by Giulio Meotti
What liberty to voice criticism do we have left in the West?
Criticize Islam? It depends on how brave you are.
Criticize mass immigration? If you are ready to parry the thunderbolts of the bienpensants.
Criticize Greta and the absurdities of the ecological movement? If you agree to pass for irresponsible. Criticize cancel culture? If you can eat without conformism.
We had one issue over which we were free of criticism, a very banal one, and if they hadn’t questioned us we wouldn’t even have noticed that it was a freedom. It was remembering that you are born male or female. The year 2022 will be remembered as the year in which we practically lost that freedom and were forced to swallow a candy-colored dogma that now dominates our lives.
As filmmakers and actors critical of the Islamist mullahs’ regime were arrested in Iran, transgender activists managed to cancel a screening of a gender-critical film on a famous European university campus this week after raiding a classroom to prevent the event from taking place, reports the Telegraph. The screening of “Adult Human Female”, a documentary challenging transgender ideology in the UK, was organized by the University of Edinburgh’s Academics for Academic Freedom group. The 439-year-old institution is known as one of the houses of the Scottish Enlightenment. Several activists occupied a lecture hall in George Square, preventing the screening from taking place. When organizers attempted to move the event to an alternate venue, more activists entered and the screening was eventually cancelled.
This in the country of David Hume…
At the same time, in Brussels, two academics were invited to the Café Laïque (an important literary meeting place) to discuss the transgender movement. Child psychiatrist Caroline Eliacheff and professor Céline Masson were to talk about their latest essay, “La Fabrique de l’enfant transgenre”, which warns about the psychological conditioning of minors.
On several occasions, Caroline Eliacheff had already been intimidated and her conferences cancelled: in Lille where she was prevented from speaking, in Paris where an event was canceled and in Lyon where one of her speeches was postponed with urgency. About twenty hooded men in Brussels threw clay pots containing waste and excrement at the public. At the same time, in Toulouse, a play critical of gender issues was cancelled.
Last May, comedian Dave Chappelle was attacked and thrown to the ground while performing in Los Angeles. The attacker was carrying a toy gun and a knife. What is Chappelle’s “sin”? He mocked transgender ideology. If that weren’t enough, Chapelle was canceled by American theaters.
In the same hours, Harvard canceled a conference on the poetry of feminist philosopher Devin Buckley as too critical of gender, and in England a conference of psychiatrists and doctors opposed to transgender in children was canceled. Then the biologist Marie Luise Vollbrecht was prevented from speaking at the Humboldt University of Berlin (where Albert Einstein and Max Planck studied). “Sex, gender and why there are only two sexes in biology”, was the title of the lecture.
Meanwhile, in Sweden, a professor was fired for his refusal to call a student “non-binary” and using ‘hen’, the neutral pronoun, because it was contrary to his Christian faith. In Ireland, on the other hand, the teacher Enoch Burke will spend Christmas in prison, because he preferred to violate school rules and a judge’s order in order not to use neutral pronouns. Hadley Freeman, ironic and passionate pen of the Guardian, left her newspaper after 22 years of honorable service. “You said both sides of the gender debate are equally passionate, but only one side requires censorship,” she wrote to the editor. “Here, it seems to me that this faction has won.”
2022 was certainly interesting for those who like to observe the rapid unraveling of Western democracy under the blows of a politically correct wave that has never been so arrogant, and therefore weak and self-destructive. Academic conferences deprogrammed, book presentations attacked, film screenings cancelled, teachers fired and in trouble with the law, attacks on theatres, forced resignations…
What else do we need to realize that in the West there is a creeping totalitarianism? Israel, beware and steer clear when you hear the words “gender” and “inclusivity”.