At last people are starting to speak out vs "progressive" intolerance

Imagine that! Just a few days ago Walt posted a very positive review ("Read the book!") of Hate, Inc., in which Matt Taibbi criticizes the narrowing of the parameters of debate on social and political issues, and the culture of conformity being imposed by the political, business and media elites.

Now comes news* that dozens of artists, writers and academics have signed "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate", published in Harper's Magazine, decrying the weakening of public debate and warning that the free exchange of information and ideas is in jeopardy amid a rise in what they call "illiberalism."

J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood are among dozens of writers, artists and academics to argue against ideological conformity. Another signatory is cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky, whose interview with Matt Taibbi forms an appendix to Hate, Inc. We posted a couple of pithy excerpts in "Noam Chomsky on the 'Crisis of Democracy'", WWW 1/7/20. Included in that post is a video in which Prof Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent is summarized in under ten minutes!

Academics on the list of more than 150 signatories hail from American universities such as Princeton, Yale, Harvard Law, Brown, Rutgers and more. They wrote (collectively) that the "needed reckoning" regarding racial and social justice "has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity."

"More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms," the letter continues. "Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes."

The letter says, "The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world.... But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion.... The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides."

*Just Fancy That Dept.: When Ed. went to Google to research this story and get the Harper's URL, the top three returns led to The Grauniad, New York Times and WaPo.

According to Matt Taibbi and Dave Rubin (in Don't Burn This Book) those are the three papers most guilty of pushing the kind of forced ideological (i.e. left-liberal) purity of which the signatories to the letter complain. Probably just a coincidence.

Further reading: "Learn How to Spot Fake News", Chapter 8 of Dave Rubin's Don't Burn This Book (Signal, 2020). Excerpts:
Newsrooms are now filled with progressive activists who bend the truth, as opposed to old-school professionals who feel a duty both to themselves and their audience.... News is a business like any other. Although we'd like to think that the business it's in is to inform and enlighten, we should always remember that it's really in the business of keeping our eyes on the TV or our fingers clicking.
Matt Taibbi's point exactly! Hey, you don't have to read only Chapter 8. Read the whole book!