dogmatistBelow is one of the comments by someone named David on a Karl du Fresne blogpost entitled  “The year of vicious left-wing puritanism” which surprisingly, given its support of Hard Left dogma, the Dominion Post published on 9 January (perhaps a less doctrinaire relieving editor was in charge).

It makes some very valid points which we feel should be spread more widely.

I’m becoming increasingly concerned about a fairly major threat to freedom of speech that is coming from much of the Anglo-world media as well as academia, its students and the teaching profession. This means it is now dominating public discussion with only one view allowed. Entire generations of young people are now leaving schools and universities thoroughly indoctrinated with it. The past few weeks have seen it raging and I suspect this will only get worse.

This threat comes from an “emergency” that is so all-encompassing it not only can’t be disproved, but virtually everything that happens everywhere is claimed to be caused by it and proof of it, according to its promoters. It’s a Theory of Everything, but not the one physicists have been seeking since Einstein.

Something so dogmatic used to be called religion, and those who questioned it were deemed heretics and often paid with their livelihoods and even their lives. Science eventually triumphed over such dogmatism. The science that gave us everything that has made life on this planet so great for billions of people invited challenge because only by challenging it could science and the world improve.

Followers of this rigid new orthodoxy call it “science,” but its dogmatic, fanatical promoters won’t allow their “science” to be challenged, which makes it truly a religion, not science.

Those who could be contrary opinion-formers who try to inject some inconvenient facts are trashed (often right around the world simultaneously in co-ordinated attacks) in the mainstream media and in social media to the extent fewer and fewer people dare speak up. Those who do are starting to lose their jobs; demands are already being heard to make it a criminal offence to challenge this new religion.

You will rarely find any contrary views, let alone challenges, in the mainstream media because most Anglo-speaking media got together last year in an arrangement coordinated by The Guardian and Columbia Journalism Review and agreed to promote their cause as the “biggest emergency in history” and to ban contrary views. You only see the whiff of a contrary view when the media hurl ridicule against any public figure who questions their dogma. In NZ, Stuff, Radio NZ and TVNZ and probably others are party to this agreement. It’s not a conspiracy, or a secret. They trumpeted their joining it. They are proud to be supporting the righteous cause.

Journalists used to be committed to uncovering the truth, no matter how inconvenient. As a profession they were wary of spin and looked out for propaganda, which they called out and treated with contempt. Not any more. Many of today’s journalists are banner-wavers and ardent promoters of a massive propaganda campaign on an international scale the like of which the world has never seen.

Orwell would probably be astounded at how quickly and totally this campaign has come to dominate the public space, with virtually every news item on whatever subject being linked to it one way or another. No news bulletin goes without at least one homily and often many. No long-form item, documentary or extended interview goes without reaching it eventually, if not in the first line.

I’m totally at a loss working out how to combat it because you can’t. Ordinary folk like me are immediately dismissed as loons if we say anything publicly. Those who could make a difference by speaking out no longer dare. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?