On the contrary
Running counter to a prevailing narrative can be hard and it can be easy money. It is important to know why you or anyone else is doing it.
On Thursday, I attended the announcement and acceptance of the winner of the Contrarian Prize. It was a pleasant evening and I met and chatted with some very nice and interesting people. I had largely gone along as I am an admirer of the writer Suzanne Moore who was shortlisted and I wanted to meet her. I didn’t read her tweet saying that she was staying away and why until I was well on my way. Another time I hope.
Throughout the event, there was also a lot of support for the notion and vital importance of free speech. With this, I completely agree. There is a lot of discussion around ‘cancel culture’ at the moment - up to and including if it is real. What there most certainly is, is a chilling culture. And though some on each side would like to claim it does, this does not have a left/right binary.
Take the debate that has been raging in my Twitter timeline about prostitution. For me, the feminist and leftist position is to fully oppose the capitalist commodification of (predominantly) women’s bodies. To work to free women from sex work and to dismantle the neoliberal and patriarchal system within which our bodies and our consent are just another thing to be traded and all that matters is the price. Others disagree. That is their right. What they do not have a right to do is either try to shut me up or intimidate women from making such arguments through the -somewhat ironic - tools of shame and coercion.
Chilling doesn’t always happen in the most obvious way and as a result, the full iceberg of its effect is rarely seen. But if you have put your head above the parapet, the reaction you get is interesting. You get days, weeks, months and in some cases, years of harassment - like Kathleen Stock - bullied out of her job at Sussex University. But you also get a lot of private messages, are asked for a lot of one-to-one coffees where a woman confesses her relief at finding a fellow traveller and you have a lot of conversations where you and another heretic try to feel each other out to check neither of you is about to hand each other in to one of the many Twitter Witchfinder Generals.
If you’ve been through this - on any of the key issues that you disagree with your own in-crowd over - it’s a really instructive experience. You begin to understand the sheer power of the things that are unsaid. They don’t go away because they have been - or have felt - silenced. I can see now both how Brexit happened and how it blindsided all those who never spoke about, or to, those with animosity towards the European project. Ironically, I have come to believe Brexit could have been avoided if we talked about it more. We got out of the habit of hearing our opponents and we got lazy with our arguments. So sure we were in the right that we dismissed everyone else as malicious or stupid or both. We believed those people to be in the minority because we never heard from them. Until we did.
Returning to the Contrarian Awards, what I question is what is meant in this forum by ‘free speech’ and ‘contrarian’? And what it is they are designed to celebrate?
The winner on the night was Toby Young. I have little or no time for Young. I disagree with the stances he takes politically but more than that I find him an absolutely prime example of someone who - thanks to his background and wealth - constantly fails up. He’s an intellectual lightweight with few - if any - novel ideas and even less understanding of how to implement them (a tip Tobes: this is usually going to involve other - competent - people. though given what some of your ideas have been, I am quite glad your ego is unlikely to let you work this out).
Watch my debut play No Cure For Love here.
At the awards, host Michael Crick made a good speech about the importance of journalists going away from the pack and I agree with this. There is too much groupthink in journalism and too often we don’t test our own assumptions because they are also the assumptions of our peers. Going beyond your usual affirmation sources can be exceptionally valuable and should be done as a matter of course, but particularly when what you are reporting gels too closely to your priors.
But I don’t believe that Toby Young has gone against the pack. I think he’s spent his life being given opportunity after opportunity that he was - at best - underqualified for and then failed at. Yet he is still given role after role because to his pack, his words are not seen as I see them, but as a brave and unvarnished truth. For the anti-PC right wing crowd, Toby Young’s status is as unquestionable as Owen Jones’ on the woke left. I don’t think either of these goes against the popular grain - as is the definition of a contrarian. On the contrary, they are both essentially crowd-pleasing circus barkers. They just exist in different tents.
For me, the real value of free speech is free thought. The ability to take an issue, not as you are presented it by someone with an angle or an axe to grind, but to think through the arguments on both sides, come to your own conclusions and be able to back those up publicly and with evidence in a well thought through argument.
The extreme opinion-havers of left, right and centre, the Aaron Bastanis, Janet Daleys, James O’Briens, Ash Sarkars, Richard Littlejohns and Jolyon Maughams all think they are about freedom of speech and fighting for the right thing. But none of them ever surprise you (well except for the odd bit of fox murder…) and that should worry all of us. If I know what someone is going to think on an issue-based not even on a headline but a byline, that shows conformity of thinking, a rigidity, that I don’t think belongs to the contrarian. Perhaps more so to the controversialist, but even they occasionally say things their followers will disagree with.
For politics of all persuasions to work, we have to find a way where we don’t reward people for being loudest, but more interesting. We need to find a way to disagree without it meaning the end of friendships or comradliness. We have to reward and listen to truly free-thinking - not simply saying what pleases your crowd dressed up as bravery.
If we don’t, we leave ourselves open to the shocks that come with finding what a majority we truly exist in. We also and for more devastatingly for those of us who believe in political persuasion forget how to exercise that muscle. If you can’t find something you disagree with your crowd over, wonder when you last changed a mind - or even put together the kind of coherent argument that might change a mind?
If you don’t know, then is it possible you have never done it? If you have never done it - how are you making a real and important difference? How are you implementing the politics you claim to be fighting for?
Where is the fight in your fight?
I run a political and communcations consultancy called Political Human. Please get in touch if you are looking for consultancy advice, copy writing, editing, training or coaching.
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What I’ve been up to
I wrote for the Times on the importance of Labour thinking beyond the Tory shambles to show voters how they will make their lives get better.
I have also been going to the theatre a lot. You can read my reviews here:
The Sugar House at the Finborough Theatre on Plays to See.
Humane at the Pleasance on Plays to See.
The Drop, 55 Aldgate High Street on View From the Cheap Seat.
If you would like me to attend and review your performance, please get in touch on the email below.
Questions, comments and arguments are very welcome. Insults will get you summarily blocked on every platform that no longer hosts Donald Trump. I’m at emmaburnell@gmail.com or on Twitter (far too often) at @EmmaBurnell_.