Cancel culture and George Orwell

[cromwell]

"It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, no matter how secret and powerless it may be".
That is a quote from the character O'Brien in Orwell's 1984.
It seems particularly apt for the West today, where woke liberals descend in full twitterfury on anyone who ventures a contrary view.

[medsec222]

It is scary that if you dont go along with the popular view you could be hounded out of your livelihood.

[Workingman]

I can't pick sides. The right, middle and left are all equally vociferous at shouting down anyone not in their gang. They all have their own echo chambers for every subject under the sun, and if you are not with them you are the enemy.

[Kaz]

I can't pick sides. The right, middle and left are all equally vociferous at shouting down anyone not in their gang. They all have their own echo chambers for every subject under the sun, and if you are not with them you are the enemy.

Pretty much.

[cromwell]

I can't pick sides. The right, middle and left are all equally vociferous at shouting down anyone not in their gang.

This is true, but the right isn't in charge of the civil service union. the teachers union, the students union or academia in general. Nor are they in charge of the broadcast media. The progressive woke liberals are in far more positions of influence than the right is.

[Workingman]

Cromwell, I think we might be talking about two different things - politics and social values.

I am firmly dead-centre politically, but I am all over the place with social values.

However, the press in the UK is mostly right wing in the political sense, quite hard right in fact, and yet it is frilly liberal on plenty of social issues. That, I suspect, is because it needs to reflect society as a whole. We are much more socially tolerant than we are politically and very few of us are far-right or hard-left in either sense.

The institutions you mention might well be left leaning, but so what? They are not in charge of anything and do not make the rules, they have to follow rules made by others. What their members do or say when down the pub is neither here nor there so long as it is within the law.

Unlike the press they have nowhere near the influence we tend to bestow upon them or give them credit for..

[Kaz]

I can't pick sides. The right, middle and left are all equally vociferous at shouting down anyone not in their gang.

This is true, but the right isn't in charge of the civil service union. the teachers union, the students union or academia in general. Nor are they in charge of the broadcast media. The progressive woke liberals are in far more positions of influence than the right is.

Crommers, the right is running the country so they have far more influence