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

by Andrew Doyle

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. Either they attribute opinions to her that she does not believe, quote phrases out of context in order to skew their meaning, or attempt a form of guilt by association. For example, her ‘liking’ of a tweet posted by an individual who elsewhere might have expressed hostility towards trans people is taken as evidence that Rowling herself shares such hostility, as though agreeing with an individual on any given point suggests an endorsement of everything he or she has ever said. One apparently damning moment was when Rowling posted an image of a T-shirt that she had bought from ‘Wild Womyn Workshop’, along with a link to the shop’s website. Pink News described the online store as ‘a hotbed of anti-trans messaging and merchandise’, citing badges and stickers bearing phrases such as ‘F*ck your pronouns’, ‘Lesbians don’t have penises’ and ‘Trans-ideology erases women’. Leaving aside the dubious claim that such sentiments are actually ‘transphobic’, these were not the items that Rowling had promoted. Under the circumstances, it is to be expected that she would feel a certain affinity for the slogan on this particular T-shirt: ‘This witch doesn’t burn’

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Rowling’s courage in the face of such an onslaught has been remarkable. Anyone who has ever been the subject of a social media frenzy will appreciate how psychologically damaging it can be, and for a figure as famous as Rowling, the extent of it is unfathomable. 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, or retreat entirely from public life. Rowling made this point in a tweet highlighting the kind of threat she regularly receives online, this time an activist wishing her ‘a very nice pipebomb in [the] mailbox’. ‘To be fair,’ she replied, ‘when you can’t get a woman sacked, arrested or dropped by her publisher, and cancelling her only made her book sales go up, there’s really only one place to go’

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I have argued that the claim of victimhood as a means to bludgeon others is a hallmark of the new puritans. When Selina Todd, a History professor at the University of Oxford, was assigned security guards in order to attend lectures, is it feasible to suggest that those who felt ‘unsafe’ as a result of her views on feminism were the real victims here? Similarly, after Philosophy professor Kathleen Stock resigned from the University of Sussex following a campaign of abuse and harassment from student activists, who claimed that her very presence ‘excludes and endangers trans people’, there can be few left in any doubt as to which party qualifies as the aggressor. And what of Jo Phoenix, a Criminology professor who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after a similarly vitriolic campaign while she was working at the Open University? That such activists have been so indulged for so long should be a grave cause for concern. The vice principal of Edinburgh University, Sarah Smith, has recently drawn attention to this trend, admitting that students ‘increasingly want to challenge what is taught and how it is taught’. This is not a sustainable situation, and it explains why institutions committed to freedom of inquiry and speech – such as Ralston College in Savannah and the University of Texas at Austin – have recently been established. While the older institutions allow themselves to depreciate further under the influence of Critical Social Justice, these new institut...

Anything that contradicts the alternative reality of the Counter-Enlightenment faces the possibility of being purged. In 2020, the new puritans took to the streets in the form of mobs who toppled statues of historical figures if they were deemed to be ‘problematic’. Academic allies were posting advice on how safely to pull down monuments; after the Lincoln Memorial had been vandalised in Washington, Sarah Parcak, a professor of Egyptology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, tweeted instructions on how to demolish obelisks, implying strongly that the Washington Monument ought to be next. Madeline Odent, curator of the Royston Museum in Hertfordshire, singled out the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square as a potential target, suggesting certain corrosive chemicals that were easy to obtain and could cause permanent damage. More recently, a golden coach used to transport the Dutch royal family on ceremonial outings has come under fire because of an illustration of slaves on one of its panels. That it was built in the late 1800s is considered irrelevant. One of the activists said that ‘they should chop it up and burn it’

We often hear the new puritans dismiss as clichéd the charge that they have ‘Orwellian’ tendencies, but it is impossible to read of their revisionist shenanigans without being reminded of Winston Smith’s words in Nineteen Eighty-Four: ‘Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped’

Eunuchs in a Harem The infatuation with representation in the entertainment industries has been largely reinforced by the influence that the new puritans have exerted on the discipline of literary and artistic criticism. Praise for Christopher Nolan’s film Dunkirk (2017), for instance, was offset by those who complained that he had not included a sufficiently diverse cast, in spite of the historical fact that the overwhelming majority of those evacuated were young white men. It seems to me that if your initial reaction to a work as arresting as Dunkirk is to appraise the degree to which its auteur has fulfilled diversity quotas, then you are not well equipped to judge his artistry. The actor Kenneth Williams once compared critics to eunuchs in a harem: ‘They’re there every night, they see it done every night and they know how it should be done every night. But they can’t do it themselves’

But the best critics are able to appreciate a piece of work on its own terms, whereas the worst seem to believe that success should be measured on the basis of how closely the artist reflects their own ideological perspective. Consider the reaction in the left-wing press to Morrissey’s album California Son (2019). The Guardian’s one-star review offers very little insight into the music itself, and might best be paraphrased as ‘I despise Morrissey’s politics’. A critic for the Independent was at least able to admit the quality of the album, but could muster no more than two stars for ‘an old hero who’s broken our hearts’. It is dispiriting to see critical faculties so easily overwhelmed by the intolerance of moral certitude.

A critic who is driven primarily by their politics, who is blinded by their own sense of moral superiority, or who cannot temporarily surrender to the worldview of their subject, can barely be said to be a critic at all. And those who fall into this category should not be surprised to hear themselves compared to eunuchs.

We have seen how the culture war is not just a matter of competing ideologies, but competing realities. The first is the liberal model deriving from the Enlightenment, promoting human and civil rights, free speech, scientific enquiry, individualism and justice. The second maintains that truth is illusory, speech can be violence, and we are products of systems of power and privilege revolving around group identity. The paradox of this model of reality should not go unnoticed; it believes that the only truth is the one we feel as individuals – ‘lived experience’ – but at the same time it promotes a collectivist view of humankind. One of the reasons why the religion of Critical Social Justice has been so difficult to combat is precisely because it rejects the concept of reason that is so key to Enlightenment thinking. One cannot argue with someone who believes that the argument itself is an oppressive denial of his or her truth. The culture war, as properly understood, is the attempt to destroy the progress of social liberalism in favour of a return to the politics of division. It is sustained only through an imagined dreamscape in which fascism is flourishing, which in turn justifies the aggressive demolition of a liberal system that has failed to bring about the desired utopia. While virtually nobody is denying that hatred against minority groups still exists and needs to be tackled, the new puritans see evidence of it everywhere, even in the most innocuous of places. The o...

The culture war is one of oppositional narratives advanced by small groups of antagonists, while the majority of us are left looking on and scratching our heads. The Guardian, for instance, has done more than any other publication to stoke the culture war, and yet articles often appear within its pages either denying its existence or claiming that it is an invention of ‘the right’. According to a study by the Policy Institute and King’s College London, the Guardian was the publication that used the term ‘culture wars’ most frequently between 1993 and 2020. Owen Jones maintains that ‘a lot of what’s called “the culture war” is just younger people trying to assert their different social and moral values over older generations who run most of the media’. Yet, as I have noted, there is no majority support for the new puritanism in any generation, and some of its fiercest advocates are well into middle age.

After the election of Donald Trump, many leftists desperately sought to understand why people had not voted for their preferred candidate. It soon became clear that a nuanced discussion of the possibilities was to be rejected in favour of groundless assertions. For instance, cultural commentator Laurie Penny decided that Trump won because of ‘white resentment’ born of a frustration that ‘women, migrants and people of colour no longer seem to know their proper place’. When Trump voters express concern for ‘ordinary people’, Penny tells us, ‘they mean white people’. Few would be foolish enough to deny that there are many individuals whose politics are motivated by prejudice, but this kind of blanket assessment of such a broad contingent of the electorate is hardly a productive approach. Nor is this kind of airy postulation ever likely to be accurate. Whenever I read remarks of this kind, I am always struck by the sheer sense of certitude on display. This sort of rigidity is inevitable when critical thinking is abandoned. To close oneself off to the possibility of alternative opinions, and only to see the world through the lens of confirmation bias, is a form of intellectual death. It is always worth remembering the uncomfortable truth that, to borrow the words of novelist Philip Roth, ‘our understanding of people must always be at best slightly wrong’. We live, as George Orwell put it, in a state of ‘star-like isolation’. Empathy is our attempt to make connections against te...

It should go without saying that nobody has ever been persuaded to alter their convictions by having them misrepresented or insulted. For all that we might be tempted to assume the worst of those with whom we disagree, we will never win anyone over if we have already decided that their very opposition is a moral flaw. I do not disbelieve these prominent voices on the left when they tell us how frustrated they are at what they perceive to be the rise of the far right in mainstream politics. I also have little doubt that their intentions are good, even if their conclusions are bad. But if they are serious about changing minds, it would serve them well to try arguing against their opponents’ actual viewpoints rather than those they imagine them to hold. By maligning others from the outset, they undermine their own cause. Consider the example of Jordan Peterson. As a public figure, there are two versions of the man. The first is a professor of psychology with a particular interest in religious and ideological belief systems. Many of his lectures on self-improvement have been circulated via YouTube, and his measured and compassionate approach has enabled him to cultivate a loyal following. The second Jordan Peterson is a notorious firebrand of the alt-right. He is a transphobic provocateur whose lectures amount to little more than hate speech. Of these two Jordan Petersons, only the first actually exists. Presenter Cathy Newman’s now famous interview for Channel 4 News exemplif...

A similar accusation could be made of those employees at the Canadian branch of Penguin Random House, who called for Peterson’s book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life (2021), to be cancelled. After multiple complaints were filed, they confronted their management at a meeting in which some burst into tears and shared their stories of how the evil Professor Peterson had caused such emotional havoc in their lives due to his ‘problematic’ opinions. According to a report in Vice, ‘one co-worker discussed how Peterson had radicalised their father and another talked about how publishing the book will negatively affect their non-binary friend’. In the days following the announcement of the book, it was widely denounced on social media for its hateful content. This was quite a feat of collective fancy, given that nobody had read it yet. These viperous attacks on Peterson can only be described as a kind of hysteria. He has been smeared as a ‘Nazi apologist’ and a ‘fascist’ by people whose familiarity with Peterson’s work amounts to a few bad-faith articles and a smattering of quotations taken out of context. He has routinely been called ‘far right’, even though the core tenets of the actual far right – a sense of racial or national superiority, support for authoritarianism and the worship of the state – represent the polar opposite of Peterson’s worldview. Many critics have attempted to broaden the traditional definition of the ‘far right’ – incorporating cultural conservatism, ...

Even when dealing with genuinely controversial figures, the assumption of fascism is generally counter-productive. When the Oxford Union extended an invitation to Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, there was heavy criticism in the media. He is an undeniably polarising figure; one writer for the Washington Post summarised his reputation as that of ‘a megalomaniacal mastermind practiced in the dark arts of political subterfuge and neo-fascist provocation’. When asked to defend Bannon’s invitation, the president of the union, Stephen Horvath, explained that it ‘is only through listening to the opinions of others that we can fully understand those opinions’. This is not only a reasonable and measured response, it also has the advantage of being true. In an article for the Guardian, Fred Dimbleby attacked the union for its decision, and in doing so exemplified one of the most troubling aspects of the censorial mindset. ‘So why has the Oxford Union invited him?’, he asked, a somewhat redundant question given that he had already quoted Horvath’s answer. But Dimbleby apparently knows the ghastly truth: ‘It’s for the excitement. Leaders of the union are titillated by t...

The temptation to intuit motive is not solely a feature of left-wing discourse, of course, but here it is far more common. It is partly a remnant of the deconstructive approach propounded by Jacques Derrida, with its focus on unconscious elements that manifest in any given text. Many on the left display an unfortunate – and frankly childish – tendency to dismiss those on the right as evil, whereas right-wing dismissals of leftist ideas usually come down to a suspicion that they are n...

We are left with a simple but crucial question: how can we argue with those who are incapable of argumentation? This is a dilemma I have been grappling with for quite some time. The new puritans are unable or unwilling to engage in debate without assuming bad faith on the part of their opponents; many of them consider dialogue to be a tool of the privileged to retain their privilege. Mudslinging is now a standard substitute for rebuttal, and anecdotal evidence is taken as gospel. But for those of us who still believe in the power of persuasion and the capacity of human beings to keep an open mind, there is a moral duty to enter into dialogue with our critics. We do so in order that we might see our own certainties challenged, on the understanding that we are often mistaken. But when our detractors are unable or unwilling to leave aside their prejudices, are convinced of their own infallibility, and perceive any dissent as a signifier of villainy, how is this duty to be undertaken? Under such circumstances, argument is no longer feasible. It’s like a boxer adhering to the Queensberry Rules only to find that his challenger has brought a machine gun into the ring.

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It comes down to the difference between those who wish to be combatants in the culture war and those who, like me, wish to see it come to an end. I have come to the conclusion that in order to reinvigorate social liberalism we need to be more selective. There is little point in attempting to engage with zealots who have abandoned reason in favour of insults and mindless platitudes, and who only assume the worst of anyone who dares to disagree. This is why I always block those on social media who cast insults or insist on deliberate misconstructions of my words. We make ourselves foolish by wasting our time on the congenitally intransigent. As Thomas Paine put it: ‘To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavouring to convert an atheist by scripture’. That said, we should be keen to engage with those who take issue with our viewpoints in the spirit of generosity. It is only a handful of ideologues who are no longer open to persuasion, even though many of them unfortunately now occupy positions of cultural power. Nor should we expect an easy ride from those who take a different view. Conflict is the palpitating heart of politics. As Bernard Crick once argued, political discourse is a form of conflict resolution, an answer to ‘the problem of order which chooses conciliation rather than violence or coercion’. Although human instinct doe...

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The depoliticisation of schools is just the first step. Critical thinking requires humility; this involves not just the ability to admit that one might be wrong, but also to recognise that an uninformed opinion is worthless, however stridently expressed.

Twenty innocent people lost their lives in the Salem witch hunts, but by the end of 1692 this short-lived spate of madness was almost at an end. Too many prominent citizens had been accused, and the cost of sustaining the fantasy for those in power became too great. Arguably, the process began when some of the girls accused the Reverend Samuel Willard, a highly respected minister of the Old South Church of Boston, possibly due to his known scepticism about the admissibility of ‘spectral evidence’. As one who had adjured caution against taking the word of the accusers as confirmation of another’s guilt, he represented a direct threat to the girls and their credibility. However, by ‘crying out’ on such an esteemed figure as Willard, the acting president of Harvard College, no less, the accusers had made a grave error. Faced with such audacity, the judges were surely jolted back into the real world, if only momentarily. They gently corrected the girls, assuring them that they must have made a mistake. Perhaps they had confused the Reverend Samuel Willard with Constable John Willard, who was already in prison awaiting execution for witchcraft? But if the girls were fallible, and if the identities of their tormentors could be so easily confused, what was the implication for those who had already been convicted? Nor was Willard the only example of this kind. When judge Jonathan Corwin’s mother-in-law was repeatedly implicated, no arrests were carried out. Nor was any action take...

We find ourselves in a similar position with the culture warriors of the present day. While their power often makes it seem as though they represent the consensus, their views have never been shared by the cowed majority. The new puritans, in other words, rely on our complicity to keep us as their marionettes, but cutting the strings would doubtless conduce to a healthier society. Self-censorship is always a choice, even when the consequences for speaking our minds can be dire. The story of Salem can be considered a microcosm of a culture that is learning to draw itself out of a collective delusion. The first to speak out are invariably the casualties, but their sacrifice lessens the risk for those who follow. Ultimately, even those who are most responsible for perpetuating the fantasy come to their senses. With any luck, it will be same with the new puritanism. It is my wish, in other words, that within a generation this book will be obsolete. The few who remain with any interest in perusing these pages will, I hope, smile and shake their heads at the bubble of absurdities that enveloped us in the first few decades of the millennium. They will vaguely recall those outlandish years when verifiable truths were ignored or denied, when a few powerful cliques attempted to sabotage our educational and political systems, and when we were all expected to parrot the same shibboleths to appease this obnoxious elite. And to think, they might reflect, authors wasted their time writin...

In November of 1692, a soldier in the city of Gloucester in Massachusetts became convinced that his sister had fallen under the influence of witches. The girls from Salem were duly called to verify the presence of Satan, but on their journey something unexpected occurred. As they crossed the Ipswich Bridge they passed by an elderly woman. Almost by instinct, the girls broke into convulsions and cried out their usual accusations of sorcery. But the passers-by simply ignored them, or moved away. Without an audience to validate their cries, the girls had little choice but to fall silent and resume their journey. After this remarkable event, it is said that the girls made no further accusations. This is our Ipswich Bridge moment. While those in authority continue to heed the cries of the new puritans, our society will continue to be dominated by the witches of their imaginations. If we continue to indulge them, we make ourselves party to their collective delusions.

As the new puritans gain momentum, and their power over us increases, it will become apparent that to ignore them will only guarantee their ongoing dominance. They will continue to deny biological reality and threaten you if you will not acquiesce. They will tell you that the kind of colour blindness advanced by Martin Luther King is a form of racism, rather than an exquisite goal worth pursuing. They will bully people in the name of compassion, promote division and call it progressive, and rehabilitate a new form of racism under the guise of tolerance. They will insist on fabricating realities that correspond with their emotional states and couch their nebulous theories in fustian and obfuscation. They will use inflammatory language to misrepresent your concerns, accuse you of ‘erasing’ people’s existence, or committing acts of ‘violence’ through speech. They will claim that there is no such thing as objective truth but demand that you acknowledge the truth of their ‘lived experience’. They will carry on feeding the far right by elevating identity politics and claim to be opposing fascism through their authoritarian methods. And if you dare to suggest that any of their demands should be subject to discussion or debate, they will not hesitate to brand you a bigot. When this happens, it is our responsibility to resist and restate the case for liberal values. It will be a long, uncomfortable, but necessary process, like the setting of a broken bone. Along the way, we should ...

more and more witches were identified in the subsequent frenzy: As the trials went on the girls grew bolder, accusing ever more reputable local figures of being in consort with the devil. Perhaps most shocking of all were the charges against Rebecca Nurse, one of Salem’s most upstanding and pious citizens. So outraged were other villagers that they took the risk of mounting a petition to testify to Nurse’s unblemished name. When the jury found her not guilty, the girls were displeased. They erupted into ear-splitting ululations, a manic and terrifying soundscape that wouldn’t seem out of place by the shores of the River Styx. Under such unmistakable signs of demonic influence, the jury revised their verdict. Later, Governor William Phips signed a reprieve for Nurse, only to retract it once he had heard that some of the girls were on the verge of death at the hands of her malevolent spirit. The children would not be denied their prey.

Much ink has been spilled over the possible motives of the girls. Linnda R. Caporael has argued that the consumption of rye bread might have caused an outbreak of convulsive ergotism which can have hallucinatory effects, but anyone who has worked with children understands that behavioural contagion requires no such catalyst. Is it really all that surprising to see young people exploiting the opportunity to break all of society’s rules, to not only evade punishment but be praised for their transgressions? See Linnda R. Caporael, ‘Ergotism: the Satan loosed in Salem?’, Science, vol. 192, issue 4234 (2 April 1976), pp. 21–

LGBTQQIP2SAA stands for ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit, asexual and ally’

intended to produce a whole new generation of activists: The rise of progressive children’s books arguably began with Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (London: Particular Books, 2017) by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo. The idea was a charming one; it contained profiles of exceptional women throughout history offered up as role models for young readers. Examples included Michelle Obama, Maya Angelou, Yoko Ono, and even Coco Chanel, whose collaboration with the Nazis was tactfully omitted.

lost a tribunal against her employers for wrongful dismissal: In June 2021, the decision of the tribunal in the Maya Forstater case was overturned by the High Court, with the judge ruling that her views were protected in law by the Equality Act 2020. See Sam Damshenas, ‘Maya Forstater wins appeal against employment tribunal over “gender critical” views’, Gay Times (10 June 2021). Once Forstater’s appeal was upheld, she was able to take legal action against the Center for Global Development for wrongful dismissal. Her erstwhile employer’s case rested on the view that Forstater’s belief that sex is immutable was a sackable offence. The tribunal was particularly revealing, because the typical strategies of gender ideologues – to cry ‘hate’ or ‘transphobia’, or to proclaim that there must be ‘no debate’ – simply could not be deployed in a court of law. As a result, the interrogation by Ben Cooper QC, counsel for Forstater, provided a rare opportunity for people to see what happens when the high priests of gender ideology are forced to defend their creed.