The analogy is appealing and commonplace: social justice being perceived as a new religion with its own high priests, dogma, heretics, and inquisition. Andrew Doyle sees the capture of the western world as more than just an analogy but a reality. Social justice is, in his eyes, a new religion. He may be right but without the foundations of something supernatural it is destined to be hoisted on its petard, to wither in its own rootless vine.
Does the analogy work for the book? In a way, yes. It is a useful and appealing comparison. Doyle divides the book along 12 chapters, titled with religious connections: maleficia, creed, cataclysm, genesis, blasphemy, exegesis, revelation, dogma, inquisition, transcendence, and finally exodus. The framing is useful and it is easy.
Yet, from early in the book, the reader is left wondering whether he has tried too hard. Using Tom Holland’s Dominion to establish the foundations from which to argue his case, he overeaches in his analogy. Referring to Holland’s understanding that the values of Christianity continue to underpin the ethics and morality of the western, secular world, Doyle interprets this – wrongly – that Holland is ‘able to trace a direct link from the Christian theology of the past to the new ideology of ‘social justice’’ (he doesn’t) and ‘even as the influence of Christianity declines, its tenets are subsumed into a new religion: secular, but equally dogmatic’ (they aren’t).
The imputation here is that the dogma of social justice is moored in Christianity or a form of Christian mentality, which is not the case at all. What Holland says, and Doyle affirms, ‘most of us in the West, even those opposed to Christianity, are but goldfish swimming in Christian waters’ referring to the ethical and moral framework that shapes our lives rather than any such transference to zealous secularism. Such an early misstep, or stretch to prove his argument, creates early doubt as to the credibility of the framing overall however appealing the metaphor may be.
Doyle, an influential writer, particularly through his satire as Titania McGrath, a very woke social justice warrior parody who plays an important lampooning role on social media, provides a strong, wide-ranging overview of the new religion of social justice.
The framing of the book under the abovementioned chapter titles is unnecessary and probably the only real weak point of the book. It feels forced – if not a round peg into a square hole at least an oblong hole – and often the content of the chapters are only loosely pinned to the titles of the chapter. It feels slightly gimmicky and damages the credibility of the important story Doyle is attempting to tell.
After getting that out of the way, to be clear, it is a book worth reading. For anyone keeping track of all the goings-on in the world of woke, there will not be a lot new here, but for the average joe or Josephine, busy going about their lives, wondering where all this new-fangled rubbish is coming from, or what it is about, it makes for both educational and fascinating reading.
What they are about to find out is how a small group of people who they have never seen or heard from seem to be changing the world they know from beneath their feet. Unaware of the newspeak that has been created or how, suddenly, some of life’s certainties have been turned on their head Doyle explains some of the tactics you didn’t even know were being used but are suddenly all too familiar:
“One immediately thinks of the now common intonation that ‘trans women are women’ or ‘trans men are men. As journalist Helen Joyce has noted, such expressions fall into the category best encapsulated by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton as ‘thought-terminating clichés’, those ‘brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases’ that ‘become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. How often have we heard commentators intuiting the motives of their opponents through accusationsof ‘dog-whistling’, the practice of sending out secret signals that only one’s followers can hear? Or the kind of amateur clairvoyance that denounces people for being ‘on the wrong side of history? Or dismissals of legitimate opinions as ‘right-wing talking points’? The implication of all such clichés is that there is no further discussion to be had, but those who utter them tend to give the impression that they are determined to evade serious argument.”
Such is the case that the unsuspecting person on the street is suddenly caught cold by the new religion, unable to understand where it all comes from, but told to accept it as unarguable fact and that it is best to keep quiet rather than reveal your ignorance.
“The religion of Critical Social Justice has spread at an unprecedented rate, partly because it makes claims to authority in the kind of impenetrable language that discourages the sort of criticism and scrutiny that would see it collapse upon itself … This tactic of deliberately restricting knowledge produces epistemic closure, and is a hallmark of all cults. The elitist lexicon of Critical Social Justice not only provides an effective barrier against criticism and a means to sound informed while saying very little, but also signals membership and discourages engagement from those outside the bubble.”
While Social Justice Warriors tackle every identarian division that can be found in the world, and Doyle covers the ironies and paradoxes within them all, it is under the most recent and possibly most challenging area of gender that Doyle exposes for the overreach of identity politics and the culture wars, and certainly where he finds most of his energy.
“There are now flags for every conceivable sexual or gender identity. These are not necessarily representative of groups that have been historically persecuted, but rather a hotchpotch of neologisms that can be seemingly selected at will like so many fashion accessories. Flags have been designed for those who identify as pangender, aporagender, agen-der, bigender, trigender, genderqueer, genderfluid, demigender, demigirl, demiboy, neutrois, polyamorous, non-binary, asexual, omnisexual, poly-sexual, abrosexual, androsexual, gynosexual, skoliosexual, aromantic, gender questioning, gender non-conforming, and many more. Surely it would be far easier to create one giant flag for narcissists and be done with it. Is this progress? Or it is simply that some of us remain sober while the world gets drunk? The proliferation of what we might call ‘neo-sexualities’ risks demeaning the struggles of sexual minorities in the past.”
Scathingly, and unsurprisingly, he draws on the words of George Orwell on more than one occasion:One cannot help but be reminded of Orwell’s words in Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command’.
Who are these people, that have been creating this culture war, fabricating a world where words no longer mean what they used to be or no longer have any shared meaning at all?
“These are the people who make grand claims of moral purity and brook no dissent, a mindset which has led to the development of today’s ‘cancel culture’. These are the powerful few who seek to control public discourse by deeming certain terms ‘problematic’ or supporting legislation against ‘hate speech’. These are the clerics who advance a modern-day equivalent of the Augustinian notion of original sin in the form of concepts such as whiteness’, ‘toxic masculinity’ or ‘heteronormativity’.These are the chosen few, the elect, the discoverers of individual ‘truths’ and ‘new ways of knowing’ that bear little resemblance to reality. These are the arbiters of justice who require no evidence of sin in order to detect and denounce the sinners in our midst.
These are the new puritans.”
However, Doyle, quite generously, despite much of the personal abuse he receives online – and sometimes to his face – for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, offers the view that many of the New Puritans – like the old – were operating with good intentions but that this can be the danger in itself – they are so assured they are so assured of the righteousness and that they are the new priests needed to show you the right path.
“As a first step, we must do our uttermost to challenge the sectarianism of the culture war. This means resisting the temptation to interpret our opponents’ motives in the least charitable manner. Most of us are trying to leave the world in a better condition than we found it; it simply comes down to a disagreement over how best this can be achieved. Even the most authoritarian impulses of the new puritans can arise from noble intentions. ‘Of all tyrannies,’ wrote C. S. Lewis, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive’, for ‘those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience’. To presuppose bad faith is to betray a certain narcissism by which one considers one’s own worldview to be the default, and any divergent opinions to be the consequence of either error or mendacity.”
The New Puritans
- Author : Andrew Doyle
- Publisher : Constable (September 26, 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0349135304
- ISBN-13 : 978-0349135304
- Item Weight : 11.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.96 x 1.34 x 7.72 inches
David Reynolds