The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

by Andrew Doyle

A present-day example of this kind of linguistic prestidigitation is evinced by activists who organise under the banner of ‘Antifa’ – a contraction of ‘Anti-Fascist’ – who are thereby able to engage in violence and intimidation against political opponents and simultaneously evade accusations of fascistic tactics. Like ‘Black Lives Matter’, these groups rely on the good nature of a public who are likely to interpret their name literally. After all, only a fascist would complain about anti-fascism. One prominent political correspondent fell for this basic rhetorical trick when she described the Normandy landing of more than 150,000 Allied troops as the ‘biggest Antifa rally in history’. Activist singer Billy Bragg posted an image of Winston Churchill captioned simply with ‘ANTIFA’. These are the kinds of simplistic misunderstandings that such word games are always apt to engender. Likewise, even as we criticise adherents to the ‘social justice’ ideology, we inadvertently support their cause by adopting their preferred branding. To return to Curran’s point, the notion that self-styled ‘social justice activists’ are advancing social justice in any meaningful sense is akin to believing that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is an authentic democracy. In their book Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody (2020), Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay favour a capitalised form of ‘Social Justice...