Saturday 3 September 2022 11:19 PM Who do the high priests of cancel culture most resemble? The witch hunters of ... trends now
We are living through a time in which unproven accusations are once again enough to see a person damned.
Charges of ‘racism’, ‘homophobia’, ‘transphobia’ and even ‘fascism’ are commonplace and no evidence is required to secure a ‘cancellation’. People have had their careers destroyed and personal relationships ruined simply for expressing unfashionable opinions.
It will be oddly familiar to anyone who has seen Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. In the 1953 dramatisation of the 17th Century Salem witch trials, our tragic hero John Proctor cries out: ‘Is the accuser always holy now?’
The trials of Salem, a Puritan community in Massachusetts, lasted a little over a year, from February 1692 to May 1693. In that time, more than 200 people were accused, 19 hanged, five others had perished in jail and one, farmer Giles Corey, had been pressed to death with boulders for refusing to enter a guilty/not-guilty plea.
And their tormentors? A group of children who had stumbled upon the means to become the most powerful members of the community. Their histrionic accusations could see fellow citizens executed on the basis of ‘spectral evidence’ alone – what we might today refer to as ‘lived experience’, the phrase used by the likes of Meghan and Harry.
Thousands of people take part in a London Trans+ Pride march from the Wellington Arch to Soho on 9th July 2022 in London, UK. We are living through a time in which unproven accusations are once again enough to see a person damned.
Harry Potter author J K Rowling (pictued). Woke activists will bully people in the name of compassion, promote division and call it progressive, and rehabilitate a new form of racism under the guise of tolerance
And today, just like in Salem, those who attempt to apply reason and logic, who dare to stand up for the accused, make themselves vulnerable by doing so.
As Miller’s anti-hero says, ‘the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom’ safe in the knowledge that those who cross them are the next to be condemned.
For those of us who have found ourselves caught in the culture wars of the present – and I have often been vilified for having created a satirical character, Titania McGrath, the ‘radical intersectionalist poet and Twitter activist’ – the parallels are obvious.
Such patterns recur wherever reason is abandoned and fear prevails, be that during the 1950s McCarthyism that inspired Miller, or the ideological capture of today’s institutions and the trickle-down orthodoxies that followed.
THE new religion of ‘wokeness’ now dominates all of our major cultural, educational, political and corporate bodies.
Its high priests make grand claims of moral purity and brook no dissent, a mindset which has led to the development of today’s ‘cancel culture’.
They seek to control public discourse by deeming certain terms ‘problematic’ or supporting legislation against ‘hate speech’. They require no concrete evidence of sin in order to detect and denounce the sinners in our midst.
Phrases such as ‘social justice’, ‘anti-racism’ and ‘equity’ mislead people into believing that those who utter them are on the right side of history. What we are witnessing is the march of online zealots destroying people’s livelihoods and reputations, all the while proclaiming their own virtue, using hashtags such as #BeKind.
Like the Salem Trials, they inflict their punishments while claiming to be on the side of the angels.
Although today’s ‘heretics’ are unlikely to be burned at the stake, their inquisitors are convinced they must convert for their own good. It is the legitimisation of bullying on a grand scale.
Significantly, many are troubled by the rise of the movement – a recent import from the US – that would see us deny the biological reality of sex differences, confess to ‘white privilege’, or to perpetuating ‘systemic oppression’.
They are rightly concerned about the relentless attacks on free speech and how anyone who dares question the new orthodoxy is mercilessly subdued.
These culture war revolutionaries, whose existence is often denied by its chief antagonists, must be challenged. For they are determined to dismantle Western ideals, to return us to a pre-Enlightenment state of ignorance.
Theirs is a world in which private feelings are allowed to trump evidence and reason. A world in which right and wrong are reduced to a battle of wills. This is a battle that, ultimately, the mob will win unless we stand up and resist it.
The book cover of classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The new religion of ‘wokeness’ now dominates all of our major cultural, educational, political and corporate bodies.
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood book cover. Shool libraries have removed Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), following complaints about ‘racist, homophobic or misogynistic language and themes’.
The impact is felt in all walks of life. For instance, after the seismic events of the summer of 2020 following the killing by a white policeman of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, an actor friend of mine was contacted by her agency because she had not posted anything on social media in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. She was told she must do so immediately if she wanted casting directors to consider her for roles.
I have heard many such anecdotes, but invariably they are communicated privately. There is a strong general feeling that to publicly object to the prevailing dogma is to jeopardise one’s career and social standing.
I have lost count of the number of emails from academics, artists and media figures who have contacted me to express solidarity for my criticism of this new ideology, but admit they could never endorse my sentiments in public for fear of being targeted. It is a circular problem that can only be resolved if sufficient numbers speak out.
A portrait of an angry witch tied for incineration. Although today’s ‘heretics’ are unlikely to be burned at the stake, their inquisitors are convinced they must convert for their own good. It is the legitimisation of bullying on a grand scale
This is the sad reality of most present-day working
