For a vivid parable of what is wrong with contemporary discourse and culture - and of what could be right - look no further than last week's Channel 4 News interview of Jordan Peterson, by Cathy Newman. At the time of writing, her half-hour grilling of the Toronto University professor of psychology has clocked up more than 2.3m views on YouTube, and provoked a cacophonous response across social media. So shamefully abusive have many of the attacks on Newman been that Channel 4 announced on Friday that it had called in security specialists.
As the digital temperature rose, Peterson quite rightly intervened on Twitter to stop the abuse: "If you're threatening her, stop. Try to be civilized in your criticism." It is unconscionable that a journalist doing her job should be threatened as Newman has been by "alt-right" idiots, with their pathetic Pepe the frog symbol, juvenile memes and claims that their adversaries have been "rekt".
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