Strikingly, it is among the young in particular, among those most thoroughly inculcated with the ideology of anti-hate, that social mercilessness reigns supreme. The ‘cold-blooded grasping’ in certain youthful circles – ‘a hunger to take and take and take, but never give’, ‘a massive sense of entitlement’, ‘an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care, ‘an astonishing level of self-absorption, language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence, ‘a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter, but not in the intimate space of friendship’.
And, of course, ‘an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others’. They will ‘demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class’, says Adichie. They will tell you to ‘educate yourself’ while ‘not having actually read any books themselves’. They will ‘wield the words “violence” and “weaponise” like tarnished pitchforks’.

The end result? A new generation that is terrified of saying the wrong thing, of entertaining the wrong thought, lest they be ‘attacked by their own’.

The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.