Andrew Doyle, host of Free Speech Nation on GB News and member of the Free Speech Union’s Advisory Council, is publishing a book called The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World and the Mail on Sunday has an excerpt. It begins:
We are living through a time in which unproven accusations are once again enough to see a person damned.
Charges of ‘racism’, ‘homophobia’, ‘transphobia’ and even ‘fascism’ are commonplace and no evidence is required to secure a ‘cancellation’. People have had their careers destroyed and personal relationships ruined simply for expressing unfashionable opinions.
It will be oddly familiar to anyone who has seen Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. In the 1953 dramatisation of the 17th Century Salem witch trials, our tragic hero John Proctor cries out: “Is the accuser always holy now”
The trials of Salem, a Puritan community in Massachusetts, lasted a little over a year, from February 1692 to May 1693. In that time, more than 200 people were accused, 19 hanged, five others had perished in jail and one, farmer Giles Corey, had been pressed to death with boulders for refusing to enter a guilty/not-guilty plea.
And their tormentors? A group of children who had stumbled upon the means to become the most powerful members of the community. Their histrionic accusations could see fellow citizens executed on the basis of ‘spectral evidence’ alone – what we might today refer to as ‘lived experience’, the phrase used by the likes of Meghan and Harry.
And today, just like in Salem, those who attempt to apply reason and logic, who dare to stand up for the accused, make themselves vulnerable by doing so.
As Miller’s anti-hero says, “the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom” safe in the knowledge that those who cross them are the next to be condemned.
For those of us who have found ourselves caught in the culture wars of the present – and I have often been vilified for having created a satirical character, Titania McGrath, the “radical intersectionalist poet and Twitter activist” – the parallels are obvious.
Such patterns recur wherever reason is abandoned and fear prevails, be that during the 1950s McCarthyism that inspired Miller, or the ideological capture of today’s institutions and the trickle-down orthodoxies that followed.
THE new religion of ‘wokeness’ now dominates all of our major cultural, educational, political and corporate bodies.
Its high priests make grand claims of moral purity and brook no dissent, a mindset which has led to the development of today’s ‘cancel culture’.
They seek to control public discourse by deeming certain terms ‘problematic’ or supporting legislation against ‘hate speech’. They require no concrete evidence of sin in order to detect and denounce the sinners in our midst.
Phrases such as ‘social justice’, ‘anti-racism’ and ‘equity’ mislead people into believing that those who utter them are on the right side of history. What we are witnessing is the march of online zealots destroying people’s livelihoods and reputations, all the while proclaiming their own virtue, using hashtags such as #BeKind.
Like the Salem Trials, they inflict their punishments while claiming to be on the side of the angels.
Although today’s ‘heretics’ are unlikely to be burned at the stake, their inquisitors are convinced they must convert for their own good. It is the legitimisation of bullying on a grand scale.
Worth reading in full.
The New Puritans by Andrew Doyle is published by Constable on September 8TH, priced £20. To pre-order a copy for £18 visit mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937 before September 12TH. Free UK delivery on orders over £20. Alternatively, order the Kindle version from Amazon.co.uk here.
Stop Press: The Free Speech Union has organised a Q&A between Andrew Doyle and me, followed by a book launch party, on September 27th in Central London. But it’s a members-only event, so if you’d like to come you’ll have to join the Free Speech Union. Membership starts at just £2.49 a month. See here for more details.
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If it’s not for Noah, so called free speech advocate DS would be just another propaganda mouthpiece with monochrome view of Ukraine conflict: peaceful democratic Ukraine was unprovokedly invaded by barbaric Russia in February 22. Those pesky Russians who are in the habit of occupying nuclear plants so that they can shell themselves causing nuclear incident…
Even if US didn’t openly provoke Russia, they (US state in partnership with MIC and big business) definitely have million reasons for the war to continue. Europe is weakened by the war and US is making money. Classic.
An excellent article which makes a lot of sense. Obviously the timing of the Russian invasion was, shall we say, fortuitous, allowing TPTB to maintain their fear programme on the back of a waning C1984.
The reasoning expounded by Noah Carl matches very much with the views of proper news organisations which are US based, such as Brighteon / Natural News, and the excellent Technocracy News.
The bottom line is that it is seriously beginning to look like the US deep state has declared war on the world and has recruited some deeply influential and well-funded pockets to their cause – the likes of Gates, Bezos,Zuckerberg etc. In many respects the US is a failing state and their current actions could perhaps be seen as the flailings of a dying man, but this of course makes it very dangerous.
A very plausible theory, it also explains why the
one had to be removed at all costs as he wasn’t onboard with the Ukraine/permanent war project.
Sounds plausible. As they say — America is prepared to fight Russia to the last European.
There’s also the small matter of the Biden family’s dubious commercial interests in Ukraine.
Not to mention the now accepted secret biolabs, funded by the USA, which everyone said was a conspiracy theory.
The difference between ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘truth’ is now about 6 weeks….
Granted this friction has been boiling for a long while, even before Euromaiden and during Obama’s tenure nothing much was resolved despite the “revolution” (or coup depending on your perspective). But you’re right, the Biden’s connections are certainly worthy of note in this whole debacle, Hunter’s Burisma “contracts” are highly suspect. They were anyway but especially now in retrospect, Burisma being owned by Ihor Kolomoyskyi. We could argue Zelensky owes his rise to power to Kolomoyskyi (and his ‘1+1 Media Group’) in the ‘Servant of the People’ comedy series, plus Kolomoyskyi reportedly was the original funder of the infamous Azov Battalion. I gather there are abundant shale deposits in the Donbas too which again Kolomoyskyi (Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast at the time) presumably wanted to benefit from which may have had something to do with perpetrating the conflict in 2014. The whole thing stinks to high heaven.
I’ve said it before.
America’s worst nightmare has been and will continue to be any alliance between the raw materials of Russia and European tec./industry – then it’s Goodnight Uncle Sam and take all your decadent baggage with you.
As an additional bonus that would be our best chance of avoiding The Great Reset.
What’s not to like…
Strange that there’s no mention of the role that eco-zealots may have played in effectively making Nordstream 2 a white elephant. Given that they’ve managed to get Keystone and various other pipelines in America cancelled or so wrapped up in lawsuits that they may never happen it seems obvious that they regard pipelines as an easy target in their war against fossil fuels and would put pressure on the U.S. government to try and stop the flow of gas/oil anywhere in the world.
I’m not sure which is worse, this delusional article from Carl or the number of Daily Sceptic readers who appear to buy in to this nonsense.
Anyone who thinks that the US intelligence agencies or the State Department is capable of organising anything more than a group order at Starbucks is delusional.
Many of us have said from the outset of the Ukraine war that the US deliberately provoked Russia. I have no problem accepting the argument outlined above is highly plausible.
“When you think about it, this is extremely provocative. Imagine if Chinese officials travelled to Canada, and publicly backed a protest movement seeking to replace Canada’s government with a pro-Chinese one. Americans would be outraged”
Whilst there is, as usual, much to agree with in Noah’s piece, he (never mind the Putin fans active in comments) cuts the Russians way too much slack. And his paragraph 4 – repeated above) is laughable.
No need for hypothetical Chinese in Canada. What about actual Russian funding of GangGreen fanatics “protesting” oil pipelines in US and Canada and Fracking in the UK and Europe? What about RT’s disgraceful support for the same “protestors”?
When will Noah notice that?