“Andrew Doyle is an ultra-conservative anti-feminist homosexual who uses a drag persona on Twitter to attack trans and queer people… He wishes with all his heart that he was Julia Hartley-Brewer. Pathologically so.”
Only one assertion in this tweet is true — and with apologies to Julia Hartley-Brewer, it isn’t the one about yearning to metamorphosise into her. I have never attacked trans or queer people; I have been a consistent advocate of women’s rights; I mostly hold Left-wing political views; and I’ve only ever dragged up once (the experiment was a failure and I subsequently destroyed all photographic evidence).
And yet despite its bizarre claims, this tweet does serve some purpose: it offers an insight into the mindset of those who claim to be “on the right side of history”. Specifically, we can see three traits on display: the tone of Pharisaic certainty even when declaring falsehoods, the conviction that it is possible to intuit the private thoughts of others, and a complete disregard for the concept of defamation.
I would like to focus on the last of these traits; the willingness to defame with no sense that there might be consequences. Today’s culture wars are largely being waged through the manipulation and misapplication of language. Many activists are explicit about their refusal to debate their ideas — for the simple reason they would collapse under scrutiny — and one of the ways this can be achieved is to destabilise shared definitions of words.
In their world, libel simply cannot exist, because the meaning of language has become a purely subjective matter.
For example, the term “racism” is generally understood to mean hatred or prejudice based on race, but for intersectional activists “racism” is an equation: prejudice plus power. Similarly, the term “fascism” traditionally connotes an authoritarian movement based on an extreme form of nationalism combined with claims of racial purity and a militaristic repression of dissent. Yet last week Labour MP Claudia Webbe claimed that the government’s decision to privatise Channel 4 was not a show of “freedom or independence” but “the seedbed of fascism”.
Webbe is not libelling anyone here, of course — she is merely revealing her own historical illiteracy. However, her tweet serves as a reminder that the juvenile discourse of social media has now successfully invaded the parliamentary realm. It is one thing for Twitter trolls to promiscuously hurl about terms such as “Nazi”, “fascist”, “homophobe”, “transphobe” and “racist”, but when politicians join the crackbrained chorus we ought to take note.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe