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.

...

The politics of "it's not fair" - welcome to the New Toddlers

I'm angry, rage-filled, cross. The little tic above my left eye is twitching, the axe in the shed sings its siren song. I'm close to having had enough. All this has been prompted by an appointment - something I might write about later. Put simply, however, it is time for those of us who like free speech, free markets, free enterprise and a free society to stop putting up with the sort of world where a TV anchor who went to one of Britain's poshest school and then to Oxford can, in all seriousness, say to an academic that he 'doesn't have the right to offend'.

Indeed, as many have already pointed out, the entirety of Cathy Newman's interview with Jordan Peterson consisted of straw men, non sequiturs, misrepresentations and the repeated use of the words 'fair' and 'unfair'. These two words are now the most abused words in the English language - from "it's not fair" being the exclusive cry of the toddler in mid-tantrum, it has now become the mantra for an entire political movement. OK, so some folk like to point at Corbyn's politics and say it's 'Marxist' but frankly this is a bit of an insult to Karl who at least tried to construct a coherent set of theories about history, society and economics. The New Toddlers don't do this, they just scream "it's not fair" ever more loudly. Sometimes, as in the case of former broadcast journalists, they scream "it's not fair" and misquote Gramsci.

These New Toddlers are joined in their screeches by the likes of Cathy Newman who refuse to let sensible things like actual research evidence get in the way of them shouting "it's not fair". Everything from Jessica's uni fees through to Grandma having to cash in some of her three-quarters of a million of housing asset is not "fair". Don't have a job - or better still the precise job (very well paid, of course) you think you deserve - scream "it's not fair" and, as if by magic, some left wing politician or right-on news reporter will appear with the soothing words "something must be done" followed by dragging one of the few remaining grown ups in and accusing them of not being "fair".

The New Toddlers have been weaned on the idea that everything is somebody else's fault - often a strange and nebulous thing called 'neoliberalism'. You're fat and you drink too much? It not fair is it but rest assured something will be done - the bad people who made you fat and forced you to drink a bottle of white wine every second day will be punished. Maybe you've moved to London because that's where all the action is and you can get a great job in a new media design start up or, better still, in some NGO, QUANGO or think-tank. But it's not fair that you can barely afford the rent, let alone buy a house (something the thickoes you left behind in Ormskirk seem able to do from their crappy little warehouse or call centre jobs) - never mind, those politicians and pundits will be there echoing your cries: "it's not fair, it's not right, something must be done, give me more money, stop them charging me so much, tax fat cats more, what about those big companies, we'll have their money, it's not fair."

Hardly a day passes without another screechy, evidence-free campaign: windfall taxes on this, give free things to this group, stop that group, nationalise this, take over that, regulate, intervene, manage, control, fuss, bother...it's not fair, it's not fair. Twitter memes are fired off, clickbait articles written, petitions launched - anyone daring to oppose is ridiculed, abused, piled onto while any, even mild, kickback results in more screams of "it's not fair, stop the nasty abusers". Every women, every disabled person, every gay man, every minority, folk with mental health problems, fat people, drunks, drug users - everyone except smokers - is a victim. It's not fair.

This ever more infantilised society - the world of these New Toddlers - is exploited by those, whether they call themselves Marxists, Fabians or 'social justice campaigners' who want to exercise power by seeming to be kind and caring. These exploiters don't really give a stuff about whether anything is fair (so long as they're running it and getting well paid), what they really hate is that, out there, there are still people who think it's not a bad idea to take responsibility for your own life, who think we should be allowed to say stuff even if some people think it's not fair and get all offended. We're the problem you see because we don't think we need great and good people on public boards and bodies to make life fair. Mostly this is because, unlike Arthur Dent, we listened to what our Mother said all those years ago when we had that toddler tantrum and screamed, "it's not fair".

"Life's not fair. Get used to it."

....