Panics and Persecutions: 20 Quillette Tales of Excommunication in the Digital Age

by Quillette Magazine (Editor), Claire Lehmann (Editor), Colin Wright (Editor)

'Whether or not readers embrace the substance of the heresies described in the essays that follow, we hope their narratives demonstrate why we should not permit ideologues to decide which viewpoints may or may not be expressed. Whether on the hunt for Catholics, Protestants or Jews, royalists or republicans, capitalists or communists, all mobs present themselves as virtue's servants. Let us now hear from victims of that insidious conceit.'

In an age when telling the wrong joke or using the wrong pronoun can cost you your career, Quillette magazine — founded in 2015 by Australian-based journalist Claire Lehmann — has provided a forum for thinkers of all political stripes to push back against the forces of intellectual conformity. Panics and Persecutions brings together a collection of especially compelling Quillette narratives, spanning subcultures from computer science to romance literature. These stories lay bare the human toll of modern ideological inquisitions, often in deeply personal terms—and demonstrate the urgency of Quillette's editorial mission to create a space where free thought lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Essays, Sociology, Cultural

420 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Antigone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quillette is the brainchild of Claire Lehmann, an academic based in Sydney who wished to create a space for lively minds to publish their ideas. A self-described "platform for free thought," Quillette stands as one of the sentinels protecting speech and expression from the dangers inherent in this fresh tendency of our fractured society to fall into philosophical lockstep. It is becoming harder and harder (especially on college campuses) to debate much of anything at all - so loud are the few who refuse to question their unwillingness to question, so quiet those who recognize these sudden, staggering penalties assessed against inquiry of any kind.

Panics and Persecutions is a compilation of writings that have appeared on the platform, all of which have to do with those staggering penalties. This is the Cancel Culture in action.

Say hello to the respected anthropologist stumbling into the quagmire of the now-negative connotations implied by the use of the descriptor "primitive." Here's the mathematician who imagined there might be something to discuss (simply discuss) in terms of gender and differing approaches to technology. And while we're on the subject, should evolutionary biologists even bother opening their mouths these days? Can you hold a position on a university oversight board if you supported Brexit? Apparently not. Can you, as a knitter, revel in the fantastical opportunities presented by your first trip to India without being branded a racist? Can you write anything - anything at all - in the genres of romance and/or science fiction without a crash course in identity politics? Would you be Flannery O'Connor today? (Answer: Not willingly.)

There are twenty incidents relayed, some of which culminated in battles won. The interesting bits, however, are found in the meat of all this testimony. I hadn't given much thought, for example, to the fact that my country's protections against censorship are designed to fight government censorship; that there's nothing in place at the moment to combat suppression from another source. I was equally intrigued by the suggestion that the motive behind a lot of this character assassination and career destruction is actually ambition; that these takedowns are frequently thinly-veiled power grabs. That's a motive worth examining.

Yes, this kitchen is hot. Too hot, much of the time. But Quillette is correct to invite us in and present us the opportunity to withstand that heat; to stick around just long enough to consider what we might be willing to offer up to make a difference.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just when you think you've heard it all, there comes a piece about dismantling whiteness in the knitting community (in three parts, no less).
I'm just about ready to go hide under a rock until all this passes and it is sane to come out again.

[Brent Celmins · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid collection of essays about cancel culture from across the political spectrum. Three particularly powerful entires:

The hard-hitting, long-form journalistic effort documenting Steven Galloway's sexual assault allegation that turned into a trial-by-media kangaroo court.

The three-essay series of wokeness run amok in-- of all subcultures-- the world of knitting.

The all-too-short piece from a former radical anarchist giving an inside view of the mindset the Antifa-style groups (seriously waiting for a full book from a deprogrammed Antifa member. You know it's coming eventually...).

Not all 20 essays are as compelling, but as a collected volume the overall theme of the death of discourse and silencing of dissent is chilling.

The thing that is most disturbing: how easy it is to destroy someone for reasons that are inscrutable coupled with the glee with which the destroyers express. The dehumanizing lack of sympathy for other people is an epidemic borne out of the ease of typing 280 characters and hitting send.

Makes me sad.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only problem with the book is since it is made up of articles from Quillette, it may just appeal to readers of Quillette or at least just people who know about Quillette. I guess if it brings more people to Quillette, it isn't a problem overall.

That minor point aside, this book serves a great purpose in getting out often the "other side of the story". The human side, the rational side, the common sense side, the factual side, whatever side, these articles look past the breathless news cycle and shine light where it is most needed: on what really happened.

A timely book no matter which side of the aisle you think you are on.

[Justin Norman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of essays that are alternately tragic, beautiful, comical, terrifying, and hopeful, all centered on instances of mob justice. For anyone who doubts the impact of "cancel culture", this is a good sampling of lesser-known people who have had their livelihoods taken from them due to a range of perceived sins. The victims are generally presumed guilty based on mere allegations — evidence isn't needed — and are not given a chance to defend themselves. We often read about these incidents in passing — they blip onto our Twitter feeds for a few hours and then disappear — but it's worth examining these situations in detail, and this book provides an in-depth look at the damage left over after the mob has exited the scene.

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both terrifying and terrific at the same time.

It's freaking scary to see how a mindless (or maybe not ...) mob can ruin someone's life. Using rhetorics taken straight from Kafka's novels. To see how people stick lofty slogans to mere bullshit (w/o anyone's objection) because wokeness does not have to follow logic or common sense. It's mesmerizing how rationally-thinking (?) masses prefer to stay silent because they know it's safer this way.

I think that as a society, we're really deficient when it comes to learning from our own mistakes in the post. Wokeness and cancel culture is an XXI century equivalent of XVIII lynching - it may not appear as lethal, but digital media has made it far harder to suppress and faster to spread in incomparably larger impact zones.

Let those stories be food for thought for (still) thinking people. For me, these stories were simply shocking. Even unthinkable (e.g. woman who shared her enthusiasm about traveling to India - I was SURE she was just being trolled on the Internet! but no, SJWs can be more trollish than actual trolls ;/).

OK, some final comments:
* the book is a collection of individual stories, each chapter is a separate one
* these can't be treated as investigation journalism - many stories (but not all, if I remember correctly) are written by the victims - which means that, of course, the viewpoint is subjective - however, I rely on Quillette editorial capabilities here (as the means for verification)

Highly recommended.

[Adrian Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although a few of the stories are truly bizarre (knitting?), they might carry more effect if set behind a truly thorough analysis of the issue - actually how common are these stories? Also, maybe due to the nature of the problem, they tend to all be stories from a particular type of world... I would be interested to hear of similar issues affecting small town people with small town jobs, for example....

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully disturbing. The stories are evocative and well-written, yet, sorrowful about the nature of public discourse. They encapsulate the modern ideology and the cowardice of human nature. I would recommend to most.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an astonishing book. If you have ever felt uneasy about digital shaming, social justice warriors or sharing an aggressive tweet on social media, or if you want to know where to go having read Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed, this is a fascinating and terrifying book.

In this, twenty writers, and (from what I could see) most of the political spectrum, recount recent and true stories of people's lives, careers and reputations being ruined because someone online posted something unpleasant about them, either factually inaccurate or a quote from them taken out of context and made to mean something utterly the opposite of what the author had (quite clearly) meant. The digital pile-on becomes enormous and, because the accusations are so nebulous, the accused has no chance to defend himself or herself. Anyone who doesn't agree with the accusers, even if the accusers have been shown after investigations to be wrong, liars, misguided, inaccurate, whatever, is then accused of being a rape apologist, a nazi, a transphobe, an antisemite, a white supremacist, or worse.

The articles about accusations of racism in the knitting community are probably the most fascinating: an innocent tweet about always wanting to visit India starts an online culture war, in which livelihoods are destroyed and people become suicidal. The accusers want nothing more than a full scale retraction of racist comments that have not been made, and any knitting organisation that does not condemn loudly enough (or quickly enough) another's racism is accuse of nazism itself. In order to save their (small) businesses, knitting shops have to join the pile-on. It reminded me very much of Mao's Cultural Revolution.

And it is astonishing how many of the people attacked by these social justice warriors are gay, lesbian, biracial or non-white. In order to assert the rights of excluded communities, a large number of excluded individuals seem to need to be pushed to attempt suicide. And the persecutors seem to think this is a good thing.

A trigger warning here: For the first time in my life, I was made to feel sympathy for Toby Young on reading this book (I still don't think he should have been appointed to a government role, but that is because of his political opinions; and what happened to him was shameful). There are also a few people who quote Jordan Petersen approvingly, actually in statements I think it is hard to disagree with, but I didn't think Petersen's name helped the argument.

But if you care about academic standards, the truth, freedom of speech, scientific accuracy, innocent until proven guilty, nuance in literature, kindness, and (I would hazard) true progress for excluded people, of all races, genders, sexualities, religions, then this is an important book to read.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

All the essays were written by different writers, so the quality of the work was totally dependent on the individual author and, of course, the editors. I found the editing lacking because the quality of the writing was very inconsistent - to the point where some stories were either way too complicated and needed more focus and other stories were so simple that they were quite boring. In any case, I found a couple of the essays very compelling, and similar to Alice Dreger's Galileo's Middle Finger, fascinating examples of tribalism, cultish dynamics and purity politic. I'd recommend Dreger's work above this text, for certain - but if you have a keen interest for this sort of thing, I'd say give it a go.

[Philip William · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of stories from Quillette magazine.

If you have not read Quillette check it out; it is on line.

One of the problems with this book is that it does not really explain why people have increased their persecution of "other" in the modern era but it does describe 20 real cases and their real world consequences.

[Paul Dow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a good sample of essays published online by Quillette. The essays focus on online censorship across a number of subcultures including universities, artistic endeavours and other ideologically based mob censorship. Quite a good read.

[Mark McCormick · Rating 5 out of 5]

yikes

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Familiarize yourself with the shape of the beast.

[Michael Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important to know these stories. In 2024, it is almost history, as it should be. But the people who created cancel culture are still around...