Respectful Discussion in the Lions’ Den

“Decency is Indecency’s Conspiracy of Silence” – George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists, 1903 Recently the trans discourse has inevitably turned back to whether trans people are being ‘respectful’ enough. Cis people complain that trans attitudes are “too hostile”, “too confrontational”. Whether that’s Chris McEleny’s self-contradictory victim-blaming bullshit in The Herald, or the accusation that […]

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No, You’re the Real Fascists

A quote often attributed to Winston Churchill is something along the lines of:- In the future, fascists will call themselves anti-fascists. There are a few problems with this quote, firstly that Churchill never said it, and secondly that, as Orwell pointed out, it’s not consistent to oppose fascism while (as Churchill did) supporting the way […]

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George Orwell's Coming Up for Air

Fight or Flight

In Coming Up for Air (published in June 1939, months before the Second World War legitimised it), George Orwell wrote about the impulse to do violence against fascists. He was attending a lecture by an anti-fascist at the Left Book Club in London, and, momentarily, found himself within the head of the speaker:- I saw […]

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