Lebedev says he will use seat in HoL to protect free speech including JKR. Gender critical feminism getting lost in right wing agenda?

[stumbledin]

irtually anything one says on gender, race or sex can now be seen as an act of violence of some sort. The problem is that this leads to an impoverishment of discussion and debate.

The personal consequences, whether online or actual, can be a huge deterrent against speaking freely. Just look at the lengthy denunciations of J.K. Rowling and Professor Steven Pinker for sharing opinions online about gender, racial justice and sexism.

Equally shameful are the condemnations of Halle Berry for accepting a role as a transgender man and of fellow actress Zoe Saldana for darkening her skin to play a character, and their public renouncements followed by disturbing apologies.

Isn’t the point of acting precisely to portray someone you are not?

We would surely be poorer without these people, but some are determined to drive all diverse voices out of the public sphere.

(Not surprisingly this was written for the Daily Mail with other papers reporting what he said) www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8608179/EVGENY-LEBEDEV-Im-proud-Russian-lord.html

The febrile stew which has been brewing in liberal arts campuses in the US since the collapse of communism in 1989 has led directly to the totalitarian #no debate fanaticism of 2020. The working class has always been a profound disappointment to middle class socialists. After all, it was millions of working class voters who put Thatcher in Downing Street and Reagan in the White House during the 1980s. This has been vaporized down the Memory hole. It doesn't fit the narrative.

A replacement for Marxist class analysis emerged from the rubble of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Thirty years later, the toxic doctrine of identity politics dominates the academy, it is entrenched in the private and public sector. The tech companies which exert unparalled control promote it and censor its heretics. It is one of the most successful examples of US cultural imperialism. The political landscape in the UK over the last two decades reflects a significant shift to the left.

The philosophical difference between Conservatives and left wing parties was that the former valued individual freedom whilst the latter were welded to 'equality'. Now? No party defends freedom of speech. It is sheer nonsense to claim that the 'alt right' is responsible for the virulent attacks against freedom of speech, debate, Enlightenment values. The Conservatives, who in the UK don't even qualify for RHINO status, have failed to articulate any defense of their definitionalvalues. Meanwhile, the Robespierre faction denounces anyone who doesn't obediently chant the new liturgy as 'far right.' Even when they are lifelong left wing feminist Labour voters. It is important to be honest about why we are where we are.

The political landscape in the UK over the last two decades reflects a significant shift to the left. I think you'll have to define 'left' because I can't sense that shift. It might be true in London or other major cities but that wouldn't make for a shift to the left because the rest of the population doesn't appear to be left. Maybe left in economic terms but I don't sense culturally and I'm not even sure about economics. A forgotten about group are the self employed skilled workers and white van wo/man, these are definitely not on Labours left

That landed on the paper much worse than it was in my head, should have read😁

I am talking about the Conservative party. Theresa May's main claim to fame was apologising for being Conservative. She couldn't articulate a Conservative principle if she was given a hundred years. The dominant theme was Blairite, massive expansion of the state sector and repetition of redistribution of wealth talking points. The Conservative party in the UK doesn't even qualify for RINO status. While foaming fanatics on Twitter claim this is a 'far right ' government. It's laughable.

@highame

The political landscape in the UK over the last two decades reflects a significant shift to the left. I think you'll have to define 'left' because I can't sense that shift. It might be true in London or other major cities but that wouldn't make for a shift to the left because the rest of the population doesn't appear to be left. Maybe left in economic terms but I don't sense culturally and I'm not even sure about economics. A forgotten about group are the self employed skilled workers and white van wo/man, these are definitely not on Labours left

The UK hasn't shifted left economically, any more than Canada, the US, or Australia. Blair accepted Thatcherite economics wholeheartedly in the same way that Clinton and Obama carried on with Reaganism in the US, the former oversaw the completely dismantling of what forms of social security they had. The same pattern held here in Canada. The deregulation of capital and banking, Chicago school economics, the shift to a globalist economy, is a libertarian, not leftist. But it has a lot to do with the changing voting patters of the working classes.

Over the past few years there has been a kind of flip, where many conservative parties are actually embracing issues that would traditionally have been seen as leftist, while the progressive parties increasingly push what would have been considered right wing ideas - which really should be called liberal. So there are really three ideas there - conservative, leftist, and liberal. And both have grass roots versions and state control versions.

@stumbledin

Not saying free speech is a right wing issue, but there are more and more articles in papers about how people with right wing politics are getting silenced / cancelled eg in universities.

Its more that the only people speaking up are more likely to be right wing or conservative, eg the Times, and so the actual feminist politics of being gender critical are lost in the wider debate.

I'm not particularly interested in being "gender-critical. On the other hand the attempts by the totalitarian left to oppress free speech and control thought trouble me greatly.

I'm not entirely sure what the point is of your hand-wringing about it being only the right wing who are standing up for free speech.

Some cracking posts from BovaryX.

It’s free speech against totalitarianism. It’s not about left or right.

Currently it seems the left have got themselves tied in knots around intersectionality and identity and a weird desire to define right and wrong rather than debate and listen. Throw in academics and other intelligentsia hiring in their own image and a deadweight of uncritical thought is drowning left leaning politics.

The right wing press were more affected, so more aware and ready to fight back. The Daily Mail has been going strong on freedom of the press for a decade or more, fighting off Blair initiatives, advertiser boycotts, search engine deboosting, and general name calling.

It means that they are now publishing articles that the Guardian ought to have. The hope is that one day the Guardian will wake up and wonder what happened. Ditto the Labour Party. The left leaning readers and voters are still there. The weird truth is that at the moment the Times, the Spectator, the DM and the Tories seem more aware of their concerns.

It’s true when Posie Parker went to America a few years ago the only people with enough power to platform their GC ideas were some ultra right Christian group.
I wonder how much autonomy the UK has left to set policies that are opposed by the social media empires, after all Facebook has more users than the population of China.
Laurence Fox said being attacked on social media “was like being attacked by a swarm of bees” and you can be attacked by activists around the English speaking world, in large numbers and so it’s getting harder for countries to maintain independence from the agendas set by the social media giants, USA.

It’s one reason given for Ireland’s surprising wokeness. Lots of US companies have their EU HQ in the RoI. Hence a level of cultural imperialism.

The trans ideology made its amazing progress by clever PR, posing as the modern version of gay rights.

All nice, kind people wanted to protect what was presented as an ill-treated minority. Most people saw it as harmless and irrelevant to their lives. No one wanted to look nasty by questioning it.

This massive, worldwide and well-funded campaign made such rapid gains that women’s rights had been eroded before many of us even realised. We’ve always been struggling since then, to change the well-entrenched narrative in which women are nasty selfish bigots. The Left bought the whole crock as much as anyone else.

So I can’t complain if right-wingers and those who didn’t care about disapproval kept their eyes open. I’m glad someone did. Even more, I admire those on the Left, like the good old Morning Star and a few other activists, who didn’t change their principles to fit the new fashion.

A cherished memory is David TC Davis MP outside the Linda Bellos courtroom chatting to committed left wing feminists. Richard Littejohn, the DM columnist, had just written and article saying he agreed with very little of what Linda stood for, but defended her right to say it.

That is how it should be in a democracy. Equally papers like the Guardian should be willing to stand up and defend the right of free speech for those who they disagree with. I am not seeing a lot of that, though put it down to feeble minded wokeness rather than them being to the left.

Needmoresleep

The Guardian and Independent used to be my "go to" sources of news, but that finished around 2015, when comments were turned off for many articles. Back in 1997, I was astonished and delighted when Blair became PM, and then horrified four years later in the aftermath of 9/11, when a Labour government joined forces with a Neo-Conservative US administration.
The Labour party is so London centric, so metropolitan, it is like comparing Lancashire hotpot to houmous and smoked salmon washed down with Bollinger (other Champagne houses available).

Ah, I'm straight mean so I used to read both the Guardian and DM online. (The Independent was just too unstable.) It was quite fun reading two often quite different takes on the same event and then coming to my own view.

A particular favourite was when Corbyn became leader of the LP. It seemed to take the Guardian about a week to work out its editorial line (the woke and metropolitan rag we now know) whilst the DM seem to have decided to hold back. Corbyn was too easy a target and better to let the left destroy themselves than to be seen holding the dagger.

Now Dacre is gone, the DM has got better and they have money when they need to do proper journalism, though there is a lot of poorly written slap-dash content. In about 2015 I stopped looking at the Guardian. It had be one too irritating. Rather than argue a point, they were telling me what I should think.

Perhaps I should actually pay for journalism.