'The Anglosphere’s far-Left has neatly pivoted from the infantilisation of black people to the Palestinian cause' (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Another day, another opportunity for huffy, hypocritical “progressive” posturing. PEN America has now been forced to cancel its World Voices literary festival in New York and LA, on the heels of also cancelling its 2024 awards ceremony. Too many authors had withdrawn from both events to make going ahead with staging either practicable. The reason for so many writers flouncing from these programmes? PEN’s failure to publicly denounce Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza. But you had probably guessed the point of indignation already, because as of October 2023, the Anglosphere’s far-Left has neatly pivoted from the infantilisation of black people to the Palestinian cause with the coordinated grace of a synchronised swimmer.
To clarify: the purpose of PEN is to defend freedom of speech and to protect writers from political oppression and persecution. It makes perfect sense, therefore, that a significant cadre of its membership would seek to stifle freedom of speech and engage in political oppression and persecution. Or: we’re all for free speech so long as you say what we tell you. These folks are athletes. It requires considerable intellectual acrobatics for Writers Against the War on Gaza to regard the shutting down of events to advance free expression as “a win for free expression”. Presumably, the fact that a number of withdrawals from both occasions were motivated by fear of being attacked by a mob of pro-Palestinian zealots is also “a win for free expression”. PEN itself stated its concern “about any circumstance in which writers tell us they feel shut down, or that speaking their minds bears too much risk”.
PEN is by its nature a big tent. It represents not only Muslim writers but Jewish ones too, some of whom might just support the existence of Israel, might just regard Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza as justified, and might just find alliance with genuinely genocidal terrorists whose unembarrassed aim is to wipe Israel and the Jewish people off the map as a teeny tiny bit obnoxious. While one PEN member decries the non-profit’s “both-sidesing”, the truth is that PEN has no business taking a position on this issue whatsoever.
Unfortunately, the Left has successfully installed the expectation that, regardless of their established purpose, all institutions — companies, museums, theatres, universities, charities, you name it — must proclaim their fealty to the “right” (which is to say Left) position on a host of inflammatory issues of the day. This hyper-politicisation of entities that ought sensibly to remain politically neutral has been systematically debauching everything from the National Trust to the NHS, from Anheuser-Busch to the Chicago Art Museum. First, all such outfits were required to fly Black Lives Matter flags, then garishly incoherent Pride flags, and now these banners have all to be swapped out for Palestinian flags, never mind what constituency or customer base might be alienated by this gratuitously partisan branding. Thus, an organisation established for the defence of free speech of every sort — including the overtly Zionist kind — is necessarily obliged to openly advocate for Hamas, a murderous, cheerfully antisemitic cult whose interest in free speech on its home turf would fit in a thimble.
Of course, PEN’s membership has form when it comes to hypocrisy. In 2015, under armed security, PEN awarded its Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Six writers withdrew from participating in the proceedings to protest the magazine’s ostensibly offensive printing of cartoons that depicted Mohammed. Yet funnily enough, what your average normal person found offensive was the vicious massacre of 12 of the publication’s employees, most of them journalists, for neglecting to adhere to one religion’s hysterical blasphemy laws in a secular country that famously celebrates “liberté”. Yet over 200 writers — including, to my astonishment, the likes of Joyce Carol Oates — signed an open letter to PEN criticising the Charlie Hebdo award. For these authors, defence of free speech, promotion of tolerance, and opposition to violent political oppression — the very purpose of PEN — counted for nothing when weighed against any injury to the delicate feelings of fundamentalist Muslims.
Much has been written about the unholy and in some ways hilarious alliance developing between the progressive Left and Islam (Lesbians for Palestine, etc). But for Western writers to embrace a restrictive, prescriptive, and stifling culture isn’t merely ironic or comical; it’s self-defeating. One needn’t consult a professor of Middle Eastern Studies to conclude that these fair-weather friends in Gaza may welcome useful idiocy, but the permissive ethos of the Anglo-Left is diametrically at odds with despotic Islamic theology. Moreover, for American writers to express increasingly shrill and little-disguised hostility to Jews is to disavow a substantial chunk of the country’s distinguished literary canon: Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, and Elie Weisel just for starters.
But then, the past 15 years have demonstrated with depressing clarity that writers, along with artists of every stripe, aren’t special. Although our occupation is more at risk from censorship than most, we’re all too capable of perversely embracing suppressive viewpoints that violate our own interest. We’re paid not only to write but to think, yet we don’t think; we listen keenly for whatever tune is playing in our fellow travellers’ AirPods and whistle along. Apparently, we’re no more creative than the average bear, and as soon as the memo goes out, we’ll chant along with the kiddies camped at Columbia University, “From the river to the sea!” whatever that means. We’ll obediently switch out one cause for another whenever we’re told, as nimbly as using “find and replace” in Microsoft Word.
We’re cowards, conformists, and copycats. Real freedom of expression is too scary; we’d rather hide in a crowd whose keffiyeh-masked members all shout the same thing. PEN has a laudable history of advocating for writers who’ve been persecuted for their opinions in repressive polities — polities much like the contemporary United States. But too many of its members would have the non-profit corrupt its global mission to protect free speech across the board so long as they can bully its leadership into pointless partisan posturing for progressives’ acrid flavour of the month.
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SubscribeWhat a miserable, unkind article. Has the writer given any thought to the person who was relieved of her suffering thanks to this procedure? What’s wrong with consumerism per se? Why should this development be monstrous? It is the alternative – of a slow, agonising and pointlessly painful death – that is monstrous.
Surely though staying alive has also been technologised and marketed to the highest bidder, often controlled by doctors who have no real sense of ‘quality of life’. Few people really die ‘naturally’ anymore.
Shades of Futurama…
So what. Its for individuals to decide and most people support physician assisted suicide. You may emote about that or also exagerrate that Canafa’s MAID is encouraging disabled people into suicide ( a lie) but this will happen in tne UK and you will need a coping strategy.
The Sarco pod is to death what elective caesarean is to birth.
I wonder how long it’s going to be before you can “help your family get by after you are gone” if you agree to a hunt as your modus operandi. Emphasis on die.
That pod would look great with a wooden door
maybe also some flapping arms and a Dalek-like voice shouting “Exterminate! Exterminate!”
It is vaguely reminiscent of a Reliant Robin.
More like a Sinclair C5.
A Utilitarian wet dream.
I think this is the rational end point of atheistic materialism. If life and existence aren’t suffused with meaning by a creator who put you here for a reason, to do something you must continue living to discover, then life becomes something to be enjoyed when it’s good and to be tossed away when it becomes painful or even inconvenient. This is why progressive politics in our era has increasingly turned into something like a death cult. Demands for “rights” increasingly have to do with the supposed freedom to kill or to die on demand. Pregnant with an unexpected child that it would inconvenience you to raise? Kill it. Doing anything you didn’t consent to or plan for would be immoral. Sick or depressed? Kill yourself. Why go on suffering for no reason? You were arbitrarily coughed up here without your input to struggle meaninglessly. Death, like life, has no moral dimension that would make either one distinguishable from the other. As a practical matter, death, in a universe with no God, is the end of experience and, therefore, pain so it’s seen more and more as the solution to every thorny existential problem.
Viktor Frankl, in his Man’s Search for Meaning, describes his experience as a trained psychologist put into the Nazi death camps. He saved the lives of many men who, their families dead and their lives unbearable, were on the verge of suicide. He writes that the men would say they were going to end it all because they no longer had anything to expect from life. Frankl would tell them, maybe that’s true, but life may yet have something to expect from you. By placing the man in service to life rather than life in the service of the man, he convinced many men to go on living in unimaginably bleak circumstances. Many survived. I think Frankl’s philosophy – called Logotherapy – is the only way back to sanity in a culture wrecked by radical selfishness and a nihilistic obsession with individualism.
“….by a creator who put you here for a reason….”. It sounds like you approach this from a religious perspective. That is your right, but what about those of us (a majority where I live) who do not adhere to that religious view?
I’d suggest you adopt the religious view. I’ve tried it without the religious view for 25 years and it doesn’t work any other way.
I think that having offspring serves much the same purpose.
If you’re one to wonder about your purpose in life, that purpose is concrete and you are now emotionally attached as a protector/provider/mentor to some degree for the remainder of your life.
Seriously.
You’re wrong. It’s a culture war. Your way leads to death and civilizational collapse.
You’re right, unfortunately. Look where the moral slide we’re in right now has lead us. Why do we still have suicide hotlines? We can’t seem to agree anymore that killing yourself is a bad thing. How would someone talk someone else out of committing suicide if suicide is now packaged as the answer to all life’s insoluble problems? As far as I can tell, it was only the belief that, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the Everlasting had set His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter that made trying to stop suicidal people from carrying out their plans comprehensible. If death really is the best answer to pain, suffering, depression, ennui, sickness, etc.then why shouldn’t we promote it to everybody who wants it?
You are probably right but most people are materialists and want a choice of when and how to die. If you want to change this you need to convince people which you will fail to do if you castigated them for subscribing to ” radical selfishness” and ” nihilism” which makes you sound as though you consider yourself to be better than them.
I don’t consider myself to be better than them; I consider the way of thinking I’ve come to after many years of trying to do things the same way as them to be better than theirs. Life doesn’t owe us anything, we owe life. If you go around bitterly complaining that life hasn’t given you what you want, and you’re an atheist, who are you complaining to? It’s senseless. How about forgetting about what you want and open yourself up to the possibility that life needs something else from you and you’d better listen for when it calls you? And whenever it calls you for whatever you need to do, you’d better be there. In other words, you don’t decide when the show’s over. You might be needed on stage after you want it to be done.
I wonder how wealthy you are or how much good luck from inheritance you have had.
I’m not wealthy, don’t come from money, and I haven’t inherited anything and don’t stand to, although I’m not sure what that has to do with what I said about adopting a worldview that promotes a sense of duty to life and a faith that life has a purpose for you as an antidote to nihilism, despair, and suicide.
Logotherapy…or the Logos? The Word Who became flesh and dwelled among us?
Jesus Christ is the only Way back to life in culture enamoured of death and selfishness, friend. He redeems cultures by saving souls from the eternal, spiritual death in Hell that is the just punishment for our sins against a holy God. On the cross, Jesus bore the Father’s wrath against human sinfulness so that anyone who trusts in the Name of Jesus could be pardoned of their sins. Jesus paid the debt of our sins; if we trust in Him, we receive His holiness, so that when we stand before the Father after we die, He won’t look on us and see our sins but see the perfect, beautiful holiness of His Son. If you repent to Jesus in prayer and ask to be forgiven of your sins, and trust that He’s a good God Who’s compassionate and kind, and more than able to do for you what you could never do for yourself (pay the debt of every evil thing you’ve ever thought, said or done), then you’ll be brought back into relationship with Him. Jesus laid His life down so that His enemies whose sins put Him on the cross could become His friends, through repentance and faith (trust) in Him. Jesus is the God of loving-kindness, and in Him we can overcome all things—even despair and death.
Just as Jesus was resurrected, one day those who trust in Him too shall rise, overcoming this wicked world to be reunited with our Saviour and King.
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:4-5.
Romans 3:23-26
One pictures Sol Roth obediently submitting to his state-mandated death to the tunes of Vivaldi and scenes of daffodil fields. Next, we’ll all be eating people.
Soylent Green.
Perhaps the rise of death cultism – whether de-growth environmentalism or assisted suicide, or simply gender dysphoria and childlessness, is telling us something about our species. Maybe our collective species consciousness is not so distinct from the collective consciousness of the biome it occupies, and the imbalances we have created within that biome are leading to these kinds of reactions.
What if, instead of 8 billion humans on earth, we had only 100 million? Would we have fewer assisted suicides and boys pretending they were girls?
It’s an interesting idea, But maybe as a species we’ve peaked and now we’re just idiots who inherited everything.
When I hear that idea, I’m always reminded of Asimov’s Foundation series, in which he (prescient master that he was) first articulated the idea of a degenerate civilisation relying on technologies it had forgotten how to engineer and no longer really understood.
I take the opposite view. I consider us to be a very young species, which in evolutionary terms is pretty accurate. Whilst our sense of history may make us seem old (there are no precedents for that ‘sense’) we might well be undergoing the kind of ‘growing pains’ that are inevitable once we’ve divested ourselves of certain illusions: the most egregious of course, being that we were “created”.
That’s not to say we mightn’t just blow ourselves to smithereens; but if we can work our way through the “loss of illusion” stage then there’s nothing to suggest we couldn’t continue to evolve and look back on these centuries in the way a mature adult looks back on the follies of their teenage years.
Hm. In every society I’ve ever seen or even read about there are some leaders and some followers. To get to the ideal “Everybody is equal and happy” seems counterintuitive, simply because each person is genetically different. So first you have to be able to control the gene pool……..
My point about lack of historical precedent isn’t about what’s already happened, but our sense of whether we’re “old” or not as a species.
I’ve not referred to gene pools, happiness or equality.
I agree that most societies are split between “leaders” and “followers”. I’ve always regarded myself as a “leader” without any “followers”.
I would think a person who says the idea that life is created is an “egregious” illusion should at minimum know things like where life came from, how the universe came into existence, and the source and nature of consciousness before ruling out a creative intelligence. And, even if you knew the answers to these questions, you’d still have to look at the deplorable consequences brought about by the loss of the “illusions” you refer to at scale and question whether there isn’t some fact about consciousness, whatever that might be, that requires those “illusions” in order to survive.
Does it matter whether or not there is a “creative intelligence”? However you spin it, we have free will. That is the important thing.
Very true. Our great burden.
I’m having a heap of fun exercising my free will.
Yes, it does. If the universe came into existence without an exercise of will by an intelligent being for some purpose then there can be no “why” to anything; there’s only “is”. If everything only is, it makes no sense to make normative (ought) statements about anything. We can say that things are a certain way and if we ask “why?” and we work our way down the turtle stack of “how” answers, we will finally hit bedrock at an “is” and have to conclude the “why” question itself is incoherent. And if we die and our consciousnesses die with us and experience ends, there is no moral import to existence at all. There is no consequence to any of our actions beyond their immediate effect. Let’s say we have free will. Some of us will choose kindness, fairness, and charity and some of us will choose cruelty, dishonesty, and selfishness. Indeed, cruelty, dishonesty, and selfishness carry a distinct advantage if your primary interest is getting power. If preferring kindness, fairness, and charity to cruelty, dishonesty, and selfishness is just a matter of each person’s preference, what can it matter which one a person chooses? To say this doesn’t matter is to miss the fact that the highly selfish, destructive behavior we see from many people today is a direct result of the conclusion that there is no moral reality.
I appreciate that this idea of a “collective consciousness of the biome” for the human species all sounds a bit “woo-woo” but there is a good well researched example albeit in prokaryotes :
Bacteria have this system called quorum sensing that does all sorts of neat things in order to optimise the survival of a bacterial colony (including stopping cell division). One of the inputs to these systems is the availability of chemicals (food) the bacteria need to thrive.
I have a possibly misplaced faith that homo sapiens is demonstrating a similar process right now – although I think the limiter for us will be fresh, imbibable water not food.
Fascinating details. Thank you Elaine.