July

It’s Not Black or White

WEDNESDAY 1 JULY

Twitter has announced it is replacing coding terms for more ‘inclusive’ terminology. The company explained, ‘Inclusive language plays a critical role in fostering an environment where everyone belongs. At Twitter, the language we have been using in our code does not reflect our values as a company or represent the people we serve. We want to change that. #WordsMatter.’

Racism sensitivities will apparently be addressed by changing words like ‘whitelist’ to ‘allowlist’, ‘blacklist’ to ‘denylist’ and ‘master/slave’ to ‘leader/follower’. Gender issues will be dealt with by changing ‘guys’ to ‘folks’, ‘you all’ or ‘y’all’ and ‘man hours’ to ‘person hours’ or ‘engineer hours’. And mental health will be handled by changing ‘sanity check’ to ‘quick check’, ‘confidence check’ or ‘coherence check’, and ‘dummy value’ to ‘placeholder value’, just in case any dummies get upset.

It’s great to see Twitter finally getting to grips with the appalling cesspit of vile, threatening, abusive crap that is pumped over its platform all day every day – by focusing on such comparatively trivial virtue-signalling nonsense. Yet again, the PC language cops get priority over censoring how we speak while a major social media platform does nothing to curb the appalling filth infecting its own site. As so often, it fell to Ricky Gervais to ask the obvious question. ‘Why isn’t this in Braille?’ he tweeted.

THURSDAY 2 JULY

Facebook is facing a growing boycott from advertisers ‘concerned’ about its failure to deal with hateful material posted on its site. Coincidentally, I quit Facebook a few weeks ago. Not because I wanted to join the boycott, but because I’ve just got fed up of reading friends banging on about polit-ics or spewing their bonkers corona conspiracy theories. I spend too much of my time immersed in that kind of noise at work and on Twitter to want even more of it on a platform that used to be a nice bit of friendly, sociable escapism from everyone shouting at each other.

I’ve also become increasingly concerned by the company’s ongoing data security issues, and the creepy way adverts pop up on my Facebook page for stuff I’ve recently searched for on the internet, or even after I’ve been talking about something. None of this is what I signed up for all those innocent years ago. All I ever wanted from Facebook was a daily diet of happy smiling photos and posts of people whom I like enjoying themselves, to distract me from covering the often unrelentingly grim and toxic news cycle.

But the sad truth is that as Facebook has grown increasingly aggressive in the way it commercialises itself, so its users have become increasingly aggressive too, especially since two incredibly polarising events: Donald Trump’s election win and the Brexit saga. And the coronavirus pandemic has sent this dynamic off the charts – turning almost everyone I know into angry amateur scientific and medical experts, all espousing their often woefully ill-informed opinions with the same intransigent certainty that they’ve applied to other issues in recent years, and all framing their arguments about the virus directly from the views they have about Trump or Brexit. It’s been utterly exhausting to watch, and also very dispiriting.

But not as dispiriting as the renewed wokie-driven cancel culture that’s returned with a vengeance since the despicable murder of George Floyd, with illiberal liberals unleashing a global wrecking ball on everything from monuments of beloved presidents to ‘inappropriate’ movies and TV shows – cancelling anyone and anything, dead or alive, that they can shame for perceived crimes against their woke world view. Now they’ve set their cancelling sights on Facebook, the world’s biggest social media platform.

The ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ campaign – led by powerful liberal activist groups including the Anti-Defamation League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press and Common Sense – asked ‘large Facebook advertisers to show they will not support a company that puts profit over safety’. Their clarion call was swiftly met, with more than 160 companies agreeing to not buy ads on Facebook during the month of July. The firms include Unilever, Verizon, Honda, Magnolia Pictures, Levi’s, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Starbucks. Organisers are now working on getting European companies to join the boycott and have also urged regulators to take a hard stand on Facebook. The boycott has already cratered Facebook’s stock price and the financial damage may get a lot worse very quickly. But what is it really about?

Coca-Cola made it clear why they were pulling their ads: ‘There is no place for racism in the world and there is no place for racism on social media.’ A laudable statement, we can all agree. There is undeniably some reprehensible material on Facebook, horrible, hateful stuff that should be removed the moment it’s posted. But you should see some of the disgusting, hateful, threatening filth I get sent on Twitter, and, since George Floyd’s killing, the blatant racism spewing into my feed from people seething about the notion of black lives mattering.

Twitter is spared a boycott by most of these firms because founder Jack Dorsey has started censoring President Trump’s tweets and kicking infamous right-wing commentators like Katie Hopkins off the platform. Yet I don’t see many hateful left-wing people, of which there are many, being censored or suspended on Twitter. It appears to be undeniably one rule for conservatives, another for liberals. Dorsey thus meets the ‘woke’ criteria for acceptable leadership and is spared cancellation. Whereas Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has tried to resist similar demands to clamp down on this kind of material, whichever side of the political divide it comes from – but will now apply warnings to some posts.

Explaining his position, Zuckerberg said in a live stream last week, ‘We’ll allow people to share this content to condemn it, just like we do with other problematic content, because this is an important part of how we discuss what’s acceptable in our society – but we’ll add a prompt to tell people that the content they’re sharing may violate our policies.’

You can agree or disagree with Zuckerberg about this strategy, but one thing it’s not is an attack on freedom of speech. In fact, it’s the opposite; he believes so passionately in the principle of freedom of speech that he wants to allow views he personally despises to appear on his platform. And it’s not like he does nothing about the problem of hateful material. Facebook removes around three million items of hate speech content around the world each month, 90 per cent of which is taken down even before being reported.

Frankly, I find Zuckerberg’s position more honest than his critics give him credit for, especially with a crucial US election looming in November. Conservatives should not be unfairly targeted or silenced in the months leading up to it, not least because the left can be just as hateful, if not more so, than the right – just ask J.K. Rowling.

Much of the energy for this boycott comes from Facebook not censoring Trump. And some of his outbursts are clumsy and vile, as we saw yesterday when he tweeted then deleted a video depicting a man screaming ‘WHITE POWER!’ But Trump was elected by half the US population and 40 per cent still support him. Are we saying that their views just don’t count – and their leader should be gagged? The way to stop Trump is through the ballot box in November, not through denying him his First Amendment rights.

And when it comes to incendiary acts, why do famous liberals invariably get a pass? Was Madonna suspended from any social media when she said she’d thought of blowing up the White House? No. Was Kathy Griffin suspended when she appeared with an image of Trump’s bloodied severed head? No. But if a right-wing celebrity or media figure had done either of these things to Barack Obama, they’d have been gone in a flash, incinerated at the self-righteous altar of liberal outrage.

There’s also an inherent deceit at heart of this boycott; these firms all want to massively cut back on their advertising spend anyway due to the crisis. This way, they can claim it is all being done for virtuous reasons, not financial necessity. Yet their newfound virtuous corporate halos come with large cracks. You can bet every dollar they’re currently saving that they’ll all come crawling back to Facebook once this temporary boycott ends, because they’ll desperately need the gargantuan number of customers that Facebook brings them.

So this is a phoney war, not based on principle but fear. There’s a growing terror circulating around every business and business leader that they’ll be next for the ruthless woke chopping board. It doesn’t take much to light the fire of public outrage in these intemperate times, but once it starts it’s almost impossible to extinguish. What these firms are really doing, ironically, is bowing to a hate mob intent on destroying Facebook. And if this campaign succeeds, the campaigners will feel empowered to go after anyone else they fancy tossing on the woke bonfire.

This strikes me as a very dangerous moment in these pandemic-fuelled culture wars. What’s at stake is basic freedom of speech. I don’t personally want to be on Facebook anymore, but I will loudly defend its right to exist and not be subjected to this kind of bullying, hypocritical, cancel culture bullshit. Amid all this indignant rage at Mark Zuckerberg, ask yourself one question: how did we all get to see the horrific George Floyd murder that sparked this new global revolutionary zeal? It was posted on Facebook.

FRIDAY 3 JULY

Young people in the city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama are throwing Covid-19 parties featuring a competition where people who have coronavirus attend and the first person to get infected, and has the infection certified by a doctor, receives a payout from ticket sales. It sounds like a spoof – but local officials have confirmed it is tragically true. Nothing better illustrates the ignorance and arrogance of so many youngsters about the virus. They just don’t care.

SATURDAY 4 JULY

Rachel Dolezal, the race-faker and former NAACP leader who was discovered to actually be white, says she feels ‘vindicated’ by the BLM movement. Dolezal, 42, who has now changed her name to Nkechi Diallo, still sees herself as black and wants to get involved once again in the push for social equality.

‘Racially, I identify as human,’ she told the New York Post, ‘but culturally I identify as black. I do hope that we can rework the vocabulary. That’s part of challenging the race world view. Overwhelmingly, most people I hear from are black or mixed or non-white in some way and a lot of people have said this is your moment, you’re vindicated.’

This is classic wokie syndrome: even when it’s obvious to everyone that you’re wrong, just continue insisting you’re right. In that respect, they are just like their nemesis, Donald Trump.

For those wondering how dangerous limitless self-identification can get, Rachel Dolezal is a perfect illustration. She was branch president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington from 2014 until June 2015, when she was forced to resign amid a scandal involving her racial identity. Ms Dolezal identified as a black woman and was lauded for it. There was just one problem with this: she’s a white woman, born to two white parents. She’s as black as me. Her gigantic lie was exposed when a local TV news crew turned up and asked her a simple question.

‘Are you African-American?’

Dolezal froze in horror. ‘I don’t understand the question,’ she replied, despite the question being one of the simplest ever posed to a human being.

The reporter put it another way: ‘Are your parents white?’

Dolezal, knowing her game was up, ran away. As her story unravelled, it grew ever more outrageous. Her parents released pictures of their daughter as a blonde white girl and condemned her as a fraud. She was forced to quit the NAACP, was fired by a university where she lectured, lost her newspaper column and had to leave a police ombudsman commission. But the icing on her fibbing cake came when it emerged that she had once sued a university for racially discriminating against her BECAUSE SHE WAS WHITE!

Rather than simply apologise and disappear for a bit, as any normal person would do, Dolezal went on the attack, portraying herself as a victim of racism and sexism. She went on NBC’s Today show, and was asked, ‘When did you start deceiving people?’

‘I do take exception to that,’ she retorted, indignantly, ‘because it’s a little more complex than me answering a question of, “Are you black or white?”’

Well, it’s not really that complex, is it? She’s white, as her whole biological family confirms. It would be understandable for her to be confused if either of her parents were black, but they’re not. They are resolutely, incontrovertibly white. The black man she claimed for years in interviews was her father is not actually her father. Her real father, as she well knew, is a white man named Larry. Her mother’s also white. And her siblings are white. Therefore: SHE. IS. WHITE.

‘It’s more complex than it being true or false,’ she blabbed on.

No, it’s not, Rachel. It’s really as simple as it being true or false, and your claim to be black is 100 per cent FALSE.

‘I have a huge issue with blackface, this is not some freak “Birth of a Nation” mockery blackface performance,’ she told Today, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this is the single greatest example of a mockery blackface performance in the history of Planet Earth: a perfectly white woman pretending to be black for decades, and using her fake skin colour to be a race campaigner.

Tendering her resignation, Ms Dolezal expressed the hope that she ‘can drive at the core of definitions of race, ethnicity, culture, self-determination, personal agency and ultimately, empowerment’.

This was nonsense. The only thing she’d driven at is the core of contemptible falsehood, albeit in a very self-determined, personal way. Sitting in the audience for this farcical Today interview were her two sons: one, an adopted black boy called Izaiah, the other, another black boy called Franklin, conceived with her ex-husband, an African-American. ‘Izaiah said, “You’re my real mom,” and for that to be something that is plausible, I certainly can’t be seen as white and be Izaiah’s mom,’ Dolezal said.

So, every white person in the world who adopts a black child now has to identify themselves as black? This is the stuff of madness. Only, I don’t think Rachel Dolezal is mad. I think she knew exactly what she was doing. She’s a cold, calculating woman who thought she could make a good living for herself as a race activist. But only if she pretended to be black.

The deceit ran so deep and for so long that even close friends had no idea. Asked by the Today show to explain her skin colour, which has darkened considerably from when she was a lily-white young blonde teenager, she replied, ‘I certainly don’t stay out of the sun.’

In another interview, Dolezal claimed her non-existent black father had to flee the Deep South after he assaulted a police officer who was attacking him. She explained, ‘My dad’s exodus [was in] the great migration to the North from the Deep South, where they left on the midnight train because a white officer harassed and threatened and was about to beat my dad with a billy club, and he whipped round and slapped the officer to his knees.’

Warming to her great, whopping, brazen lie, she added, ‘They got out of town because as a black family in the Deep South, if you had any kind of negative altercation with a white cop where you stood up for yourself, it was gonna go badly for you.’

Wow. A white woman pretending to be black, claiming her fake black dad had to escape the clutches of a white policeman who was going to kill him. What could be a more incendiary, inflammatory thing to say in race-torn America? And this from someone who when she was exposed was the leader of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The LEADER!

The NAACP said in a statement, ‘One’s racial identity is not a qualifying criteria nor disqualifying standard for NAACP leadership.’ No, and it shouldn’t be either. That would be racist. But what should be is lying about one’s racial identity.

Rachel Dolezal’s appalling act of deception deserved every heap of abuse that rained down on her head. But there was one positive thing to come out of her absurd, forked-tongue antics: I’ve rarely seen black and white Americans more united on any race issue. Everyone seemed to agree that the only statement this pathetically disingenuous wastrel should now release contains the following ten words: ‘I’m Rachel Dolezal and I identify as a complete idiot.’

Yet to this day, she refuses to accept she’s done anything wrong. ‘There’s no protected class for me,’ she wailed to the Guardian newspaper. ‘I’m this generic, ambiguous scapegoat for white people to call me a race traitor and take out their hostility on. And I’m a target for anger and pain about white people from the black community. It’s like I’m the worst of all these worlds.’ Well yes, she is. By pretending to be black, Rachel Dolezal betrayed everyone. Yet she remains totally unrepentant, insisting it’s her right to identify as black if she so chooses, and saying she just wants to ‘encourage people to be exactly who they are’. She even says that if people are allowed to identify as non-binary, gender-fluid, the same rules – or lack of them – should apply to race. ‘It’s very similar,’ she said, ‘in so far as: this is a category I’m born into, but this is really how I feel.’

In a sense, she’s right. Self-identification means exactly what it says; you can identify as whatever the hell you like. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us in the real world have to go along with it and we shouldn’t be silenced by the woke brigade when we engage in debate about it. I don’t respect Rachel Dolezal’s right to be black because it’s absolutely bloody ridiculous. If I suddenly said I was black, I would rightly be laughed out of town. Dolezal’s woeful tale perfectly highlights why self-identification is such a dangerous thing.

WEDNESDAY 8 JULY

More than 150 writers, including J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Malcolm Gladwell, Martin Amis and Margaret Atwood, have signed an extraordinary letter published in Harper’s Magazine pleading for an end to cancel culture. ‘The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world,’ it read, ‘and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion – which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.

‘The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organisations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

‘This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.’

I couldn’t agree more. The letter writer, Thomas Chatterton Williams, explained to the New York Times: ‘Donald Trump is the Canceller in Chief. But the correction of Trump’s abuses cannot become an overcorrection that stifles the principles we believe in.’

Exactly.

Williams added, ‘We’re not just a bunch of old white guys sitting around writing this letter. It includes plenty of Black thinkers, Muslim thinkers, Jewish thinkers, people who are trans and gay, old and young, right-wing and left-wing. We believe these are values that are widespread and shared, and we wanted the list to reflect that.’

Rowling said she was ‘very proud to sign this letter in defence of a foundational principle of a liberal society: open debate and freedom of thought and speech’ and she compared the cancel culture epidemic as akin to the McCarthy years in America, saying, ‘To quote the inimitable Lillian Hellman: “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.”’

Of course, there is an irony that some of the signatories, including Rowling, have been keen members of the Cancel Club for many years. But everyone should be allowed to repent their sins. I feel very encouraged by this letter.

It’s always been clear to me that illiberal liberalism will only end when liberals themselves bring an end to it, and this seems a significant intervention by a large number of high-profile figures in the liberal world to say: ENOUGH. Is this the beginning of the end for wokery?

THURSDAY 9 JULY

I should have known better. All hell has broken loose over the letter. One of its signatories, transgender activist author Jennifer Finney Boylan, has now publicly recanted her support, saying she wasn’t aware of who else was involved. She tweeted, ‘I did not know who else had signed that letter. I thought I was endorsing a well-meaning, if vague, message against internet shaming. I did know Chomsky, Steinem, and Atwood were in, and I thought, good company. The consequences are mine to bear. I am so sorry.’

It quickly emerged that she was objecting to J.K. Rowling, for her views on transgenderism. Rowling hit back, tweeting Boylan to say, ‘You’re still following me, Jennifer. Be sure to publicly repent of your association with Goody Rowling before unfollowing and volunteer to operate the ducking stool next time, as penance.’

Another signatory demanded her name be removed. ‘I do not endorse this @Harpersletter,’ raged historian Kerri Greenidge. ‘I am in contact with Harper’s about a retraction.’

A third signatory, Vox journalist Matthew Yglesias, was publicly shamed by one of his colleagues for signing the letter. Emily VanDerWerff, a trans woman, said she was ‘saddened’ by Yglesias’s involvement because the letter had been signed by ‘several prominent anti-trans voices’ – and it made her feel ‘less safe’ in their workplace.

So, a letter signed by liberals that was designed to end liberal cancel culture and censorship has exploded into a blazing firestorm that will probably lead to more people being censored and cancelled. The woke farce is complete.

TUESDAY 14 JULY

Extraordinary scenes at the New York Times, where top opinion writer Bari Weiss has abruptly resigned, claiming the paper has been consumed by intolerant wokies. ‘Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times,’ she wrote in a thunderous resignation letter, ‘But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.’

Weiss, whom the Washington Post said cast herself ‘as a centrist liberal concerned that far-left critiques stifled free speech’, joined the paper in 2017 as part of editorial page editor James Bennet’s desire to show the ‘many shades of conservatism and many shades of liberalism’.

Ironically, Weiss’s decision to leave came a few weeks after Bennet himself was forced to quit after publishing an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton that called for troops to be used on the streets to quell rioting during protests over George Floyd’s murder.

It was a very inflammatory view, but Cotton is an elected member of the US Senate and that is what he thinks. As such, his opinion is newsworthy, and I say that as someone who thinks his opinion is completely wrong. What followed next, though, was astonishing.

New York Times journalists rose up in outrage and demanded an explanation for why the op-ed had been allowed to run. Bennet posted his reasoning: ‘The Times editorial board has forcefully defended the protests as patriotic and criticised the use of force, saying earlier today that police too often have responded with more violence – against protesters, journalists and bystanders. As part of our explorations of these issues, Times Opinion has published powerful arguments supporting protests, advocating fundamental change and criticizing police abuses. Times Opinion owes it to our readers to show them counter arguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy. We understand that many readers find Senator Cotton’s argument painful, even dangerous. We believe that is one reason it requires public scrutiny and debate.’

This cut no ice with the paper’s wokies.

‘No and no and no – you’ve made one too many bad decisions and clearly should not have run this,’ answered the New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis.

As the furore grew, Bennet was eventually fired, for publishing an opinion by a US senator that New York Times journalists didn’t like. This was a shameful moment … for the New York Times. A newsroom full of woke liberals rose up to silence an elected official’s right to freedom of speech – and the paper’s spineless editors and owners let them win. Freedom of speech has to mean just that: freedom to speak freely. By reacting the way it did, the New York Times behaved just like the Twitter cancel culture mob, and showed it only believes in free speech up to the point where its liberal journalists agree with it.

Bari Weiss, who had previously enraged colleagues by challenging aspects of the #MeToo movement and the Women’s March, claimed ‘my forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views’. She said some of them had called her ‘a Nazi and a racist’.

Weiss added, ‘What rules that remain at the New York Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinised. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.’

Perhaps her most damning allegation came when she described a ‘civil war inside the New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes and the (mostly 40+) liberals’.

In other words, this battle isn’t even left v right.

It’s liberals v wokies, a fight that is destroying liberalism.

Later today, another high-profile writer, Andrew Sullivan, announced he is leaving New York Magazine after many years. Sullivan, who describes himself as an ‘anti-Trump conservative’, said some staff and management believed that a writer who doesn’t conform to critical theory (a Marxist-inspired movement that divides the world into two categories, the oppressed and the oppressors, and is now seen as the bedrock of wokeism) was harming co-workers ‘merely by existing in the same virtual space’.

In his final column, he wrote, ‘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, who said he intended to vote for Joe Biden in the election, added, ‘It seems to me that if this conservatism is so foul that many of my peers are embarrassed to be working at the same magazine, then I have no idea what version of conservatism could ever be tolerated. And that’s fine. We have freedom of association in this country, and if the mainstream media want to cut ties with even moderate anti-Trump conservatives, because they won’t bend the knee to critical theory’s version of reality, that’s their prerogative.’

It may be their prerogative but it’s also preposterous.

As MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman who has become a leading anti-Trump voice, put it in a tweet response to the two resignations, ‘I’ve told liberals for three decades that they’re easier to beat in elections because of academia’s left-wing bubble that protects liberal students from having to aggressively defend their views. Today, @nytimes and @NYMag provided the same disservice to their readership. Grow up or be prepared to get routed by moderates and conservatives of all parties for years to come. The defeat of Donald Trump will no more be the “end of history” than was the election of Barack Obama. If you are too fragile to read one opinion column a week that unsettles you, then you are too weak to run a country.’

THURSDAY 16 JULY

I’ve announced the publication of this book and, exactly as I predicted when I started writing it, the instant hysterical reaction perfectly exemplifies why I needed to write it.

My launch tweet read simply, ‘BREAKING: I’m delighted to announce my new book: WAKE UP – Why the “liberal” war on free speech is even more dangerous than Covid-19.’

‘Oh good,’ came the first sarcastic response, ‘we don’t have enough of these hysterical right-wing “we’re under attack” books yet.’

The presumption I must be right wing to write a book about illiberal liberalism was further promoted by a musician with the Twitter name @BungleSharkfart, who calls himself ‘a Centralist with no tolerance for self-serving ignorance’ and raged, ‘Yay just what the world wanted, more angry right-wing white man books about how their privilege has been taken away because they’re ever so slightly put out …’

One lonely voice of Twitter reason named Micky Dean politely explained, ‘People can be critical of woke culture without being right-wing. Especially when woke culture attacks freedom of speech and limits open debate.’ But he was drowned out by a cacophony of wokie outrage, much of it focusing on my skin colour.

Jade Azim, a self-acclaimed ‘leftie-type writer’ who apparently represents MPs’ staff in Westminster, sniped, ‘I want to know what’s in the head of very wealthy famous white men when they think they’re being silenced and get a book contract to talk about it.’

Of course, I’ve never thought I’ve been silenced – though many wokies have tried, often using allegations of non-existent bigotry to do so.

Some of the reaction to my book announcement followed a similar path. Natasha Roth-Rowland, a Middle East magazine editor, sneered, ‘Being asked not to be racist is “a fate worse than death” is becoming its own book genre.’

Gay activist Benjamin Button, who wanted me sacked for challenging the BBC’s decision to promote 100 genders to kids, said, ‘Wake Up is exactly what so many minorities and oppressed people have done. They woke up to the bigotry and discrimination and smears that are peddled about and started calling for action to end them.’

If only it were that simple.

Some of my new post-Covid left-wing fans felt personally let down. ‘Lazy politics Piers and you were doing so well,’ said @MarkWelshyeds, ‘There is no war on “free speech” but there is a war on “hate speech”. The word liberals also means, in this sense, people of decency.’

Another, @mz_jnr, said, ‘So basically why people should let bigoted people say and do whatever they want no matter how harmful or against the stand-point of the platforms which they stand on without accountability … gotcha, nice one.’

A few people were bemused by the apparent hypocrisy of my argument, which they haven’t actually read yet. ‘To be clear,’ said @stevieegg1978, ‘you’re taking time out from tweeting to 7.6 million followers, hosting a moderately successful TV show, and your Daily Mail columns, to complain you’re [sic] free speech is being infringed, in the book you’ve just had published. Got it.’

And of course, Hitler made an appearance. ‘Jesus,’ tweeted @jigje1, ‘this grift again. It’s not a real problem Piers. Hitler was a great advocate for free speech when he was in opposition, most of the people supporting it now would have voted for him in.’

This message, in particular, said so much about the absurd way the debate on free speech has gone. The ‘everyone who doesn’t agree with me is a Nazi’ attitude of so many wokies is not just outrageously offensive, it also ironically illustrates why this new illiberal liberalism is so fascist in its attitude.

Thankfully, there are some liberals other than me who get the dangers of all this, though. A man named Jeremy Tarling posted, ‘As Christopher Hitchens said, “My own opinion is a very simple one: the right of others to free expression is part of my own. If someone’s voice is silenced, then I am deprived of the right to hear.”’

And the #BeKind brigade was well represented by @tetjerry who tweeted, ‘Hope you won’t get Covid in the meantime, 15 October is quite far away, and it could easily ruin the title.’

Ultimately, though, it was someone named @theiandemon who posed the most interesting question about the book. ‘So, is this aimed at your pre-Covid Brexit right-wing Boris fans that you lost during Covid, or the left-leaning fans that backed your stance taking the government to task? Not sure there will be much centre ground in your fanbase for sales on this.’

There lies the problem.

There cannot be any centre ground.

Everything has to be tribal, based on partisan politics and a shocking erosion of free speech.

I gained right-wing Boris fans before the pandemic because I was a Remain-voting liberal who wanted the democratic vote to Brexit honoured and even voted Conservative to ensure it happened. This made me an enemy to extreme left-wingers, the Remoaner wokies, who refused to accept the result.

Then I harshly criticised Boris Johnson and his government for their dreadful handling of the coronavirus crisis and lost many of my newfound right-wing fans who were incapable of separating Brexit from Covid-19. In the process, I gained and regained new left-wing fans delighted by my apparent conversion back to the cause.

Yet the truth is, I’m just a reasonably liberal person who believes in democracy, freedom of speech and holding governments (of any persuasion) to account.

This book is therefore ‘aimed’ at anyone who thinks those things are a problem, and in particular people who call themselves liberals but behave in a very illiberal way.