Drawing on historical parallels, Edward Skidelsky at The Critic considers how today’s slipperiness of language and its meanings may be worrying signs of totalitarianism, even as, formally, we continue to live in a democracy
This view of affirmation as the perfection of tolerance — “super-tolerance”, as it were — is misleading. In reality, the demand for affirmation entails a new form of intolerance, all the more powerful for not being recognised as such. For logically, if affirmation is required, non-affirmation is forbidden. There can be no tolerance for the unaffirming.