Telegraph piece on 'Orwellian doublethink'

[BovaryX]

The Telegraph has an opinion on 'Orwellian doublethink' which is driving the cancel culture which saw Baroness Nichson axed from the Booker panel. The ideology underpinning emerged from American 'liberal arts' colleges and has colonised the UK's institutions. Its proponents, with a gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun have adopted the denounce cancel paradigm with puritanical zeal.

The double-think is as unsurprising as it is flagrant. Once-niche “critical theory” has infiltrated contemporary discourse, with its rejection of logic, reason and objective reality. And revolutionaries always become what they claim to abhor, like the French radicals who repressed formal religion and ended up worshipping an amorphous Cult of Reason, and replaced the judiciary with “people’s courts”. Today, we are similarly discovering what atrocities may be committed under the guise of the Rights of Man. Dominating every major wing of cultural life, small wonder that the Left feels so comfortable in its exquisite hypocrisies. Influential appointments have the ring of a cosy, quasi-incestuous club, a conveyor belt of Left-wing opinion linking Guardian editorships, heads of Oxbridge colleges, public health quangocrats and more

It opens by stating the Archbishop of Canterbury is proposing an ecclesiastical iconoclasm with an enthusiasm reminiscent of Thomas Cranmer.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/28/orwellian-double-think-woke-elite-blinds-ridiculousness/

For how long can this state of affairs continue? Being obliged to parrot propaganda and declare the sky is pink to retain your livelihood is emotionally draining. Neither is it healthy for our institutions to be so consistently out of step with public opinion, overseen by a detached cultural elite that is only occasionally roused from its perch by a disobliging election or referendum result. Few of us wish to inhabit a monoculture, and the quality of artistic output is already suffering; take the Booker Prize’s own deterioration in the literary landscape. Worst of all, it will destroy genuine progress. In liberal California, presumably to pave the way for “affirmative action” measures, the legislature has just voted to strike anti-discrimination commitments from its constitution – a development that should terrify all thinking people. Britain is never far behind America and already ours is a topsy-turvy world, in which bullies feign victimhood, discrimination masquerades as social justice and “feminist” activists use the mantle of progressivism to hound women with impunity. Truly, we are through the looking glass now

No satire could match this delicious declaration of support for openness and plurality of opinion, while sacking someone people disagreed with. Like adults who wear Crocs in public, they seem to have forgotten that we can see them

I'm stealing that.

The Telegraph also publishes transwoman D Thomas’s column, which this week is having a go at JK Rowling & feminists in general. I had a trial subscription from an offer I clicked on somewhere. That was enough to stop me signing up long-term.

Its true. But that is better than only showing one side, which the article is saying we should avoid.

I think the Telegraph is being very clever publishing Thomas's column and articles such as this at the same time. People can compare them and let the lunacy speak for itself.

Influential appointments have the ring of a cosy, quasi-incestuous club, a conveyor belt of Left-wing opinion linking Guardian editorships, heads of Oxbridge colleges, public health quangocrats and more

This part reminds me of something both the much missed Lang and Michelle have said about the incestuous revolving door which guarantees there is zero diversity of opinion at the head of many institutions. One of the many contradictions at the heart of the SJ movement is its proponents claim to be powerless, while having a vice like grip on vast chunks of contemporary culture. In the UK, I guess the Spectator is the most staunch defender of freedom of speech in the wake of this existential threat.

One thing I don't like is this:

Similar sleight of mind can be seen in the tragicomical conduct of Booker Prize organisers, who sacked their long-time patroness Baroness Nicholson as honorary vice-president for the “crimes” of voting against gay marriage in 2013, believing in biological sex and “misgendering” someone on Twitter.

We all know that a significant part of the decision was based on Nicholson calling Bergdorf a "weird creature". It does no credit to the side promoting free speech to not tell the whole story.

Fair point Nauticant

It's something that continually drives me mad about "our side". Giving in to the temptation to spin the story and in the subsequent row discussion, a lot of energy gets derailed into an argument about whether someone has told lies.

I can see the point Empress makes, but maybe as Minge says, the juxtaposition tells its own tale? I can't say I am particularly impressed by the Telegraph at the moment. Articles like the one posted are rare. I think the Spectator has interesting opinion pieces.

I don't know Nauticant. I think that left wing media sources like the Guardian are egregious in simply not reporting news which it deems problematic. It's one reason its readers are perpetually shocked and awed by election results. There is a dislocation from external reality which is promoted by only relying on one news source. Or Twitter.

The Telegraph also publishes transwoman D Thomas’s column

My impression is that in publishing this, they’re not being as kind to poor old Di as Di would like to believe. Come on! Realistically, how do we imagine it’s received in unwoke Torygraph-land?