W. B. Yeats Was a Conservative Opponent of Democracy, Not the Bard of Liberal Centrism
Political centrists love to quote Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming” as they face a world where “things fall apart” and “the center cannot hold.” But the great Irish poet was a radical conservative whose hostility to democracy led him to sympathize with fascism.
Irish poet W. B. Yeats. (Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons)
First published in 1920, “The Second Coming” may not be the most popular work of W. B. Yeats or even the Irish poet’s finest achievement. It has nevertheless managed to infiltrate the Western political imagination in such a way as to render its influence almost inconspicuous.
From writers like Joan Didion and Chinua Achebe to a plethora of politicians on the center left and center right alike, Yeats’s ominous augury of a world where “things fall apart” and “the centre cannot hold” as “mere anarchy is loosed” and “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” carried a clear resonance.
Since the UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016 and the election of Donald Trump in the United States that same year, the ambiguous allegories, symbols, and indeterminate political stance of “The Second Coming” have all been put to good use, especially in the United States.
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