The intolerance of the "inclusive" tolerant side

J.K. Rowling sold 600 million books. She financed shelters for women victims of violence. She has declared herself leftist, feminist, and supportive of minority rights her entire life. But in 2020 she wrote that women had the right to have single-sex spaces based on biological sex. Since then, she has become a persona non grata in the progressive circles that once elevated her. Her publishers have distanced themselves. Some actors have refused to say her name. Conferences have been canceled because of her. Those who once adored her books now reject her, accusing her of transphobia. A whole life destroyed by a single phrase, without a fair trial; such is the side of "good"...

Rowling is not an isolated case. In France, documentaries have been censored under pressure from militant groups and the documentary about Samuel Paty, the teacher murdered in France, presented this year at the Cannes Film Festival, was criticized and labeled as Islamophobic for showing the truth, a truth that is uncomfortable.

Moreover, conferences on academic freedom have been canceled at universities. Researchers have been marginalized for producing data contrary to the expected conclusions. Comedians have been suspended for jokes that the previous generation would have defended in the name of freedom of expression.

The paradox is terrifying

The left in France, for example, was, for two centuries, the side of freedom of expression. It was they who defended Voltaire, Zola, pamphleteers, and satirists. It was they who fought against state censorship, the self-righteous, and the guardians of moral temple. Today, it is the conservatives who defend freedom of expression, and the progressives who restrict it, under the pretext of coexistence. They are reinventing the crime of blasphemy, which the French Revolution had contributed to abolish. This turnaround in less than twenty years is one of the most significant political facts of our time.

The question is not why progressives are hypocritical. The question is why this system needs intolerance to function. It is structural.

Contemporary progressivism does not rest on an economic program and the defense of the working classes, it has long since left them behind. It rests on a moral foundation. And every moral demands heretics. Progressivism is a religion, and like any religion, it needs deviation to punish and has established a tribunal, just like the Holy Inquisition of the Catholic Church, to judge transgressors. And the penalty dictated by this tribunal, above the justice of the states, is cancellation.

Defenders of progressivism continue to claim that they are tolerant, but true tolerance tolerates everyone except the intolerant, as philosopher Karl Popper would say. 

The diversity of appearances, origins, sexual orientations, or opinions. But in this last point, progressivism is not truly tolerant, as it positions itself as the bearer of the only truth that can be and it is unthinkable to deviate from it.

If he had lived in 21st century France, Voltaire would surely have been canceled...