“That was a time when New York Times journalists and academics would take to Twitter to distance themselves publicly from a newly controversial colleague while fantasising about how they’d decorate that colleague’s desk once assigned it after their Twitter-mob-fuelled firing”, Laura Kennery writes. It is the essence of political correctness: not merely a dreadful ideology, but a form of lethal competition. It feeds a frenzy of crowd-sourced vengeance. Everyone watches everyone else; everyone records everyone else. Anyone can be accused of not being sufficiently purist. The result is relentless pressure toward radicalization.
Notice, though, that Kennedy speaks in the past tense. The situation is more complicated now. Liberal opportunities have dwindled in some quarters, and openings for conservative or neutral positions are, by contrast, multiplying. If you join a public witch-hunt too eagerly today, you may find some new doors closing on you. The wiser tread more carefully.
That shift has not fully arrived in the Czech Republic, and it may not. But consider this: beneath a headline-grabbing scandal like Filip Turek’s Twitter affair, the signature is not that of a fearless editor but of a minor functionary — the little clerk whose job is to sign off on delicate pieces. When the chips are down, she is the one you can sacrifice without trouble.