A question for ideology wonks: what do the following books have in common, apart from the fact that they’re all related to the issue of freedom of speech and expression? On Tolerance: A Defence of Moral Independence, by Frank Furedi; Trigger Warning: Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?, by Mick Hume; A Duty to Offend: Selected Essays, by Brendan O’Neill; and From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Aftermath, by Kenan Malik.
Answer: all four of them were written by people who once belonged to the (UK) Revolutionary Communist Party, who wrote for its journal Living Marxism, and who are connected to the two entities – the online magazine Spiked and the London-based Institute of Ideas – to have emerged from the ruins of both. Coincidence? I think not! [More here.]