Andrew Bolt: How Princess of Woke is part of poisonous cancel culture
Meghan Markle’s latest woke advice to the young is to “drown out the noise” of anyone who disagrees — without consideration or argument — proving this cancel culture is a revolt by brainless, intellectually lazy bullies, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
Don't miss out on the headlines from Andrew Bolt. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Meghan Markle, Princess of Woke, has told her young tribe how to deal with arguments of older people.
Don’t debate them. Don’t test your ideas against theirs.
No, Markle’s advice at the United Nations-backed Girl Up Leadership Summit: “There will always be negative voices ... You can and will use your own voices to drown out the noise.
“Because that’s what it is — just noise. But your voices are those of truth.”
Doesn’t that perfectly sum up this poisonous new cancel culture? The arrogance! The intolerance.
In fact, the “noise” of those “negative voices” may include important arguments. Critical facts.
But Markle’s advice is not to listen, consider or argue. It is to assume the young instinctively know the “truth”, and must simply “drown out the noise” of anyone who disagrees.
They must stick their fingers in their ears and shout “la la la, I can’t hear you!”
Yes, it is that childish. This is a revolt of the brainless, the bullies and the intellectually lazy.
These are the people who scream “racist!” when they just mean “shut up”. Who answer arguments by saying they are so offensive, they should never have been made.
Who don’t just refuse to hear “offensive” opinions, but try to ban anyone else from hearing them, too.
I have never seen such anti-intellectualism in the West. And now more talented thinkers of the Left realise this revolution — whipped up by the Left — threatens them, too.
Comedian Ricky Gervais this week warned: “There’s this new weird sort of fascism of people thinking they know what you can say and what you can’t say ...
“Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right. Offence is good because it makes you think and it makes you come up with an argument.
“And what’s happened recently is that ‘I’m offended’ has replaced an argument.”
True. And last week some 150 intellectuals drawn mainly from the Left — including authors JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood — signed an open letter denouncing this “restriction of debate”.
How did it get this bad? Most sane parents would never tolerate their children answering their arguments with screams and foot-stamping.
Yet overgrown toddlers in our universities, public broadcasters and literary festivals now do just that.
A Twittering barbarian empire is rising over the ruins of Western civilisation. Behold its Princess of Woke.