https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2019...r-19322019
Familiar pattern in Britain.
"...In other words, Sir Roger Scruton (he was knighted in 2016) is about as accomplished a public intellectual as it is possible to be. He is also an outspoken political conservative, a contingency that has long made him a target of leftist obloquy. When he was appointed last November by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government as the unpaid chairman of a new public body to champion “beautiful buildings,” the attacks from politically correct journalists and politicians came thick and fast....
Eaton proceeded to publish an interview that shockingly misrepresented what Scruton had said about Islam, George Soros, and the Chinese, ripping phrases out of context and distorting his meaning by tendentious editing. He then dribbled out bits from this farrago on social media, embellishing the lot with editorial comments about how “outrageous” Sir Roger’s opinions were.
For example, Eaton said Sir Roger argued that “Each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and that is a very frightening thing.” What he actually said was that the Communist Party of China was “creating robots out of their own people by so constraining what can be done. Each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and that is a very frightening thing.” Note the difference. Sir Roger was talking about the cpc. Eaton made it seem that he was talking about the Chinese people....
Indeed. Which is why we applaud the historian Niall Ferguson’s suggestion in The Times of London that the new vigilantes shutting down debate in the West are direct descendants of “the illiberal, egalitarian ideology that once suppressed free speech in eastern Europe.” “The lesson of the Cold War,” Ferguson writes, “is clear. From now on, an attack on one of us must be considered an attack on all of us. I therefore invite all who believe in the fundamental human freedoms to sign a new Non-conformist Academic Treaty.” Where do we sign? “The present danger to free thought and speech,” he continues, “is not Red Army tanks pouring through the Fulda Gap in Germany; it is the red army of mediocrities waging war on dissent within academia and the media. It is time to confront these people with the one thing that will deter them, as it once deterred the Soviets: massive retaliation.” Amen."
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Political correctness and distortion in Britain
