The small island nation of Singapore is like the American TV program, The Wire. I understand that is probably one of the weirdest opening sentences to an article about philosophy and global politics, but hear me out.
Co-creator of The Wire, David Simon, once stated the reason for the show’s success was its ability to mirror every conceivable political bias of the viewership. This was enabled by the many different themes and issues exhibited throughout the show. If you are against the War on Drugs, you will see evidence of its failings. If you support it, you will see evidence it should continue. If you believe that police failings are because of cultural or economic reasons, you will see those perspectives reflected too.
In short, within the entire series, you will see nearly every modern political issue at play as understood by every ‘side’ of said issue. What remains interesting is that, as noted by Simon, the show maintains an ability to “validate” and consequently reinforce the beliefs of the viewers.
As such, the city of Baltimore continues to hold a light to America-at-large and its ongoing issues, even if it aired 21 years ago, finishing just before the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Whether it’s urban decay, corruption, or the failure of the American Dream, what we see in the show are things that existed in the 1960’s and still exist today in this post-industrial broken city.
You can follow this train of thought into the world of global politics, which is not as far away from modern media as I would like to admit. Specifically, we have seen a similar situation emerge out of the success story that is Singapore.
Singapore is like a mirror to any political persuasion that one might have, from which also can “validate” one’s own personal politics. The only real difference is that The Wire (and by extension the city of Baltimore, I say this because the city itself is largely the main character for the entire show) are used negatively, while Singapore is used positively.
If you want to see a thriving multi-ethnic, multicultural, post-colonial state, then you can look to Singapore. If you want to see somewhere that champions free-market capitalism, then you can see it there. If you want to see somewhere with a right-wing government that places a strong emphasis on law and order, not to mention the death penalty, it’s right there between Johor and the Riau Islands.
It remains fascinating to me that a tiny island, one which most people could never find on a map, has sparked such a massive debate on what they ‘see’ when they think of Singapore.
A nation with a population comparable to Lebanon or Palestine, yet more than a hundred leagues above such countries. A right-wing free-market paradise with the best public housing in the world. Those who see its publicly-funded universal healthcare system, one of the most efficient in the world, argue to the contrary. A super politically conservative nation that’s current president is an ethnic minority Muslim woman, racial success story, model minority, etc, etc.
Is Singapore perfect? Of course not. Is Singapore used to reflect general political beliefs about the world? Well, yes. Are a lot of these views correct? Yes and no.
Politically, socially, economically, a lot of different political views and philosophies are validated by the existence of Singapore. Fundamentally, Singapore and Baltimore have a comparable effect on the politically-minded.
Do people get murdered and addicted to drugs in both places? Yes. Are both places being led by an ethnic minority leader? Yes. How we view subjects often depends on the viewer itself, as much as the subject matter in play.
Despite this, Singapore has become a symbol of success whilst Baltimore has become a symbol of failure. Singapore is a model whilst Baltimore is a failure, and nobody wants to see their political beliefs reflected or “invalidated” by the latter.
What is revealing is how two completely different places are so similar, while being so completely poles apart. Everyone can infer whatever they want from either place or still be generally, albeit not exactly, correct.
In conclusion, I think that David Simon is largely correct about this idea of how we as viewers of a thing can be so vastly different, yet so widely validated by its existence. Maybe, it’s more revealing for us, as viewers, to look at places or thematic issues within the greater context of The Discourse, whether political or pop culture, and realize we can all be somewhat right, while also being largely wrong.
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Why We Won’t Publish the Word ‘Woke.’
As of today, the Mallard is no longer publishing articles that include the word ‘woke’, in either print or online.
Too many submissions, not just to the Mallard, but other publications – have become reliant on this word to explain away current trends that people find unappealing, yet cannot articulate why beyond anything other than this word. It is the responsibility of all outlets to contribute to the public discourse, and when a word, concept, idea, or individual, fails to contribute to the discourse – they have to be removed.
When pundits of the right use ‘woke’, they are using a word spawned by the online Left to denote their being ‘awake’ to the ‘injustices’ of the world, which are usually spawned from an ideological conviction rather than an actual understanding of the complex issues of the world. It suggests these people – the ‘woke’ left – are awake to the things that we are not, as if they have some deep insight that surpasses the average person. It is simply the latest expression of ‘real consciousness’ derived from Marxism.
Of course, we all know that the word is used sarcastically – but to use it at all is to make the eternal mistake of the Right, and to fight the Left on their own terms. We have been making this mistake for seventy years, and to reverse this trend, we need to stop appealing to their language, their values, their goals.
But even when the word is used derisively, it adds virtually nothing. Issues around pronouns and bathrooms pale in comparison to the economic, cultural, and demographic changes brought about by the respective trends of globalism, liberalism, and immigration. There is nothing substantively different in the current cultural trends than in the previous cultural trends. What is happening today should not be described with a new word, because what is happening today is not new. That is the reality of where we are now – ‘woke’ is not sufficiently different from what came before it to really merit a separate topic of discussion. It is just an extension of the logic of the sexual revolution, the Civil Rights era, and the great liberalisation of the last sixty years.
One of our assistant editors, William Yarwood, last year recorded a short podcast begging us to stop calling groups like Antifa ‘fascists’ or the Left ‘the real racists’, and recognise that they are just communists. Stop calling the Left ‘woke’ as shorthand for a broad range of things you just ‘don’t like’.
It is useless to say ‘look, I agree with what they stand for, I just don’t like how they’re going about it’. Then your disagreement is technical, it is not fundamental, so really you’re just the ones putting the brakes on their movement. They will come for you eventually, so you might as well recognise that now.
Calling something ‘woke’ is a lazy caricature that lets (what passes for) the right wing commentariat get away with murder; the liberals of yesteryear are allowed to displace conservative voices in media, politics, and culture. They pretend, in their sarcastic overtones, that leftists are weak and hypersensitive, when in reality they want to put children on hormone blockers, let men into womens’ changing rooms, open our borders to people who hate us, and teach the next generation that they have nothing to gain from the civilisation that birthed them.
These individuals are not weak. These people are not hypersensitive. Instead, they pass laws to put people in prison if they so much as joke about them. The notion these people are weak is a reflection of decades of failure of conservatives to actually do anything about them. If these individuals were weak, they would not find it so easy to break down the barriers that protect the most vulnerable in society: women and children.
These are not just simple activists, by the way. They are in our institutions, running our universities, pioneering our civil service, ‘decolonising’ our curricula, all the while entrenching their culture by building parallel careers that have no real world purpose or function. The massive, tumorous growth of the ‘human resources’ machine has seen to it that busy body unemployable humanities graduates have a reason to exist once more, only now it is self-perpetuating cancer that simultaneously cannot abide the existence of leftist heresy whilst relying on it like a parasite.
And as we see continuously, the online right is just as bad. If there are necessary discussions about poverty, living crises, genuine injustices that actually harm peoples’ lives, the right shrieks ‘woke!’ in such a hypersensitive way that the actual discussion disappears behind parody and caricature. TalkRadio’s infamous Mike Graham recently told an Extinction Rebellion member that we can ‘grow concrete’ in an effort to ‘own the lib’ – to which the XR member, who is stupid for different reasons, was left speechless. By consequence, Mike Graham made XR look reasonable – an own-goal, if ever there was one.
When war broke out in Ukraine, it was necessary for the right to attempt to make sense of it. This was done well in some circles – with people drawing attention to the Realist school Regardless of your thoughts on the Realist school, it was undoubtedly an intellectual contribution to the discourse. If you looked at the mainstream discourse however, you would know nothing of this contribution. Instead, it became another flashpoint to discuss this word, those they associate with it, and how these people were ‘weak’, ‘hypersensitive’ and made it so we were incapable of fighting a war against Putin.
It couldn’t possibly be that nuclear war is a possibility, or even – as the neoconservative lobby implicitly recognises but refuses to admit – that we have nothing to gain from getting involved in the war. No, it must be the woke. We end up in some perverse eternal Spy vs Spy scenario, where ‘woke warriors’ seek out racism/sexism/whateverism in any place they can find it, while the ‘common sense rightists’ only try to define what they consider ‘woke’ to make it work, rather than criticise it on its own grounds.
So we are not publishing the word any longer. Here is a list of publications that are likely interested: The Sun; TalkRadio; The Critic; Compact; Breitbart; GB News. I am sure they will find your work fascinating. We won’t.
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The Argument for the Monarchy Should Not Be an Economic One
An unfortunate reality which I am determined to alter is the prevalence of economic arguments for The British Monarchy. Many in The Mallard have wrote fantastic pieces on the Monarchy, for example Xander West’s article exploring of the “Republican Option” was an excellently written and intellectually brilliant piece in its deconstruction of the abysmal yet ever prevalent republican argument.
My issue in this article is not so much the republican argument, but the royalist one. More specifically the economic argument for the Monarchy. This argument often relates to tourism, or other businesses which profit from the Royal Family, and while there are truths and falsities to these arguments in various manners, I believe they completely miss the mark on the advantages of The Monarchy. In fact, I find the inability to assert an effective non-economic argument for the Monarchy illustrates a lack of true respect and support for the most important institution in our Great Nation.
Looking at the world through monetary value alone is a sad consequence of liberalism’s iron grip on society, and the Monarchy for the most part hasn’t escaped this sad reality. Many seek to promote the necessity of the Monarchy for financial reasons, and I believe that this can only be understood as arguing that the main advantage of a car is its paint colour while ignoring the true substance of the vehicle. The Monarchy was never intended to be a money maker, because it was never something crafted or forged to serve the people, rather it was the other way around. This flip of perspective has relegated the Monarchy to the post-metaphysical level, and thus removes it of its core value and its actual importance. In a sense, this switch of the Monarchy serving us as a monetary gain, over the joint relationship of service both ways for a stronger symbol of the nation and its values is in effect cutting the meat off the bone and throwing it all away.
Conservatives are passionately aware of the Monarchy’s true value, and standing, because more often than not we are metaphysical in our thought. We seek to attribute special value beyond materialism, and the monetary nature of our liberal society. The Monarchy is something which goes beyond money, it is a symbol of our nation itself. Not a reflection, an idea which is often asserted. The Monarchy is not a reflection, instead it is the ideal to strive towards. The Monarchy is a guiding force through the calamity of the postmodern world, and all of the consequences which come of it. Our Monarchy is steeped in the legitimacy of the centuries by which it has presided and led our Great Nation. Money is nothing in comparison to our rich history, and special traditions. When our Monarch sits to open Parliament in front of that grand gold display, enacting a tradition centuries old in a building which will soon reach 1000 years of age, something special is occurring. The fibre of goodness which is left in the liberal melting pot of modern Britain comes to the forefront, and when our armed forces march with determination and people fly their flags in pride of their Monarch and nation, the reality of our Monarchy shines brighter than the bleak alternative of a republic.
Tourism and money cannot match the respect, reverence and admiration of the world when they see our Royal Family. Money cannot reach the levels of symbolism and leadership our Monarchy provides. Simply put, our Monarchy is more than money, and to reduce it to such material levels is a shameful reminder and promotion of liberalism’s destructive presence in royalism today.
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Why Can’t We Be Friends?
It’s hardly a novel take at this point to notice that something is fundamentally “off”, to put it lightly, with the way politics and society are currently operating. The events of the last year and a half have demonstrated a distinct lack of consistency in terms of virtually everything. Groups of rioters tearing down and/or vandalising historical monuments have operated virtually unimpeded, whilst a peaceful vigil for a woman murdered by a police officer was met with unwarranted violence, and the once obscene conspiracy theory that COVID originated from a Chinese lab has now been deemed not only acceptable, but plausible by the political elite. Perhaps the worst part is, no matter how uneasy this situation makes us, there is nothing “off” or abnormal about it; it is simply politics operating exactly how it should, whether we like it or not.
In Concept of the Political, German jurist and philosopher Carl Schmitt attempted to precisely define the term “political”; indeed, the more one thinks about it, the harder this task appears. If you asked twenty random people off the street what “politics” actually means, I’d bet a modest pittance you’d get around twenty different answers. From experience, it would range from “the practice of governing/making laws”, to “ruling over people”, to “compromising to reach a universally acceptable outcome.” Schmitt would have fundamentally disagreed with all of these propositions, more-so the last assertion for the crime of being egregiously wishy-washy.
Instead, politics, like all spheres of human activity, is defined by a dichotomic distinction. In the sphere of morality there is “good” and “evil”, in aesthetics “beauty” and “ugliness”, and in economics “profitable” and “unprofitable.” For politics, “the specific [distinction] to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.” The “enemy” in the political sense is not a business competitor, or the villain of a petty private rivalry, but a public enemy, or “hostis.” As Schmitt explains,
“An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship.”
Politics then, is driven by group-based loyalties; ideology, nationality, ethnicity, etc., any means of finding commonality amongst otherwise isolated individuals. Of course, this reductively alludes to the sentiment of “strength in numbers”, but it also appeals to the human disposition towards a common purpose greater than themselves, fostering a sense of camaraderie between those who share in it. These are the friends, and those who do not share the values and goals of the group, or hold loyalties elsewhere, are enemies. For the safety and security of the friend group and its institutions, enemies must be defined, outed, and crushed.
Historians and theorists continue to debate whether Schmitt’s “concept [or definition] of the political” drew from his tendency towards authoritarianism and later National Socialism. Despite this, one cannot ignore that Schmitt’s definition is universally observable both in the past and present. Having formed the Second Triumvirate, Mark Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus instigated brutal proscriptions to ensure their most high-profile enemies were disposed of. In the words of Ronald Syme, “the Triumvirs were pitiless, logical, and concordant. On the list of the prescriptions all said they set one hundred and thirty senators and a great number of Roman knights.” They were not motivated by personal disdain or savage revenge, rather “their victory was the victory of a party”; the supremacy of the Caesarean cause against its threats.[5] Lenin too was political in this sense, evident, among other places, in State and Revolution:
“the ‘special repressive force’ of the bourgeoisie for the suppression of the proletariat, of the millions of workers by a handful of the rich, must be replaced by a “special repressive force” of the proletariat for the suppression of the bourgeoisie.”[6]
This is essentially a high-brow version of “it’s okay when we do it”; the destruction of the bourgeoisie (the enemy group) through violent means is perfectly acceptable, nay necessary, but violence used by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat (the friend group) is unjust. Even Joe Biden began his presidency in this manner, declaring those who stormed the Capitol Building on January 6th (something which both the elite and faux leftist rebels are still seething over) to be “extremists dedicated to lawlessness” who “do not represent a true America.”[7] Whether it be the most brutal dictatorship or the smiliest liberal democracy, every successful regime refuses to suffer the presence of those who wish to undermine it. Regardless of what we think of Schmitt’s motivations and endeavours, or indeed the notion of group/identity-based politics in itself, the friend-enemy distinction rings true to those in power.
Therefore, when the elite tells us that tearing down statues is correcting history, or that taking the knee before a sporting event is a heroic stand against injustice, but protesting against lockdowns or waving the flag of your own country is a threat to “our way of life”, they are simply doing what all political entities must do: defining what behaviours and values are and are not acceptable, preserving the sanctity of the friend group against its enemies. Indeed, this sentiment echoes through Samuel Francis’s concept of “anarcho-tyranny”; describing the situation when an authoritarian state, despite its extensive power, is unable to enforce basic law and order, leading it to overregulate the lives of law-abiding citizens instead, rather than attempt to deal with genuine crime. An example of this would be clamping down hard on people travelling too far for a run at the peak of lockdown, but refusing to take any meaningful action on systematic trafficking through grooming gangs.
In the context of the friend-enemy distinction, anarcho-tyranny appears as a political choice rather than risible incompetence; to introduce another of Schmitt’s famous definitions: “sovereign is he who decides on the exception”, holding the power to transcend the restraints of the law such that they may protect the friend group in a state of emergency.[9] “Anarchy” reserved for friends, permitted by the sovereign (ruling elite in this case, rather than single individual) to do as they please because they either pose no real threat to the system and its goals, or are a useful pawn against its enemies. “Tyranny” is imposed upon enemies, whose every move must be monitored to ensure they are not in a position to challenge the system, and swiftly dealt with if they are. However, the problem with liberal democracies is that they are operated by the soft-handed administrators of the managerial elite, who are hesitant to use brute force against their enemies, even at a time of emergency. Make no mistake, the tyranny is still there, it simply takes a subtler form, often involving long-term manipulative tactics rather than outright arresting or executing dissidents, as one would typically expect from an oppressive state.
One of the most powerful of these tactics is “framing.” In this context, framing can be best described using the old adage “you’re either with us, or against us”, a sentiment expressed in one way or another by political icons from Cicero to Lenin and Benito Mussolini to George Bush. As soon as there is the possibility of a middle-ground, or a compromise with the enemy, subversion is all-but certain. Consequently, the slightest disagreement with the status quo can effectively be painted as a potentially system-level threat. Even the mildest of lockdown sceptics, concerned about the effects of shutting the country down on small business, human interaction, or children’s development, can be framed as a threat to public health by placing them, in the mainstream consciousness, as one step away from national enemies such as Piers Corbyn, David Icke, and other such “deranged anti-vaxxers.” When put so reductively it sounds like a laughable exaggeration, yet it works. Understandably, the average person holds no desire to be framed in such a way, given the potential ramifications it could have on their life, leading them too comfortably justify averting the risk and pushing any niggling worries they may have had to the back of their head, slotting comfortably back into “trusting the experts.”
This process also notably applied to UKIP at its peak (perhaps even the entire “populist uprising” more broadly), a party of free-market libertarians who flirted with drug legalisation, yet successfully framed in the media as fellow travellers of the openly fascist and white nationalist BNP; simply because they both claimed to oppose “the establishment” and mass immigration, and didn’t apologise for the Empire every ten minutes. Neither of these examples have been presented to lament their underdog status against a system that hates them, but simply to illustrate that once the powers-that-be determine a group or an idea unacceptable, usually because it threatens their narrative, social pressure will be enough for the average person to cave in and accept the status out of fear of being associated with extremists, and subsequently marginalised. One silver-lining to this practice is that it informs us which opinions truly are dangerous. If you can say something without fear of being called an extremist, chances are it’s neither threatening to the system nor particularly edgy; how many people have lost their jobs or livelihoods for being a Marxist in recent years? If anything, it’ll get you a pretty cosy gig at SAGE.
Returning to Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty, our aforementioned extremists or “threats to the system”, are regularly exaggerated to justify a faux state of emergency or “exception.” The most hardcore COVID deniers and anti-vaxxers, should they by some miracle gain political power, would do some damage to the system, so too would the BNP if it ever got anywhere. Realistically, the chances of either of these happening is so miniscule it seems the media time afforded to them feels somewhat unjustified. What were the odds of the BNP winning an election, even at their peak? Essentially nil. How many people are total COVID deniers who think vaccines are the mark of the beast? An insignificant amount. Yet, we’re constantly bombarded with sensationalist fear porn to make it seem like the enemies are just one step away from ruining everyone’s day. By lauding them as existential threats to normality, and making them seem more powerful and influential than they are, it leads people straight back into the arms of the system, such that it may protect them from these awful people and their dangerous ideas. In fact, there is an argument to be made that suppression of extremists is counter-intuitive, as their existence (especially when, as it is in reality, negligible) works to support the system rather than weaken it, providing a visible manifestation of the enemy; a deterrent to discourage normal people (who are raised from birth with the idea that the establishment is the friend) from straying too far outside the Overton window. Framing then, acts as both a means of undermining the enemy, as well as consolidating the power of the friend group without needing to bash down doors and shoot dissidents in the street; far more civilised if you ask me.
Framing also has an added bonus effect: it forces enemies to talk in the same language as friends, functionally turning them into a friend, but still kept at an arm’s length. Moderates of either side don’t want to be associated with extremists either, it’s bad PR, and will almost always side against them if it means they won’t be classified as an enemy. They possess a constant need for approval from the establishment; understandable at the surface level, as such approval allows them to participate in the mainstream dialogue, albeit at the cost of excessively watering-down their positions to the point where they offer little but an edgy (at best) spin on the narrative of the ruling elite. Hence why the moderate right-wing is so painfully milquetoast, they would rather cosy up to the progressive managerial elite than support people on their own side. Paul Gottfried refers to these people as “Conservative Inc.”, the Turning Points and “liberal Tories” of the world, establishment right-wingers who peddle toned-down, politically safe opinions, easily consumable by the average “sceptic”, whilst attacking those who offer a genuinely conservative alternative, often accusing them of being rabid reactionaries. Unfortunately, if you want a seat at the table of power, you need to be a friend, and that means you must play by the rules of the game and participate in the punishment of the enemies just the same.
Despite all of this, liberal democracy tries to disguise the friend-enemy distinction. According to Schmitt, as an ideology emergent from the economic sphere, liberalism is inclined towards compromise, as it is unprofitable to hold contemptuous relationships with a potential business partner or customer. As we have established, this does not mean that liberal democracies do not enforce the friend-enemy distinction, in fact, considering the effectiveness of framing they’re rather good at it, but they do attempt to smokescreen the natural dichotomy of politics.
One of the methods this is achieved is through what Curtis Yarvin calls the “two-story myth.” Under authoritarian regimes, a “national myth” is forced upon the population, constituting a narrative of history containing elements justifying the existence and power of the ruling elite. The problem with this, according to Yarvin, is that people fundamentally hate being told what to think, particularly as national myths are never completely truthful. You can see this in the limp efforts by the Conservative Party to promote “British values”, the substance of which are another issue entirely, and are almost always widely repudiated, whether it be through cynical edginess or a realisation that these things cannot be artificially created. Therefore, it is arguably more effective to create a “two-story myth”, whereby the national myth is split into two narratives.
“When people hear one story, they tend to ask: is this true? When they hear two stories, they tend to ask: which one of these is true?”
What is being questioned is not whether the ruling elite is justified in its position or not, simply the path taken for it to get there. The Tories (when not infested with Blairism) tell us that the British state promoted individualism, freedom of speech, and entrepreneurship, good old classical liberal values which built us into the country we are today. Labour on the other hand insist that our country was built into what it is now through co-operative values such as trade unionism, the NHS, and the welfare state. Despite both of these being mostly falsehoods, there are nuggets of truth present in them which provide just enough for there to be an “uncontroversial, bipartisan consensus”, meaning that when the system is threatened, the loyal peons of each path can be relied on to defend it.
As politics is innately dichotomous and confrontational, the two-story myth provides a faux-friend-enemy distinction to act as a “safety valve” stopping people turning to narratives that won’t arrive in the same place as the approved ones. Whilst people are busy fighting over whether the Tories or Labour should be in power, it keeps them from realising that they are friends, and that by supporting either they are supporting the maintenance of the status quo, regardless of which one is in office. Even people acutely aware of their similarities, quite a substantial number these days, still fall into the trap of engaging with such theatrics. This does not mean that there is no disagreement at all between friends, there are tussles over particular policies, permitted insofar as the fundamentals of the system are not challenged, and as long as the illusion of disagreement (at least superficially) maintains the deception. Different MPs of different parties had all sorts of opinions on Brexit, but beyond lip service, none of them ever questioned whether globalism or free-trade are inherent goods in themselves. Equally, Boris Johnson, Joe Biden, and Justin Trudeau certainly all have their own views on a variety of matters, and may not even like each other on a personal level, but when the time comes, they chant in unison their desire to “build back better.”
There is no friend-enemy distinction between Labour and the Conservatives, or any party in parliament; if any of them were deemed to be enemies of the system they would not be allowed anywhere near power. Back to the BNP example, whatever one thinks of them, they did not share the values of the ruling elite, nor did they buy into the national myth via either one of the two stories. Consequently, after gaining 2 MEPs in the 2009 European Parliament election, they were actively denied access to information afforded to every other party, and it was made clear that their involvement in anything meaningful would be kept to an absolute minimum. This is not an endorsement of the BNP or its failed plight against mainstream politics; honestly speaking, it makes perfect sense, bringing us full circle back to the central question raised by the friend-enemy distinction: would you let a rogue element, which actively despises you and everything you stand for, operate on the same playing field as you? If the answer is yes, then you must be some kind of masochist.
One should not misinterpret this as a polemic against liberal hypocrisy; yes, they allow their friends to operate as they please whilst marginalising anyone they disagree with, but that is not hypocrisy, it is simply politics. They are the ones who hold the power, and no one can expect them to sit back and give free rein to potential subverters. It may not be particularly nice, but the sooner we come to terms with it the better, and once we stop trying to be the bigger person, better still. They want you to “debate” them because it is a distraction, no matter how easy it is to tear apart their ideas and arguments. If those with power decide that something will happen, it will determine whether its justifications are fallacious or if anyone agrees or disagrees with it.
The simple answer is to return the favour, if they don’t care what you think of them, then you shouldn’t care what they think of you. Stand tall for what you believe in, refuse to allow that which you hold dear to be critiqued or questioned by people who hold you in contempt, because as soon as those ideas become contestable, they lose their sacred status. Let them bombard you with petty insults, safe in the knowledge that they are, in the words of Roger Scruton “propaganda words”, abstract weasel words designed to attach enemy status to someone; recognising such is the first part of stepping over the quagmire of liberalism. One you discover your friends (not enemies who wear the skins of friends) discuss ideas among them by all means, learn from your enemies but do not engage with them, no matter how much they try to lure you in with the promise of “free and fair discussion”; a deception to hide their true intention: to confuse you, humiliate you, and obliterate you and your way of life.
Friend good, enemy bad; the motto of all successful political entities.
