The man from the “Min­istry of Sil­ly Walks” just stepped on can­cel cul­ture, and in a rare turn up, the increas­ing­ly per­ni­cious cul­ture rather than the step­per, end­ed up with the moral equiv­a­lent of dog drop­pings on its shoe.

John Cleese (he of Mon­ty Python fame) “black­list­ed” him­self from an appear­ance at the ven­er­a­ble Cam­bridge Union Soci­ety, as he put it, “before any­one else does.”
The deft­ly-barbed snub (it was caveat­ed with “per­haps some of you can find a venue where woke rules do not apply”) was in response to the black­list­ing of lec­tur­er Andrew Gra­ham-Dixon for a debate tac­tic  in which did an imper­son­ation of Adolph Hitler. The par­o­dy was intend­ed to illus­trate that the Nazis had objec­tive­ly bad taste due to their racist views.
Appar­ent­ly unaware that that satire and irony rely on nuance, impli­ca­tion, exag­ger­a­tion and par­o­dy to make a point, Zara Salaria, the Union’s ‘equal­i­ties offi­cer’, described it as “absolute­ly unac­cept­able” and “utter­ly horrifying”.
In the face of crit­i­cism from a fac­tion of the stu­dent body, Keir Brad­well, the pres­i­dent of the 200-year-old debat­ing soci­ety, said a black­list of future speak­ers would be drawn up. He quick­ly had the com­mon sense, and courage, to say he had been wrong and announce a U‑turn on both the idea and Mr Graham-Dixon’s penalty.
No doubt 21-year-old Mr Brad­well will pay a price for the unfor­give­able sin of behav­ing like an adult, with a mind of his own, rather than pros­trat­ing him­self before the mob. The ques­tion of “whose/what side are you on?” leaves no open ground for polite, let alone seri­ous dis­cus­sion, or reason.

                                      SCEPTICS NEED NOT APPLY

Two hun­dred years ago — rough­ly the same time as the Cam­bridge Union Soci­ety was found­ed (1815) — Scot­tish Enlight­en­ment philoso­pher and essay­ist David Hume wrote in his Enquiry Con­cern­ing Human Under­stand­ing, that to be scep­ti­cal is “to begin with clear and self-evi­dent prin­ci­ples, to advance by tim­o­rous and sure steps, to review fre­quent­ly our con­clu­sions, and exam­ine accu­rate­ly all their consequences”.
In the world of those who pre­fer chant­i­ng mantras to hav­ing a dis­cus­sion, how­ev­er, nei­ther scep­ti­cism nor crit­i­cal think­ing are con­sid­ered virtues, or even useful.
One shud­ders — or in the case of those with more open minds, hoots with laugh­ter — to con­sid­er what they would make of Jonathan Swift’s 16-page pam­phlet “A Mod­est Pro­pos­al For pre­vent­ing the Chil­dren of Poor Peo­ple From being a Bur­then to Their Par­ents or Coun­try, and For mak­ing them Ben­e­fi­cial to the Publick.”

Writ­ten in 1729, it is con­sid­ered by seri­ous schol­ars to be one of the great­est works of irony and satire in lit­er­a­ture. Swift’s pro­posed solu­tion was that the chil­dren be eat­en by their landlords.
When the actor Peter O’Toole read the pro­pos­al aloud at a the­ater re-open­ing in Dublin in 1984, some mem­bers of the audi­ence walked out, and the Irish state broad­cast­er cut its live trans­mis­sion of the event.
On the bright side, they mere­ly refused to con­sid­er there could be any mer­it in some­thing they didn’t ful­ly under­stand. Less than a hun­dred years before Swift’s pam­phlet, peo­ple could be denounced by rivals or jeal­ous neigh­bours for “offences” as minor as “mut­ter­ing” or own­ing cats, and then be tor­ment­ed, tor­tured and even exe­cut­ed as “witch­es”.

                                           MODERN WITCHES

While less extreme, can­cel cul­ture is the mod­ern equiv­a­lent. Its basic tenet is that some peo­ple are more moral­ly right­eous than oth­ers, and as such should be the ones to make the laws — for the bet­ter­ment of oth­ers, of course. Empir­i­cal facts need not apply. It’s the kind of Puri­tan men­tal­i­ty the writer H.L. Menck­en defined as “the haunt­ing fear that some­one, some­where, may be happy”.
Adher­ents of can­cel cul­ture might be defined as “haunt­ed by the fear that some­one some­where, might have a con­trary point of view, and facts and cogent argu­ments to back it up”. 

                 WEAPONS OF MASS DECONSTRUCTION

 Can­cel culture’s strength lies in the sad fact that the cost of debat­ing, nev­er mind hold­ing an oppos­ing posi­tion, is sim­ply too high to cope with in the glare of social media. What could, and should be a play­ing field for a cor­nu­copia of ideas, beliefs and points of view is instead vacu­ity made man­i­fest, a bul­ly pul­pit for peo­ple with unearned griev­ances and unsourced opinions.
Behav­ing in a cour­te­ous and refined man­ner is scorned as “elit­ist”. Being “elite” in that sense is a fail­ing, and reprehensible…unless of course it refers to an ath­lete or “real­i­ty star”.
Para­dox­i­cal­ly, in the name and under the guise of “being me” and “it’s my right”, civil­i­ty is now treat­ed as and mis­tak­en for weak­ness. Along with the con­cept of respectable inquiry, it’s gone the way of “Fox and Friends”.
Good man­ners went to hell with the advent of base­ball hats being accept­able indoors. I saw a grown man sport­ing one sit down at a table in one of Rome’s best restau­rants. An Ital­ian wait­er qui­et­ly asked the Eng­lish-speak­ing tourist to remove it.
That’s the only kind of can­cel cul­ture the world needs.

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