2025-07-17
6 分钟The Economist.
Hi there, it's Jason Palmer here, co-host of The Intelligence,
our daily news and current affairs podcast.
This is Editor's Picks.
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Enjoy.
The high priests of speaking out are John Stuart Mill,
an English philosopher, and Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran pastor.
"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends," Mill warned,
"than that good men should look on and do nothing."
Niemöller famously ventriloquised the many Germans who kept silent
when the Nazis "came for the socialists", the trade unionists and the Jews:
"Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
Like Mill and Niemöller, artists and musicians
who call out injustice avowedly see standing up for the oppressed as a moral obligation.
Speaking out on world affairs is in vogue, as it tends to be amid political ructions,
and much of it is doubtless heartfelt and sincere.
But it can also have other motives—and unintended consequences.
Two developments explain the current clamour.
First, the re-election of Donald Trump, a bogeyman for the showbiz elite,