Conspiracy theory isn’t what it used to be. The term has taken on a pejorative quality of late, and those who subscribe are increasingly viewed as dangerous lunatics. It was once the case that a person who believed in shadowy government cover-ups was considered eccentric but harmless. Celebrity adherents were smilingly indulged. In 2003 the […]
Why Orwell was right
13-minute read 70 years have passed since George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four: the book that was to be his final work, his magnum opus, and perhaps the defining novel of the twentieth century. Orwell realised during the Second World War that the world was heading into “an age of totalitarian dictatorships – an age […]
The judicious rulebreaker: misunderstanding Jordan Peterson
11-minute read No one attracts criticism like Jordan Peterson. Since his emergence as a public intellectual in 2016, Peterson has been accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and right-wing conspiracy theorising. He stands apart from the other members of the so-called ‘Intellectual Dark Web’, his name a by-word for everything that is supposedly […]
Fake News and Low-Resolution Narratives
10-minute read A pleasing thing about growing older is that one’s experience and hopefully wisdom gently increase, not unlike a middle-aged waistline. It can be hard to know whether you’re becoming better and quicker at spotting patterns, discrepancies, and contradictions in the media, or maybe it’s just cynicism with a little confirmation bias sprinkled […]
Facing down the culture police
13-minute read Last week the pop singer Taylor Swift made headlines with an otherwise-unremarkable live performance. She was considered to have stolen some of her moves and production from the singer Beyoncé, and because Beyoncé is black, there were calls of ‘cultural appropriation’. Only a few short years ago this strange phrase would have […]
Social Justice Warriors: a cult by any other name
14-minute read “It was the darkest chapter of my life… I’ve pinned down four core features that make it so disturbing: dogmatism, groupthink, a crusader mentality, and anti-intellectualism… Every minor heresy inches you further away from the group. People are reluctant to say that anything is too radical for fear of being seen […]