The Coalition For Cultural Freedom Strikes Back
"But threats remain. Totalitarian systems in Russia, China, and their former Marxist-Leninist satellites have transformed, with the exception of North Korea, into systems of authoritarian control that permit some economic liberty while maintaining state sovereignty over politics, society, and culture. The authoritarians use "sharp power" to interfere in democratic elections, bully and exploit Western corporations and universities, and influence public discourse through information warfare. A renascent Marxism competes with, and to a large extent has been subsumed by, the ideology of multiculturalism and its attendant identity politics. It is this ideology and politics that have captured America's most prestigious intellectual, cultural, and media institutions. The university, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and increasingly formerly "neutral" and "objective" platforms such as the New York Times and the Atlantic have come under the sway of racial and sexual dogmas and attitudes that brook no disagreement. Membership in these institutions, which play a crucial role in elite opinion-formation, and the social networks in which they are embedded, is contingent on agreement with or silence about certain ideas of "white privilege," patriarchal "oppression," "Islamophobia," and "gender fluidity." To dissent from these ideas - to exercise one's right to say no - invites not only anathematization from polite society but also the loss of one's job and, in some cases, physical threats. Just as happened in the twentieth century, an unlikely group of compatriots has emerged to resist the contemporary domestic challenge to cultural freedom. Reading Bari Weiss's recent article on the "intellectual dark web," one cannot help being struck by the diversity of opinion and partisan allegiance among the renegade thinkers challenging political correctness and its stigmatization of arguments that violate its axioms of group identity, racial strife, and transgenderism. A stultifying intellectual atmosphere, in which the subjective emotional responses of designated victim groups take precedent over style, argument, and empirical evidence, makes for unexpected alliances. Who would have thought that Kanye West would become, in the space of a few Tweets, the most famous and recognized champion of individual free thought in the world today? Who could have anticipated that New Atheist Sam Harris would find himself in a united front with Jordan Peterson, who instructs his millions of acolytes in the continued relevance of biblical story?" It is time to fight back.
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