Although some of us remember him in the run-up to, and then for several years after, the invasion of Iraq, Nick Cohen
"Political correctness" is a treacherous
ideology, which can turn you upside down. I avoid the term if I can because it
has a double meaning.
On the one hand, it describes a liberal and in my view admirable campaign to persuade institutions and the wider population to treat people equally regardless of gender, colour or sexual orientation. Like all campaigns in democracies, it can win only by winning arguments.
But political correctness has become a despised term because it also means the silencing of arguments.
Liberal authoritarians, a description that would once have been oxymoronic, have trampled down the boundary that allowed the law to punish speech only if it directly inspired violence – a racist speaker urging a crowd to attack a mosque, a religious fanatic calling for the murder of gay people.
Instead of engaging in unrestrained argument against opponents who threaten no violence, they demand that the police arrest them, that universities ban them, or that employers fire them, as happened with a Christian, Adrian Smith, who, after posting his opposition to gay marriage, was sacked by Trafford Housing Trust.
Matthew Goodwin, the co-author of a recent study of Ukip, said the radical right was triumphing because it could pose as an honest spokesman for popular concerns.
Forty per cent of working-class voters thought they had no representation in politics, he said, a figure that should terrify the British left [Why? That has always been the proportion, or slightly less, of the working class that would never vote Labour in a million years]. They saw Farage as a liberator because he allowed people to speak their minds.
Or some people.
Last weekend, Cambridge police sent two officers to the home of Michael Abberton to accuse him of posting a politically incorrect tweet.
After thinking that the Home Office had not cut the Cambridgeshire constabulary's budget hard enough, if it could afford to waste public money harassing free citizens, I took a deep breath and wondered what "crime" Abberton had committed.
Real or imagined homophobia, racism or sexism, that had harmed no one? It had to be one of the above. No, it was a satirical mock-up of a Ukip poster, of the type people tweet every day.
The officers told him to take the tweet down, he said, and to make sure he told no one about their sinister visit either.
Like a true free-born Briton, Abberton refused.
After the coppers left, he wondered how the police had found his address, when it is not on his Twitter profile, and why they had come to his home on a Saturday afternoon and threatened him, just because his tweet had offended a Ukip councillor.
"This is not 1930s Germany," Cambridgeshire police said as it sought to explain away its intimidation. This was hardly reassuring.
If police officers use the "at least we're not as bad as Hitler" defence, every abuse short of starting a world war becomes permissible.
And Ukip will encourage the abuses. The Abberton case shows the supposed defenders of plain-speaking common sense are more than willing to call 999 to silence their critics.
The worst of the right goes on to imitate the worst of the left in echoing the self-pitying cry that it is a victim of a vast elite conspiracy.
Except this time the conspiracy is not patriarchy or neoliberberalism but anyone who engages in the vigorous debate. (You can witness what happens to Farage when properly cross-examined, as he was last week by James O'Brien on LBC.)
Farage began the sob story when he announced that the media had whipped up a "storm of hatred" against Ukip. By "whip up", he meant that a free press had examined the lavish expense claims of Ukip politicians and told the electorate about their political views.
Farage moved on to say that his opponents in Unite Against Fascism and Hope not Hate were Labour-led, taxpayer-funded organisations that were threatening him with violence. He was a persecuted dissident: a modern Mandela in a blazer and cords.
Farage did not mention that Unite Against Fascism is a tiny group run by the Socialist Workers party. Hardly anyone on the far left, let alone the rest of British society, has associated with it ever since women members revealed how the party hushed up their accusations that SWP commissars had raped them.
Meanwhile, far from being a gang of thugs, Hope Against Hate is an inspirational organisation. It's never been violent. It is not Labour-led.
How could it be? Until recently, Ed Miliband has ducked a confrontation with Ukip and wastes his time deriding Nick Clegg, who, for all his faults, at least knows that Farage must be fought.
Most of Hope Not Hate's supporters are from the left, but it works with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
In the days when Farage seemed more anti-EU than anti-immigrant, Ukip said it was happy to work with it too and discuss how to spot far-right infiltrators.
Nick Lowles, founder of Hope Not Hate, tells me he knew that Ukip was going wrong when the party's then chief executive failed to show up at a meeting.
It's not what Hope Not Hate does but how it does it that matters.
It does not say Ukip is a fascist party. It does not damn all Ukip supporters as racists. Rather, it goes on to the streets and argues.
By the time of the election, thousands of supporters will have delivered eight-page newspapers to several million homes.
Their articles talk in a straightforward English that the academic left cannot master about how unscrupulous parties use hatred of foreigners to divert attention from the need for higher wages and better jobs.
Certainly, they mention the Ukip politicians who dine long and well at public expense and their attitudes to women, black people and gay people.
But that is democratic politics, not a police matter, and if Farage cannot handle democratic politics, he should seek a less demanding trade.
That so many on left and right want to punish opponents tells us one of two things.
It may be that the British think that argument is too weak a means to express their righteous disapproval and only punishment can satiate their fury.
In which case, they do not know that argument can be strong, unconstrained, as vulgar as you want, and devastating.
Or it may be that large sections of British society no longer know how to argue and banning is all they can do.
On the one hand, it describes a liberal and in my view admirable campaign to persuade institutions and the wider population to treat people equally regardless of gender, colour or sexual orientation. Like all campaigns in democracies, it can win only by winning arguments.
But political correctness has become a despised term because it also means the silencing of arguments.
Liberal authoritarians, a description that would once have been oxymoronic, have trampled down the boundary that allowed the law to punish speech only if it directly inspired violence – a racist speaker urging a crowd to attack a mosque, a religious fanatic calling for the murder of gay people.
Instead of engaging in unrestrained argument against opponents who threaten no violence, they demand that the police arrest them, that universities ban them, or that employers fire them, as happened with a Christian, Adrian Smith, who, after posting his opposition to gay marriage, was sacked by Trafford Housing Trust.
Matthew Goodwin, the co-author of a recent study of Ukip, said the radical right was triumphing because it could pose as an honest spokesman for popular concerns.
Forty per cent of working-class voters thought they had no representation in politics, he said, a figure that should terrify the British left [Why? That has always been the proportion, or slightly less, of the working class that would never vote Labour in a million years]. They saw Farage as a liberator because he allowed people to speak their minds.
Or some people.
Last weekend, Cambridge police sent two officers to the home of Michael Abberton to accuse him of posting a politically incorrect tweet.
After thinking that the Home Office had not cut the Cambridgeshire constabulary's budget hard enough, if it could afford to waste public money harassing free citizens, I took a deep breath and wondered what "crime" Abberton had committed.
Real or imagined homophobia, racism or sexism, that had harmed no one? It had to be one of the above. No, it was a satirical mock-up of a Ukip poster, of the type people tweet every day.
The officers told him to take the tweet down, he said, and to make sure he told no one about their sinister visit either.
Like a true free-born Briton, Abberton refused.
After the coppers left, he wondered how the police had found his address, when it is not on his Twitter profile, and why they had come to his home on a Saturday afternoon and threatened him, just because his tweet had offended a Ukip councillor.
"This is not 1930s Germany," Cambridgeshire police said as it sought to explain away its intimidation. This was hardly reassuring.
If police officers use the "at least we're not as bad as Hitler" defence, every abuse short of starting a world war becomes permissible.
And Ukip will encourage the abuses. The Abberton case shows the supposed defenders of plain-speaking common sense are more than willing to call 999 to silence their critics.
The worst of the right goes on to imitate the worst of the left in echoing the self-pitying cry that it is a victim of a vast elite conspiracy.
Except this time the conspiracy is not patriarchy or neoliberberalism but anyone who engages in the vigorous debate. (You can witness what happens to Farage when properly cross-examined, as he was last week by James O'Brien on LBC.)
Farage began the sob story when he announced that the media had whipped up a "storm of hatred" against Ukip. By "whip up", he meant that a free press had examined the lavish expense claims of Ukip politicians and told the electorate about their political views.
Farage moved on to say that his opponents in Unite Against Fascism and Hope not Hate were Labour-led, taxpayer-funded organisations that were threatening him with violence. He was a persecuted dissident: a modern Mandela in a blazer and cords.
Farage did not mention that Unite Against Fascism is a tiny group run by the Socialist Workers party. Hardly anyone on the far left, let alone the rest of British society, has associated with it ever since women members revealed how the party hushed up their accusations that SWP commissars had raped them.
Meanwhile, far from being a gang of thugs, Hope Against Hate is an inspirational organisation. It's never been violent. It is not Labour-led.
How could it be? Until recently, Ed Miliband has ducked a confrontation with Ukip and wastes his time deriding Nick Clegg, who, for all his faults, at least knows that Farage must be fought.
Most of Hope Not Hate's supporters are from the left, but it works with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
In the days when Farage seemed more anti-EU than anti-immigrant, Ukip said it was happy to work with it too and discuss how to spot far-right infiltrators.
Nick Lowles, founder of Hope Not Hate, tells me he knew that Ukip was going wrong when the party's then chief executive failed to show up at a meeting.
It's not what Hope Not Hate does but how it does it that matters.
It does not say Ukip is a fascist party. It does not damn all Ukip supporters as racists. Rather, it goes on to the streets and argues.
By the time of the election, thousands of supporters will have delivered eight-page newspapers to several million homes.
Their articles talk in a straightforward English that the academic left cannot master about how unscrupulous parties use hatred of foreigners to divert attention from the need for higher wages and better jobs.
Certainly, they mention the Ukip politicians who dine long and well at public expense and their attitudes to women, black people and gay people.
But that is democratic politics, not a police matter, and if Farage cannot handle democratic politics, he should seek a less demanding trade.
That so many on left and right want to punish opponents tells us one of two things.
It may be that the British think that argument is too weak a means to express their righteous disapproval and only punishment can satiate their fury.
In which case, they do not know that argument can be strong, unconstrained, as vulgar as you want, and devastating.
Or it may be that large sections of British society no longer know how to argue and banning is all they can do.
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