Here’s an idea: let’s cancel the censors and live ‘dangerously’
We must stop letting the left silence our courage and convictions and learn to speak our truth. Here’s a dangerous idea: Hamas is the enemy of the Palestinian people, not Israel.
What is a dangerous idea? In 2024 are ideas, genuine ideas, even allowed to be birthed, spoken about freely and openly? Moreover, what does an idea have to look like to be considered “dangerous” in a world where many would like us all to believe that up is down, black is white, and night is day.
These are the questions that came delivered to my oft overactive mind this week, after reading about how the director of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas is bracing herself for an onslaught of the cancel culture kind when the event takes place in a few months.
Curiosity got the better of me, obviously, and after poking around the event website and program I decided it would be worth a look. Some of the speakers I’d categorise as decidedly safe, to be honest. A couple of them look like they might offer a bit of spice. But neither of these things is the point.
The point is that this event, which I will more than likely now attend, is about the only place in the country where you can hear voices that dare to challenge. Voices that have the audacity to present a perspective that doesn’t align with the ruling orthodoxy du jour.
Ironically, it’s the only safe space to hear allegedly dangerous ideas. The other type of “safe space” – you know, the one that sections of academia and government bang on about, the type that gets held over you like some kind of threat – is nothing of the sort. These are just iron-clad thought-police clubs, determined to keep out anyone who might respond with a question like: is that really the case?
I know the cancer of cancel culture was well established before October 7, but the vicious, suffocating repression of true diversity in thinking – this attempt to silence and intimidate anyone not singing from the regressive-left song book – grew like an algal bloom in a Perth summer following the Nova Massacres.
Let’s start with the idea of Zionism. Did you ever imagine an Australia where dozens of talented, wonderful, beautiful artists would be blacklisted for being Zionists and that the term itself would be so wickedly co-opted and corrupted by the political left?
Zionism is simple. It is about believing the State of Israel has a right to exist in its ancestral homeland; that Jews have a right to celebrate their history and culture in Israel. If you have a problem with the truth of Jewish indigeneity to the regions, let’s do a little archaeology and history for dummies.
I’ve watched the sun rise over the Zion gate in Jerusalem (the name kind of gives it away, but let’s keep going). I’ve stood atop Mount Moriah, the place where Hebrew patriarch Abraham offered his son Isaac as a sacrifice. The archaeological dig at the City of David site in Jerusalem is another, irrefutable, site of Jewish existence, thousands of years ago.
I could go on but these alone are proof of the Jewish people’s indigeneity, backed by science, carbon dating and accepted historical fact. But some would have you believe Zionism is a dangerous idea.
The only dangerous thing here is that the word Zionism has been shamelessly co-opted into being a slur against Jews; a cover for anti-Semitism used by the gutless among us.
Does anyone else fear there’s a smallness to what we’ve become in the past eight months? A shrinking of our moral character and timidity in the face of ugliness?
There’s no better example than the obscenity of the University of Sydney, rolling over to terror sympathisers like a dog begging for a treat.
In seems that in 2024, true ideas are scarce, and fear of offence has been weaponised to the point that people will nod their heads and agree on the most absurd things, simply to avoid conflict and consequences.
It is allowed to flourish because of a perversion, an inversion of sorts, of the victim-perpetrator paradigm. Of the one who is to blame and the person doing the blaming. And as with most things, this mixed up, muddled up, shook up world can only exist because of a selective approach about what is and isn’t acceptable. What is and isn’t considered to be “dangerous”.
If the idea of Zionism is dangerous, what about Christianity? Probably. Careful, you don’t want any of us pesky Christians walking around peddling toxic ideas like redemption, love and forgiveness. Better watch out lest someone takes notice and has their hope restored.
Is it a dangerous idea to believe that Hamas is the enemy of the Palestinian people, not Israel?
I’ll tell you why it is dangerous to some. Because the idea that their own paradigm might be shattered by irrefutable truth is too much to cope with.
Is it a dangerous idea to believe that some of the best-known universities in Australia have lost their moral and intellectual credibility? I’ll say that, too.
We all nod furiously at the patently absurd, at the truly dangerous ideas that have been systematically chipping away at our social cohesion in the past months and years.
We appease and we look the other way for fear of putting a spoke in the squeaky wheels of activists who, by their shrieking, attract the most oil. I believe the tide is turning on these thought police as many say no, we’ve had enough.
For example, it is not a dangerous idea to believe that a vulnerable child is not able to make a decision about their gender that is irreversible, based on treatment that is highly questionable. These children require our protection.
It is not a dangerous idea to say that women deserve to have spaces that are exclusively their own. Neither is it a dangerous thought to believe that a non-citizen who threatens our unique way of life, our social cohesion, does not deserve the privilege of life in Australia.
And the idea that the United Nations has been corrupted by terror sympathisers and UNRWA should be immediately disbanded and defunded is not dangerous. That is a fair comment based on facts that would stand up to any decent level of scrutiny.
Give me a megaphone and I’ll shout these ideas – these sound, centrist beliefs – from one end of this country to the other.
Let me tell you what I want to do. I want to take back the concept of what a dangerous idea is.
I want to rescue it and reframe it so that instead of a truncheon, it’s an invitation.
I want to silence the silencers and let ideas flourish again. Beautifully, enticingly, deliciously and, yes, with an element of danger. The kind of ideas that instead of being cancelled are heard whispering this could be the start of something amazing. The kind that say, what if you’re wrong, and offers a road to a different, better destination.
The kind that bring light, and life, that challenge and probe. That offer the thrill that comes with intellectual adventure.
A dangerous idea does not require a clenched fist or a masked face to convince. A dangerous idea will invoke strength and courage, convince with undeniable truth. These are the dangerous ideas I believe in. These are the ones we need now more than ever.
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