A Heretic's Manifesto

by Brendan O'Neill
Spiked, 2023, 172 pages
reviewed by T. Nelson

ow to respond to the wave of tyranny sweeping the West? That is the question Brendan O'Neill, chief political editor of Spiked, asks in this 172-page op-ed.

O'Neill says “cancel culture” is too soft a term for what we're up against. We are living, he says, through “one of the gravest reversals of free thought and of Enlightenment itself in modern times.”

One response might be to document what they're doing, and why. O'Neill says identity politics is caused by a crisis of identity. People feel unmoored from the real world, so they adopt a pretend identity as a substitute for authenticity. It becomes a triumph of appearance over truth, group identity over merit, feelings over thought, and pretense over honesty. So they might pretend to be a Native tribesman. Or invent a new sex. Or just say outrage­ously false things, like “a woman can have a penis” and attack anyone who disagrees.

Others would speculate that this is the product of the ‘snowflake’ generation, which seemed to be afraid of its own shadow and so cut itself off from the real world. Or maybe it's a product of post-modern­ism's idea that everything is power and everything, even one's identity, is part of a struggle for dominance and power.

But O'Neill isn't really concerned with the history or psycho­pathology of the ideas. He does document how treating people according to their group identity instead of as individuals resurrects everything we had once abandoned as evil: racism, class hatred, lists of approved and prohibited words, coerced speech, censorship, conformism, and intolerance. But he doesn't waste time trying to understand garbage: the activists already know their beliefs are self-contra­dictory. That's why they can only be maintained by force. O'Neill says the solution is to be heretical and never stop nattering about it.

Glorious intemperance is a virtue that defenders of free speech might be wise to resurrect. . . . A good heretic never falls silent, in any circumstance.

In the last chapter, O'Neill embarks on one of the most eloquent and inspiring defenses of freedom of speech I have ever seen. He writes:

People are right to sometimes feel afraid of words. Words are dangerous. When they say words wound, we should say: ‘I agree.’ . . . It is precisely because words can wound, precisely because of their power to unsettle, that they should never be restricted. . . .

When we hide ourselves and our ideas from contestation, debate, mockery, and rebuke, our minds become ossified. We start to believe what we believe not because we have tested it against the doubts and disagreements of others, but because we just know it is right. This is how an idea becomes a catechism, how an individual turns from a free thinker into the imperious holder of what he presumes to be perfect, untouchable, unquestionable beliefs. [p. 168]

So, while other authors ably dissect the contradictions and the absurdities and the dogma disguised as science to hide its unfalsifiability, Brendan O'Neill gives us an impassioned and articulate defense of freedom of speech. And maybe that's even more important.

aug 08, 2023. updated aug 10, 2023