Before I even really understood what a conservative was, I knew it was a bad thing. It was used negatively, as an insult mostly, and constantly associated with entitled ‘Karens’ and smug ‘Boomers’. So impactful was the negative portrayal of conservativism that everything I associated with it became wrong and backward too. Abortion? Wrong. Traditional values? Wrong. Nationalist pride? Don’t even get me started. It was made apparent to me that going down those roads only leads to bigotry, homophobia and racism.
The worst thing about it is that, even from an early age, I knew I agreed with conservatism a lot. I felt a lot of affinity with their beliefs and values but the problem was that no one around me seemed to be open and accepting of anything short of full-blown liberalism. I was surrounded by an increasingly woke and Leftist attitude that isn’t necessarily all too convincing, but certainly loud enough to drown out other points of view. Over the years, the insidious rhetoric has become common-sense, virtuous, analogous with the good side. And who wouldn’t want to be on that side? Only contrarians and right-wing fascists surely. Definitely not an insecure teenage girl who’s desperately trying to fit in.
It’s ironic that my mother is one of the most conservative people I know. One would expect growing up with her would expose me to conservatism as a legitimate standpoint before others could convince me otherwise. Looking back on it, she will tell you it was one of her biggest regrets as a mother that she deliberately held back her views from her children. She didn’t impose her beliefs on us, hoping that as children we would curiously investigate the world and use it to come to our own conclusions. Whilst I can certainly see the benefits of this in theory, I know that that’s not how the world works unfortunately.
Although the idea that children are “empty vessels to be filled with knowledge” is an idea disliked by coddling ideologues of education, I think it’s a rather apt description. People are reluctant to admit it, but children are not born inherently good. They are not born inherently evil either, I hasten to add. They are just born. And at that point how they are raised, how they come to understand the world dictates which values they choose to embrace and which lifestyle they choose to represent them. Some adults pay close attention to how their children’s vessels are filled; they are considerate and careful, mindful and modest. Others are, regrettably, more careless. They entrust this massive responsibility to other institutions that have no business in raising children and who have far more sinister intentions.
The idea that we are vessels influenced by institutions was an idea first presented to me in an A-level Sociology lesson. There are ‘agents of socialisation’ which help form the social norms and values of an individual like: family, community, religion, peers and media. Many today view this sociological theory as passé but I think it remains more relevant than ever. How else does a child learn to understand the world in which they live?
From my own experiences, family had a huge impact and as my mother took a conscious step back, my siblings took her place. I am the youngest child in my family, with many older brothers and sisters. They were my idols growing up, every one of them cooler and wiser than I could ever hope to be; I was desperate to be just like them.
My eldest sister (with whom I share a 20-year age gap) and her husband were the first people to ever introduce me to the word conservative. I have a clear vision of them explaining the difference between ‘conservative with a small c’ and ‘Conservative with a big C’. I couldn’t have been more than 8 at the time but I remember thinking even then that whatever a conversative was, it wasn’t desirable.
From then on, they were all very explicitly left-wing and vocal about it. They all preached their views loudly and proudly with implicit connotations that anyone who thought anything else was ‘idiotic’. As a result, I spent my formative years believing every single word they said. They presented their beliefs with such confidence that I convinced myself I was stupid and that they were all much, much cleverer than me.
Looking back on it, I realise now that there was very rarely any disagreement. There was never any debate or dialogue; there was never an exchange of ideas or a discussion of different viewpoints. The recent vernacular of ‘echo-chamber’ describes it perfectly – it explains their confidence, their vocality, their arrogance. It also explains why the few times my sister’s husband (who became more right-wing over the years) did counter our views, he reduced us to tears. In our little world, politics was a place of agreement and not discourse.
To this day, my siblings remain varying degrees of liberal and still cling to the ideals of the leftist ideology. Additionally, my sister’s husband has regrettably dialled back his views from family ‘debates’ which has only entrenched the ‘left is best’ attitude.
There are many other agents responsible for my anti-conservatism – education, media, culture, social media and the death of religion. However, there’s too much to unpack in one go. Each agent deserves its own focus and to rush through them now would vastly underplay each institution’s role. Needless to say, that by 26 years old, I had spent my whole life hearing one side of the story. I had been bombarded by so much liberalism that it just became my normal. Anything that seemed hypocritical, I clearly didn’t understand; anything that didn’t make sense, I just shrugged off and ignored. I was compliant, amenable and avoidant of any confrontation. I was on the ‘good side’ so long as I pushed my conservative thoughts aside like a dirty secret.
As the years passed, and the polarisation between Left and Right got wider and wider, I repressed my conservatism deeper and deeper. Woke-ism was growing, and Leftism was gaining more power than it knew what to do with. Conversely, conservatism increasingly shrank from the mainstream stage, which seemed to frame it as more extremist and outdated. Respectful dialogue, discourse, debate and disagreement seemed to disappear completely from view and was replaced by everyone shouting over one another.
In fact, the only disagreement that I seemed to notice was within myself. The cognitive dissonance of what I thought and what I believed I should think worsened to the point that I completely abstained from politics for years, believing that I was too stupid to understand it.
On reflection, I think the ‘crunch-point’ for me was the 2016 US election. Although British, American politics has always seemed more interesting than my own and I remember watching in disbelief as Donald Trump not only qualified as the Republican candidate for President but actually won. Donald Trump actually won. 62,984,828 people actually voted for Trump.
I remember thinking at the time – 62,984,828 can’t all be stupid. They can’t all be idiots. They can’t all be racist, homophobic bigots. And yet, that is exactly how the Left justified it. Democrats and liberals became more convinced than ever that Republicans, and therefore conversatives, were brainless, indoctrinated morons. The Left-wing narrative became harder for me to identify with then than it ever had before, yet I’m ashamed to say that I kept my head down, my mouth shut and found something else to think about.
I genuinely believe that despite all the hypocrisy and inconsistencies of Leftism that I would still identify with them to this day if it wasn’t for my fiancé. Though I’m sure many feminists will be horrified to hear, it was he who introduced me to a new narrative and kick-started my 2-year journey of questioning every belief I had ever taken as fact.
In many ways, his transformation seems even more substantial than mine. When we started dating at school, he was a Leftie, staunch atheist and the son of two Asian immigrants.
Incidentally, it seems the 2016 election ignited some curiosity in him too and he started to research about the Republican appeal of Trump. He read books, listened to podcasts, watched numerous videos and read countless articles which all seemed to indicate the same thing – there was another way of looking at things. And what’s more – it made a lot more sense!
When he started to share these ideas with me, I reacted as a good Leftist does- with fear and emotion. He presented me with facts and statistics, I responded with anecdotes and tears. Whilst this certainly shutdown the discourse, it also quickly put a heavy strain on our relationship. I struggled with how to balance that my fiancé – an intensely good person whom I love with all my heart – could harbour these conservative beliefs which I had been told time and again were ‘evil’ and ‘wrong’. My family mentioned how he must have fallen prey to the ‘YouTube algorithm’ as if this were the only way one could form different opinions.
I thank God for his patience and restraint as lesser men would have tired of my resistance and suspicion to his new perspective on things. Instead, he kept to his beliefs and he opted ‘to agree to disagree’ for the time being and to focus on our relationship instead.
But there was a new narrative out there for me now, one I hadn’t had access to before. I started to hear a different point of view on the radio, overhear podcasts, read articles that he had left lying around and it made something very clear to me: many of my deepest, innermost beliefs actually had some validity to them. Maybe I wasn’t an idiot. Maybe there were other normal people who shared the same ideas as me.
It took me a long time but I started to open up to these ideas and slowly and surely begin to embrace them. I actively started listening to different points of view, reading books I thought sounded interesting and I found something that I had never really encountered before: discussion, discourse, debate and dialogue. People talked about issues, disagreed with one another without hysterics or shouting. They listened and reflected on other people’s opinions. I’d never really seen that before. Furthermore, I even started to enjoy educating myself about politics and ideologies; I liked hearing a new and refreshing perspective from that which bombards us in almost every form of mainstream media.
I know my siblings would deem that I am also victim of the YouTube algorithm. But I disagree. Because I don’t actually agree with everything I hear. I don’t take things I hear for granted. I question a lot of what I come across because I spent so long believing the other side of it. My fiancé and I don’t agree on everything either. Contrary to what some think, I haven’t ‘abandoned’ my beliefs because a man told me too. In fact, I am still building my beliefs, I’m questioning them and investigating them. For the first time, I am not just settling with the first viewpoint I hear, I’m listening to other ideas and doing my best to weight up the options.
I call myself a closet conservative (much to the horror of the LGBT community I’m sure) because I’ve spent my whole life feeling ashamed of what I believed deep down. To be honest, I am only just recently starting to explore what I stand for and I am frustrated that it took me so long. I am eternally grateful to my fiancé for so many things but giving me a voice is by far the most powerful thing he’s done for me. Because the truth is, I am a conservative and I don’t think I should have to be ashamed of it. I am prouder of the person I am now than I ever have been before now.
I’m not saying the ‘Right is right’ or that anyone who is left-wing is ‘idiotic’ – it would be hypocritical and hubris to say so. But there is a crisis (many crises in fact) in Western culture that must be addressed.
At the core of the solution, we must encourage debate. Despite the stereotype that Right-wingers never listen to reason, the ones I have come across are the most open-minded and tolerant people I have met. Without a forum to openly discuss and share ideas, to question not criticise the beliefs of others, we will only slip further into division to the point that it becomes irreversible.
I don’t have all the answers, I really don’t and I’m fully prepared to admit that. But I know that my only chance of finding them is by actually listening.
The Closet Conservative 