If the recent convulsions in France have reminded us of anything, it’s that the radical, post-literate left seems far more interested in causing disruption than engaging in rational argument. It prompted us to recall that here in Britain we also have our own variety of ultragauche militants. And that reality was made evident on Friday at Cambridge University, when students stormed a lecture being given by James Orr, the former head of policy at Reform UK, and accused him of spreading fascism and hatred on campus.
The activist accused Orr of being complicit in the death of Jason Arday, the disgraced Cambridge academic
Orr, an associate professor of religion at Cambridge, is known for hosting meetings for postgraduate students at his home on the outskirts of the city, which the Financial Times recently described as ‘an alternative Cambridge college – a refuge from the liberal academy,’ a venue where ‘Orr’s brand of Christian nationalism’ is discussed and disseminated.
Such an ideology of ‘faith, family and flag’, as his opponents are apt to call it, and his association with Reform, one which ended ignominiously in September after a Channel 4 News investigation led to accusations that he was trying to circumvent electoral laws on foreign political donations (Orr has denied wrongdoing and an internal Reform inquiry cleared him of having acted illegally), have both combined to make him a target of student vilification at Cambridge.
So it was to no-one’s shock when on Friday two student activists members of the Fire James Orr Campaign disrupted a lecture he was delivering, where the first charged him with being ‘responsible for the rise of hatred in this country. Transphobia, sexism, and racism in this due to you as head of policy for Reform UK’.
‘Don’t take it from me as an undergraduate. Take it from the lecturers, the supervisors, and the postgrads who condemn what you do,’ he continued. ‘You preach inequality and hierarchies at this university.’
Apart from the self-righteous presumption of this intrusion and its hyperbolic content, what is striking about the accusations are their incoherent and contradictory substance. Calling Orr ‘responsible’ for the ‘rise of hatred in this country’ is not merely vacuous overstatement: where is the proof that the professor is responsible for this rise? Can the activist establish a cause and effect relationship between the two? He might be confusing causation with correlation. In that case, instead of reading Michel Foucault or Edward Said, he and his cohorts might be better served by studying David Hume and Immanuel Kant.
Perhaps, like many ultra-progressives, and even those on the centre-left, he fails to see that Orr’s ideology and the people drawn to it are themselves the symptom of a populist revolt that surfaced ten years ago, of which the Brexit vote and the rise of Reform UK were also symptoms. The likes of James Orr and Nigel Farage are not merely ‘first mover’ agents who have changed people’s minds. They are the products of a wave of discontent that has been emerging in the past three decades. They are as much the symptoms as the causes of this wave.
The protestor also accuses Orr of preaching ‘hierarchies’, seemingly oblivious to the reality that all institutions depend on hierarchies, of structures which permit juniors to defer to their superiors, as he himself does when – paradoxically – he invokes the authority of his lecturers, supervisors and postgrads to support his argument.
That latter tactic is hardly likely to sway those who believe that Cambridge University, and academia in general, is rotten to the core, institutions which have been infected and compromised by hyperliberal ideology. Only on Monday, we read in the Times a survey by the Student Publication Association which found that many student newspapers were being censored and obstructed by universities and students’ unions, which it accuses of suppressing stories and banning criticism. But censorship is inherent to hyperliberalism, which makes it a bit rich to hear from Orr’s first censorious disruptor the defence: ‘I am practising freedom of speech.’
The second activist accused Orr of being complicit in the death of Jason Arday, the disgraced Cambridge academic who was found dead following intense media coverage this summer. He said: ‘You are tied to a national network of national conservatives who were complicit in the social lynching of Jason Arday.’ Once more the hyperbole and conspiratorial tone. Once more the lack of proof and the failure to establish causal relationship between one event taking place and another following as a consequence. There was no ‘racist witch hunt’ in the first place, there being no evidence of racist intent or racially-motivated harassment in media revelations of Arday’s unprofessionalism.
Rather than highlighting the problem of the ‘far right’ in this country, this stunt has merely reinforced the realisation that, like our neighbours in Europe, we have a grave problem with the far left. Not only are they infantile and given to histrionics and street theatre – that much became clear with Just Stop oil – they are also slaves to dogma. This is why they make wild accusations, repeat slogans and cliches, and show little sign of original, rational thought.
Comments