Not long ago Yasmin Abdel-Magied, a Sudanese/Australian/Muslim writer, described in the Guardian how offended she became when author Lionel Shriver, speaking at the Brisbane Writers Festival, defended the right of authors to write fiction about “marginalized” characters (i.e., people of color and others seen as oppressed). Abdel-Magied, who came off as someone unable to tolerate even the mildest contradictions of her views, stalked out of Shriver’s talk in tears, virtually accusing the speaker of perpetuating racism by appropriating other cultures in her writing.
Not long after, Shriver published her full talk online, also in the Guardian, and it turned out to be passionate, eloquent, and thoughtful, but not at all offensive—except to the overly tender ears of someone like Abdel-Magied. Read it for yourself. But I had no idea that, as Shriver describes in a new New York Times piece, “Will the Left survive the Millennials?“, that the ostracism of Shriver extended farther than the kvetching of Abdel-Magied. It did.
As Shriver describes:
The festival immediately disavowed the address, though the organizers had approved the thrust of the talk in advance. A “Right of Reply” session was hastily organized. When, days later, The Guardian ran the speech, social media went ballistic. Mainstream articles followed suit. I plan on printing out The New Republic’s “Lionel Shriver Shouldn’t Write About Minorities” and taping it above my desk as a chiding reminder.
Viewing the world and the self through the prism of advantaged and disadvantaged groups, the identity-politics movement — in which behavior like huffing out of speeches and stirring up online mobs is par for the course — is an assertion of generational power. Among milliennials and those coming of age behind them, the race is on to see who can be more righteous and aggrieved — who can replace the boring old civil rights generation with a spikier brand.
When you read Shriver’s address, I suspect, you’ll be horrified that the festival disavowed it—and after having approved the topic in advance! And have a look at the New Republic column by Lovia Gyarkye, which basically says that cultural appropriation is okay, but only a minority group does it (“A Mexican in a Tyrolean hat is not the same as a group of college kids partying in sombreros.”)
But Shriver’s point is one we take up frequently here: the Left is under assault by college kids, many of whom adhere to “purity standards” so absurd that that parts of the Left are consuming other parts. I needn’t point out the sad saga of Peter Tatchell, or the way some feminists ignore the deep misogyny of Islam because many Muslims are brown. And now Shriver is in the center of the hurricane:
Viewing the world and the self through the prism of advantaged and disadvantaged groups, the identity-politics movement — in which behavior like huffing out of speeches and stirring up online mobs is par for the course — is an assertion of generational power. Among milliennials and those coming of age behind them, the race is on to see who can be more righteous and aggrieved — who can replace the boring old civil rights generation with a spikier brand.
When I was growing up in the ’60s and early ’70s, conservatives were the enforcers of conformity. It was the right that was suspicious, sniffing out Communists and scrutinizing public figures for signs of sedition.
Now the role of oppressor has passed to the left. In Australia, where I spoke, Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act makes it unlawful to do or say anything likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate,” providing alarming latitude in the restriction of free speech. It is Australia’s conservatives arguing for the amendment of this law.
As a lifelong Democratic voter, I’m dismayed by the radical left’s ever-growing list of dos and don’ts — by its impulse to control, to instill self-censorship as well as to promote real censorship, and to deploy sensitivity as an excuse to be brutally insensitive to any perceived enemy. There are many people who see these frenzies about cultural appropriation, trigger warnings, micro-aggressions and safe spaces as overtly crazy. The shrill tyranny of the left helps to push them toward Donald Trump. [JAC: or toward Milo Yiannopoulos.]
I used to question that last sentence—that the Regressive Left was pushing people toward the right. But now that I’ve heard so many Trumpheads mention “political correctness,” and seen the Left refuse to have an honest conversation about Islam, I’m not so sure Shriver is wrong. And yes, classical liberalism—the brand that defends minority rights and free speech at the same time, the people who promoted the Free Speech movement at Berekeley—is endangered by the antics of people like Abdel-Magied, who can’t even bear to hear her opinions contradicted.
Just like it’s salutary for nonbelievers to declare publicly that they’re atheists, so as to give courage to nonbelievers in the closet, so should we, as did Shriver, call out the bullying tactics of the Regressive Left, which might now be renamed The Repressive Left. Nick Cohen has been warning us about this for years, but few read him in the U.S. Perhaps they’ll read Shriver in the New York Times, whose peroration is this:
In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is the intention of the identity-politics cabal — and maybe my generation should retreat to our living rooms and let the young people tear one another apart over who seemed to imply that Asians are good at math.
But do we really want every intellectual conversation to be scrupulously cleansed of any whiff of controversy? Will people, so worried about inadvertently giving offense, avoid those with different backgrounds altogether? Is that the kind of fiction we want — in which the novels of white writers all depict John Cheever’s homogeneous Connecticut suburbs of the 1950s, while the real world outside their covers becomes ever more diverse
. . . Protecting freedom of speech involves protecting the voices of people with whom you may violently disagree. In my youth, liberals would defend the right of neo-Nazis to march down Main Street. I cannot imagine anyone on the left making that case today.
Maybe Shriver will become the American Nick Cohen. Ceiling Cat knows we need one!
