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

Yet again justcly, thank you for your posts. You couldn't be doing more to support the points being made on this thread.

I didnt hear fox on QT but I did hear him discussing his views on the radio.
He said Britain isnt a racist country. From listening to him I think he meant, on a global scale of racist countries, we would be nowhere near the top. And I agree with him on that. I also agree with another thing he said, which was that saying we are a racist country because some racists live here is polarising debate.

I think it's the same as sexism. Is Britain a sexist country compared to the rest of the world? No. We don't cut the genitals off our girls, selectively abort them or make them sit in sub zero temperatures in a shed because they have their period.
But do all women in the UK experience sexism and disadvantages because they are female? Absolutely.

Bovary, interesting that we are accused of being an echo chamber for you

I mean why? It's beyond bizarre.

LF is just a publicity hungry well connected stale pale Male

The expression "stale, pale male" is nasty, bigoted and prejudiced.

stale pale Male

Revolting choice of words based on his sex and skin colour. Why exactly is that ok?

smile

In a way, LF is an irrelevance. But the Tsunami of abuse his QT appearance generated highlights the existential threat to freedom of speech presented by those who chant #no debate because they can't debate That is the core issue

The expression "stale, pale male" is nasty, bigoted and prejudiced

But apparently certain forms of abuse are absolutely hunky dory for Team Tolerant.....

Why exactly is that ok?

It isn't but as another poster put it

the tendency on the left to demonize anyone who disagrees with them, this conviction of their moral superiority. This Manichean certainty they are right and their desire to silence dissent and debate. It is totalitarian

explains it.

He's forty one. Is that 'stale' (elderly) now?

Iain Duncan-Smith is one-eighth Japanese. Does he get a free pass?

That just about sums it up LuisaRey. Important to not let them get away with it unchallenged.

Manichean

Gosh. Learned a new word.

I haven't been following closely but just to say I stand with team justcly, if she has one. If she doesn't, even more so. LF is a twat. Racism everywhere is a reality, and he really isn't in the best position to judge.
And, needmoresleep, since when were you the judge of who wins MN today? Can we all apply for a stint in the job?

LF is only relevant in that he was an individual in the public eye who dared to go off script a give an opinion (a pretty mild one), contrary to woke acceptable. LF is obviously enjoying the limelight and seems a bit of a dick, but that's not important either, only the backlash and tactics of the woke really matter here.
The woke will not tolerate deviation and the pushback is immediate and hard with a direct threat to LFs livelihood. Ironically it is because he obviously is privileged that this threat will not mean much to him. Like JK Rowling, he will not struggle to pay bills or buy food because of it.
I have never really been one to get worked up about freedom of speech before now, but then to me it has never felt under such threat as it does now, or have such frightening implications for us ordinary folk.
Well done LF, even if you are a bit of a dick, and I don't fully agree with everything you said.

LF is an overpriviliged dick, but some of us will defend to the death his right to dick off in accordance with his Barmy Brussels Yooooman Rights.

Ironically it is because he obviously is privileged that this threat will not mean much to him. Like JK Rowling, he will not struggle to pay bills or buy food because of it

That is a critical point. Both Douglas Murray and Harry Miller reference this. Harry Miller speaks about the disproportionate responsibility he feels to speak out because many people are too terrified to do so. This is the current climate. In an advanced Western democracy.

This is from Douglas Murray's Spectator piece:

In what turned out to be the last year of his life, Roger Scruton often mulled on the nature and techniques of twenty-first century denunciation. For Roger, like others who had seen totalitarian societies up close, knew what intimidation and officially-imposed forms of thinking were actually like.Which is not to say, of course, that modern Britain or America are totalitarian societies. Only that we have people among us who act with precisely the same techniques as those did in totalitarian societies. In modern Britain, as in communist Czechoslovakia and elsewhere, the habits are the same. A member of a profession comes into their workplace in the morning to find a letter of denunciation signed by all their colleague..

The Rotherham situation happened elsewhere. A victim who i think was from Oxford was tried for racial hate crime against her abuser. He was Turkish. The serious case review said police obsession with supposed hate crime blinded them to the real serious crime happening to the teenage girl.

To speak out in current times, where abuse is almost inevitable, seems to require someone to be opinionated, pig-headed and stubborn.

This observation comes up again and again in threads. Very often the people who speak up about problems like this have significant dickish qualities. Not just about racism or women's issues, either, I've seen it many times over the years around different questions, some quite specific to the time and place. It's someone who is opinionated, is willing to be disliked and maybe even revels in it a little, someone who is willing to be a little not nice and expects people to be adults about it and doesn't care if they don't.

And like some have said, often isn't in a position to greatly lose because of it.

Finally an intelligent discussion about Laurence Fox's views. On the thread I started, I was subjected to abuse for suggesting he might have a point.

One poster said that even on a council estate, the unemployed white males have privilege. There was also a horrific post comparing a white Jewish person who is homeless and suffering from cancer with a BAME person in the same situation. The white Jewish person has "privilege", apparently. You can easily see how we've ended up with anti-Semitism if the far left's ideology is this stupid.

Auditing people for "privilege" is A Level Sociology homework. It's no way to run a society.

SuckingDiesel
Yes, I think one of the things which the LF episode demonstrates is that not only does freedom of speech face an existential threat, but it has become a luxury most people can't afford. Harry Miller spoke of the disproportionate responsibility he feels to speak out because so many are terrified to do so. This is the environment in an advanced Western democracy, 70 years after Orwell's death.

There was a SA SCA judgment last year on the regulation of hate speech in a 'vibrant democracy'. The judgment (unanimously finding that legislative provisions purporting to regulate such speech were unconstituitional) contains this quote: 'Some of us remember all too well how the apartheid government tried to censor our thoughts and our speech. Do we really want to go back to a situation where we are so scared to express our deeply and sincerely held and honest opinions that we shut up because we fear we might be found guilty of hate speech?’
I think a lot of what LF said was crass and dickish. If freedom of expression means anything it's that he has the right to say it and I have the right to find it crass and dickish.

That's an excellent point about SA. And interestingly, the judge in the Harry Miller case made the point you make about LF. That freedom of speech applies to statements more controversial than Kittens are fluffy

freedom of speech applies to statements more controversial than Kittens are fluffy
Yep there's a well-known quote from a judgment (Handyside v UK) of the ECtHR: Freedom of expression...is applicable not only to 'information' or 'ideas' that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population