Pip: HarperCollins cut ties with David Walliams — no formal complaint, no investigation, no specified accusation — and called it a moral stand. freerein61 has a different word for it.
Mara: This episode follows one extended argument: that corporate moralism, operating under the banner of MeToo, has become a mechanism for dismantling due process across publishing, media, and cultural life.
Pip: Let's start with the Walliams affair itself — and what it reveals about who these purges actually serve.
Corporate Moralism and the MeToo Purge
Mara: The post opens with a precise claim: HarperCollins terminated its relationship with Walliams based not on verified evidence but on unsubstantiated claims spread through media. The question the piece puts to the reader is whether this represents a failure of due process — or its deliberate rejection.
Pip: The post answers that directly. The argument runs: "The Walliams affair is not an isolated incident. Instead, it represents a recent phase of a reactionary movement that over the past ten years has gradually chipped away at fundamental democratic rights, often under the pretext of moral accountability."
Mara: So the upshot is that what looks like a publisher making a cautious HR decision is, in this reading, one data point in a longer pattern of institutional purges conducted without legal standards.
Pip: And the post names those standards' opponents by title. Senator Mazie Hirono argued the presumption of innocence makes it "really difficult for victims and survivors to come forward." Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer stated that outside court, "there is no presumption of innocence." These weren't slips — the piece treats them as the doctrine made explicit.
Mara: Which is where the corporate angle sharpens. The post argues HarperCollins acted to protect its brand and internal hierarchy, not out of moral courage — and that corporations have adopted this framework precisely because it lets them shed liabilities without legal proceedings.
Pip: Corporate governance dressed in the language of safeguarding junior staff. The post calls that the "ideological veneer for a commercial calculation" — which is a polite way of saying the morality is load-bearing decor.
Mara: The piece situates Walliams inside a documented pattern. W.W. Norton destroyed all copies of Blake Bailey's Philip Roth biography on unsubstantiated allegations. Ian Buruma was removed from the New York Review of Books for publishing an essay by Jian Ghomeshi — who had been acquitted. Hachette suppressed Woody Allen's memoir after an employee revolt. Kevin Spacey was publicly ruined before any court ruled. The post quotes critic David Walsh describing the Bailey case as "McCarthyism of an especially pernicious character."
Mara: In each instance the structure is identical: unilateral institutional action, no forum for the accused, media repetition until allegation becomes assumed fact.
Pip: The post is careful to say the working class has no particular stake in defending Walliams or HarperCollins — a millionaire entertainer and a Murdoch-owned publisher are not the sympathetic parties here. The stake is in the principles: presumption of innocence, the right to face one's accuser, the requirement of evidence.
Mara: Rights the post describes as won through centuries of struggle against arbitrary power — and as the only protections workers hold against victimization and political repression. The closing line lands hard: "The purge of cultural figures is a dress rehearsal for the repression of workers."
Pip: Which makes the question less about David Walliams and more about what gets normalized when institutions learn they can punish without evidence and call it safety.
Mara: The throughline here is a specific argument about where legal standards go when moral language fills the vacuum — and who ends up holding the controls.
Pip: Due process as a class question. That framing tends to have more runway. Worth watching where it surfaces next.
A Trumpet of Sedition 