Why the Left Needs Its Own Reckoning

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In his new book Coming Clean, Eric Heinze rejects the idea that we should be less woke. In fact, we need more wokeness, but of a new kind. Yes, we must teach about classism, racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and other gross injustices, but we must also educate the public about the left’s own support for regimes that damaged and destroyed millions of lives for over a century—Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia, or the Kim dynasty in North Korea.

Criticisms of Western wrongdoing are certainly important, yet Heinze explains that most on the political left have rarely engaged in the kinds of open and public self-scrutiny that they demand from others. Citing examples as different as the Ukraine war, LGBTQ+ people in Cuba, the concept of “hatred,” and the problem of leftwing antisemitism, Heinze explains why and how the left must change its memory politics if it is to claim any ethical high ground.

Eric Heinze is Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of The Most Human Right: Why Free Speech is Everything (MIT Press), among other books, and has published over 100 articles and has been featured in radio and television and other media around the world. His new book is Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to The Michael Sherman Show.
0:16.0	Eric Hinesh, Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary University in London.
0:13.2	He's the author of The Most Human Right, Why Free Speech is Everything. You can imagine I like that book,
0:23.2	as a free speech fundamentalist, as it were, among other books, and he's published over 100
0:29.5	articles that's been featured in radio and television and other media around the world. His new book is, here it is, coming clean, the rise of critical theory
0:34.3	and the future of the left. Now, after I had Christopher Rufo on the show, I got some pushback going,
0:42.6	hey, you got to have somebody that's not on the right. Okay, I gather my guest today, Eric,
0:47.9	nice to have you on here. You are not from the right. You're not a mega-right or a conservative. I gather my guest today, Eric. Nice to have you on here. You are not from the right. You're not a
0:52.2	mega-right or a conservative, I gather, for reading your book. But welcome to the show. And maybe start
0:56.1	there. What's your story? How did you get into all this stuff in political science and law and all that?
1:02.0	And then what is your position on these things? Yeah, well, I mean, basically, yeah, I think as with many people who kind of jump into these
1:06.8	issues, you notice certain things and certain discontents over a long time, sometimes,
1:18.3	you know, dating back to your student days.
1:25.4	But it can take time to kind of be able to articulate a broader picture of where, of what's going wrong.
1:29.0	Sometimes the things are, you know, so, are so glaring in front of us that we don't see them.
1:35.3	Because I don't think anything I say in the book should be very shocking, and yet I think
1:42.1	a lot of what I say is not really being said.
1:48.4	A lot of people, I think, are getting the impression that I simply kind of want to rehash
1:54.8	a kind of what about hery, right?
2:00.3	And so the left spends a lot of time criticizing, you know, sort of, you know, the West and
2:02.7	Western history. And then on the right, you get the kind of mirror imaging of telling the
2:08.2	left, all of the complicity that they've had with totalitarianism.
	...

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