Claire Fox writes in the Independent today about the way in which people like James Watson are being silenced for voicing unpopular views.
“A new priestly class has arisen to police secular heresies. Say the wrong thing on race and watch the CRE swoop zealously to demand you retract, are sacked, are humiliated. Their viciousness and intolerance would make medieval cardinals blush. Dare you challenge global warming orthodoxy, and watch everyone from the Royal Society to environmentalists shout “blasphemy”? James Watson may not have been shown the instruments of torture as Galileo was but his treatment speaks to some chilling similarities between the new and old inquisitions.”
I’m not sure I agree that this is all new. I’m not a card-carrying member of the loony left anymore, although I would still describe myself as left-leaning. But, even in my looniest days, I loathed the harsh response to any deviation from the party line. And it has always been thus in socialist politics. Look at Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, to name but a very few. And let’s not forget that Fascism and Nazism started out as socialist parties.