Covid-19 denial is feeding irrationalism and masking elite culpability

As Covid-19 continues to ravage the globe, the tragi-comic denial of the crisis shows no sign of abating. 

The scale, severity and very existence of this mass public health calamity is being wilfully denied by the most powerful and irrational forces on the planet.

An already infamous exchange between Donald Trump and a reporter on contrasting global death rates and the crisis gripping America is but the latest 'did that actually happen' moment in this all-too-real 'comedy show'.

As with climate change, Trump's waving of infantile 'America is doing better than the world' graphs is yet another alarming illustration of the cornered clown simply ignoring vast bodies of scientific evidence.

Boris Johnson, likewise, stumbles around like a clumsy circus act, evading responsibility for the carnage and playing the 'persevering populist'.

With so much at stake, it's humanity's terrible misfortune to have so many dangerously vacant and narcissistic people running the show at this most critical juncture. 

As with Trump's and Johnson's coming to power, the problem is deeply systemic rather than aberrational.

We've long been governed by corporate-serving, war-seeking, people-sacrificing, planet-destroying 'leaders'.

How fitting that the same life-denying, globe-killing neoliberal system which produced this continuity of villains should now give full stage to such a troubling troupe of virus-denying/minimising crazies.

From Trump to Johnson, an entire political elite are directly responsible for the tragic failure to protect lives and prevent the staggering extent of avoidable Covid-19 deaths. 

From the outset, their business-first priorities have been nothing less than a class assault on the poorest and most vulnerable.

As in the US, Tory 'interventionist' measures have been primarily capitalist-protecting, from concerns to insulate big corporate interests to handing out crony contracts for PPE and tracing services. 

So many lives uselessly lost. So much political negligence. So much unnecessary dislocation.

Masking the realities

As this self-serving class engage in every squalid effort to disguise their culpability and protect their positions, we should be equally focused on exposing their criminal actions.

Yet, rather than holding them, and the system that created them, directly to account, the same tragi-comic irrationalism seems to have infected a range of figures and platforms purporting to be of the 'indie left'. 

A faction of once apparently rational minds now seem more obsessed with deflecting elite conduct over the pandemic than holding it to account, veering off, instead, on a diversionary trail of preposterous claims and suppositions.

In this freakish hall of mirrors, much 'left' Covid-19 denial looks little different to the unhinged nonsense peddled by the libertarian right, from Breitbert to David Icke. 

In 'defence of civil liberties', it has now joined a feverish 'to the barricades' call for 'individual freedoms', perversely negating the very ideals of collectivist leftism.

Depressingly, it not only rejects well-respected scientific and public health advice on Covid-19, but, like the libertarian right, sees it as part of a dastardly 'grand plan' to impose some New World Order.

Trying to mark out this confused confluence is to be led through a veritable fantasy land of disjointed claims and conjecture, with not the remotest connection to real issues of power or class.

I shall refrain from name-checking the main exponents. (Alas, many have shown no such reticence in castigating, trolling and abusing others on the left not taken with their delusional outpourings.) It's enough just to record some of their crass assertions:

There is no pandemic

Covid-19 is just flu/another flu/a bad flu

Covid-19 is a hoax/scam/fraud

It's a Plandemic

An international elite deliberately planned/engineered Covid-19 in order to impose sweeping authoritarian controls

Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings helped engineer lockdown and mask-wearing as part of this pre-planned operation 

Rather than containment, herd immunity was the correct policy

Covid-19 should have been allowed to run through the community

Lockdowns are unnecessary and a violation of our liberties, rights and freedoms

There is no scientific proof or public health evidence that lockdowns work

Those observing lockdown and advocating masks are puritanical killjoys

Social distancing is nonsense, a dark strategy to keep us all apart

The 'R' number is meaningless, part of the same pseudo science

Mask-wearing is tyranny, a fear porn fuelled by grim, fun-hating politicians and wicked puppet governments

Muzzles (masks) have been deliberately imposed on the population to humiliate us, part of the pre-ordained plan

The deliberate purpose of masks is to stifle humanity and enforce complete obedience

Masks are being imposed in order to undermine our immune system 

The wearing of face nappies (masks) is enslavement

Mask-wearing will be made permanent 

We must all resist masks. This is the new Battle of Britain

A Christmas lockdown is in the planning in order to finally break us mentally

Don't get tested for Covid-19 as this only increases positive numbers and keeps lockdown going 

Leftists have all been duped into believing what the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other major scientific/public health bodies are saying about Covid-19

Captured leftists endorsing this science are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome 

The UK excess death figures of over 65,000, published by the Office of National Statistics, are false and meaningless

Doctors have been deliberately doctoring death certificates by citing Covid-19 in order to inflate the mortality figures

A sinister Covid-19 vaccine poison project is being run by billionaire Bill Gates

Covid-19 is being orchestrated to make vaccines mandatory in order to secure profits for Big Pharma

Covid-19 is part of a Grand Plan to impose a New World Order

Covid-19 is a pretext for realising Global Domination 

The WHO are a key party to the Grand Plan

The Plan, seeking to inflict World Government, is hidden within the UN's proposed (climate change) Agenda 21

Climate change is also a hoax/con/scam, part of the same Plan to control us

The Great Reset will see the next major step in implementing The Plan for World Government and Global Domination 

There's more, much more, of this stuff floating around social media. But this pretty much encapsulates the broad range of Covid-19 denial.

If one were really conspiratorially-minded, it might be tempting to see all this as some malevolent right-wing plot and narrative to discredit the left. But that would be to wander back into the fantasy maze itself.

It's not just this faction's multiple machinations over masks, or distancing, or surveillance, or vaccines that's problematic here. It's the ways in which, without any coherent explanation, these questions are all flung together as 'grand proof' of some deep authoritarian agenda.

Vulture capitalism 

Of course, not all Covid-19 deniers embrace every such ludicrous extremity.

Some more coherent elements seek validity by pointing out that big capitalists are using the global dislocation of Covid-19 to maximise profits, asset strip companies and reap state resources. Major parts of capital, they announce, are benefiting hugely from the virus.

Yet what serious leftist, or any other rational observer, wouldn't acknowledge such practices or fallouts?

Vulture capitalism is part of any such crisis. Indeed, capitalism is vulture economics. Financial speculators, in particular, have a vested interest in feeding uncertainty and dislocation, profiting handsomely from such volatility, as we saw in the 2008 banking crisis and the gigantic state bailouts which accompanied it. 

Disaster capitalism isn't an 'event', it goes on continually, all dutifully managed by neoliberal-serving governments.

And at times like this, the managers reach for 'big fixes' like the Great Reset.

Introduced by Prince Charles at the World Economic Forum in June 2020, and due to commence in January 2021, this is the latest attempt by global political and financial elites to 'rescue' the collapsing capitalist 'order'. 

In 'facing up' to the Covid-19 and climate change emergencies, it 'promises' a New Green Deal, supposedly serving to regenerate capitalist fundamentals. 

Like many other Davos-styled projects, it seeks to incorporate a whole array of left/liberal forces. 

In essence, this is a major capitalist lifeboat, seeking hegemonic consent. 

It may, indeed, be serving to assert or 'reset' capitalist authority.

But there's nothing here to suggest any 'great' corporate scheme, or desire, for ultra-authoritarian controls which would imperil a return to 'normal' consumer-driven profit. 

There's no actual evidence that it involves any 'grand plan' for global domination.

There's nothing remotely credible in the idea that major corporate forces have actually used or engineered the virus situation to impose and maintain sweeping lockdowns. 

And there's certainly no evidence that political elites were, or are, 'in' on any such 'plan'.

Why would Trump, Johnson, and the capitalist class they represent wish, or 'conspire', to crash their own capitalist economy, all in some devious plot to realise a 'new authoritarianism'? 

And why 'new' authoritarian order, as if the mass of humanity isn't already subject to the brutal forces of neoliberal capitalism?

Tory (and Labour) policymakers have shown no shortage of wicked ingenuity in crafting instruments to humiliate the poor and control the workforce. 

But what serious political gains might even harsh neoliberal governments derive from locking down entire populations in perpetuity?

As should be blindingly obvious, Johnson, Trump et al have done everything in their power to avoid lockdowns, masks and all other such disruption to business. 

Indeed, they rushed out of lockdown and back to 'business-as-usual' as soon as indecently possible - which is, predictably, why we've seen so many alarming surges in US deaths and infection rates across large parts of England.

Precautionary principles and elimination 

Why, moreover, did countries like Cuba, Venezuela and others not aligned with the dominant US neoliberal consensus move independently at the outset to lockdown and other containment positions?

Across the globe, states like New Zealand, Vietnam and South Korea also saw the early benefits of a swift containment and elimination strategy. 

This was based on rational science, past virus-handling experience and proven public health understandings of what had to be done in order to preserve life and, indeed, allow economies to re-open earlier. 

Contrast that with the mass deaths, social dislocation and wider health crisis caused by not acting in such early and precautionary ways.

The UK's belated airport, border and quarantine orders are but the latest weak and bumbling efforts to 'catch up' on 'containment' as it struggles to end lockdown and fully open up for business.

In contrast to Johnson's disastrous public health failings, one can now see a more hopeful policy shift in Scotland. 

Whatever the early tragic mistakes of the Scottish Government in following Johnson's Westminster line, the subsequent redirection towards a specific elimination goal (influenced by public health/advisory figures and others around Independent Sage) has shown that it is possible to keep community transmission and deaths at a very low, almost zero, level.

One key feature here is the reinstatement of a localised test and trace system - based on NHS confidentiality rather than England's privatised and centralised holding of information - serving to identify cluster outbreaks and quickly break transmission chains.

While there's still considerable room for improvement, that's a proven, science-grounded model of public health protection we can at least have some faith in. 

Again, importantly, it rests not on blustering notions of 'private freedoms', but on an ethos of social collectivism.

Rational collectivism

Covid-19 deniers reject all such public health interventions and messaging - a 'logical' rejection, of course, for those who deny that there even is a pandemic.

It's truly bewildering to see the obsessive time some of this faction have devoted to their 'cause', to the exclusion of almost every other key issue. 

Their Churchillian 'never' bombast in refusing to 'conform' and in support of 'freedom gatherings' is truly excruciating.

'What did you do during the virus?'

'I faced down minimum-wage supermarket workers in refusing to wear a mask.'

How very radical.

To think how so many are suffering in war zones, the imprisoned souls of Gaza being relentlessly bombed, the lives and homes being washed away by climate calamitous floods. And here some people are mounting insurrections over being asked to keep a temporary safe distance.

There's an entire world of elite warmongering, authoritarian power grabs and Cold War imperialism going on, and this faction want us all to join with them in their 'great battle' over masks!

That's not to minimise the many difficulties of life under Covid, the physical impacts, the mental distress, the deep social and economic consequences. These are bleak and dispiriting times.

But the focus of blame for so much of that should be on the criminal political class and system which, in its political negligence and capitalist greed, allowed it to happen.

Yes, there are key questions to be asked about wider health fallouts, such as the halting of cancer and other vital treatments. 

And we shouldn't dismiss the more general distrust people feel towards governments and their consequent wariness of vaccination programmes.

Nor, of course, is all of the science completely uniform in its understanding of the virus. Just as science is a process of learning, so too can we be critically receptive to emerging studies.

Yet, none of this merits the kind of fanatical reactions of Covid-19 deniers, the blanket dismissal of WHO-accepted science, the value of proven epidemiological practices and public health programmes. 

If each person does their small bit within their home, family, workplace and locale to maintain a little space, place a small cover over their face while on a train, bus or in a shop, observing basic scientific advice on suppressing a highly-contagious and dangerous virus, that doesn't make them a 'prisoner', 'muzzled', a 'puritanical killjoy', or obediently subject to some grand authoritarian plan to 'humiliate' and control the population.

It shows that they are engaged in acts of common public concern, underpinned by scientific logic, and showing elementary consideration for others. 

That's the more prosaic and simple truth about public compliance in a time of pandemic. Anything else is spurious distraction, feeding greater irrationalism and allowing the truly culpable to evade scrutiny.

Note:

I have not included specific links and references here. Instead, may I highly commend 'Myths of the Pandemic Deniers', a voluminously-referenced study by leftist academic Tim Anderson, taking apart the whole field of Covid-19 denial, exposing the falsities, distortions and scientific vacuousness of denier groupings and the dangers they pose to rational public health agendas.

May I also commend 'On Covid-19 And Authoritarian Abuses', an excellent and humbly honest article from Caitlin Johnstone casting deep doubt on the mass of unsubstantiated Covid-denying claims being peddled by some indie media platforms, and, while correctly defending their right to do so, calling out their smearing of other indie left platforms for refusing to join them.

Further reading:

5 COVID-19 myths politicians have repeated that just aren’t true

Nine COVID-19 Myths That Just Won’t Go Away

Unpacking the false narrative and real motivations behind 'cancel culture'

As fallout over the Harper's magazine 'cancel culture' letter grows, it's worth noting some significant response pieces helping to cut through the seeming tangle of argument, positions and agendas around it.

In particular, Jonathan Cook offers a key dissection of the real motives and issues behind the letter.

But first, there's the 'issue' of Noam Chomsky's inclusion amongst the list of signatories to consider.

Citing and siting Chomsky

At the outset, Cook accepts Chomsky's apparent reasons for signing the letter, in contrast to others on this list:

"Chomsky, importantly, is defending free speech for all, because he correctly understands that the powerful are only too keen to find justifications to silence those who challenge their power. Elites protect free speech only in so far as it serves their interests in dominating the public space."

Still, for Cook, this doesn't alter the problematic effect of Chomsky's signature in providing 'cover', or 'being used', for the kind of anti-left agenda being propagated by many others on the list. 

For Cook: "He made a mistake. He’s fallible."

Yet, as Cook makes clear, and clarifies in a second update to his article, this isn't, or shouldn't really be, about Chomsky at all, but about the letter itself, and what's driving it:

"Really, Chomsky shouldn’t be the issue. The issue should be that a bunch of centrists and right-wingers used this letter to try to reinforce a narrative designed to harm the left, and lay the groundwork for further curbs on its access to social media."

This, indeed, is the key point.

It can be added here that while there's legitimate discussion to be had over Chomsky's signing, leftists should really be invoking an actual Chomskian principle in not getting overly detained by it.

A past example from Chomsky himself (invoked in a more direct way by Cook in his piece) can be applied here:

'Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing'. 

By the same token, why help critically amplify Chomsky's name in the Harper's letter rather than highlight and challenge the main signatories and motives behind the letter itself?

Why give the right and centrists, including many of those same signatories, the added benefit of seeing their claims go unchallenged by diverting criticism away from them and towards Chomsky?

In short, the citing of Chomsky in this letter is less important here than the siting of him.

In the aftermath of the letter, Chomsky shows no regrets about his inclusion, noting the letters of support he's had from left academics and others fearful of the toxic climate of 'cancelling'.

But this is just more confirmation of his bona fide motivations in permitting his name to be used, as a true defender of free speech - a point, again, acknowledged by Cook in his piece.

Yet, at the same time - as Cook also rightly insists - that shouldn't inhibit us from noting the potentially harmful ways in which that inclusion can, indeed, be used.

And, as Chomsky himself no doubt understands, much of the right surely will use his inclusion in the letter as a means to attack the left.

Yet, Chomsky's vast body of work and lifetime effort towards truth and justice is sufficient evidence of his own progressive intent here.

Again, whether Chomsky was mistaken or not in lending his name here is not really the key issue. We can be sure, however, that his basic reasons for doing so still stands moral mountains higher than many of the figures on this list.

As with Cook, this writer won't be 'cancelling' Chomsky any time soon.

In contrast, you're highly unlikely to find many of the others on this list lauding Chomsky or his work, even after lending his name to their 'cause'. 

Indeed, it's so reflective of the posturing Harper's letter and it's lofty signatories that the most effectively marginalised and 'cancelled' figure of all by the same kind of liberal 'free-speechers' over so many years has been Chomsky himself.

A re-run of 'fake news'

The 'cancel culture' letter being peddled by many of these signatories and their proponents is reminiscent of how the whole 'fake news' framing was originated, embraced and driven by the same kind of entitled liberals. 

A large element of this involved Guardian, BBC and other established journalists fearing that online media and citizen journalism was undermining and exposing their own privileged 'right' to that long-held domain. 

The same kind of attack by the same kind of people is underway again here against the left. It's the same posturing attempt to 'retain' the moral high ground, using 'free speech' and 'persecution' tropes this time to push back and suppress real radical and alternative voices, most notably those calling out that very liberal entitlement.

Cook makes a similar kind of point in yet a third clarifying update to his piece:

"This letter won’t help the left because “cancel culture” is being framed – by this letter, by Trump, by the media – as a “loony lefty” problem. It is a new iteration of the “politically correct gone mad” discourse, and it will be used in exactly the same way."

In many cases, as with Rowling, it's also a rearguard 'vanity' response, with liberal celebrities using this 'halt illiberalism' line to push back against those criticising their own personal political positions. 

Ali Abunimah also comments on the "monumental hypocrisy" of such people in even claiming to be 'cancelled', or threatened with it, given the widespread platform they are still given across 'mainstream' media.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez makes similar valid points on entitlement and who is really being "cancelled" here.

The real test for many on this list and their exponents is how ready they are to take up much more difficult positions in defence of really purged figures like incarcerated journalist Julian Assange or the hounded Labour Party member Chris Williamson.

Very few of these figures, or Harper's itself, appear willing to stand up for greater discussion of taboo subjects like the right to criticise Israel and Zionism without being witch-hunted and expelled.

From the right-wing Frum to centrist Rowling, these are already highly privileged figures who are now getting an even more elevated platform to cast their complaints and views.

Many others, in contrast, are consigned to the silenced fringes. Consider, for example, Jackie Walker, another Labour member denigrated, removed and anonymised, with no support from the kind of celebrated signatories to this letter. 

Cancelling power

'Cancel culture' is not an encouragement to more expansive speech. It's actually a discouragement to those seeking to mount more action-based challenges to power from below. 

Are we now to inhibit or stop people calling out Blair and his accomplice in crime, Alastair Campbell? 

To do so is not just about wanting such figures 'cancelled'. It's about them being held to proper account, brought to justice. And a key part of this is about challenging a system of power that protects and grants them ongoing platforms. 

Which means ultimately, for any serious leftist, that this actually is about cancelling outlets like the Guardian as we seek to build truly independent and system-changing media.

As the backlash against the Harper's letter intensifies, discussion around 'cancel culture' isn't just exposing many of the signatories and their motives, it's also serving to put some of the 'media left' itself under new scrutiny. 

For example, Billy Bragg has written a response article strongly critical of the Harper's piece, making a similar set of valid points about the privileged nature of the signatories and their attempts to push back against a new generational movement of political and media voices.

Yet, as pointed out by Media Lens, we have the irony, some might say hypocrisy, here of Bragg placing his piece not at any such new social media space, truly reflective of that shift, but at the Guardian, an organ of that very 'older', more privileged media establishment, one that has not only sought to slap down alternative media voices, but actually led the cancel Corbyn agenda, and, as part of that smear campaign, sought to cancel out any discussion critical of Israel as 'antisemitic'. 

Lamentably, Bragg cannot even see the paradox of his consistent endorsement and support for the Guardian or its deep culpabilities here.

Owen Jones is an even more prominent leftist denouncing the whole 'cancel culture' line, again correctly pointing out that this is the powerful defending their privileged platforms and positions against new social media and marginalised voices. 

But, again, Jones himself is solidly ensconced within that same privileged world through his own tenure at, and relentless defence of, the Guardian. 

Jones was also part of the Labour-Guardian cabal that helped purge people like Williamson and Walker, and openly greeted the removal of Asa Winstanley, while eagerly defending the virulently anti-Corbyn Jewish Labour Movement. 

Again, like Bragg, Jones refuses to see or acknowledge both his own and the Guardian's key parts in that much more brutal and systematic cancelling.

All too typically, Jones has now blocked Williamson for daring to respond back to these latest criticisms of him - just as he has blocked Media Lens and critically reasoned others.

Again, like Media Lens, Cook is well seasoned in exposing and challenging this kind of 'cancelling'.

Feeding, exposing and using the narrative

There is, of course, the more familiar paradox here of 'narrative surge': that by actually engaging the Harper's letter, we are giving 'cancel culture' the very enhanced airing it seeks. 

Yet the inevitable hype and consequent opportunity to challenge the letter and its backers can also serve to expose that narrative itself. 

In showing how those who already have the highest platform are the ones being granted an even higher one, it's possible to subvert both that entitlement and the narrative supporting it.

The same exposure of that framing also serves the vital purpose of opening up for critical examination many of those doing the 'subverting', in particular those 'guardian leftists' acting as the 'vanguards' of independent media and in 'defence' of the purged while authenticating the very platforms and institutions engaged in protecting the entitled, purging so many dissenters and nullifying radical change.

Engagement in that debate may, again, seem like the very divisive outcome desired by right and centrist exponents of this letter. But it does serve to bring this much more comprehensive and crucial set of issues out in the open.

All round, that amounts to a pretty healthy, critical and constructive 'use' of this letter and the real issues around it.

But there's a further vital point to be made in this regard. Amid the fire and heat over this debate, even as we assertively argue our corners, it's easy to lose sight of the truly invaluable array of people and outlets, like Cook, Media Lens and others, serving to illuminate our understanding of such issues and how we best channel that awareness. 

Unlike the loaded, sanitised and conformist version of framing and 'analysis' handed down by the 'mainstream', this is a medium and process to be utilised and cherished, a very real learning process helping us to think, and re-think, through such difficult questions and how best to action them. And, of course, it's precisely these kind of writers, this set of resources, this capacity for tolerant, reasoned and system-changing debate that power is really intent on not just 'cancelling' but truly silencing.

Lofty liberals only reveal their own limitations and intolerance in calling for an end to 'cancel culture'

There's been wide reaction to a letter at Harper's magazine signed by varying notable figures calling for a greater defence of open speech and an end to 'cancel culture'.

As the piece states:

"The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought."

Noam Chomsky, a longstanding advocate of universal free speech, is included as a key signatory to the letter. 

But his name sits alongside an array of more liberal voices with rather less rightful claim as defenders of truly fearless speech.

Chomsky is essentially correct in his basic premise about the fundamental right to free and critical speech. 

This may sit uncomfortably with many leftists, notably those more inclined towards varying forms of  'identity politics'. 

But Chomsky's imperative of free speech for all should be seen neither as a liberal clarion call, nor as an undermining of any radical politics or movements.

And, to be absolutely clear here, Chomsky is not defending racists, the far-right or, as even more ignorant charges suggest, Holocaust deniers. Nor does he defend any right to hate speech or incitement to violence.

But the real issue here is not actually with Chomsky or his position on free speech. 

Rather, it's the contrived way in which the letter itself is being presented as a 'noble liberal backlash' against 'intimidation' of those wishing open discussion.

And, as the great liberal alarm call over 'fake news' goes relentlessly on, this false narrative has even deeper implications for how the very 'problem' of free speech is being framed, and who has the right to frame it. 

Much more alarmingly, we're seeing how big social media corporations are now acquiring the power and 'moral authority' to decide what views are permissible - all in insidious agreement with elite state forces. 

Ban one from the right and 'balance' it up with exclusion of one from the left. All seemingly neutral, responsible and benign. Yet before you know it, big swathes of progressive voices are suddenly gone, leaving us with a vacuous landscape of safe, compliant liberal centrism.

Chomsky himself would certainly recognise and warn against that danger to free speech, unlike, one suspects, many others on this list.

A good litmus test for people like Frum, Ignatieff, Nelson, Rowling, Atwood and many other 'free-speechers' here is how they use their voices on Israel. 

How many of these 'guardians' of open, expansive speech are up in arms over the right to criticise Israel, or are seeking to amplify Palestinian voices? 

How many here are openly questioning the growing taboo and climate of fear around even mentioning Israel's crimes and its apartheid state? 

Even if they don't uphold Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, how many are ready to call for open and expansive discussion of the legitimate claims behind it? 

This is real cancel culture.

How many of these figures, so apparently concerned over the closure of probing discourse, are worried enough to condemn the Labour Party's McCarthyite witch-hunting of members who question the doctrine of Zionism? 

How many are calling out the dark alignment of forces within that party now purging anyone who dares critically discuss Israel's ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism and ongoing violations of international law? 

Chomsky does. Consistently. Do any of the others?

Remember all that liberal je suis Hebdo breast-beating in supposed defence of all political views, however difficult? In France itself, you're likely to get locked up now for condemning Israel.

Nor are you likely to hear many of the figures on this list speak up for Julian Assange, or call out the rest of the 'tolerant liberal media's' effective closure of discussion around both his vital journalistic exposures or his ongoing persecution. 

Chomsky, of course, again stands as a consistent and moral voice in this and all such cases.

Yet while Chomsky has earned the moral right to put his name to any letter on free speech, we're also entitled to wonder about the very usefulness of placing it here alongside such figures, and on a liberal  platform which itself serves to manage and control the parameters of 'dangerous' views and discussion. 

Publications like Harper's, as with almost all liberal 'mainstream' media, readily laud 'open, challenging speech' while effectively filtering, through 'in-house' selection, editorial omission and other such means the permissible range of 'difficult' topics and radical voices.

Paradoxically, and unfortunately, Chomsky's honourable position on free speech has been used here as kind of fig leaf to mask this publication's, and the wider liberal media's, own effective limiting of radical discourse.

It is pure liberal posturing.

The real issue for expansive, fearless discussion here is the vital part that safe, conformist, establishment-serving media and academia at large play in toning down dissent, incorporating radical movements and policing output which exposes that very liberal 'authority' and its claims to speak as the 'principal guardian of our freedoms'. 

The career interests at stake in the perpetuation of this self-promoting illusion are, of course, considerable.

All that much more vital discussion has been cancelled out by the faux liberal-generated narrative around this story. 

While bewailing 'cancel culture', such liberal voices have been only too ready to cancel, de-platform and ghost radical voices. 

And the most disgracefully ghosted and marginalised of them all over the years has been Chomsky himself.

Many such big names, again with the notable exception of Chomsky, have been all too willing to throw progressives and the causes they wish to raise under the bus. 

Again, one only need look at coy journalists at outlets like the Guardian in working relentlessly to cancel Corbyn and his left agenda, and using the 'antisemitism' smear to cancel out so many decent critics of Israel.

The easy liberal claim here is that we should all be striving for more brave discussion and debate. 

But where is their boldness of action in examining their own elite consensus, resisting McCarthyite culture and defending the truly cancelled?