Andrew Doyle - The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

CONSTABLE

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Constable

Copyright Andrew Doyle, 2022

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-0-34913-529-8

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For Robin Robbins
19422010

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false, it is impalpable, it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself, in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

Y oure a fucking Nazi cunt.

This had been the third time he had shouted this at me, and I was still struggling to believe that it wasnt some kind of misjudged joke.

You arent serious though, are you? I said.

Yes, Im serious. Youre a fucking Nazi cunt.

We had been drinking vodka martinis, so it was always possible that this sudden crazed outburst was an alcohol-induced fantasy. Perhaps from where he was sitting he could only discern the hazy outline of the reincarnated Joseph Goebbels. But even making allowances for his inebriated state, surely this man I had known for many years a left-winger with a reputation for his intelligence and integrity could not genuinely be entertaining the idea that I had any sympathy for fascists? If so, its odd that some years ago he had asked me to be godfather to his son; my role is to protect the boy from Satan, not indoctrinate him in the ways of the Third Reich.

I looked to his wife, one of my oldest friends, for any kind of support. She was silent, clearly embarrassed, reluctant to come to my aid. The strangers within earshot in this busy Soho bar were tactfully pretending not to hear in that very British manner.

The eruption had seemingly come from nowhere. The three of us had been chatting amiably for over an hour by this point, and there had been not the slightest intimation that an expletive-laden barrage of bile and slander was about to be hurled in my direction. Clearly this had been on his mind for a while. He was apparently convinced that my professional output over the past few years had been engineered to promote fascistic ideas, but when pressed to explain his reasoning he struggled to do so. The best he could muster was that I had written for a publication he didnt much like, had voted in favour of leaving the European Union, and had written scripts that had satirised political positions that he supported. How any of this could qualify as fascism remains unclear. As Carl Sagan was fond of saying: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. No such evidence was forthcoming.

I have thought a good deal about the implications of this regrettable event. Like many people, I have grown accustomed to being smeared and misrepresented by strangers on social media to the extent that it barely registers any more. But there was something especially disturbing about being verbally abused by someone who knows me well enough to be sure that fascism represents everything I stand against.

The alcohol only explains so much. Few of us can claim never to have behaved badly when drunk, but in the sobriety of the morning we apologise for misspeaking, or for those pockets of lost memory during which we apparently let ourselves down. It has been over three years and I have received no apology. I can only assume that he feels justified in his tirade. I will almost certainly never speak to either of them, or my godson, ever again.

Quite apart from how upsetting it is to discover that someone you have known for so long is harbouring such unpleasant misconceptions, there is the more sinister aspect to consider. I am not alone in having lost friends for the crime of expressing my opinions honestly.