You can't always tell when you're on the right side of history

If your cause is right, you don't need to make bad arguments

When I look back at history’s more horrifying episodes, I sometimes wonder whether I would have been on the ‘right side’ of whatever injustice was taking place at the time.

If I were around in Germany in the 1930s, would I have bravely resisted the Nazis? And were I living in the American South in the 1960s, would I have been one of the white allies of the civil rights movement, joining the marches and speaking out in support of voting rights for African Americans?

The march from Selma to Montgomery. The bridge was, and somehow astonishingly still is, named after the former supreme leader of the KKK.

I’d clearly like to think so, because I’m a man from the 21st century, where both of these causes now seem so obviously morally right.

And if I were to somehow go back in time to 1965, then surely – surely – I would join one of the famous civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, which began 59 years ago today.

Plot twist! I’ve actually been to the famous bridge in Selma (though I was 55 years too late to join the march).

However, if we imagine that I was someone with my demographic characteristics back then, and if I had no knowledge of what the future would hold – could I be so sure that I’d be on what we now to know to be the “Right Side of History”?

Is it more likely that 1965 James would have kept his head down and not wanted to cause trouble? Hell, is it not more likely that 1965 James would be less certain of the correctness of the civil rights struggle in the first place?¹

I’d hope not, but if that were the case, people in 2024 would correctly conclude that 1965 James was either a racist or a coward. He would very definitely have been on the “Wrong Side of History”.

And that’s what I really want to talk about this week. Those phrases – appeals to being on the right – or wrong – side of history.

Because when we talk about progress and argue about the righteousness of a political cause, the weight of history makes for a powerful argument. Appealing to history places you as part of a grand, historical narrative – and frames your political opponents as morally flawed, in a way that future generations will judge harshly.

That’s why activists and campaigners will often reach for it as a rhetorical cudgel.

However, though it might be an effective way of winning a fight on Twitter, or ending a soaring speech… it’s actually a really bad way to make an argument, both logically, and in terms of its ability to persuade.

So this week, I’m going to explain why people who appeal to “the right side of history” are actually… on the wrong side of history² – and how we should actually think about the biggest moral crusades in our culture today.

Discredited utopias

I’m a big believer that progress is possible – that we can build a better world, and we don’t have to accept bad things as they are. That’s why (at risk of sounding impossibly pretentious) it’s one of the foundational ideas behind this newsletter³.