Jonathan Kay on the Tyranny of Twitter: How Mob Censure Is Changing the Intellectual Landscape
19th July 2017
… for certain rather expansive definitions of ‘intellectual’.
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.
Just as Muslim terrorists tend to kill more Muslims than non-Muslims, PC ThoughtCrime mobs tend to attack their own co-delusionists more often than their opposition.