THE NEW CENSORS OF THE LEFT


Like anyone with a Facebook account expressing a ‘like’ for 'progressive' causes I find I attract calls for my solidarity and support. More often than not this I am happy to provide. However there is a trend of causes with which I cannot offer either; invariably coming from the left of the spectrum a stream of demands to silence this group or that person or ban this book or that magazine, or in respect of a current campaign, a particular genre of magazines, that is so called ‘Lad Mags.’

Now I have neither purchased nor even read a magazine of this type. I think though I have some idea of their content; aimed at young men, who aspire to own sports cars, lead the ‘fast’ life fuelled by wealth; a life of good eating, great sex with beautiful women and flirtation with danger.
Puerile in the extreme I believe they contain the kind of material likely to be written by the likes of Jeremy Clarkson. Indeed the Top Gear viewer is almost certainly part of the target group for this product. I am told they contain pictures of expensive motorcars alongside pictures of naked or semi naked young women, both viewed as desirable ‘objects.’ It is this that the post on my Facebook wall took objection to and wanted to see banned.

From the lifting of the Chatterley ban to the Oz trial the decade of the 1960’s represented a prolonged onslaught on censorship. This onslaught was led by the liberal and libertarian left against the instinctive censors of the establishment. In those days free speech and free expression was a totem of progressive politics, the idea of declaring some subjects taboo or suppressing opinions was considered anathema.

These days it is more likely to be the left who present with petitions to ban and censor.* The new witch-finder generals see themselves as the holders of the public conscience, protectors of the public good. The people it seems are not to be trusted, deviant notions, unpleasant opinions, dangerous ideas must all be kept out of the public arena. The default position being, if in doubt, ban it, deny it a platform, suppress it.
Respecting ‘lad mags’ I am not sure whether to laugh at or feel sorry for the young men who read them and buy into the world view propagated inside the glossy pages.  A world view which is certainly as pernicious as it is infantile. It may even be possible that such material arrests the development of some young men. I would certainly place them on the upper shelves. However, whilst I will always contest the views espoused by such publications, I will not demand that these magazines be banned and I think it is bad news indeed when people imagine that there is something progressive about calling for censorship.

When Thatcher died we were treated to a grotesque 10 day symphony of sycophancy presenting this highly divisive and mean spirited politician as if she were the matriarch of the nation. One of the few protests at this exercise in enforced bereavement took the form of attempting to get a song ‘ding dong the witch is dead,’ to number one in the music charts. This protest was arguably both in bad taste and childish. Nobody however questioned its legality. It was still met with a concerted and ultimately successful attempt to have the song censored.[1]

Flushed with this success you can be sure that the likes of Paul Dacre have a little list to hand of things that they would also like to see suppressed. What arguments will those who have campaigned so vigorously on the left for other bans and suppressions then employ; a call for free speech?

*The left of course has always had a puritan streak.

[1] Aside from the absurdity of this affair,  the BBC said a tiny snippet only of the song would be played,, it may have escaped the notice of those so eager to pull the plug how much this act of censorship was welcomed by dictatorial regimes around the world, not least in China and Putin’s Russia. See, they said, what hypocrisy, despite all their moralising  they too see the importance of censorship. Without any indication of irony Paul Dacre’s Daily Mail was the cheerleader for this form of censorship at the same time as, rightly, attacking the Leveson proposals as an attack on press freedom.  The crime committed by the protest could of course be best characterised by the term Lese Majeste.  I recommend reading Nick Cohen’s comments at the time.


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