[SH] gets it, and if you didn’t now you can too. Of all the problems we face, a bunch of people you’ve mostly heard of (a pretty good proxy for privilege) feeling oppressed because they need to say things differently isn’t serious. But the fact that, of all the things they might say now, they’d chose to make a statement about that does speak of a larger problem: the self-absorption of parts of the intellectual elite. It’s a big reason we’re in this mess.
[SH] July 13, 2020
It’s parochial to witness the dramatic escalation in everything from the manipulation of elections to the industrialisation of authoritarian regimes’ social-media propaganda, and conclude that the main problem we have is an assault on free expression by a very particular angry mob of a certain political persuasion. It merely serves to expose the self-absorption of parts of the intellectual elite. As a pandemic and a global anti-racism movement unsettle us and force us to think deeply about how our societies perpetuate an inequality that threatens the lives of those on the sharp end of law enforcement and poor healthcare access, our “thinkers” show us that their definition of a crisis is far removed from the real world. This solipsism about cancel culture proves in itself the need for more democratisation, and less reverence for those who look at a world fundamentally changing, but see only how it is changing for themselves.
(Guardian)