Spare us the Twitter zealots and their pious left censorship – Sydney Morning Herald

Anyway, this was nothing compared to what the British writer Ian McEwan inspired on Twitter when he apparently poisoned the world by writing a novel narrated by a foetus. This was a sinister plot to humanise zygotes and, thus, outlaw abortion forever. According to NASA, which can heat-map Twitter outrages from space, there are about 4 billion collective spasms of strange and performative outrage each day, so the Foetal Narrator Controversy is naturally consigned to obscurity.

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Except in my memory, where Ive installed a plaque to commemorate it. The contagious apoplexy that McEwans (unread) book generated seemed to me a form of significant but undiagnosed illness, and one regret of deleting my Twitter account is not being able to cite the unhinged responses I received from folks when I asked them, sincerely, if they were serious.

You can say that ridiculing Twitters exotic grievances is an easy sport. Sure, except that years ago it seemed to me that Twitter wasnt merely reflecting, but engendering and magnifying, a kind of wickedly censorious piety. And one that was increasingly influencing journalists and artists. Ive had editors more interested in avoiding controversy than in judging the accuracy and value of my work.

Online, piety has no trouble finding affirmation. But the thing with piety is that it stubbornly resists private examination. This might work for the seminary, but it seems ruinous for a writer. Unless youre an awful one. In which case, this is an optimal environment to work in so, congratulations on being born to an age that enthusiastically supports your mediocrity.

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I suspect the most politically pious in this country wont be satisfied until certain professions have yielded their specific values and functions in deference to a vision of society that is perfectly liberated from aggravation. Its a vision of a giant creche.

All contest would be outlawed. Literature would become dogma. Universities would moonlight as daycare centres. The law would abandon its duty to evidentiary thresholds and the presumption of innocence, and become a place of infinite credulity. Comedy would cede the joys of irreverence, and prefer applause to laughter. Journalism would reject curiosity, exploration and corroboration, in favour of politically sanctioned advocacy and authentic personal essays. Increasingly, newsrooms will serve their readers a narrow, ideologically curated diet.

Ive disagreed with plenty of Bari Weisss work, but I agreed with her this week when she wrote, in her open letter resigning as an opinion editor at The New York Times, that a new consensus has emerged in the press ... that truth isnt a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

These days, its quite common to hear: It is imperative that a writer of non-fiction write only about experiences theyve had. When confronted with this stupidity, I experience my own violent irrationality and consider applying the credo in extremis by torching all newsrooms and the history sections of libraries.

A common defence of the lefts censoriousness however venomous and trivial is that it is merely free speech deployed against anothers. Thats fundamentally true, and its also disingenuous: the threat of mobilised zealotry is chilling speech.

I cant prove the negative here I cant measure the things not written or said. But I can tell you that Ive spoken to a few eminent writers about this authors of works wed consider classics who have told me they would not dare to publish the work today. One writer told me she had not slept the night she spoke to me about such things, so fearful was she that Id publish it. Thats a problem.

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Its also a problem when scholars are sacked for tweeting links to academic papers, when good faith cannot be distinguished from bad, when writers self-censor or have to explain that their insistence on complexity is owed to intellectual integrity and not, say, their belief in white supremacy or Satan.

Increasingly, those who have contributed to a culture of outrageous sensitivity are being impaled on the swords they helped sharpen. Past months have resembled a kind of woke purge. Which makes schadenfreude very easy to indulge, but well need to resist that dubious pleasure lest we perpetuate this cycle of mob-ruled destruction of careers and reputations.

This isnt either/or. It shouldnt be truth versus freedom. It shouldnt be inferred that criticism of this censoriousness means that the critic doesnt believe there arent righteous battles being fought. But you cant tell me that elements of this online piety arent absurd, indulgent or destructive.

You cant tell me that middle-class folk arent publicising interpersonal spats as proof of systemic violence, or that were not partially cannibalising culture in a moment of historic uncertainty and vast, easily industrialised disinformation. Or that I cant resist or make fun of Jacobin zealotry. You cant.

Martin McKenzie-Murray is a freelance writer.

Martin McKenzie-Murray is a regular contributor and a former Labor political speechwriter.

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Spare us the Twitter zealots and their pious left censorship - Sydney Morning Herald