The Lies They Tell: The Modern Society in Captivity of Political Correctness

Date of event: 31.10.2017

On the 31st of October, a debate with the author of the book The Lies They Tell, Tuvia Tenenbom, took place in the atrium of the CEVRO Institute. The event was organised on the occasion of introducing the book to the Czech book market.

Alexandr Vondra, the director of the Prague Centre for Transatlantic Relations, introduced the event and presented our guests. The debate was moderated by Tomáš Pojar, the Vice-President of CEVRO Institute, and Jan Dražan, the journalist at a weekly magazine Týdeník Echo. It was Jan Dražan and Jan Pergler, who, as a co-founder of a publishing house Wall, showed Tuvia Tenenbom to Czech readers.

Tuvia Tenenbom is a writer, playwright, theatre director, journalist and founding artistic director of the Jewish Theater of New York. He was born in Israel but has been living in the USA for the past 33 years. In order to point out the absurdity of today’s political correctness, Tuvia Tenenbom decided to travel around the United States. He has visited big cities of vibrant multiculturalism as well as conservative countryside and has been talking to hundreds of people. The outcome is presented with a dose of irony and a sense of humour in the book The Lies They Tell.

In the debate, Tuvia Tenenbom admitted, that the United States he discovered differ a lot from what he was hoping to find. Nowadays, thoughts and usual actions of Americans are tied up by a pursuit of political correctness. Paradoxically, with the effort to upgrade democracy, we are moving to some form of dictatorship. It seems like liberalism is gone.

After the debate, there was a book sale and autographing.