But in the long run, liberalism is giving way to progressivism in elite spaces. The new cultural liberalism in the media reflects the views of senior staff members, and is opposed by affinity groups and young employees. That’s important, because surveys consistently find that “woke” values are twice as prevalent among younger Leftists than among older Leftists. Over 8 in 10 undergraduates at 150 leading US colleges say speakers who say BLM is a hate group or transgenderism is a mental disorder should not be permitted to speak on campus. What’s more, 7 in 10 think a professor who says something that students find offensive should be reported to their university. Young academics are twice as censorious as those over 50. These are the editorial teams and professoriate of tomorrow.
The steady erosion of free speech values is generational. Today’s young people are far more censorious than the young people of 1980 or even 2000, and they won’t grow out of it. While Zoomers are scared of being cancelled, figure 2 shows that they accept this risk as part of their political ideology.
Administrations’ occasional rebukes of student activists or adoption of high-minded academic freedom resolutions will make little difference to this speech climate. The situation in universities increasingly reflects a transformational current of illiberalism, guided by the generations who will one day form our elite. – Eric Kaufmann
68% of business owners believe the current state of the New Zealand economy is either poor or very poor. Over half (54.5%) expect the economy to decline over the next 12 months, with only 14% expecting an improvement. An indication that the tough times are set to continue for the foreseeable future, – Simon Bridges
Meanwhile, businesses are grappling with a range of challenges, including a shortage of skilled workers, increasing supply chain costs, and the impacts of recent weather events. 50% of respondents are experiencing a shortage of skilled workers, while 72% expect to be negatively impacted by changes in interest rates and inflation. – Simon Bridges
The results of this survey show New Zealand businesses continue to struggle with significant challenges amidst the current economic climate. Confidence is on the decline, and raising costs are exerting mounting pressure. It’s crucial for political parties in this election year to propose concrete policies that promote growth, instil certainty, and restore confidence – Simon Bridges
Of course, that’s not how things are at all. For the vast majority of people, losing a job — even piecework, one show, one publishing deal, one temporary contract — is an enormous deal. In my own life, I know women with multiple dependents, sick relatives, no safety nets, who’ve had their livelihoods threatened for expressing such controversial views as “biological sex is politically salient” and “rape crisis centres should offer female-only counselling”. I know brilliant women, with amazing reputations, who found themselves ghosted, losing contract after contract, having wondered out loud whether lesbians ought to be threatened with violence. Nobody cares about these women because they’re not famous (and are unwilling to put themselves through the additional exposure and trauma of fighting back, as Maya Forstater so bravely did). No one thinks their lost jobs matter because to a certain mindset, if they’re not silencing the big fish — the JK Rowlings of this world — the little fish barely count (which doesn’t mean they won’t go for them anyway).
This is not to say that Rowling’s own experience has not been harmful enough. As Özkirimli notes, the author “may continue to sell books, but this does not mean she is unaffected by the death or rape threats she has been receiving on a daily basis“. It is beyond the scope of Cancelled itself, but there is much more to say about the human cost of cancellation as a form of psychological abuse, taking place in plain sight and rubber-stamped by people in positions of authority. Some women find it reminds them of abusive childhoods, school bullying or being in a controlling relationship. For many – and I would include myself among them – it destroys trust in others that has been hard-won. It reminds us just how many people, friends, colleagues, family members, can end up persuading themselves that yes, you must just be some crazy bitch who deserves it, otherwise he wouldn’t do it. – Victoria Smith
In her book Hagitude, Sharon Blackie describes women’s growing fear “of being ‘cancelled’, or publicly excoriated” for their views on sex and gender in terms of the “witch wound”, a legacy of centuries of witch trials, leaving behind a “deeply ingrained and often very visceral fear of the consequences of holding unpopular beliefs, or challenging the cultural orthodoxy“.
For the rest of our lives, many of us will know we’re only ever one statement of fact away from abuse and ostracism from people we thought were on our side. Yet I fear there will be no point in telling them this; they’ll only think it shows they were right. – Victoria Smith
Men who identify as women are riding roughshod over women’s sports. The latest example of this came at the weekend, in the result of the Tour of the Gila, an elite women’s cycling race in New Mexico, US. The winner was Austin Killips, a biological male who identifies as a ‘transgender woman’. – James Esses
Killips’ win at the Tour of the Gila tells us all we need to know about the question of trans inclusion in women’s sport. Here we have someone well into his twenties, who only took up cycling four years ago, and yet is now winning elite competitions by a considerable margin. Had Killips competed in the male event, as he should have, there is no doubt that the result would have been vastly different. – James Esses
Clearly, this is an ideology that does not care about fairness for women, and is dismissive of those who do.
If we want to make women’s sport fair again, we must keep male athletes out of it. – James Esses
The integrity of family life is a fundamental human right. Yet officers seem to have decided that Jones was entitled to try to have Creasy’s children taken away simply because he disagreed with her views — and the police quoted the European Convention on Human Rights at her for good measure.
Why have the police gone through the looking glass like this? Creasy believes such tactics are a way of pushing women out of public life and raise further concerns about how the police deal with crimes against women in general. Other women have suffered similar attacks. – Melanie Phillips
However, the problem is surely broader and deeper. Hate crime, which developed in the 1980s as part of the emergence of group identity politics, made certain views illegitimate and turned those opinions into thought crimes. For example, Christians preaching the words of the Bible against homosexuality had their collars felt by the police; on at least one occasion when a crowd of objectors assaulted such a street preacher, he was arrested while they were not.
The offence was no longer an action but an opinion. The attackers weren’t seen as the problem. The person who expressed the opinion that had enraged his attackers was viewed as the problem instead, for provoking the attack upon himself.
In today’s victim culture, this dividing line between victims and attackers is drawn up by approved groups who declare themselves oppressed by the majority and whose claim to victim status can’t be challenged. Subjective feelings trump fairness and facts. – Melanie Phillips
In recent months there has been a tsunami of evidence that the police have lost their way. There’s a widespread culture in the ranks of bullying, intimidation, cruelty, prejudice and corruption. Officers acquiesce to disrupters such as Black Lives Matter or climate protesters, either from ideological conviction or a wish to ingratiate themselves with the dominant culture of coerced opinion.
The police have lost their way because society has lost its way. When moral boundaries dissolve and informal social policing collapses, the actual police implode. First, opinion became crime. Now crime has become opinion. The culture itself is being trolled and anarchy is the result. – Melanie Phillips
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