Author: Joop Beris
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On the Dignity of Withdrawal
There is a distinct, suffocating odour that hangs over the modern digital agora. It is not the scent of fresh inquiry or robust debate, but of stale, recycled outrage and the metallic tang of algorithmic manipulation. It is the smell of a civilisation that has forgotten how to speak to itself, preferring instead to scream…
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Linguistic Theatre
There is a new and particularly insipid form of superstition sweeping the West, a kind of digital animism that would have made the most credulous Victorian spiritualist blush. It is the conviction that the silicon chip has acquired a soul, or at least a conscience, and that we must now hold it accountable for the…
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Politically Homeless
Once upon a time, before the beard grew grey and the world went so thoroughly stupid, I considered myself securely of the left. Healthcare, education, solidarity; these weren’t luxuries but the bare minimum of a civilized society. The strongest shoulders should bear the heaviest burdens, and the weakest should not be left to rot. I…
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Reality doesn’t require Apologists
It remains a source of great amusement to me that some people style themselves “religious apologists.” Religion certainly has much to apologize for – inquisitions, crusades, genital mutilations, the ongoing sabotage of science and education – but that is not what they mean. They mean that their job is to defend religion. This is already…
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Opposing Voices Matter
On Wednesday, September 10th, political activist and Trump devotee Charlie Kirk was shot dead during one of his campus appearances. A man of the right, Kirk styled himself as an evangelist for conservatism, Christianity, the Second Amendment, and whatever the word “anti-woke” happens to mean on any given day. The assassin has not yet explained…
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How Europe is Betraying Its Own Values
A curious spectre is haunting Europe, though it is not socialism this time; it is the creeping, bureaucratic death of liberty. Across the continent, our political class is flirting with a proposal so flagrantly absurd and authoritarian that one almost wonders if they have read a history book: the mandatory scanning of every private message,…