Thread by @KellerZoe

The double-think of the woke elite blinds them to their own ridiculousness
Both @Cambridge_Uni and the @TheBookerPrizes claim to be defending free speech while simultaneously canceling people they disagree with.

telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/2…

@Cambridge_Uni’s defence of Dr Gopal ("The university defends the right of its academics to express their own lawful opinions which others might find controversial") happens to be a lie — and one so barefaced that it would almost be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

Cambridge has led the way in appeasing the outrage mob: it has singularly failed to defend conservative academics such as the sociologist @NoahCarl90 — summarily dismissed after an open letter from faculty members accused him of racism.

It took them just 48 hours to rescind @jordanbpeterson’s visiting fellowship, while the students’ union claimed his “work and views” were “not representative of the student body”. Cambridge is guilty both of double standards and double-think.

A similar sleight of mind can be seen in the tragicomical conduct of @TheBookerPrizes who sacked their long-time patroness Baroness Nicholson as honorary vice-president for the “crimes” of believing in biological sex and “misgendering” someone on Twitter.

An equally Orwellian statement followed: "We deplore racism, homophobia, and transphobia, and do not discriminate on any grounds. Literature is open, plural, and questioning. We believe every author’s work should be approached by readers in the same spirit."

No satire could match this declaration of support for openness and plurality while sacking someone they disagreed with. The double-think is flagrant. Once-niche “critical theory” has infiltrated contemporary discourse, with its rejection of logic, reason, and objective reality.

Dominating every major wing of cultural life, the Left feels so comfortable in its hypocrisy. Influential appointments have the ring of a cosy club, a conveyor belt of Left-wing opinion linking Guardian editorships, heads of Oxbridge colleges, public health quangocrats and more.

For how long can this state of affairs continue? Being obliged to parrot propaganda and declare the sky is pink to retain your livelihood is emotionally draining. Neither is it healthy for our institutions to be so consistently out of step with public opinion, overseen by a

detached cultural elite only occasionally roused from its perch by a disobliging election or referendum result.
Few of us wish to inhabit a monoculture, and the quality of artistic output is already suffering: take the Booker Prize’s own deterioration in the literary landscape.

Worst of all, it will destroy genuine progress: in liberal California, to pave the way for “affirmative action” measures, the legislature has voted to strike anti-discrimination commitments from its constitution — a development that should terrify all thinking people.

Britain is never far behind the US: it is already an upside-down world, in which bullies feign victimhood, discrimination masquerades as social justice and “feminist” activists use the mantle of progressivism to hound women with impunity. We are through the looking glass now.