The Purge

Once upon a time the left fancied themselves the champions of liberty of thought and expression, but it'd be a mistake to think that "liberals" still hold to that position today. Liberals were commonly heard to quote (or misquote) Voltaire who was said to have declared that "I may despise your opinions, but I'll fight to the death for your right to express them." No liberal says that today.

Today's left seems instead to have modeled itself after Orwell's barnyard menagerie in Animal Farm. Everyone on the left, or employed by institutions that are run by leftists, is goosestepping in unison to the shibboleths of race and gender dictated by the modern thought police.

Those who think for themselves are fated to be purged. Just as under the French Directorate during the Great Reign of Terror in 1793-94, dissenters from the dogmas of the left are at serious risk of being metaphorically guillotined, even if they consider themselves to be leftists themselves.

The quaint notion of thinkers like John Stuart Mill that a healthy society is one that carries on free and open discussions of differences has been relegated to the dustbin of history. Today anyone who even remotely offends against the dogmas and orthodoxies of the left is dragged off to the Revolutionary Tribunal where guilt is a foregone conclusion to be figuratively (at least for now) dispatched.

All that needs happen to guarantee one's "cancellation" is that an emotionally fragile co-worker complains of feeling physically or psychologically "unsafe" in the presence of the hapless miscreant.

Bari Weiss at the New York Times and Andrew Sullivan at New York Magazine are two recent journalists whose names have been added to the long list of those who've been martyred for their adherence to the Enlightenment values of freedom of thought and expression.

Tyler O'Neil at PJ Media tells us about Andrew Sullivan's dismissal:

On Friday, Andrew Sullivan wrote his last column at New York magazine. Apparently, his brand of heterodox conservatism was too much for fellow staffers at NY Mag and Vox to take. Even though Sullivan supported John Kerry in 2004, Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden this year, his criticisms of the radical left were allegedly “physically harming” his Cancel Culture zealot co-workers. 

The woke inquisition has come for Sullivan, just as it came for Bari Weiss at The New York Times.

Sullivan wrote in his final column that,

What has happened, I think, is relatively simple: A critical mass of the staff and management at New York Magazine and Vox Media no longer want to associate with me, and, in a time of ever tightening budgets, I’m a luxury item they don’t want to afford. And that’s entirely their prerogative. 

They seem to believe, and this is increasingly the orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to critical theory in questions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity is actively, physically harming co-workers merely by existing in the same virtual space.

Actually attacking, and even mocking, critical theory’s ideas and methods, as I have done continually in this space, is therefore out of sync with the values of Vox Media. That, to the best of my understanding, is why I’m out of here.

Sullivan focussed on the increasingly stifling woke orthodoxy that prevails in academia and other areas of American culture.

Two years ago, I wrote that we all live on campus now. That is an understatement. In academia, a tiny fraction of professors and administrators have not yet bent the knee to the woke program — and those few left are being purged. The latest study of Harvard University faculty, for example, finds that only 1.46 percent call themselves conservative.  

But that’s probably higher than the proportion of journalists who call themselves conservative at the New York Times or CNN or New York Magazine.

Sullivan is no stranger to this cancel culture, O'Neil writes. In 2017, The Verge’s Sarah Jeong — now at The New York Times — demanded NY Mag fire Sullivan for an ostensibly “racist” column.

Sullivan’s crime? In addressing reasons why Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, he had taken a detour into racial issues, suggesting that the relative success of Asian-Americans proves that the U.S. does not have overwhelming structural racism.

Bari Weiss, a staff editor at the New York Times, finally got tired of the vicious group-think atmosphere in the Times' newsroom and submitted her resignation.

Weiss, who is Jewish, faced harassment and accusations that she was a “Nazi” and a “racist” for daring to question the dogma of the radical left. She recently resigned following years of harassment.

Here's an excerpt from her resignation letter:

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m ‘writing about the Jews again.’  

Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly ‘inclusive’ one, while others post ax emojis next to my name.  

Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. 

Weiss follows Times' opinion editor James Bennet out the door after Bennet had been subjected to accusations that he had put black staffers “in danger” by running Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) op-ed calling for federal troops to put down the violent George Floyd riots. Bennet resigned amid mounting pressure.

Another target of the leftist inquisitors is Harvard scholar Steven Pinker:

Recently, some linguistics professors penned an open letter to the Linguistic Society of America with the goal of removing Pinker as one of the society’s “distinguished fellows.” 

It claimed, “Dr. Pinker has a history of speaking over genuine grievances and downplaying injustices, frequently by misrepresenting facts, and at the exact moments when Black and Brown people are mobilizing against systemic racism and for crucial changes.” 

The seemingly damning charges fall apart under scrutiny. As an example of Pinker’s misogyny, the letter described how he had responded to an incident wherein a student murdered “six women.” In fact, Pinker had merely pointed out that two of these women were actually men.

For that appalling breach of leftist orthodoxy Pinker's colleagues sought to excommunicate him from the Church of Proper Opinion.

Reached at his home on Cape Cod, Pinker, 65, noted that as a tenured faculty member and established author, he could weather the campaign against him. But he said it could chill junior faculty who hold views counter to prevailing intellectual currents.

The Cancel Culture is a form of mob rule, and it's tragic that those who run our media outlets and universities have sold out to the mob. Some of them simply lack the courage to stand up to the angry ideologues who scream for someone's head to roll, but many others are themselves sympathetic with leftist dogma and happy to purge non-conformists from their institutions.

It's how left-wing totalitarians, whether fascists or communists, have always sought to acquire and consolidate power.