Mere words are now criminal. We are inching towards totalitarianism

Politics has become entangled with subjective experience, yet nobody seems to realise how dangerous this is

Politics is currently dominated by unusually intense moral debate. The coverage and analysis of the day to day events that constitute the business of governments – our own and those of other countries – is dominated by explicit questions of good and evil.

There is nothing new about this in principle: political philosophy in every civilised society, even autocratic ones, has involved an attempt to institutionalise virtue. That was the whole point of legitimate rule. This idea prevailed even before the modern democratic era which embodied those ideals in official documents. From Plato and Pericles to Hume and Jefferson, the object of political life has been to create a social order, enshrined in a legal code, in which good behaviour (however that was defined) would overcome bad inclinations.

But there is something absurdly surreal about the fact that the two stories dominating the heated arguments of the moment are so wildly different in their moral implications and importance – and that no one appears to think this odd or even worthy of comment. The first question is, what constitutes war crime, specifically genocide? And the second is: should it be a criminal offence to misgender someone? The first one, following a century in which there was calculated, documented murder of whole ethnic and national populations, is of huge and urgent significance.

The second is ridiculous. Indeed by the standards of political discussion which prevailed until about 20 minutes ago, it is meaningless. (Who would have guessed that the word “misgendering” would become commonplace so readily that it could be written into law?) And yet somehow, these two matters are being treated with virtually identical solemnity and fervour by politicians themselves, and by those who influence and interpret their actions.

This is particularly strange given the gravity of the first issue. Surely the need to address the questions raised by the wars in Gaza and Ukraine are so profound and critical that the decadence of the trumped-up “misgendering” farrago should have been obvious.

How on earth did we get here? Could this be the logical conclusion of that 1970s feminist slogan “the personal is political’’? We have now apparently accepted without reservation that the private, subjective experience of individuals is a proper matter for the state: that hurt feelings are as much the concern of the law as murder or theft.

Perhaps the only thing that these two disparate controversies have in common is the extent to which they rely on the definition of significant words. In the case of “genocide”, this is crucial. That is the name given to a uniquely heinous form of crime which has very specific criteria: it can only be legitimately used against a state or a military operation whose goal is to wipe out – eliminate by mass murder – an entire people. The obvious paradigmatic case of this was the killing of Jews during the Holocaust. It is now the stated aim of Hamas to eliminate Israelis – and, in some of the formulations, all Jews.

To suggest that Israel’s response to this intention is, itself, a form of genocide is simply wrong. It is possible to describe Israel’s actions under Benjamin Netanyahu’s premiership as ruthless and unethical but not as genocidal because the intention is to eliminate Hamas, which is a terrorist organisation, not the Palestinians as a people who are collateral damage.

This distinction is at the heart of the difference between moral absolutes and political decisions. The Netanyahu policy may or may not be theoretically justified but it is unquestionably a political disaster. It has, in effect, created the appearance of a moral equivalence between the horrific initiating actions of Hamas and Israel’s response to those actions. Politics may be based on abstract values but it must come to terms with visible consequences in the real world. Arguing about what words mean can get you only so far when it comes to perceptions of events.

Whereas, in the parallel universe of gender identity in which contrived outrage creates a simulacrum of political unrest, there is no difference between words and the real world. The words themselves are the crime. By prohibiting the uttering of wrong words, the intention is obviously to eliminate the possibility of wrong thoughts. Totalitarian regimes have always relied on the policing of language, refusing to accept any distinction between words and acts, which is why modern revolutionary republics place such emphasis on freedom of speech. What is happening before our eyes is nothing less than the criminalising of consciousness.

Why are the official agencies of government so complacent about this? What counts as politics – and the legitimate domain of government – has become entangled with personal psychology and subjective experience which is not susceptible to any objective test.

On the face of it, the moral injunction to “be kind” seems unimpeachable but kindness itself is subject to individual interpretation: one person’s show of kindness is another’s insulting condescension.

Even more dangerously, what appears to be kindness at any given moment – for example, the indulgence of a child’s judgement about his sexuality – can be an irresponsible mistake which will bring untold future damage. So what is kindness? And what are the moral and practical risks of legislating to enforce it?

Somehow we have arrived at a place that the West never expected to inhabit. A generation after the collapse of the most powerful totalitarian regime in modern history, the “free world” has apparently lost its grip on the relationship between moral values and political decisions which was once its greatest strength.

The idea had seemed to win out against all the odds: that a government could uphold fundamental first principles of justice, liberty and the authority of the law while still responding realistically to changes in popular opinion and social conditions. This was a truly miraculous understanding of the relationship between morality and politics and, difficult as it might have been to manage, it seemed to deliver the life most people wanted.

It’s hard to believe but we might be witnessing the end of it.