The Most Totalitarian Ideas Suddenly Become Acceptable

March 2013

‘If you question the Savile crusade, you're seen as evil’

"Frank Furedi on his new book about Jimmy Savile, and why it's so hard, but so important, to challenge the moral crusade on child abuse.

Frank Furedi, author, sociologist and spiked writer, has written a new book called Moral Crusades in an Age of Mistrust: The Jimmy Savile Scandal. He talked to Tim Black about why he wrote the book, and why he expects it to win him few friends.

Tim Black: What made you write Moral Crusades in an Age of Mistrust?

Frank Furedi: I’ve become concerned about how the issue of children and abuse has become so badly moralised. It is as if any claim is permissible if you invoke children; the most totalitarian ideas suddenly become acceptable. When it comes to children and allegations of abuse, only one interpretation, only one story is permissible. If you treat child abuse as you would any other crime, and apply the same standards of justice, you are condemned as at best cruel and insensitive, and at worst as an accomplice to an act of paedophilia."

http://www.spiked-online.com/site/reviewofbooks_preview/13468/

Frank Furedi

"Sociologist, commentator and author of Culture of Fear, Where Have All The Intellectuals Gone?, Paranoid Parenting, Therapy Culture, and On Tolerance: In Defence of Moral Independence."

http://www.frankfuredi.com

Moral Crusades in an Age of Mistrust: The Jimmy Savile Scandal

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1137338016/spiked