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

by Andrew Doyle

Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington DC, recently included ‘objectivity’ on a short list of ‘harmful research practices’.

Yet this assault on objective truth does little to improve the lives of the powerless. Rather, it substitutes a flattering claim of superior insight which can only ever be based on faith.

For all the emphasis on ‘lived experience’, objective truth still matters. We should be wary of those who tell us otherwise in order to preserve the delicate scaffolding of their pseudo-reality.

The persecution of homosexuals over the centuries is well documented, but if there has been any equivalent campaigns against asexuals it has certainly escaped the attention of historians. It is difficult to conceive of a militant evangelist at his pulpit condemning anyone for having a low libido.

As the regalia and lexicon of the LGBTQIA+ movement grows ever more farcical, one cannot escape the feeling that many of its proponents are nostalgic for the oppression of the past.

The allure of qualifying for victim status has made it voguish to ‘identify’ oneself into an oppressed class, with almost a third of American millennials now claiming membership of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Stonewall’s biggest mistake has been to consistently interpret criticisms of its activities as expressions of transphobia.

The attempt to frame this debate as those who support transgender people versus those who hate them is, for the most part, a disingenuous tactic.

For many of us, ‘gay’ is not an identity but a descriptive term; to say ‘I identify as gay’ feels about as worthwhile as saying ‘I identify as left-handed’.

A recognition of the anatomical differences between the sexes is the foundation of same-sex orientation.

The vast majority of gay women are sexually attracted to female bodies, not to those who identify as female. Yet this has not stopped Stonewall from redefining ‘homosexual’ as ‘someone who has a romantic and/or sexual orientation towards someone of the same gender’. This definition excludes most ...

The common refrain that ‘genital preferences are transphobic’ shows how homophobic ideas can be rebranded as progressive.

Very few would deny that gender dysphoria is real and causes genuine distress to those who suffer from it, but the potential for children to be misdiagnosed and encouraged to stave off puberty with hormone blockers because they do not fulfil old-fashioned gender stereotypes is far from trivial.

the phrase ‘trans women are women’ has no semantic basis, because it only makes any kind of sense if one dispenses with definitions.

The liberal approach offers the most straightforward solution. Everyone has the right to identify as they wish, use whatever name and pronouns they prefer to describe themselves, and ask others to do the same. They do not, however, have the right to foist such decisions onto anyone else.

To impose one’s beliefs on others by force is the very definition of illiberalism.

gender is increasingly perceived as a problem to be fixed. Yet there can be no utopian end point at which gender will be considered irrelevant.

Of course, to assert that sex is entirely socially determined is very easy if you have no understanding of anatomy or genetics.

for today’s activists, gender can be both fluid or fixed, depending on how one feels about it at any given time. Ideological consistency is no prerequisite for the new puritans.

There is surely some neutral territory to be located between the traditional feminist view that gender is a dangerous fiction and the transgender activist view that it is integral to one’s existence.

Ironically, it is the anti-racist nature of our society that enabled this to happen. The cost of being accused of racism is too great, precisely because it is so opposed by the general population.

It would be akin to a clergyman claiming that atheists are unqualified to declare their disbelief in God until they have developed a sufficient level of expertise in Thomas Aquinas’s writings on the compatibility of faith and reason.

Well actually…

Critical Race Theory, then, is underpinned by the conviction that the organising principle of Western society is racism, perpetuated by white people for their own advantage.

Critical Race Theory makes a number of suppositions. The first is that race is the defining principle of the structure of Western societies, and that ‘whiteness’ is the dominant system of power.

failure to observe racism does not mean that it is absent, but rather that it has not been successfully uncovered.

When perceived in this way, no outcome can conceivably exist that would cause the proponents of Critical Race Theory to doubt their own precepts.

This kind of wild conjecture, based as it is on the presumption that anyone of the same skin colour must share an identical experiential outlook, has become remarkably common.

In this, DiAngelo is attempting to sabotage the goal of colour blindness so powerfully expressed in Martin Luther King’s most famous speech. Such a concept is anathema to a race determinist like DiAngelo, who considers judging people not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character a manifestation of ‘aversive racism’.

there appears to be an inverse relationship between the gravity of the claims and the extent of the evidence.

What could be more elitist than assuming that pupils from certain ethnic or social groups are incapable of mastering written English?

if it were the case that racism was built into the system, we would not have a situation where black Caribbean pupils perform badly, but black African pupils outperform their white peers. It would have to be a very targeted form of racism that kept black Caribbean pupils down, but actually elevated those from an African background.

Children who had once been taught that treating people differently on the basis of skin colour was morally wrong are now being encouraged to see everything through the prism of race.

The problem is not so much those activists who make their demands, but the tendency of employers to capitulate.

Self-censorship is now an accepted feature of most modern workplaces.

Those of us who are concerned about the impact of the culture wars understand that the ongoing assault on our cognitive liberties will create the conditions within which authoritarianism may thrive. Do we really want to live in a society in which truth no longer has any meaning, in which our words and ideas are provided for us by those who seek to regulate the limits of intellectual enquiry?

‘If sex isn’t real,’ she tweeted, ‘there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth’.

Having spoken to a number of people who consider Rowling to be transphobic, I have been struck by the lack of substance upon which they have based their conclusions.

The intensity of the rage can be partly explained by the fact that the new puritans have grown accustomed to getting their own way. They appear not to comprehend the idea that one of their victims might refuse to apologise, to yield to their superior authority,

the trans writer and YouTuber Blaire White has pointed out, most of those who have supported Rowling are themselves trans, while many of the more vociferous attacks have come from self-declared ‘trans allies’, such as Takei, who are speaking on behalf of others.

It should go without saying that nobody’s safety is threatened by atrocities committed by long-dead historical figures.

Employers are unlikely to discipline workers over a simple difference of opinion, but once an allegation is made that personal safety has been jeopardised, they are obliged to take action.

the claim of victimhood as a means to bludgeon others is a hallmark of the new puritans.

Even a bust of the abolitionist Thomas Henry Huxley has been targeted on the grounds that he held outdated views on race. As someone who was born in 1825, it would be extremely odd if his views were not ‘outdated’.

If the activists currently calling for the removal of statues had been born at the height of British colonialism, they would almost certainly have endorsed slavery as well.

Those with a tendency towards groupthink, such as the new puritans of today, could never have conceived of a concept so radical as abolitionism.

Certain aspects of postmodernism have had a degrading effect on humanity, concerned as they are with the demolition of grand narratives and the reduction of human experience to a transactional relationship to power and language.

The rapid advance of their worldview in mainstream cultural, educational and political institutions has been accelerated by one factor above all: intimidation.

With its narrow perception of art and its prudish impositions, is it conceivable that the new puritanism will ever achieve anything of lasting artistic value? This is the gang that would happily see Dionysus turn teetotal and Eros fitted with a chastity belt.

One of my favourite novelists is Stella Benson (1892–1933),

This is perhaps the most unforgivable aspect of the new puritans’ cultural revolution. They have rehabilitated racial thinking to such an extent that we are overly conscious of race in all circumstances, meaning that people are encouraged to see each other primarily in terms of group identity.