Defend Owen Jones

‘By not appealing exclusively to the full range of their sensibilities he had outed himself as a traitor and as no longer worthy of respect.’

Some days ago Owen jones wrote an article. In this article he pointed out that the refusal of many remainers to accept the new reality of Brexit led to the domination of hard brexiteers and hard brexit thinking. For this, his fellow labour supporters cannibalised him.

By not appealing exclusively to the full range of their sensibilities he had outed himself as a traitor and as no longer worthy of respect. The attacks on Owen Jones express clearly the civil war mentality that has gripped the two major English speaking countries in recent times. This type of thinking can be summed up pretty fairly by the idea that if you are not with me at all times, on every issue, then you are my enemy and you must be stopped.

I refuse, utterly, to entertain this type of thinking. I disagree with Owen Jones on certain issues, but he is still a person worthy of respect, a competent journalist and moreover he seems like a thoroughly decent fellow. More importantly however is the type of behaviour that this thinking excuses and the suffering it could lead to if followed to its logical conclusion.

I would also put forward that this type of thinking in itself is wrong both morally and practically; it refuses to take in nuance and stifles the pursuit of truth. This is the same phenomenon that ended with the Labour Party trying to purge Jeremy Corbyn for party political and electoral gain. We should not let any organisation or party get away with this sort of thing. Political thought or peaceful political protest of any kind should not be suppressed, but as always the logic of the thought itself should always be attacked and questioned.We should always defend our political opponents when they are deserving of that aid.

We must remember that we live in this society together, and that starting wars for the fun of it is not always the best idea.