Shriver, on younger staff in publishing who express their discomfort working on certain books.

From this, in which concern is expressed about the difficulties being faced by several, er, best selling authors. https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/books/cancel-culture-authors-books-jk-rowling-b900277.html

For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ve ever felt any of these people *shouldn’t be published*, necessarily. I just think that *when* you’re published, your published views can be publicly interrogated. It’s not that complicated?

What bothers me more about these perennial pieces is that, unwittingly or delicately, they’re part of a far bigger cultural and political project to paint all the cultural and artistic industries and communities as intolerant hotbeds of leftist thought.

And it’s so obvious to me that that in turn is part of a wider and even more troubling project to undermine faith in both artistic and intellectual endeavour. We can see that playing out in higher education too.

I find it very sad to see writers and publishers propping that project up, if I’m honest, and doing so under the banner of free speech when actually the goal is so obviously wider and deeper suppression.

I know you’re all looking for good news right now, we all are, but I really feel we’re about to live through a dark and deeply regressive cultural and political era in which both the right and notional left agree that “everything has gone too far” and...

...we’re all flogged a vision of “adults in charge” cultural and political life which cynically sells us on a mirage of stability by rolling back what meagre progress has thus far been made towards a more just society.

I mean “unwittingly or deliberately”. There’s nothing delicate about any of it. But you know what I mean. https://twitter.com/byers90/status/1351612489717456900