Earlier this year, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, one of our greatest writers, expressed anxiety that young authors were being forced into self-censorship out of fear of being trolled by the anonymous lynch mobs of the politically correct.
He said that he felt safe himself, because he was already well-established: ‘It may be an illusion, but I think I am protected.’
Ish may be more protected than I am by the fact that he is not white. I, too, am established and we are the same age but, for years now, I have felt that I have had to self-censor.
This is mainly out of consideration for my editors, who display mild panic at every sign of political incorrectness.
I don’t know whether or not they actually are ‘wokesters’ — I rather doubt it — but I think they might be terrified of those who are.
Everyone dreads being trolled by the Pharisees who pray in public, our social-justice and identity warriors.
I refer to the kind of people who force students to take unconscious bias exams in which you have to admit to things of which you are not guilty because otherwise you don’t pass; to those who have ‘cancelled’ or ‘no-platformed’ both our most influential modern feminist (Germaine Greer) and our most popular storyteller (JK Rowling) in order not to be ‘triggered’, and to be ‘safe’.
