You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal
I FEEL more strongly than ever that George Orwell’s 1984 should be a compulsory feature of the national curriculum. What better way to warn our young people of the threat and consequences of institutional censorship and authoritarianism? And what better time to do it than now, with cancel culture burgeoning and free speech increasingly imperilled?
The tale of Winston Smith’s struggle against dystopian tyranny – symbolised by the cult of Big Brother and the sinister Thought Police – would serve as a healthy corrective for any student inclined to believe that the current state of things were normal.
While some liberal-minded people would argue that, when it comes to freedom and liberty, we’ve never had it so good, it sure doesn’t feel that way. The growing prevalence of echo chambers, safe spaces, trigger warnings, no-platforming, ‘behavioural contracts’ for entertainers, workplace speech codes, and an expanding web of restrictive laws attest to the current suffocating atmosphere.
The recent revelation that over 62,000 people in Britain have been arrested for ‘speech offences’ over the past five years should disabuse anyone of the notion that the threat to freedom of expression is being overhyped.
On some topics, the liberal elites act as though there were only one legitimate position. And they are only too happy to enforce that orthodoxy ruthlessly. Try being someone with a public profile and deviating from it, and you’ll soon learn the cost. Sometimes, as Ed Sheeran has discovered, just remaining quiet is enough to attract the mob to your door. Silence is violence, these days. And dare we forget it.
It isn’t uncommon for some among our elites – leaders of our creative and cultural industries, for example – to blatantly rewrite or falsify history in their desire to embed their ideology.
Or to apply the standards of today to yesteryear and then be outraged when spotting a historical violation – as though they are too ignorant to understand that social and cultural norms change over time.
Or to erase – or, as Orwell put it, ‘vapourise’ – all trace of an individual and his work, sometimes on the mere grounds that he has been accused by nameless individuals of ‘inappropriate conduct’. David Walliams might be able to tell us a thing or two about that.