At Last People Are Waking Up To The Tactics Of The New Puritans

It is a shame anything involving Germaine Greer and her vile comments about transgender people seems to have helped bring some sanity back to the world of political commentary. As we have seen there has been a new puritan spirit rising across the nation as politicians try to ban/filter porn, suppress sex workers freedoms and ban some magazines. And it isn't just in those sort of initiatives one can see it... there's a creeping sense of conformity drifting back across various aspects of our lives. Just look at the adulation given to same-sex married couples and their kids on the gay news outlets for an example of this (having children isn't exactly pioneering, my other half has 4).

Anyway. After some students sought to ban Germaine Greer from giving a talk at a university because, well let's be frank, she's a really horrible person there finally seems to be a few more voices rising up to defend free speech (even if its hers). Ironically many of these voices are ones who didn't stand up against porn blocks or other infringements of our freedoms, but hey the number of Labourites standing up for marriage equality prior to 2010 could be counted on one hand. These things change gradually. Referring to the neo-progressives as a cult is pretty much on the nose except I don't really like the word cult. One person's cult, is another person's religion. Certainly neo-progressives, with their love of woo and hatred of the atheist movement, share much with the religious.

Howard Jacobson has also got the measure of the latest type of prude.

Our country is in a censorious mood. The more educated we are, the less we are prepared to tolerate views contrary to our own. Shake any institution of higher learning and a dozen boycotters will fall out of it. If the academic community gets its way, we will soon all be speaking with a single voice.

Others are also getting a sense of just how far things have already gone. In universities the students are cleansing their courses of anything that might offend.

Using tactics like trying to get someone fired to silence them (then getting upset that their own businesses might get hurt in the blowback), we are seeing the real "morality" these puritans are preaching.



But more are starting to stand against the shaming.


Nick Cohen says it all here.