In a response to our recent event with Judith Butler, Olivia Fane offers her view on the progressive movement. No culture is either true or untrue. Culture is a shared narrative; one that should be judged not on whether it is true or not, but on how much people thrive within it. Money, power, sex, gender, and the self, have been turned into new gods for us to either worship or rage against. Progressives are not thriving, argues Fane.

This is the curious thing about our progressive culture as promoted by Judith Butler et al. Unlike other intellectuals who attempt some kind of bird’s eye view, who ask questions like why? and where from? and are happy to compare and contrast one culture with another, the progressive intellectual believes, I’m quite certain of it, that the culture they espouse and promote is in an important way ‘true’. Not only do they write and talk politically, with words like ‘power’, ‘equality’ and ‘vulnerable minorities’ peppering their discourse, but quasi-religiously, as they imagine a time ahead when all things will be good and right and equal – which means chucking out the old Christian-Judaic values, and replacing them with their own.