16 January

Margaret Atwood, I think making the important point that many social movements like #metoo end up as squabbles between people within the movement, and the real issue gets lost. (I don’t agree with her that moderates are in the middle. There is no middle between extremes.) “In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn't puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated. Fiction writers are particularly suspect because they write about human beings, and people are morally ambiguous. The aim of ideology is to eliminate ambiguity.”