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The past, Murray says, is 'hostage — like everything else — to any archeologist with a vendetta'

This new religion gives permission to those of “oppressed” status — women, people of colour, indigenous peoples, LGBTQ — to hate their oppressors: heterosexual white men, racists, transphobics. (Gay himself, Murray refuses to play the LGBTQ card as the sole, or even most important marker of his humanity.) For many unlucky people, a silly joke tweeted, an incorrect opinion on Facebook or an inadvertently touched knee can be the kiss of death to career and reputation. Murray provides plenty of examples of good people cut down without mercy — indeed with unseemly relish — by relentlessly vigilant activists.

Toby Young, for example, once divided his time between journalism and the New Schools Network, where he worked to help disadvantaged children get a better education. Long story short, a few naughty references to “boobs” on Twitter, excavated by the usual suspects, lost him a government appointment and all his writing gigs in a fusillade of opprobrium. Too good a mind to waste, Young is now the U.K. editor of Quillette magazine, “a platform for heterodox ideas,” ironically one of several excellent magazines that have sprung up in a polemical resistance movement to cancel culture.

In fact, Murray muses during our chat, “It’s a good time for someone who’s got an appetite for writing. If they think writing is a way to pursue truth — this is a great time. We live in an incredibly target-rich environment.”

Photo by Postmedia News

I asked Murray if he followed news of Canada’s more egregious cancel-culture incidents. Yes, very much so. And he had some trenchant words of advice for us.