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

by Andrew Doyle

might ‘be compelled to speak only according to the dictates of the supreme power’. Just as language can be manipulated, it can also be compelled, which is a similarly coercive method of control. Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson first became widely known due to his opposition to the compelled use of gender-neutral pronouns. Contrary to popular belief, he had never objected to addressing his students according to their preferences, but he drew the line at legal proscriptions against refusing to do so. ‘Tyranny grows slowly,’ he reminds us, ‘and asks us to retreat in comparatively tiny steps. But each retreat increases the possibility of the next retreat’. Once we permit speech to be compelled under certain circumstances, we create a precedent whose limitations will be impossible to predict.