Joe Hildebrand: Katherine Deves devotees believe in right to speak truth

The so-called progressive left has revealed, through its unrelenting attacks on Katherine Deves and others, just how hostile it is to basic concepts of liberty, writes Joe Hildebrand

“Freedom,” wrote George Orwell, “is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

Orwell is not, needless to say, talking about mathematics. The fundamental universality of the human condition doesn’t rest upon the outcome of a child’s equation in the Hindu-Arabic numeral system.

Instead it rests on an individual’s right to articulate that equation. To be able to express a truth — or at least what they believe to be true — in opposition to whatever the state or any other prevailing authority dictates to be true.

And it is on this point of principle that the so-called progressive left ­always fails to understand – and therefore always underestimates — support for supposedly “controversial” figures such as Katherine Deves.

As everyone in Australia now knows, Deves is a crusader against biological males being able to compete in women’s sport, a subject not hitherto considered a burning issue in the leafy seat of Warringah she is ­contesting.

Katherine Deves. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Attending a Liberal campaign rally with PM Scott Morrison. Picture: Jason Edards

But the groundswell of support for Deves has no more to do with biology than Orwell’s quote has to do with mathematics.

The critical question is not whether trans women should be prevented from competing against biological women.

The question is whether someone should have the freedom to simply express that view without being hounded, threatened or barred from public life.

As I wrote on this page a fortnight ago, Deves was clearly not preselected in ignorance of her social media history. Subsequent reports have confirmed this.

Likewise I said that in light of this she was clearly chosen to send a message not to the woke electors of Warringah but to the broader Australian electorate that the Coalition was the champion of traditional values and freedom of speech.

Well, it has certainly achieved that. Fuelled largely by the outrage against her, Deves has not only become a lightning rod for outspoken conservatives and libertarians but her views would almost certainly be shared by many traditional Labor voters.

The Western Sydney ALP heartland seats of Parramatta and Fowler, for example, voted two to one against same-sex marriage.

There are plenty of understandable religious and cultural reasons for this but it is fair to assume that for such voters the belief that trans and biological women are not the same would be as simple a proposition as two plus two equalling four.

It is also highly likely they had never even contemplated the issue before the firestorm around Deves erupted, and so the censorious “progressives” attempting to shut debate down have once more only illuminated how precarious their hold on the argument is.

Had Deves been allowed to run unmolested she would have almost certainly failed to win Warringah and most viewing her comments from afar would probably have simply wondered what she was banging on about.

Instead she is now a national hero and her critics seem increasingly ­desperate and shrill.

Like Dr Frankenstein, the woke keep making their own monsters and then shrieking in fear at what’s before them.

Indeed, all the supposedly tolerant left has to do is actually tolerate people and such groundswells of opposition to them will disappear, yet they can’t even manage that.

Take the hysteria around Elon Musk’s declaration that he will restore free speech to Twitter and provide greater transparency of its workings.

Had the usual suspects just shrugged and Musk done just that, the platform would probably still be just as left-dominated as it is today and they could have claimed ­supremacy.

Instead they started claiming white supremacy and unleashed the sort of conspiratorial fury that has made the Twitter left so toxic.

So toxic, in fact, that even ABC presenters have been hounded off the platform by a barrage of paranoid ­accusations that they are Liberal stooges.

Apparently free speech is fine for attacking and abusing individuals but not for expressing unfashionable ideas.

But just when you thought ­Orwell’s nightmare couldn’t become more real, consider Joe Biden’s bone-chilling move to establish a “Disinformation Governance Board” — which has instantly been dubbed a Ministry of Truth.

This would be terrifying enough if it was headed up by Mother Teresa. Instead it’s headed by a woman who publicly pushed the line that the Hunter Biden laptop story wasn’t true. The line between satire and reality has officially dissolved.

Meanwhile ministers in NSW have been told not to use the word “mate” or drink alcohol in the office by a “diversity and inclusion” consultant. How perfectly Orwellian that inclusion now means excluding things.

Little wonder that people are flocking to Deves just like they have flocked to other firebrands — not necessarily because they believe everything they say but because they believe in their right to say it.

And because that, as Orwell tried to tell us, is freedom.