Douglas Murray on denunciations and Lawrence Fox

[BovaryX]

Douglas Murray takes aim at the cancel culture and denunciation tactics at the heart of # no debate. Those who try to control and police what people think and say have dominated public discourse to its detriment. Many are aware of the existential threat to freedom of speech this faction represents.

Nothing that Fox said on Question Time was at all controversial. He suggested that the Labour party leader might be selected on merit and he suggested that Britain is not a racist country. Both these sentiments are held by the majority of the public. Yet so dominant have the minority-opinion pushers become that many people are persuaded that it would not just be career-damaging but socially fatal to say anything to the contrary. Even when that thing is the truth

Douglas Murray writes in defence of Alastair Stewart:

Does it think that his deep, terrible racism has only come to the surface once? And does it believe that on the one occasion when Alastair Stewart finally satisfied his racist urges he did so through the medium of Measure for Measure? The likelihood – as Jeeves would say, would appear to be a remote one

blogs.spectator.co.uk/author/douglas-murray/

I haven't followed all of this but the point about racism reminded me of a debate where a woman of Indian ethnicity from London was wondering about visiting Norfolk. Now there are some pretentious parts of Norfolk but much of it is poor white working class. The debate was around how racist were the inhabitants of Norfolk. Would they be able to enjoy a holiday there or would the terrible natives spoil it for them? In other words, was poor behaviour NFN? '('Normal for Norfolk' - a derogatory slur). It was suggested that this showed racism towards Norfolk people and a huge pile on ensued predicated around the fact that as white, Norfolk people were far more privileged than any one of colour and couldn't possible be victims.

The history of antisemitism goes back a long, long way. Martin Luther was at it too. Jewish people, have long borne the brunt of displaced anger and resentment..and have suffered oppressions, atrocities and forced conversions throughout history in many places.

That being 'Jewish' is amongst the most 'privileged' conditions in the inter-sectional hierarchy goes some way to explaining why there is so much anti-semitism on the left.

I was a bit downcast to see Martina Navratilova trying to get the Margaret Court Arena renamed as the Evonne Goolagong Arena. I can see why she doesn't like Margaret Court, who has some pretty horrible views about homosexuality. But having been a victim of cancel culture herself, I'd have hoped Navratilova would have paused before engaging in those tactics herself.

Right on cue Yale cancels an introduction to art history course as being "too white, too Western, too male and too straight." Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Leonardo were all gay. But never mind.
www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/yale-plans-to-end-art-history-course-deemed-too-straight-white-male/

MsSafina
The Year Zero desire to obliterate the canon on display again. The obsessive fixation with identity, the desire to destroy. These recurrent themes have historical resonance which it would behoove their architects to carefully consider......

Unlike previous versions of the course, the Daily News explains, its final installation “will seek to question the idea of Western art itself.” According to the syllabus, it will also examine art as related to “questions of gender class and ‘race’” as well as Western capitalism. Its relationship to climate change will also be a “key theme

Sounds utterly riveting......

When I read crap like this, I'm sort of glad that I'm old and got my education before this surreal nonsense took hold. Not that bad on this side of the Atlantic yet, but I suspect it's only a matter of time.

Hopefully it won't get as bad as the States and Canada. I think it sneaked in there and has taken root. Now we know what they're up to we can and are fighting back. Increasingly they'll have to do it in the full glare of publicity. No wonder they are so keen to shut down debate. Too late I'm afraid

I’m somewhat hopeful about that. Britain doesn’t have much of a history of fundamentalism - either religious or political. This is why this current mania is so odd and not familiar to me at all from anything I’ve experienced in my 51 years of life here. We are generally good at laughing at extremists and generally not going OTT on self indulgence. What happened to that sceptical mindset ?

I agree - despite the hysteria you hear in certain circles, Britain remains a tolerant country with a healthy respect for cynicism! It took an English man, Ricky Gervais, to call out the faux woke nonsense of the Hollywood elite so hopefully things will never get quite so insane over here.

This is quite an interesting read.... Pretty much restating what’s been said in other articles, but no paywall.

unherd.com/2020/01/will-no-one-resist-the-new-totalitarianism/

Hey, McKenna thanks for linking that. It is a superb analysis by Douglas Murray and a sobering read. We live in an increasingly intolerant, fanatical age, where bigotry and vendetta masquerade as righteous courage.

We do not slash the virtual tires of those who take them away. We do not pick up whatever cudgels we have to hand to beat back their accusers. We just sit, as the anonymous lists and the unprovable complaints pile up and up, simply hoping all the time that the dishonest players and anonymous accusers will never come for us. If people want to understand why totalitarianism works, the seedlings are all around us

Britain doesn’t have much of a history of fundamentalism - either religious or political.

We certainly do! Just it was a while ago. Hence old manor houses with priest holes.

We certainly do! Just it was a while ago. Hence old manor houses with priest holes.

Religious intolerance was the norm in most of Europe until about the 19th century. Britain wasn't particularly extreme in this regard, arguably somewhat less extreme than some parts of Europe.

Right on cue Yale cancels an introduction to art history course as being "too white, too Western, too male and too straight." Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Leonardo were all gay. But never mind

Cultural relativism is one thing, but what can happen with that is that standards of skill and professionalism drop...in favour of choosing the politically correct candidate or politically correct choice.

My daughter is a becoming something of an expert on Shakespeare & Renaissance literature...and she is always bemoaning the imposition of various post-modern & intersectional analyses onto texts. Completely bastardises them.

Of course the U.S was founded, in large part, by various religious sects and cults setting up home there...fleeing from persecution in the Europe.
And it remains a very religious place......not only mainstream evangelism....but also every kind of cult imaginable can find a home and a place there. Hidden away in deserts and various remote places.

@justathought.
Any of those texts should be read in the context of their time.

I think Douglas Murray's article on Unherd is very good. I slightly question his choice of Alastair Stewart as an example, because according to some news reports he had a habit of getting into unseemly arguments with people on Twitter, and I really believe that if you're a newsreader, that's not on. To be a newsreader requires you to have an aura of neutrality, and taking part in Twitter spats doesn't do a lot for that image. I think Danny Baker might have been a better (though less topical) example.

I agree. The main lesson to learn from the Alastair Stewart business is how the two sides immediately latched on to how he exemplified their arguments and then used an incomplete picture of what had happened to prove this. How completely polarised and aggressive it was right at the start.

In this bunfight yet again I saw The Guardian having chosen its side and stirring things up. As ever I'll say that I look forward to that shitty propaganda sheet going out of business.

I slightly question his choice of Alastair Stewart as an example, because according to some news reports he had a habit of getting into unseemly arguments with people on Twitter, and I really believe that if you're a newsreader, that's not on. To be a newsreader requires you to have an aura of neutrality, and taking part in Twitter spats doesn't do a lot for that image.

While I agree that a newsreader should steer clear of getting into spats on Twitter, being a shit stirrer isn't at all the same as being racist.

If I were in any way high profile, I'd keep well away from social media except maybe to promote my work. It's not a medium in any way suited to nuance and any misunderstandings or unfortunately phrased thoughts can get blown out of all proportion and end up destroying someone's reputation. It's just not worth it.

Speaking of which:

twitter.com/jolyonmaugham/status/1223214764853223425?s=21

I must confess I had never heard of this person until his boasting about bludgeoning a fox to death made headline news. He strikes me as a seriously unpleasant piece of work. The kind that is addicted to Twitter.

@justathought.Any of those texts should be read in the context of their time

Absolutely....drives her mental. You can't really enjoy or appreciate them otherwise. Part of studying history and historical literature lies in reading around, and understanding the contexts of the day.

You might like (hate really) this stupid BBC piece about the reporting of a suicide in 1912.

BBC report

It really is beyond comprehension how ignorant and yet righteous some people are.