In defence of ‘virtue signalling’

Of all the stupid things the BBC has done lately, their latest diktat must be the stupidest: a global warning to staff that they are subject to disciplinary action if they’re caught ‘virtue signalling’. Here is poor old Aunty, wetting her bloomers at the prospect of another roughing up from the mean girls in Downing Street – and in the process adopting a fatuous culture-wars catchphrase as if it were some gold standard of political neutrality.

As I’ve argued here recently about ‘woke’, the term ‘virtue signalling’ is not an argument but a sneer. When you say somebody is ‘virtue signalling’, you’re not bothering to commit yourself to an argument about whether the position they are taking is right or wrong. (Perhaps, indeed, you feel on sticky ground entering that argument.) Rather, you are making a groundless and unfalsifiable presumption about their motive for doing so and using that as the supposed basis to dismiss the whole shebang.