Time to play dirty? Lessons from the David Starkey affair

The issue quickly became – is David Starkey racist? The wrong question, to be sure.

The now defensive Darren Grimes then proceeded to do an interview with a UK talk back host. He was joined by a Guardian journalist, one Dawn Foster.

This interview takes us to the nub of the problem. Darren, an innocent abroad, appealed to the notion of forgiveness. Shouldn't we simply forgive "mistakes" like Starkey's sloppy language and "move on". As the incomparable Frank Devine once said, in a similar (Aboriginal sorry debate, in the 1990s) context – "shouldn't the Aborigines simply forgive us?"

Well, yes, perhaps they should.

The performance of the leftist Foster during the interview is very revealing, and instructive. She won the debate. It left Grimes looking ill-at-ease, defeated, uncomprehending. Foster is clearly a seasoned ideological protagonist. And there are lessons to be learned here for those of us who endlessly scratch our heads in wonderment as to the left's complete victory in the culture wars that began in the 1960s.

Her two big points were – well, yes, there may be some cancel culturing going on (yawn), but it is essentially a case of "nothing to see here". Sometimes people on social media do "pile on", including against her. Just ignore it and move on. Really? Clearly, no social media mob is about to cancel Dawn. Kill her career. Kill her reputation.

Because – we play fair.

Foster has let the cat well and truly out of the bag. But she won the point. Her second, and killer, blow was afforded her because she had the final word in the interview. She agreed that podcasts and interviews should be "unfiltered". Free speech is grand. Because then, and only then, we can reveal the true thoughts and motives of the likes of Starkey. Now we know he is a racist! Grimes had been owned. Well and truly. And I don't think anyone noticed, though Grimes seemed perplexed and rendered ill-at-ease by the ending of the interview.

Herein lies a dilemma for both those who believe – innocently now – in objective social science, for those who believe in the vigorous to-and-fro of democratic debate, and for Christians and others yearning for a forgiving world in which we just "get on", despite out differences.

Well, friends, those days are well and truly gone, forever. You do not have to believe, as an increasing number do, that we are living in the end times, to recognise that, with the out-workings of the sixties revolution co-created by cultural Marxists and postmodernists, we are now involved in a fundamentally new game.

I believe implicitly in forgiveness. I feel I have to, given my own massive need for eternal forgiveness for my many sins.

But Alinsky didn't. Nor Marcuse. Nor Adorno. Nor Gramsci. Nor all their sixties revolutionary mates. These were the architects of the twentieth century post- Marxist Marxism. These folks simply don't do forgiveness. They are very, very smart. Determined. They play for keeps.