Forecasting the future is a fool’s game. Nevertheless, I would put money on the fact that, even when the apocalypse is nigh, the conservative press will never lose sight of what is really important. The ice caps are melting? Rightwingers will remind us that it is snowflakes on the left we should be worried about. The threat of nuclear war? They will explain that it is not the nukes that should keep us up at night, but the woke brigade and their pesky trigger warnings.
If you think I am exaggerating, I suggest taking a look at the Daily Mail. You would think that the very real war in Ukraine might have temporarily distracted the keyboard combatants at the Mail from their obsession with the culture wars. Alas, no: the Mail seems immune to outrage fatigue. It certainly hasn’t allowed the geopolitical situation to stop it from summoning up righteous indignation at a university’s use of content warnings. The paper of regressive record is very upset about the fact that the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland has apparently put a content warning on Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea stating that it contains “graphic fishing scenes”.
Is warning students about literary violence against fish ridiculous? Yes, of course it is. I am not even going to try to argue that it isn’t. But let’s be clear: an overzealous attempt to inform students about content they may find upsetting is not something to be outraged by. Nobody has tried to ban students from reading Hemingway. Nobody is burning the book because they don’t like its message. Nobody is dropping bombs on civilians because they read a book with “graphic fishing scenes”. Someone was just a little bit too worried about their students’ feelings.
I don’t know about you, but the idea of living in a world where the biggest cause of outrage is people being overly sensitive sounds like a dream to me.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
