The egoism responsible for the loss of a generation of Liberals.

It is the solipsism, (egoism, self containment, uniqueness) of liberal identity politics, according which is responsible for the loss of a generation of young liberal activists. 

Instead of getting out among the people with an inspiring message about advancing together, caring for each other as citizens with common goals, young left-wing graduates seek self-validation in movements that emphasise, through a claim of oppression, the inherited differences that set them apart. 

For them the unit of political activism is the romantic self; its fullest expression, the urban demonstration in support of a particular cause, as big and boisterous as possible. 

They are romantics, Mark Lilla says, and not in a good way. ‘We need no more marchers. We need more mayors.’ 

He calls the Black Lives Matter movement, set up to challenge police brutality against black people, ‘a textbook example of how not to build solidarity’, and, using a term from an article by Tom Wolfe from 1970 about blacks who exploited white guilt to get municipal handouts, accuses the movement of using ‘Mau-Mau (A group of revolutionary Africans led by former Kenyan president Jomo Kenyata that used underground tactics to drive the white man out of their land) tactics to put down dissent’