They ("progressive left liberals" since you ask) aren't very nice. And some are downright nasty.

It's knitting for heaven's sake. Knitting.

Comments like these set off a wave of critical voices across knitting communities on sites like Ravelry.com, the biggest source of online knitting patterns by independent designers from around the world and the home of many knitting chat forums. Most of the criticism amounted to sharing words written by knitting activists @su.krita and @thecolormustard, who posted “educational” content on their profiles for others to circulate. Instagram notes scorned Templer’s “peak whiteness,” and reminded her that “the world doesn’t owe you a patient explanation and education” and that as a “coloniser” she ought to “stay in [her] lane.” Su.krita also warned her white knitter friends that if they stayed silent and didn’t speak up against racism then they would be considered “part of the problem.”

We saw it with gamers. Then with science fiction fans. It has happened in the music business, in theatre and everywhere in politics. Seemingly - well not seemingly at all, actually literally - innocuous remarks are twisted into sins against the politics of identity: race, gender, sexuality. Back to the knitters - this is the offending phrase:

One of my closest friends [when I was 12] and her family had offered back then that if I ever wanted to go with them on one of their trips (to India), I could. To a suburban midwestern teenager with a severe anxiety disorder, that was like being offered a seat on a flight to Mars.

The result was one of those destructive pile ons where nothing, absolutely nothing, the victim can say will excuse or exonerate their sin against the gospel of social justice.

I tried to think through what sort of defence there might be for the sort of people who trawl through online communities looking for targets. I could think of none. These are deeply unpleasant people who are not remotely interested in anything that might be called "social justice" but want instead to score hits, to mount up wins - "look who I've taken down", "hey, we got them sacked".

The targeting doesn't stop with the individual sinner - here's a chilling quote from an article by someone who challenged the #MeToo narrative:

My husband was told to leave his wife or lose his business

This is what these disgusting online warriors get off on - destroying jobs and businesses in a gleeful assault on those they decide are sinners along with anyone connected to those sinners. It's the same mentality that saw communities shunned and women tortured and killed. It is the world of the witchfinder where people's worst traits are fed and exploited in the crushing of essentially innocent people. And remember that it's not enough to simply keep your head down and say nothing - if you don't endorse the gospel as defined by the witchfinder then you run the risk of being condemned for the same sins. It's safest to go along with, to quietly nod and smile in agreement with those raising the storm, and to sever any connection with the sinner they have identified.

This appalling world is not the creation of Nazis or fascists but of people who position themselves as the good guys - progressive, liberal, campaigners for social justice. We - normal people who don't set out to cause offence - have sat back and watched as the scriptures of social justice are enforced by righteous attacks on anyone who those progressive, left-liberal saints deem to be sinners. Whether there is a way back or not I don't know, but we should recognise we've a problem when the witchfinders target knitters excited about a trip to India or the husband of someone with an edgy opinion about allegations of sexual abuse.

Getting people sacked, destroying their relationships, cutting them off from friends, undermining their businesses, frightening their children...a litany of unpleasantness done in the name of a supposedly good cause: social justice. But where's the social justice in all this? Where's the goodness in gleefully whipping up a mob:

“No amount of reason will change a zealot like Tuskenknits’ mind, but we can make sure they feel their hatred reflected in their bank accounts and their follower counts until they are crying into a void.”

This isn't justice. This is what it purports to confront - hatred, unthinking and uncaring hatred. And it is the wholly owned property of the so-called "progressive liberal left". Speaking as an Englishman, I can only conclude: these progressives aren't very nice. And some are downright nasty.

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