How opposite-think took over our politics. By Patrick West.
We live in a time of opposite-think, a topsy-turvy era in which truths become distorted and inverted. Words refer to the reverse of what they once did, and most things are no longer what they seem.
Ours is a woke epoch in which women can have penises and being colourblind is racist. In which ‘diversity’ is now code for ‘uniformity’, and ‘inclusivity’ means being inclusive only of people who agree with you. Uttering obvious untruths is now commonplace. Upending reality has been normalised. …
Recent newspaper headlines suggest that opposite-think is here to stay. …
The behaviour of radical trans activists, both online and in the flesh, is getting ever more poisonous and confrontational — all because, they protest, they are the real victims. It’s classic cry-bully opposite-think.
Not a week goes by without more evidence of unreality and delusion becoming the norm. Last week, Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe said we must trust the judgement of children who say that they are a different sex from the one they were born as. Children already half-inhabit a fantasy domain, and that’s the beauty of childhood. But that shouldn’t be confused with the real, adult world.
Alas, many adults themselves now dwell in their own realm of fantasy and make-believe. No wonder opposite-think pervades elite thinking. Free speech is for fascists; censorship is the means to awaken minds. Non-racism is racist; to oppose racial identitarians like Black Lives Matter is proof of racism. Silence is violence. The list goes on. As Heather Mac Donald explained on spiked last week, in the US racism is seen as more endemic wherever there is the least evidence of it — such as in progressive universities.
Opposite-think rules because the woke codes that govern us are based on falsehoods. You only have to place these rules side-by-side to expose this.
For instance, the woke believe that there is no such thing as biological sex, but they believe very much that race is real. In reality, the reverse is true. Male and female are real immutable categories, and the boundaries between the two can’t be breached. Black and white are mutable categories, and the boundaries between the two can and do blend. We are on a spectrum when it comes to skin pigmentation. We are not when it comes to sex.
