I constantly hear complaints about double standards. And it is true that the liberal camp applies them (the alternative camp does as well, but that is not today’s subject). What Zeman (former Czech president) could not do, Pavel (current Czech president) can. What was acceptable for Fiala (former Czech prime minister) becomes unacceptable when Babiš current Czech prime minister) does it. Ukrainian glorification of Nazism passes without objection, while MP Turek’s juvenile provocation is treated as scandalous. Yet when we complain, we are expressing the belief that double standards are wrong. Often we even assume they are so obviously wrong that no one who promotes them could possibly be serious. If only everyone could be shown that this is a double standard, the other side would be forced to admit it was mistaken.
Wrong. Not even close. The other side knows perfectly well that it is applying a double standard. It does so deliberately and openly embraces it. In more respectable language, however, it is called “context.” The use of the same symbols may, in one context, be a repugnant expression of the far right, while in another it is a celebration of Bandera’s heroes. A “creative interpretation of the constitution” may, in one context, be an assault on democracy and, in another, its salvation.
And who decides what the proper context is? Why, the holder of power, of course.
From the standpoint of the logic of power, this makes perfect sense. Those who hold power may choose to govern according to fixed rules, or they may choose to govern without rules at all (in the overwhelming majority of cases, reality lies somewhere in between).
Now for a practical example. Many people naively believe that racism exists whenever people hate others because of their race. Not so. The prevailing liberal definition says that hatred toward people of another race is not enough. A second condition must also be met: one’s “position within the hierarchy of power” (see, for example, here). That is the context. So if Black people insult you and try to kill you because you are white, it is still not considered racism, because the required context is missing. If you fire back with a sharp remark, then it becomes racist because the context is present. If the same sharp remark is made by a lesbian activist from a nonprofit organization, then it is not racist after all.
If anyone imagines this is merely an American phenomenon, I would point to a case from 2012 in which a teenage girl, Lucie Dupová, was held in pretrial detention for several months on the basis of an expert opinion claiming that her tattoo (a cogwheel and a black flag) was, “in the context of the defendant’s personality,” a neo-Nazi symbol. I cannot name the expert—he would have had to be an extraordinary bastard—because several experts were involved in the case, and I do not know which one authored that conclusion.
But even context must itself be understood in context. There are circumstances in which it is entirely proper to consider the broader context. Take a slap, for example. It is one thing when an insufferable teenager who bullies everyone around him gets slapped, and quite another when the victim is a frightened, abused child. Everyone understands that there is a difference, even though the impact of the hand is exactly the same. That implies the existence of a broadly neutral standard—something along the lines of, “any reasonable person would agree that…” In politics, however, such a neutral standard cannot exist in principle.
Now let me place all of this in an even broader context. The anthropologist Ernest Gellner argued that the development of morality in Europe can be divided into two stages. The first was characterized by the absence of universally applicable rules. The morality of the nobility, the morality of the peasants, the morality of the burghers, the morality of the clergy. This reflected the old Platonic principle that “justice” is, above all, the harmony between a person’s social position and his conduct. According to Gellner, the Enlightenment marked the transition to a new phase in which the same moral rules applied equally to everyone.
Now the pendulum is swinging back. Instead of common rules, we have context. One set of rules for the liberal oligarchy, another for ordinary people and those who represent them.