughout the doctrine considered hostile to religion and moral values. I believe these opponents define the close relationship that exists between liberalisation and democracy. Democracy has moved forward, and human rights have been known financially by liberal thinkers.

INT ERVIEST:

The authors you analyze in your book all swim upstream

LLOSA:

Hayek and Ortega could not even publish their two books. Are the liberals doomed to walk alone? Liberalism is not that it simply embraces, it actually stimulates change. It knows that society is composed of many different kinds of people and that it is important that these changes continue to be preserved. It is not ideology; an ideology is a secular religion. Liberalism protects basic rights: freedom, individualism, rejection of collectiveism and nationalism, in other words, all ideologies or doctrines that limit or eliminate freedom within society.

INT ERVIEST:

Let's talk about nationalism, where Ortega y Gasset had much to say about its dangers in Bask Place and Catalonia. Why do liberals reject nationalism?

LLOSA:

Because it's incompatible with freedom. They just need to remove the surface to see that nationalism involves a kind of racism. If you believe that belonging to a certain place, or to a certain race or religion, is a privilege, value in itself, then believe that you are superior to others. And inevitable racism leads to violence and the extinction of freedom. That's why liberalism since Adam Smith's time has perceived this kind of collectiveism in nationalism as a rejection of reason for acts of faith.

INT ERVIEST:

Populism, the resurface of nationalism, Brexit... Is tribalism being reborn?

LLOSA:

There's a tendon with what I consider to be the most progressive development of our time ʹ forming large entitys that are slowly removing borders and administering different languages, different clothing and beliefs, as is happening in Europe. This causes a lot of uncertainty and a great temptation to go back to the tribe, a little homogenous society that never really existed, where everyone is the same, where we all have the same beliefs and speak the same language. It is a myth that generates a large amount of security and explains revolts such as Brexit, Catalan nationalism, or the kind of nationalism that rages within democracies, as happened in Poland, Hungary, and even the Netherlands. Nationalism is present, but my impression is that, as in the case of Catalonia, we have a minority and the strength of democratic institutions will gradually undermine it. I'm pretty optimistic.

INT ERVIEST:

Your movement from Marxism to liberalization is not unusual. It's the same as the authors you analyzed, such as Popper, Aaron and Reveli.

LLOSA:

My generation in Latin America came to its senses when they were side-to-side the continent cruel inequality and when the United States was supporting military dictatorships. For a young and concerned Latin America, it was very difficult not to deny that cartoon of democracy. I wanted to be a Communist. I thought Communism represented the antithesis of military dictatorship, corruption and, above all, inequality. I started it at the National University in San Marcos with the idea that there would be other Communists I would become with. And there was. But Communism in Latin America was completely Stalinism, with parties being subheading Comitern in Moscow. I was just a soldier for a year, and then I went on and became a socialist, an attitude strengthened by the Cuban revolution, which at first seemed to be different, as a less dogmatic socialism style. I became quite enthusiastic. In my 70s, I was in Cuba five times. But gradually, the illusions were removed, partly after U n The MAP [military aid production unit] has been announced. There were raids on the young people I knew. It was traumatic. I remember writing a private letter to Fidel Castro telling him I was worried, and asking him how Cuba, which seemed to have a more tolerant and open socialism style, could put “crumbs” and gays in concentration camps with ordinary criminals. Fidel had invited dozens of other intellectuals and me to talk to him. We spent all night, 12 hours, between eight and eight o'clock in the morning, mostly listening to him. It was very impressive, but not so convincing. Since then, I began to doubt you a little bit. The final secession came in the case of the indictment when writer Herberto Padella, imprisoned in 1971, was obliged to denigrate himself in public, marking the end of an idyllic relationship between important intellectuals and the Cuban regime. I entered a long and difficult process, embracing democracy and gradually moving into liberal doctrine I was lucky to live in Britain during the years of Margaret Thancher.

INT ERVIEST:

You painted Margaret Thatcher as a strong, cultured woman with strong liberal conviction, in contrast to the image we have for her.

LLOSA:

This is a completely unfair cartoon. When I arrived in England, it was a decadent country of freedom but was attacked by the economic nationalism of the Laborist Party. Thatcher's revolution awakened Britain. It was hard times; it created capable free market societies, protected democracy by facing socialism, China, the most cruel dictatorships in history. There were crucial years for me because I started reading Hayek and Popper, both of these authors quoted by Thatcher. She said that the Open Society and its enemies would be a key book for the 20th century. Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's contribution to freedom culture, ending with the Soviet Union, the greatest challenge of democratic culture ever existed, is a reality that is unfortunately portrayed in media influenced by left whose achievements are few.

INT ERVIEST:

What is the main challenge of Western democracy now?

LLOSA:

Its greatest enemy is populism. Nobody in charge wants a model for their country as they do North Korea, Cuba or Venezuela. Marksism is already in the last range of political life, but not population, which is tearing democracies apart from within.

INT ERVIEST:

The 2008 banking crisis, which exacerbated inequality, has revived criticism of liberal doctrine, often referring to it as neoliberalism.

LLOSA:

I don't know what this is what they call neoliberalism. It's a way of deregulating liberalisation and presenting it as a ruthless form of capitalism. Liberalism is not dogmatic, there is no answer for everything. It has evolved from Adam Smith's day until now with society becoming increasingly complex. There is injustice today, such as insinuating discrimination against women who were previously far from spoken.

INT ERVIEST:

The big difference between different levels of liberalisation is the role of state

LLOSA:

Yeah. The Liberals want an effective state but not an invading state; a state that will guarantee you equal freedom and opportunity, in part in law-related education. But beyond this basic consensus, there are differences. Isaiah Berlin says that economic freedom cannot be reduced because this has led children to become trapped in mines in the 19th century. Hayek, on the other hand, had tremendous confidence in the market that he thought you would solve all problems if he was allowed to work. Berlin was more realistic. He believed that the market was the one who brought economic progress, but if progress meant creating such inequality, it put the essence of democracy at risk. Meanwhile, Adam Smith, considered the father of liberalisation, was very flexible. Of course, there are distortions of liberalization. For example, there are economists who are very narrow, convinced that only economic reforms can bring inevitable freedom. I disagree. I think ideas are more important than economic reforms. But go back to the cartoons or language fraud, using the label “progressive” that is very significant; in Spain it has been used to describe forces protecting dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela. I believe unfortunately that this is an intellectual contribution to distorting language. They have filled Marxism and Communism with prestige, as had once been done with Nazism and fascism. Verberically, intellectuals have always viewed democracy as a mediocre system that has lacked beauty, perfection and consistency of great ideology. And this blindness is not incompatible with great intelligence. How could Heidegger, perhaps the greatest philosopher of our time, for example, be Nazi? The same was true of Communism. He raised writers and poets of a high profile to applaud the goug. Sartri, the most intelligent philosopher of the 20th century, supported the cultural revolution in China.

INT ERVIEST:

Sartre justified genocides, and he supported tyrannical regimes, while others, such as Albert Camus, risked their lives to resist. And then they gave a lecture! Why are you still protecting him?

LLOSA:

It was a very important part of my teenage life, so.

INT ERVIEST:

You call him a great intellectual, but he was the man whose political convictions were very controversial.

LLOSA:

He was not a true member of the Resistance. He even agreed to replace a teacher who had been removed just because he was Jewish. He belonged to some of the resistance that was not particularly active, and I believe that he never passed the complex that took him out of it, and spent the rest of his life trying, some of which were gratotic, to get more progressive and revolutionary titles. It was a very common need in his day that intellectuals wanted to pass a test of progressiveness because it was required of them. In Latin America, if you weren't a left-wing intellectual in your 90s, they weren't even considered intellectual. They shut them up. Culture was controlled by the left, which was very tribal and dogmatic and which made invisibility deformities in cultural life. I think this has changed a lot.

INT ERVIEST:

This has happened in Europe.

LLOSA:

Of course. Although in my time in England, there were intellectuals who did not have the inferiority complex and who went out and fought and protected me from being honest with myself.

INT ERVIEST:

Is it a matter of intellectual honesty?

LLOSA:

The elites that protect regimes would never be together... Bertrand Russell, for example, who defended honest matters and who was an admirable person in many ways but who at the same time defended terrible things and allowed himself to be manipulated by the left who had no respect for his work nor read it to him. How do you explain the contradiction? Unfortunately, intelligence is not a necessary guarantee of intellectual integrity.

INT ERVIEST:

Should we protect the work of an asshole?

LLOSA:

We should not only respect it but also publish it. If you start to judge literature in moral and ethical terms, not only would it be annihilated but it would also disappear. Literature expresses what reality tries to express for various reasons. Nothing gets more critical in society than good literature. But literature and morality don't go together. They're enemies. And you have to respect literature if you want freedom.

INT ERVIEST:

Does political honesty threaten freedom?

LLOSA:

Political correctness is the enemy of freedom because it denies honesty and authenticity. We have to treat it as a warped truth.

Subtitles by Leapin