Ideological Extremism is now so normalised that the main stream media [MSM] not only promote it, they also campaign to smear and exclude any one who questions their dubious stance. For example, it has been evident for some time that to question the official line on Covid lockdowns and vaccination is to position yourself as an extremist in the eyes of many in the MSM. A cursory glance at today’s Sky News UK online provides yet another example. of the battle they are waging.
With the widespread availability of the internet today, there are all sorts of outlandish views and claims being published. Personally I suspect that in the population at large, there have always been the range of views which now find expression on the internet. The difference between today and yesteryear is that, before the internet, the only platform available to them was the Letters Page of local newpapers. That of course was subject to editorial control.
The internet, of course, provides the capability for an open market in ideas and information. This necessarily means that extreme views and wilful distortions will occur. You can either accept that the existence of bizarre views was always the case, or you can take the censorious line and seek to banish what you find unacceptable.
The truly tolerant, mature and forgiving will tend to put up with small minority nonsense, as they have always done. They will take the view that it is up to each of us to deal with these things. Indeed, the best way to deal with falsehood and extremism is to let people see it for what it is.
Those who show themselves to be intolerant and censorious, however, are the ideologically persuaded – the politicised who have an agenda, be that commercial, religious or political. They are aggressive and don’t believe that the rest of us should be able to think for ourselves. Unless of course we share their particular worldview and agree with all they say.
This intolerance is born of the Liberal Left’s self righteous monopoly of all truth and morality. They have made incredible headway in recent decades. In fact the 21st century has seen their agenda come to fruition. A generation has now been educated in this mentality, and that generation has positions of power in every domain, from the media and politics, to the civil service and judicial systems, and now too in big business. This mentality has seeped everywhere, including the church.
It is the prevalance of this Materialist philosophy, born of the Enlightenment, which has made it credible for governments to usurp the right to tell us all when we can go out on the streets, whom we can see, when, and in how many numbers. It is extreme control, and when it possesses people they cease to be able to see the world in proper proportion and from a realistic perspective.
In the scientific and rational world of Enlightenment thinking where we are all just an assortment of atoms, 2 + 2 = 4. Always has and always will. That simplistic mentality applies straightforwardly to all other areas of life, because this world is rational and logical and will respond to rational and logical measures, however personally uncomfortable and outrageous those measures are in fundamentally human terms.
So these people see nothing wrong with lockdowns and racing to get everyone vaccinated.
It is in this climate of thinking that a Green peer this week suggested on the floor of the House of Lords in the UK parliament that provision ought to be made in law for a curfew to be imposed on men at 6pm to prevent the assaults on women like Sarah Everard whose body was recently found after she disappeared on the evening of March 3rd
The logic is straightforward and impeccable. Men do these wicked things. Women yet again are the victims. Sarah Everard disappeared during the evening. Ergo, lockdown men so that they don’t have the opportunity at night to do such terrible things.
Of course, this totally ignores the reality that the vast majority of men do not kidnap and kill women. It does, however, fit the ideological stereotype of wicked men and virtuous women. Real life is not quite so conveniently binary, but that is irrelevant in this bizarre paradigm. Because in woke world problems are not individuals, but are the result of a wicked trait belonging to a specific class or group.
The logic of course does not apply across the board because only certain groups are inherently evil; the rest are inherently good. So all minorities are necessarily good and therefore beyond all question.
This was how the Pakistani grooming gangs got a hold; any criticism exposed the questioner to the accusation of being a racist. So the problem spread and spread with disastrous consequences for hundreds of vulnerable young women.
But getting back to murderous men, it emerges that in the cited case of Sarah Everard, another wicked group are to blame. Latest News: police in London have charged a serving Metropolitan police officer with the kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard.
On the Green peeresses logic, we can surely now reduce the problem group from all men to all policemen. Ergo, we must ban all policemen from the streets after 6pm !
But it is not just ideologically obsessed politicians who pose a problem. The media itself bears considerable responsibility for the insanity we are now regularly treated to as “normal”.
Taking up the Green peeresses barmy suggestion about curfews for men, no less an institution than the BBC then promoted the notion by asking the First Minister of Wales whether he would consider imposing such a curfew.
Any one with any sense of proportion and realistic perspective on life [a.k.a. common sense] would have treated such an outrageous comment as unrepeatable rubbish. But in the woke world which our Materialist friends are in process of imposing on us all, common sense means nothing; ideology and rationality alone will cure our prejudices, inequalities and injustices.
Ray Catlin
Conservatism Institute 