The Tyranny of Twitter: How Mob Censure Is Changing the Intellectual Landscape
25th June 2017
In a 1945 essay, Notes on Nationalism, George Orwell described a rumour among leftists that the real reason American troops had been brought to Europe was to suppress English communism, not fight the Nazis.
“One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that,” Orwell famously noted. “No ordinary man could be such a fool.” Even by Orwell’s high standards, those words have aged extremely well. Tell an ordinary Canadian schlub that white people aren’t allowed to quote Beyoncé, and he will be smart enough to laugh in your face. Dress down a superbly intelligent Peace and Conflict Studies PhD candidate for the same act, and she will fall over herself with apologies.
Since 1789, Revolutions have always turned on their instigators. We apparently live in such a time.