Continued enabling by ostensibly liberal democratic governments of the ongoing genocide in Gaza (where increased condemnation remains unmatched by tangible actions to end the carnage) reveals more than the hypocrisy of those who purport to represent us.

It exposes the double-edged nature — and indeed bankruptcy — of liberal ideals at the heart of the Western philosophical tradition itself.

This is a bold claim. Yet the wilful, unremitting desecration of Palestine — colluded with by Western governments and all manner of Western institutions — makes it surprisingly, albeit still confoundingly, easy to substantiate. How, in the face of current unchecked genocide, can the liberal political tradition itself emerge intact from betrayal of its foundational principles before we need to confront disturbing realities about liberal principles themselves?

Identification and brief recapitulation of the main tenets of liberal ideology is clearly necessary. It is also a straightforward exercise because these principles are well known.

Universalism

Since its inception in 18th century Europe, the ideal of universalism has been central to the ideology of liberalism. Assuming its most dramatic expression in the North American context ("We hold these truths to be self-evident"), liberalism stresses the desirability and applicability of its principles to a wide range of cases and contexts. Yet its emergence from a particular historical and socioeconomic context — namely that of the 18th century European west — means that liberal ideology is more shaped by the conditions of that context than the principle of “universalism” implies.

This is not to deny that liberal ideals may be aspired to in “non-Western” contexts. Far from respecting cultural difference, cultural relativist claims that liberal values are inapplicable outside Western contexts can serve to support existing power structures in diverse locations. Rather it is to contend that the liberal impetus to universalism is inevitably coloured by its Western origins, which can manifest in coercive, no less than liberatory, ways.

This duality was apparent in the debate surrounding establishment of the 1948 “ Universal" Declaration of Human Rights. And which, revealingly, led to construction of two separate covenants.

While Western governments endorsed individual rights such as freedom of expression and the right to private property, “non-Western” leaders and those of the former Soviet Union emphasised economic, social and cultural rights (e.g. freedom of expression means little if you have insufficient to eat).

In its practice, liberalism frequently functions in ways which are coercive and impositional. Fortified by avowed commitment to “liberal democracy”, successive American administration equating of US interests with the good of all has become a cliché. While pertaining at one level to the North American context in particular, rather than to Western liberalism more generally, this is precisely the point i.e. the ease with which liberalism can coexist with, and serve to rationalise, nationalism.

The founding of Western “liberal democratic” societies at the expense and outright annihilation of Indigenous peoples — settler colonialism — is unarguable. Contrary to its own self-representations, the philosophy of liberalism did not respect diversity from its inception. This was even within Europe — the “birthplace” of democracy — where introduction of ideals held to be universal was hardly a peaceful process ("the ideals of the Enlightenment were forced upon the people of Europe by the soldiers of Napoleon”).

Imposition of a “culture of uniformity” to which diverse “others” must assimilate was sanctioned by an ideology that not only gave aid and comfort to rights violations on a large scale, but an implicit rationale for them. As we have seen in many Western foreign policy interventions around the world, it continues to do so.

Progress

Corresponding to its universalism, the progressivism with which liberalism is associated is compromised as well. “Progress for who?” is the obvious question in light of the dispossession and continuing destitution of Indigenous people within “liberal” societies. Well before the genocides which have occurred subsequently, the liberal record was far from confined to these particular (and particularly egregious) instances. Again and again, on a range of diverse fronts, there is ample evidence that the ideal of “progress” is similarly flawed in any unqualified sense.

The notion of “progress” implies not only contrast but opposition to regression, where these entities are actually deeply intertwined. In fact, the ideology of liberalism is constructed around precisely such untenable polarisations (that between “public/private” is emblematic). The act of dichotomising — implied opposition between entities which are intrinsically related — is illegitimate because it counterposes interdependent dimensions which only make sense in light of one another. Yet the ideology of liberalism per se remains replete with precisely such binary polarisations.

Recognition that the “civilisation” of “developed” societies so-called is no impediment to brutality – indeed that it may incubate it – remains hard for liberals to assimilate. Fyodor Dostoevsky — an early and stringent critic of Enlightenment values — declared over a century ago that it is possible to “progress” to barbarism That progress and barbarism may not only coexist but be deeply implicated in one another remains one of the most challenging enmeshments Western sensibilities continue to disavow. And since there is little in the liberal conception of progress to assist us in this task (far easier to regard barbarism as the province of “others”) the ideal itself is predisposingly distorting.

Equality

The notion of “equality” remains an article of faith to many. But precisely because of the gulf between theory and practice, questions need to be asked about what liberal conceptions of equality comprise. It is common to emphasise equality of opportunity rather than outcome. But the reality of economic and other forms of disparity raises more urgent questions than any variety of liberalism can address.

Vast and growing discrepancies in wealth and life chances between and within diverse parts of the globe proliferate. Due to the continuing impacts of colonisation, it is disingenuous to speak of the West and the Global South as separable entitles; the notion of liberal “reform” fails to scratch the surface of global inequity which cannot be detached from national contexts. More insidiously, it directs attention away from systemic sources of inequality to which Western societies actively contribute and from which they disproportionately benefit.

Individualism

Respect for “the individual” is a liberal mantra. But in another of the dichotomies on which liberal ideology was founded, classical liberal individualism was founded on a false opposition between “individual” and “society”, entailing an unrealistic conception of autonomy in ways which continue to shape Western attitudes. Recent scholarship also shows unequivocally that contrary to the claim that “man” stood for “everyone”, the “individual” was clearly assumed not only to be a white male but a marketplace actor. The rights to which the “individual” was held to be entitled were long — and in many instances remain — inaccessible to those who did not fit that template.

Many exclusions on the basis of gender, class, ethnicity, and so on have long operated within ostensibly liberal societies. Moreover, group rights are routinely secondary to those of (a problematic conception of) “individuals” in Western liberal society in any case. The compounding foundational — and as the contemporary desecration of Gaza reveals, continuing — elevation of whiteness within the liberal tradition also and again dispels the illusion of “universalism”. Disturbingly, it also uncovers the racist antecedents of liberalism which shed light on continuing Western and European government enabling of the genocide in Gaza.

Rationality

At the time and as a result of the Enlightenment, the faculty of reason was held to represent a crucial break with superstitions and prejudices of the past. But just as “progress” is not inconsistent with oppression, “rationality” is not unproblematic either. In the name of “reason” a myriad practices can be conceived, implemented, and rationalised against those who, due to disparities in power, are unable to contest them.

Not only the abuse of reason accounts for coercive applications of it. Reason per se is intrinsically problematic when operating in isolation from other human qualities. It shows no necessary relationship to ethics or morality and is inherently rationalising of its own foundations and principles. Ironically, the rationalism of liberalism — revealingly counterposed to emotion together with its individualist orientation — is central to the process by which distancing of others occurs.

Liberalism and law

That laws should be respected and obeyed is valorised in liberal ideology. Yet implicit conflation of the law with justice and ethics — such that upholding of the law is necessarily the right thing to do — is another dubious principle. On the one hand, law is an essential pillar of a functioning society. On the other — in ways too numerous to enumerate — it is replete with anomalies both in conception and execution.

The familiar claim of the “objectivity” of law belies a very different reality. The term “legal fiction” itself calls into question the relationship between law, objectivity and truth. It would surprise few of us that particular laws can be unjust. But as the current criminalisation of anti-genocide protests in many parts of the Western world now attests, unqualified insistence that laws should be respected fails to account for the fact that the law can be politicised. It also undermines the need for vigilance as to which laws are worthy of our respect and which need to be criticised and potentially resisted.

The phrase “law-abiding citizen” itself highlights the need for this distinction, when laws are also in place which deny the status of “citizen” to so many of the world’s population. The now normalised term “illegals” also flies in the face of the fact that it is not illegal to claim asylum. As the title of the book Legal but Lethal strikingly conveys compliance with liberal law is no guarantee of ethical or even life sustaining behaviour. And as the text Justice on Trial elaborates, dubious practices can be deployed with respect to the construction and operation of the “justice” system itself.

To canvas even briefly the double-edged nature of celebrated liberal principles from their inception (i.e. quite apart from the recent deformations of economic “neoliberalism”) is a melancholy exercise. But it is also a valuable one. Illuminating the shadow side of an ideology adept at deflecting attention from contradictions at odds with its principles (one critic decries its “racialised forgetting” via “the strategy of concealment”) means we are better equipped to contest the travesties perpetrated in its name. In the current period, this means exposure of the deception of appeals to “liberal values” in the sickening complicity of Western institutions in the genocide which continues to be enabled against the Palestinian people.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.