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

A Teesdale Mercury reader complained to the paper after finding a report in a 1912 edition on the death of 16-year-old parlour maid Dorothy Balchin.
Words fail me. Someone with no historical perspective trawling through old newspapers.

I slightly question his choice of Alastair Stewart as an example
I think the real issue isn't the tweet but the reaction. The quote was not and is not rascist and the fact that a Lib Dem candidate could suggest it was says everything - it is the action of a totalitarian. I think he realises that because Stewart was sacked, he obviously knows he's not on the moral high ground.

They obviously ran out of things to misinterpret and take unwarranted offence at in this century so had to start trawling through the archives.

Binterested that report is unbelievable!

The past needs to be rewritten in order to not be inconsistent with the prevailing views of the present. Again, it's 1984 as instruction manual.

Is this approach going to win out?

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 with that, I don't think it really relates to what happened in this instance. An accusation of racism here is basically unfounded. Just the interaction in itself needs to be significantly stretched to interpret it that way. But additionally, everyone that knew Stewart has said that he is in no way a racist, whereas the fellow who has accused his is clearly both a racist and a shit-stirrer.

This afternoon I saw Jung Chang speak at a travel show in Olympia. One really must read her books to understand the devastating impact of a totalitarian society upon writers and intellectuals and artists. Once you start banning or limiting access to art and free speech you really are on a slippery slope.

Off topic, but I was at the same travel show this afternoon, so a retrospective wave! Did not listen to the talks, though would have been interested in Jung Chang.

The past needs to be rewritten in order to not be inconsistent with the prevailing views of the present

Recently
There was a thread about Enid Blyton being racist - true she used very racist terms about black Africans.
I was young in the 50s , 60s but I can remember horrifying newspPer articles about the Mau-Mau killing the white settlers in Africa . They would attack at night with machetes, killing, beheading whole families. KEnya was one place.
I would think there would have been blatant racists views about these attacks across the country.

So I don't KNOW that that was what caused E Bs opinions but it seems likely..
I get exasperated when people can only see things with today's inclusive society's eyes.

But ask how people feel towards Muslim extremists after a terror attack, many views would be similarly anti Muslim.

Trevor Phillips writes in support of Alastair Stewart, whom he has known for decades. Sacking him reflects extremely badly on ITV. Their precipitate reaction shows a cavalier disregard for their staff and their audience.

Having known Al all my adult life, I imagine that he was carried away with his own rhetoric — he never could resist an oratorical flourish. My guess is it never crossed his mind that this tweet could be taken as a racial slur. He has admitted that the remark was misjudged. Maybe. But it isn’t racist, unless you’re desperate to take it that way

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7954443/TREVOR-PHILLIPS-Racist-friend-Alastair-Stewart-fought-against-National-Front.html?ito

A good article - and may I take the opportunity to say thank you for another very intelligent, thought-provoking thread. LangCleg would be proud.

A slight detour: Trevor Philips writes: "a mixture of extremism and naivety in the student movement has slowly twisted our early idealism into a dangerous academic authoritarianism.

It started in the 1980s with the banning of Conservative politicians on grounds of their supposed racism, and more recently has skirted the depths of liberal fascism with the cancelling of speeches by well-known radical feminists.

Their sin? To maintain that, while trans people should be treated fairly, there is a difference between women born female and those who have chosen to become anatomically female.

Even if you disagree with them, they surely have the right to say this in public without being accused of ‘transphobia’."

I just wanted to make the point that trans-women cannot even be accurately described as 'anatomically female'; they have neither ovaries nor womb nor Fallopian tubes.

And with regard to the AL tweet - I made the point to my rather woke 15 year-old daughter that if she was saying that Stewart should not have used that quote in reply to a POC (though he'd also quoted it to other - presumably white - people), she was saying that Stewart should have treated that person in a different way precisely because of their colour - which surely is the very definition of racism.

She changed the subject rather quickly!

A good article - and may I take the opportunity to say thank you for another very intelligent, thought-provoking thread. LangCleg would be proud

Hey ChesterBelloc that's a lovely thing to say! Thank you! I will not forget how enjoyable it was to discuss stuff with Lang, despite our political differences and how kind and knowledgeable she is. She is greatly missed.

"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."

@Justhadathought - Quite. I was researching Humanities degrees for my daughter, and discovered that Kings College London's Liberal Arts faculty puts forward this 'diversity statement':

"Our core modules all encourage students to identify the inequalities and exclusions created by power structures in the academy and beyond. Postcolonial and feminist theory are now central parts of core curricula, and we continue to welcome suggestions for how our strengths in these areas can be developed. As well as opposing all forms of prejudice and discrimination including racism, sexism, classism, ableism, transphobia and homophobia, we encourage our students to critique such injustices through the range of approaches they learn across the arts, humanities and social sciences.
In order to achieve and sustain this approach to knowledge, we have recently reviewed our core modules to identify areas where we should diversify our reading lists, particularly with regards to race and gender, and to flag up new questions of representation, diversity, and accessibility. The conversation goes beyond the curriculum, however, to a broader desire to give students the tools for engagement in theories about privilege and inequality. As of 2018-19, we will run unconscious bias training for all our incoming first year students."

I'd be interested to see the course materials for this 'unconscious bias training'.

...and where the faculty stands on the TWAW issue, and whether they accept dissent from their students (in either direction).

Quite. I was researching Humanities degrees for my daughter, and discovered that Kings College London's Liberal Arts faculty puts forward this 'diversity statement

Dear me.....that is more like a degree in itself...in how to analyse everything according to politically correct analogies and representations, and therefore to completely fail to learn anything substantial or meaningful about the subjects themselves. It sounds like something from an American university campus. Students are being taught what to think, rather than how to think.

As part of our application process, we are committed to ensuring that all staff with a UCL contract in the Division have undergone a training session to enhance understanding of our unconscious biases that may affect our treatment of colleagues

The word 'training' is always a red flag.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_bias_training

You know what though, that was how they operated in my daughter's schools when she attended, grade six through grade 8. It was all for giving them a lens through which to view what they learned in their other subjects, before giving them any content. So themes for social studies were year six - culture - year seven - empowerment, year 8 - diversity. There is no way those kids could go on to read the facts of history from any perspective other than the one they'd been instructed to.

And so, as the mantras go, 'you are what you eat' , 'my body is a temple', so becomes true of thoughts and ideas. Everything you choose to read, watch and otherwise engage with must be pure. The individuals that created the culture you imbibe must also be ideolgically pure.

What could possibly go wrong...?

I don't think he denied there is racism in the country or that he is in a relatively privileged position. He didn't mention race at all until that lecturer brought it up. She insisted that the negative press Meghan M was getting was solely due to racism. He more or less said the opposite. She then accused him of being white and privileged which is progressive speak for 'shut up whitey you don't know what you're talking about'. Both are unsubstantiated opinions. While racism may have driven some of the press none of it was explicitly racist so it's hard to prove definitively either way and it's not as if there aren't plenty of reasons, good and bad, to dislike MM and her husband.

I think Fox has used a common definition of racism and are you saying no white person has never experienced racism?

Also posted on the Harry Miller thread, but relevant here too:

unherd.com/2019/09/how-identity-politics-drove-the-world-mad/?=refinnar

He could have been talking about Lawrence Fox:

"... your accusers are not interested in your deeds; they are interested in you, and in the crucial fact about you, which is whether or not you are “one of us”. Your faults cannot be overcome by voluntary action, since they adhere to the kind of thing that you are. And you reveal what you are in the words that define you.

These words may be taken out of context, even doctored to mean the opposite of what you said — as happened recently to me in an interview given to the New Statesman — but this will not affect the verdict, since there is no objective trial, no “case for the defence”, no due process.

You are accused by the mob, examined by the mob and condemned by the mob, and if you have brought this on yourself, then you have only yourself to blame. For the mob is by nature innocent: it washes its own conscience in a flow of collective indignation, and by joining it you make yourself safe."

Prescient last line: we now seem to be ruled by 'the madness of crowds' that Douglas Murray's last book references: the mob culture which says 'you're either with us or against us - and if you're against us, you're fair game'.

Terrifying.

Just seen this article:

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7956545/DOUGLAS-MURRAY-Alistair-Stewarts-forced-exit.html

Another Mail article, this time covering the paradox of why well meaning liberals don’t seem to care anymore.

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7956517/IAN-BIRRELL-tech-giants-turned-San-Francisco-dystopian-nightmare.html

Half of America’s homeless live in California, many in San Francisco. (DD travelled through California a couple of years back and confirmed the number of homeless is very shocking.) SF is the second richest city in America and regularly elects left wing leaders. Yet nothing appears to happen.

Presumably the Mail would advocate right of centre policies. But taking a step back, it is clear something is wrong. Is SF too liberal, to the extent that vulnerable people, who don’t have the capacity to manage their own lives are left to get in with it. Not dissimilar to self ID and the idea of disposing of checks and hurdles that might pick up the vulnerable and delusional as well as those with malign intent.

Liberalism, indeed libertarianism, sounds great, but the impact seems to be an absence of caring.