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

by Andrew Doyle

Then there is the slippery term ‘alt-right’, a catch-all that rivals ‘fascist’ and ‘Nazi’ for the way in which it is deployed so thoughtlessly. Even Jordan Peterson, the famous clinical psychologist whose opposition to tyranny in all its forms could not be more well documented, has been branded as ‘alt-right’ by numerous media outlets. In common parlance, the term has become irrevocably associated with white nationalism and movements helmed by the likes of Richard Spencer. So when Peter Walker, political correspondent for the Guardian, claims that the meaning of ‘alt-right’ is ‘subjective’, he is either being disingenuous or naïve. According to Walker, it ‘can be associated with a sort of highly robust, fairly confrontational libertarian right-leaning politics with a dash of support for Trump’, but his use of the modal verb is telling. That a phrase with such potentially libellous connotations can be defined in multiple ways should surely give journalists pause for thought. Unless, of course, their intention is to imply a correlation with white supremacy, safe in the knowledge that the get-out clause of ambiguity will excuse the smear. We see the same problem with the notion of ‘Islamophobia’, which has been weaponised to great effect. As a consequence, people with legitimate criticisms of Islam are gratuitously pigeonholed alongside the sort of reactionaries who shout abuse at women in hijabs or throw bacon at mosques. Even Muslim critics are dismissed as suffering from ‘...