I’ve just been thrown off a substack to which I was a paying subscriber for daring to make a negative comment about Ian Leslie’s latest post which was about a member of the gilded elite I had never heard of and which read to me like a typical entry in a celebrity columnist. This is what Leslie said in his reply -
This is absurd. The piece concerns one of the biggest financial news stories of the last year and the ethical questions surrounding it. I can't help it if you haven't been paying attention but just because you haven't heard about the story doesn't mean it's not important. The piece is quite clearly critical of the elites it describes; hardly brown-nosing. I will now voluntarily cancel your subscription for being such a dick
For anyone actually interested in the contretemps and Leslie’s stupid reaction I suggest you try to access https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/can-we-blame-sam-bankman-frieds-parents
The irony is that Ian Leslie wrote a (good) book called "Conflicted" in which he extolls the benefits of disputation - something which he clearly can't now bear!!
My blogger friend Boffy was kind enough to send me a note of support, making the good point that substack people tend to develop their little bubble which brooks no criticism – except that he put it rather more eloquently viz
Typical of the intolerance of a lot of discourse, nowadays, fuelled by the fact that large sections of the petty-bourgeois Left have closeted themselves away in "safe spaces" so as not to have to justify their arguments and behaviour, and can simply massage their ego by only talking to sycophants in their own tiny silos, whilst "no platforming", i.e. bureaucratically excluding any alternative view. It is actually the basis of totalitarianism.
So, even when they could simply defend their arguments, they now choose, often, not to do so. The whole atmosphere generated by the idea of "safe spaces", is also one that generates paranoia, particularly in the era of the Internet/social media, in which anyone, as with you, in this case, who simply posits an alternative view, even if based on a lack of knowledge/information, is immediately identified as being a cunning "bad actor", to be excluded without further ado. No good will come of it, and the Left certainly will only go backwards rather than forwards on that basis, much as happened with Stalinism in the 20th century.
UPDATE; And Ian Leslie is simply wrong in saying that "this is one of the biggest financial news stories", since there is a far more important issue – namely the US prosecution of Google for its monopolisation - see John Naughton’s latest article https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/30/google-antitrust-us-department-of-justice-court-case-monopoly
THE PIC - is of some French bookmarks I bought in a flea-market a decade or so ago. The ones at the top are wooden; those at the front plastic. And they are on the oak desk in my Carpathian mountain house
Typical of the intolerance of a lot of discourse, nowadays, fuelled by the fact that large sections of the petty-bourgeois Left have closeted themselves away in "safe spaces" so as not to have to justify their arguments and behaviour, and can simply massage their ego by only talking to sycophants in their own tiny silos, whilst "no platforming", i.e. bureaucratically excluding any alternative view. It is actually the basis of totalitarianism.
ReplyDeleteSo, even when they could simply defend their arguments, they now choose, often, not to do so. The whole atmosphere generated by the idea of "safe spaces", is also one that generates paranoia, particularly in the era of the Internet/social media, in which anyone, as with you, in this case, who simply posits an alternative view, even if based on a lack of knowledge/information, is immediately identified as being a cunning "bad actor", to be excluded without further ado.
No good will come of it, and the Left certainly will only go backwards rather than forwards on that basis, much as happened with Stalinism in the 20th century.
totally agree, Boffy - the irony is that this is the guy who wrote a (good) book called "Conflicted" about the advantages of disputation - something which he has clearly come to regret. Thanks for the comment B
DeleteAlso, glad to see that you have overcome the problem of being able to post comments to your blog you had been experiencing.
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