On the 8 th of April, the Institute of European Studies at Berkeley, alongside the Center
for British Studies and the Anglo-American Studies Program, hosted a lecture by Matt
Beech, Reader in Politics and Director of the Centre for British Politics at the University
of Hull, and Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies, to a room of
thirty people.
Beech discussed his project on what he refers to as “war at home”, a consequence of
widening culture polarization within nations of the anglosphere. He associates this
phenomenon to greater ideological divergence, decreasing toleration in the public
sphere, and social media effects. The author argues that all history is the history of
thought, stressing the role of tradition and the subsequent form of philosophy operating
behind the theory, the role of thinkers and thought in cultural conversations,
fundamental to political activity. At the center of his research is the cultural war being
feuded in the form of ideas and language, and the emergence of a new theory of speech
opposed to traditional liberal progressivism and liberal conservativism alike, a
phenomenon of types of new left traditions blended down into Western conservative
thought. He defines the 21 st century as an age of confusion, and as a time for very deep
polarization.
His project revolves around speech, more concretely, the illiberal landscape that
predominates in his area of study, product of the new morality introduced by the new
left in the 1960s. Beech analyzes how the role of social norms and self-censorship
overcome the formal protection of liberty of speech and legal speech in the anglosphere.
This process has led to the boundaries of lawful speech redrawn and reimagined in an
environment of general unawareness of the prominence of the underlying intellectual
origine and tradition, and which infringes the individual right of speech in the legal and
public arena.
To conclude, the lecturer offers a tonic to reduce the inflammation of polarization based
on seven elements or practices: more meaningful conversation in real times (substitute
rants by conversations), the need for institutions to be intentional about diversity of
opinion, the need to dignify one’s interlocutor, the cultivation of a deep sense of
gratitude for one’s legacy, the understanding of arguments as a necessary component of
civilization, effective toleration (stressing lawful speech, beliefs and disposition, and the
toleration of that that one dislikes, especially because one dislikes it). The last key point
proposed is the permanent practicing and rehearsing of the previous steps, to reduce
automatization, the angry outpour in social media and the lived solitudes of many
people.