There is the pluralist, democratic left, whose adherents believe in democratic institutions, freedom of speech, a regulated market and the rule of law. They are a mixture of mostly radical liberals and social democrats, and they believe that while our society is a liberal democracy, there is much that needs reforming, and so they favour nonviolent, radical reform achieved after rational debate.
The new kids on the block are the identitarian left. They promote a mixture of transgender/queer and critical race theories and, while having different emphases, they tend to work together and are often described as woke. While there are probably many more Australians on the pluralist, democratic left, they tend to run scared of the identitarians, who have no compunction in cancelling their opponents.
This is done in the name of social justice or human rights but there are many differences between how each of these left-wing streams interpret these concepts.
I am a lifelong inhabitant of the political left. After nearly two decades of work inside the peace and civil liberties movements, I formed the Queensland Greens in 1990. After nearly 60 years of activism, my life membership of the party was suspended because I would not delete women’s posts that were gender-critical on my Facebook page. This suspension turned into an expulsion in May 2025.
Identity is the key term in the identitarian left. Each one is tribal and they tend to co-operate with each other. The transgender grouping believes biological sex is unimportant in identity and people are what they think they are.
This is not necessarily an anti-social belief except that the movement has been able to convince enough governments around the world to pass legislation making it illegal for women to have women’s-only spaces such as toilets, change rooms, prisons, refuges, women’s sport and lesbian events. It also promotes the gender-affirming model of treating troubled young people to deal with their problems with puberty blockers, hormones and life-changing surgery.
Queer theory builds on postmodernism; it valorises the blurring and disruption of boundaries. After the LGB movement won the end of structural discrimination, the T and the Q were added, and queer theory found a home in legacy LGB organisations.
Both leftist streams might campaign on the same issue – that the Israelis are committing genocide in Gaza – but from completely different viewpoints. The identitarians, for example, support the Palestinians and demand the destruction of Israel as a white settler colonial society, while the universalist left would be more likely to demand a ceasefire, Palestinian statehood and a two-state solution.
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Across the world anti-democratic parties of the right are gaining increasing support. The response to this on the left has been mixed. Calls for unity ignore the fact there are two main streams of left-wing thought in Australia and they are incompatible.