Interviews
"At school or university events, I have noticed an increasingly prickly willingness to take offence – and the corrosive effect that this is having on attitudes to free speech. This trend, to be easily offended, is now exploding into public consciousness with the unravelling madness that has taken over so many American universities, and is now emerging on British campuses.
It is time to create something more positive and robust than today’s offence wars: a critical climate that really is in opposition to some of the more destructive social and cultural trends that this generation has come to exemplify.”
A whole new lexicon of words and phrases, such as ‘fake news’, ‘post-truth’, ‘virtue signalling’, has sprung up to dismiss others’ opinions as not worth engaging with … Millions of voters have been demonised as deplorables, low-information xenophobes, populists. Populism itself has moved from being a political science category to the insult de nos jours.
But if you can’t vote freely – without being classified as beyond the pale – what hope for speaking freely? This has contributed to a febrile culture war, with serious implications for engaging civilly with those we disagree with.”
