Owen Jones Profile picture
Jul 11, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read Read on X
"Cancel culture" is being used to describe everything from people disapproving of pedophiles to celebrities being criticised on social media.

It's become a means to protect the powerful and wealthy from being scrutinised for things they say or do.
A lot of what's called "the culture war" is just younger people trying to assert their different social and moral values over older generations who run most of the media.

A lot of older media types genuinely fear younger people as woke barbarians banging at their gates.
The essential truth of modern political debate is that younger people and older people now live on different planets. That's unprecedented: both Thatcher and Reagan won the youth vote.

My politics are based on class: this divide doesn't make me comfortable. But it's just a fact. Image
According to @IpsosMORI, in the 1983 Tory landslide, 42% of under-25s voted Tory, compared to 33% for Labour.

In the 2019 Tory landslide, 62% of under-25s voted Labour compared to 19% who voted Tory.

You can't understand modern political and cultural debate without those facts.
For those asking for the full debate about "cancel culture" with Toby Young, here you go!

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More from @owenjonesjourno

Jun 30
Cindy McCain says there's no evidence that Hamas is stealing aid.

But what does she know.

She's only the director of the World Food Programme, and widow of the hawkishly pro-Israel Republican Senator John McCain.

Then there's David Satterfield, the diplomat who served Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden, former US Ambassador, former Special Envoy for Humanitarian Issues.

He says Israel has never offered privately alleged or offered evidence of Hamas stealing aid.

According to 110 aid looting incidents recorded by the Israeli army, not one was perpetrated by Hamas.

So what @MrTCHarris is doing here - retweeted by @dpjhodges - is peddling a lie which is being used to justify the mass starvation of a people. Image
Read 7 tweets
Jun 29
This depraved psycho publicly declared that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children can just go to hell.

This morally warped man called for the death of hundreds of thousands of kids - which is what his statement means in practise - and thinks he has a moral high ground. Image
He publicly supports the mass murder of innocent civilians.

Yet instead of disappearing into a hole somewhere forever, @DPJHodges has faced no consequences for his support for genocide and feels able to adjudicate on morality.

Fucked up doesn't begin to cover it. Image
Imagine someone had publicly declared, after thousands of Israeli children had already been killed, in an onslaught that person supported, that Israeli children can just go to hell.

@DPJHodges would interpret that as a call to slaughter kids, and for once he would be right.
Read 8 tweets
Jun 27
Israeli officers and soldiers have revealed they’ve been ordered to deliberately shoot at unarmed Palestinians trying to get aid.

That’s in Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Israel is deliberately massacring civilians it’s deliberately starving.

There are few crimes more depraved. Image
It’s easy to feel like you’re going mad watching a live streamed genocide for a very obvious reason.

You can see overwhelming evidence that the most depraved crimes are being committed every day, yet you’re treated as a hateful extremist if you say so.
You think that, in a rational and sane world, crimes this extreme, this depraved, this evidence would surely - surely! - trigger an overwhelming, deafening response to stop them, immediately.

Instead you see your politicians and media outlets facilitating these crimes.
Read 6 tweets
Apr 27
Trans women legally obliged to use men's toilets, trans men legally obliged to use women's toilets.

Trans people are not going to do this. Every visit to the toilet would be humiliating, at worse dangerous.

In practise, it means trans people not using public toilets.
What happens to your life if the very act of using a public toilet becomes a source of fear or panic?

Well, it largely means you don't leave your home unless you really have to. You don't go to pubs or bars or cinemas or theatres. Do you even go shopping?
If you *only* consider the question of toilets, and nothing else, Britain has been turned into a hostile environment for trans people.

Britain is now the most hostile country to be trans in Europe, other than Russia or Hungary.
Read 13 tweets
Apr 18
Israel's lies about the massacre of the Red Crescent medics are comprehensively taken apart by Sky News.

Israel's initial lies, and subsequent lies, are taken apart.

This is important journalism.

But it isn't good enough. Here's why.

news.sky.com/story/two-hour…
Since the genocide began, Western media outlets have sporadically taken apart Israel's lies about atrocities it has perpetrated.

For example:

- The Flour Massacre

- The November 2023 attack on al-Shifa hospital

- The use of 2,000lb bombs in so-called 'safe areas'
Indeed, there have been enough Western media exposés to show that the Israeli lies and lies and lies again about war crimes it commits.

The problem isn't just that these rebuttals are too infrequent, too late, and lacking in prominence.
Read 8 tweets
Apr 14
Opposition to Israel’s genocide is a position shared by millions of people.

And yet there are some on this website who want to make it a fringe position, by imposing a purity test which would exclude the vast majority who oppose the genocide.
Even if you oppose the genocide, even if you support a total arms embargo and sweeping sanctions on Israel, the arrest of the entire military and political leadership, the creation of a single state with equal rights for all:

Even then, they will say you’re not pure enough.
There’s always been a small strain on the left, amplified by social media, who are driven primarily by being seen as the most radical person in the room, who think they can prove their radicalism by defining themselves against any leftist with a platform.
Read 16 tweets

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