Farage’s milkshake attack and the perils of progressivism

Much worse than the fact of a banana milkshake being chucked over Nigel Farage is the inevitable discourse it has occasioned. This has mostly involved progressives finding it very funny and others trying desperately, and unsuccessfully, to reason with them. This is as good a time as any to reiterate a point I hope to drive home to all those who belong to a rival political tradition to progressivism, be they right-wingers, liberals, social democrats or Marxists. That point is this: you can’t reason with a progressive. Not because they are irrational, although some are, but because progressivism operates outwith the philosophical and ethical confines of these other ideologies. 

It will do no good to appeal to questions of public safety (‘What if it had been acid?’), partisanship (‘What if someone threw a milkshake over Diane Abbott?’), hypocrisy (‘Aren’t you lot the ones who say speech is violence?’), or decorum (‘Shouldn’t politics be more dignified than this?’).