In a mere matter of days, JK Rowling has rendered [Scottish First Minister] Humza Yousaf’s new laws against “hate crime” utterly toothless. It’s worth remembering, though, that it isn’t just laws that can silence people. Peer pressure can, too. And no one understood this better than George Orwell.
“At any given moment,” wrote Orwell in 1945, “there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness.”
The Telegraph London
