The case of George Hook is a classic case of someone falling foul of McCarthyism. He may be “colourful” but he is entitled to his opinion. The world is, to
be blunt, over-sexed, hyper-sexed in fact, and the sex industry (all the way
from suggestive photographs every Sunday on the cover of the SINDO magazine to
hard core pornography) is now one of the world's most powerful industries.
Once money – on a vast scale – becomes part of any industry it becomes a very
powerful industry and very difficult to challenge. Anyone wishing to challenge
the sex industry is going to have to be smarter than George Hook. They are going
to have to find a way past the moral policemen of the Iveagh House Bulletin,
Crown Forces Times and Whatever You’re Having Yourself Matrimonially- Speaking
Newsletter. They are going to have to find a way of saying that the male of
the species is like the male of any species - always looking for sexual
encounters. They are going to have to find a way of saying that women need to be
aware of the raw threat from the male of the species in how they comport
themselves and in the situations they get into. That has implications for
everything from fashion to film and from education to social life. We will have to wait for something to happen, some trigger that will allow
rational argument back into the debate about the sexual mores of our time.
It’s a bit like Trump: the forces that Trump threatened (globalization,
perpetual war for perpetual peace [profits], the abortion lobby) mobilized the
world media industry to try to stop him. They failed but the military industrial
complex and the secret state have – for the moment at any rate – crushed Trump’s
efforts to re-engineer US foreign policy away from war-making and naked
imperialism. By the same token, powerful vested interests are able to ensure
that anyone who challenges the sex industry will be crushed. You would think
that someone like Fintan O’Toole could spot that and see what Hook was trying to
say in his muddled fashion but they don’t seem to be able to. Smart people are being manipulated by
powerful forces and they don’t even know it. Plus, there is, I think, a natural
urge to McCarthyism, a natural desire to seize any opportunity to silence the
opposition if you can. All the better if you can dress your intolerance up as
something else.
