Cancel Culture

Progressive politics has to talk about class and race, and challenge the false divisions of the right Gerry Hassan The National, 24 May 2022 These are divisive times in politics and public life; strident voices stoking division are all around. Many of them tell us that the age we live is shaped by “culture wars” and “cancel culture”. Cheap talk is everywhere - surrounded by noise, charge and counter-charge. New media platforms like Rupert Murdoch’s Talk TV assist loud men such as Piers Morgan to broadcast their ill-informed opinions to the world – even when there is next to no

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The cancel culture of the anti-woke brigade Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, March 17th 2021 Everywhere you look in the media the word ‘woke’ is used as an insult. It has become a trigger word used by the right, reactionaries, populists - and those uncomfortable with identity politics and what they see as the onward march of political correctness. Instead, they pose the word ‘woke’ to sow division; to label and dismiss people who stand for things like social justice, racial equality and against homophobia, and to close down debate and demands for change in society. The origins of the word

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The Worldwide War over Truth and Free Speech Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, December 2nd 2020 The battle for truth is all around us. Fake news. Fake media. The argument over free speech and freedom to say what we like and think, alongside controversies over ‘cancel culture’ and ‘safe spaces’. Meanwhile an American President who has lost an election still, one month after polling day, refuses to accept the result. He has called the contest ‘rigged’ and ‘stolen’ – a denialism that 77% of Trump voters agree with according to a Monmouth University survey. This is the world all around us.

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