Nick Cohen nails it in The Guardian:
'The intellectuals who excused Stalinist communism in the 1940s aren't so different from their grandchildren, who excuse radical Islam. Orwell was something of a "whoreophobe" himself and he warned his contemporaries: "Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for. Don't imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the Soviet regime, or any other regime, and then suddenly return to mental decency. Once a whore, always a whore."Unless today's intellectuals want the same said of them they must end the censorship of debates that provoke no violence beyond the violently hurt feelings of the thin-skinned. They must prove the sincerity of their argument that religious reaction must be met with words, not arrests, by overcoming their cowardice and spitting out protests of their own.'
Orwell's comment would look good on a T-shirt.
ReplyDeleteIs it a coincidence that Common Purpose and the Communist Party share initials? I don't think so.