Posts Tagged ‘free speech’
Only the fearful sneer at ‘Giant Troll’ Milo Yiannopoulos
You don’t have to like him to support his right to free speech. Ann Althouse gets it:
“ABC’s Nightline goes after Milo Yiannopoulos and I’ve never bothered with this guy one way or the other… but this ham-handed effort to cut him down made me side with him. Why is the ABC reporter sneering and yelling at the person he’s interviewing?”
The hectoring reporter makes anyone who values free speech side with Milo. We all value the right to be offensive, right?
PS: The Ghostbusters remake is crap.
Posted: 6th, September 2016 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Gawker: power and money smash free speech and the right to offend
Sorry to see Gawker go? Here are a few words on what they said about the US site:
Denton’s self-starting staff crossed two rich and angry men. One was the wrestler Hulk Hogan, incensed when Gawker published part of a video showing him having sex with a friend’s wife. Hogan took Gawker Media to court and won a total of $140 million in March. Hogan’s suit was bankrolled by Peter Thiel, a billionaire whom Gawker had outed as gay in 2007. At last month’s GOP convention, Thiel told the audience that, “I’m proud to be gay. I’m proud to be a Republican.” Gawker, for its part, went proudly bankrupt.
Gawker, the muck-raking, dirt-digging, mud-slinging internet magazine, has just been forcibly closed down. It was not found guilty of threatening America’s national security, or corrupting the nation’s youth. Instead, Gawker was put out of business for publishing true stories that some people found offensive. One of those offended people happened to be a Silicon Valley billionaire, who used his wealth and power to shut Gawker’s irreverent mouth as surely as if he had been a Third World tyrant sending the cops to close a dissident newspaper.
But this is more than an outrageous tale of a thin-skinned rich boy. Gawker’s demise is only the headline in a bigger story about a campaign to tame press freedom, online as well as in print, and to sanitise the news media. It is a campaign being led on both sides of the Atlantic, not by old-fashioned censors, but by a new alliance of illiberal-liberal prigs who want to ‘ethically cleanse’ the media of whatever is not to their refined taste.
Nick Denton (Gawker publisher):
Peter Thiel has achieved his objectives. His proxy, Terry Bollea, also known as Hulk Hogan, has a claim on the company and my personal assets after winning a $140 million trial court judgment in his Florida privacy case. Even if that decision is reversed or reduced on appeal, it is too late for Gawker itself. Its former editor, who wrote the story about Hogan, has a $230 million hold on his checking account. The flagship site, a magnet for most of the lawsuits marshaled by Peter Thiel’s lawyer, has for most media companies become simply too dangerous to own.
Peter Thiel has gotten away with what would otherwise be viewed as an act of petty revenge by reframing the debate on his terms. Having spent years on a secret scheme to punish Gawker’s parent company and writers for all manner of stories, Thiel has now cast himself as a billionaire privacy advocate, helping others whose intimate lives have been exposed by the press. It is canny positioning against a site that touted the salutary effects of gossip and an organization that practiced radical transparency.
As former Gawker developer Dustin Curtis says, “Though I find the result abhorrent, this is one of the most beautiful checkmates of all time by Peter Thiel.”
That crisis and the editorial changes that followed it did almost as much as the Peter Thiel-funded Hulk Hogan lawsuit to illustrate that what made Gawker great also made it vulnerable. In a word: money. (And an internet that’s become increasingly responsive to it.) Gawker was able to be what it was because it existed at the whim of an eccentric millionaire, not beholden to corporate interests, who was interested in what journalism could be. It was only a matter of time, perhaps, before other eccentric billionaires (like Peter Thiel and Frank VanderSloot) would come along who were more interested in what it couldn’t.
That Thiel succeeded in destroying Gawker by secretly funding Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit is a serious sign in a media landscape that’s already lost most of its biodiversity. But Gawker’s closure is a loss for its own sake. And ours.
NBC:
Until the news broke that tech billionaire Peter Thiel was funding former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan’s suit against (now-defunct) gossip blog Gawker for outing him as gay nearly a decade ago, most people were unaware that third parties — traditionally, hedge funds — could bankroll a lawsuit against a person or business
As a result, start-ups in the field of litigation-finance investment have gained prominence, with a simple pitch to investors: Put up as little as $5,000 to fund lawsuits, and make money.
What price free speech?
Camber Sands: Super-sensitive Police report Katie Hopkins to Twitter for saying mean things
We live in strange and worrying times. Katie Hopkins, a woman who lost a competition for an office job in Brentwood, Essex, (The Apprentice), has said something about the deaths of five people in the seas off Camber Sands. When I first saw the Independent’s headline, I thought it was a typo, with the words the wrong way around:
Katie Hopkins reported to Twitter by police over Camber Sands deaths poll
It can’t be so that the British police demure to twitter in criminal matters? It can be. That’s no typo. The story goes:
Sussex police has reported Katie Hopkins to Twitter after she conducted a poll mocking the possible identities of five men whose bodies were pulled from the sea at Camber Sands beach.
This was the Tweet that had Sussex police upset:
5 dead at Camber Sands were:
Aspiring footballers, mentally ill, fans of Anders Brevik or big fans of inflatables.
Stewart Ayrey @StewartAyrey was offended. He called the police, asking the State’s enforcers to deal with some one said something he didn’t like.
@sussex_police is there anything you can do about this from @KTHopkins? Bad taste at very least.
Can the police arrest you for doing things in bad taste? No. Not yet. They admit as much in their reply:
@sussex_police @StewartAyrey @KTHopkins incredibly insensitive, although not criminal. We suggest reporting her to @Twitter. We have already.
A spokesperson for Sussex police goes on the record:
“At about 10.30am on Thursday (25 August), Sussex Police were made aware of a tweet regarding the tragic incident at Camber Sands on Wednesday (24 August). The force considered this tweet to be insensitive towards the victims and their families and reported it to Twitter under the categories “abusive or harmful” and “disrespectful or offensive”. Shortly after this the tweet was removed.”
Who knew the police were so sensitive. We knew they were censorious and keen on PR. But sensitive?
Chief Inspector Julia Pope then adds:
“Our primary reason for doing this was out of respect and concern for the thoughts and feelings of the next of kin of those who sadly died at Camber. Since the removal of the tweet we have been asked whether we will investigate and seek prosecution. After reviewing CPS guidance we have made the decision that this communication does not meet the prosecution threshold. Therefore, whilst the communication is distasteful it would not be criminal or fit within the guidelines for prosecution.
“We are satisfied that the tweet has now been removed.”
They checked. They wanted to see if a tweet they didn’t much like could be criminal. We know it can be. Liam Stacey’s plight taught us that.
We live in strange times when words are policed and free speech is criminalized. Stranger still they we all don’t get angry about it.
PS: On the Sussex Police Facebook Page, these comments appear below the story. None are deemed insensitive by the Force:
Free speech: it’s not only ok when you agree with what’s being said. It’s the right to say unpleasant things, too.
Posted: 25th, August 2016 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)
Burkini ban: France has a moral police force – like Saudi Arabia
When did we become such prudes that a woman wearing too many clothes on the beach was a crime? The Telegraph:
French police made a woman remove her burkini on a Nice beach while another was fined in the resort of Cannes for wearing leggings, a tunic and a headscarf…
At which point the French rose up as one and cried aloud for liberty? No.
Along the coast in Cannes, a mother of two told AFP on Tuesday she had been fined on the beach for wearing leggings, a tunic and a headscarf. Her ticket read that she was not wearing “an outfit respecting good morals and secularism”.
France, place of enlightenment, now has a moral police police.
The BBC meets the woman who designed the cover-all:
Aheda Zanetti, who claims the trademark on the name burkini and burqini, said online sales were up by 200%… “I’m an Aussie chick, I’ve been here all my life,” she said. “I know what hijab means. I know what veil means. I know what Islam means. And I know who I am. I wanted my girls to grow up to have that freedom of choice. I don’t care if they want to have a bikini. It’s their choice. No man in this entire world can tell us what to wear or what not to wear.”
She gets it.
Brendan O’Neill, Corinne Grant, Cindy Prior and an assault on free speech
Brendan O’Neill asks Corinne Grant a question:
The story is:
Cindy Prior, an indigenous administration officer in QUT’s Oodgeroo Unit, is using section 18C of the racial discrimination act – the controversial section that former Prime Minister Tony Abbott vowed to repeal – to sue three staff at QUT and five students.
Ms Prior claims she suffered “offence, embarrassment, humiliation and psychiatric injury” as well as ongoing fear for her safety, because of their actions and comments.
As The Australian has reported, the problems started when three students, who wandered into the Oodgeroo Unit in May 2013 looking for a place to use a computer, were asked by Ms Prior “whether they were indigenous”.
They said they were not, and she said there were other computers they could use.
She asked the students to leave the unit and they went away.
An hour later a Facebook page, called ‘QUT Stalker Space’, featured a post from one of the students, Alex Wood, saying: “Just got kicked out of the unsigned indigenous computer room. QUT (is) stopping segregation with segregation.”
Another student, Jackson Powell, wrote on the Facebook page: “I wonder where the white supremacist computer lab is.”
Another post — “ITT n—ers” — was attributed to another student, Calum Thwaites, who has emphatically denied that he had anything to do with the post.
Prior went to a doctor and was medically certified as unfit for work. Her initial doctor wrote: “Cynthia feels unsafe and frightened to return to work.”
Ten days after the students walked into the Oodgeroo Unit, a second doctor issued a workers’ compensation certificate declaring her unfit for work due to “nightmares, fear and sweating”. Four days later, Prior, who has not returned to the unit in the three years since the incident, told QUT she would be taking the matter to the Human Rights Commission. She felt “disheartened and powerless” because the university and its vice-chancellor, Peter Coaldrake, had made public statements about the incident and directed new strategies, which did not go far enough in her view. She felt “the critical issue of how to get me back to work and feeling safe once again” was being avoided.
She…
…is suing the three students and the university for almost $250,000 in lost wages and general damages, plus future economic loss. She later claimed she felt unsafe leaving her home due to fears of being verbally abused and was unable to return to work in a role requiring face-to-face contact with white people.
So. About free speech. What does it cost?
Posted: 23rd, August 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Free speech for Anjem Choudary: Twitter backed the Devil but banned Milo Yiannopoulos
So, farewell, Anjem Choudary, the UK’s leading gurning face of Islam. Choudary took over from hook-handed Abu Hamza and ‘Tottenham Taliban’ Omar Bakri as a the country’s Islamist-in-residence. But his carer is near its end.
Britain’s most controversial hate preacher, is today behind bars after finally being convicted of terrorism offences. The 49-year-old firebrand cleric, who has helped radicalise a generation of would be terrorists, was found guilty of inviting support for a banned organisation after swearing an oath of allegiance to Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
The Sun sees it as a victory for good over evil. The ‘Devil’ is locked up:
Did you follow Anjem on social media? The Guardian notes:
Social media giants had the last word on Anjem Choudary’s online posts, even after he was arrested for inviting support for Islamic State.
British authorities made repeated efforts to get his Twitter posts and YouTube videos taken down after an oath of allegiance to the Caliphate surfaced online with the preacher’s name on it, jurors at the Old Bailey were told during his trial in July.
But they had no power to force corporations to remove material from the internet even if it was believed to have fallen foul of UK anti-terror laws.
Choudary was not censored by censorious Twitter. Good. Free speech means just that. No buts.
The BBC adds:
Supporters of Choudary included:
• Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, the murderers of soldier Lee Rigby
• Suspected IS executioner Siddhartha Dhar
• Omar Sharif, a British suicide bomber who attacked Tel Aviv in 2003
• Brusthom Ziamani, jailed 12 years later for planning to kill in the streets of London
Sky continues:
The jury took less than three days in July to find Choudary and his co-accused Mizanur Rahman, 32, unanimously guilty of inviting support for a terrorist organisation. Choudary and Rahman were found guilty on 28 July, but for legal reasons the verdicts could only be reported on Tuesday.
Choudary’s key lieutenant, Siddhartha Dhar, was arrested at the same time as him in police raids in 2014. Dhar later skipped bail and fled to Syria with his young family, where he began taunting the UK authorities with a series of pictures and online posts.
The Mail says Choudary has been “nailed”, which is another way of saying crucified.
In other news, Twitter banned Milo Yiannopoulos; it did not ban Anjem Choudary. Remember when Twitter was the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party”?
UKIP’s Lisa Duffy rises above the trolls
Can we offer a word of praise for Lisa Duffy, the unlovely would-be UKIP leader? The HuffPost says Dear Lisa is being mocked on the web.
The candidate with the most momentum seems to Lisa Duffy, who has secured a number of significant endorsements in the past few days…. While Duffy has attracted support from established party members, some members of Ukip’s youth wing – Young Independence – have been mocking the leadership contender.
Mocking. Not trolling? So says the Huffost, on which you can read such anti-trolling stories as:
Jess Phillips Reveals The Extent Of Trolling As Even More Women Are Forced Offline
We Often Forget Online Abuse Has Real World Repercussions
Why Female Journalists Are A Major Target For Internet Trolls (Sexism Has Something To Do With It)
London Metropolitan Police Service Take A Massive Step To Tackle Online Hate Crime
Is it only mockery when you don’t much like the person on the receiving end, but criminal trolling when you do? The HuffPost provides a few examples of the mocking:
In a closed Facebook group called ‘YI Faculty’, Oscar Gomez, a former local election candidate in North East Derbyshire, wrote: “Roll the fat fuck down the street and straight to the RSPCA. We can flog her off as an unwanted butchers dog.”
Another group member, Edwin Smith, wrote: “She rolls her sleeves up before assaulting another bucket of deep fried poultry.”
After a picture was posted of Duffy mocked up as Mr Blobby with the caption: “Mrs Duffy says Move on”, Smith wrote: “She needs to ‘move on’ to a treadmill.”
And how has Duffy responded to this trolling, which looks a lot like being rude, fattist, sexist (she’s being called a ‘dog’) and, lest it go unsaid, offensive?
Duffy’s campaign manager Jay Beecher said: “…These vile attacks on her are clearly just a childish attempt by some of her competitors who see her as the main contender. We’re busy fighting for a bright future for Ukip, so we’ll do what we’ve always done: rise above them”
Stick and stones, eh. Meanwhile, over at Labour, one MP has called in the police after being told to “get in the sea” on twitter. Oh, grow up.
Posted: 16th, August 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Free Speech: Australia’s ABC fails to understand comically
Thanks to Tim Blair for this wonderful moment in the debate over Free Speech and Me Speech. On Australia’s ABC idiots, the talk if on the “negative effects of free speech”.
Scott Stephens:
There’s something quite disturbing about our response to the events we’ve witnessed in places like Orlando or Nice. I’m hearing things being said that not that long ago would’ve been unthinkable …
It seems to me that we are going through a period in the west of a moral regression, and because of that I’m wondering whether we as moral agents can still be trusted with the privilege of freedom of speech. I think we’re at the point where we have to re-examine what we mean by that and if there is a deeper moral obligation that puts constraints on what we ought to be able to say in public.
Bloody hell.
Waleed Aly:
Certain speech and the proliferation of certain speech can have real world harms … it’s part of whipping up a mood that has seen people bashed and may well see more people bashed.
William Cavanaugh:
We tend to think of free speech as self expression—it’s just the expression of whatever it is on your mind, it’s the expression of the self whether or not the self is worthy of being expressed. So Donald Trump for example is congratulated for speaking his mind even if he doesn’t necessarily have a mind that’s worth speaking.
Shhh!
Dutchman jailed for insulting King Willem-Alexander
To Holland, where a Dutchman has been locked up for 30 days for insulting King Willem-Alexander. Did he mention the ears? The chin? That gap-year incident with the chicken? No. The criminal insulted the king on a Facebook post, accusing the regent of being a murderer, thief and rapist.
The 44-year-old idiot also stuck the king’s face on images of peoples being executed.
Sheikh Willem the Magnificent (and not at all chinless)
Said the Dutch courts “This behaviour is unacceptable in our society and demands that a penalty be imposed on the suspect.”
Amsterdam is now twinned with Riyadh.
Spotter: DutchNews
EU commissioner Vera Jourova censors free speech
One more reason to vote to leave the European Union arrives. “The internet is a place for free speech, not hate speech,” says Vera Jourova, the EU commissioner responsible for justice, consumers and gender equality.
Jourova was born in 1964 Czechoslovakia. She grew up under Communist rule. You might suppose she’d know better than to meddle with hard-won freedoms. She says she understands what freedom means. Vera Jourova loves free speech. But Vera Jourova wants to censor free speech, to shackle it. The bits she does not like, she calls hate speech. These parts of free speech, says its champion, must be banned. And because the undemocratic EU works the way it does, what she says goes for every country in the bloc.
There’s a lot about European regulations, or regulatory intentions, that U.S. Internet giants don’t like. They hate being described and treated as monopolies, and a mention of paying taxes where they operate — as European countries have long wanted them to do — instantly puts them on the defensive. Yet ask Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube to censor their content, and they will happily oblige. Of all the U.S. rules that have allowed them to get as big as they have become, freedom of speech appears to be least important.
The four U.S. companies have accepted a European Union-dictatedcode of conduct, which obliges them to “review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content.” The reviewing is to be done by “civil society organizations” and “trusted reporters”: the EU and its member states are to “ensure access” to them…
Laws limiting free speech have a tendency to change in response to terrorist attacks, electoral upsets, changes in public attitudes. Russians and Turks can attest to how quickly anti-terrorist legislation can turn into a system of censorship and suppression. Europe is not immune to versions of these developments. The U.S. giants’ willingness to work with governments and advocacy groups to uphold speech limitations makes them unreliable as platforms.
On Twitter, a few see the dangers:
You can vote to change this. You can vote ‘out’.
Posted: 2nd, June 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
J.K. Rowling: Donald Trump’s ‘offensive and bigoted’ comments make us all free
J.K. Rowling was speaking at the PEN America Literary Gala & Free Expression Awards:
Intolerance of alternative viewpoints is spreading to places that make me, a moderate and a liberal, most uncomfortable. Only last year, we saw an online petition to ban Donald Trump from entry to the U.K. It garnered half a million signatures.
Just a moment.
I find almost everything that Mr. Trump says objectionable. I consider him offensive and bigoted. But he has my full support to come to my country and be offensive and bigoted there. His freedom to speak protects my freedom to call him a bigot. His freedom guarantees mine. Unless we take that absolute position without caveats or apologies, we have set foot upon a road with only one destination. If my offended feelings can justify a travel ban on Donald Trump, I have no moral ground on which to argue that those offended by feminism or the fight for transgender rights or universal suffrage should not oppress campaigners for those causes. If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on them grounds that they have offended you have crossed the line to stand alongside tyrants who imprison, torture and kill on exactly the same justification.
What she said.
Posted: 18th, May 2016 | In: Celebrities, Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Stephen Fry, sexual abuse and free speech policing
Paris Lees is talking about free speech in the Guardian. Stephen Fry has something so say about therapy and victims being defined by their ordeal:
“It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place – you get some of my sympathy – but your self-pity gets none of my sympathy…. Self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity. Get rid of it, because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. The irony is, we’ll feel sorry for you if you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Grow up.”
Agree? Not agree? Lees has a problem with it:
Fry is talking rubbish.
He is allowed to, of course, because of free speech: for in 2016, an absolutist interpretation of free speech has become popular among the chattering classes. If only the overwhelmingly white, middle-class, Oxbridge-educated, male-dominated commentariat would take “freedom from prejudice” as seriously as it takes “freedom of expression”.
Free speech is free for all. She’s wrong.
Posted: 13th, April 2016 | In: Celebrities, Reviews | Comment
Glasgow Police threaten everyone on twitter
Glasgow police have issued a threat to everyone on twitter. If your tweet or Facebook post or online comment falls short of their guide, they will knock on your door and menace you. If they think your comment is “unnecessary”, unkind, anything less than utterly true, illegal – illegal words? – or hurtful – and they and the ‘victim’ will be the judge of what is and is not hurtful – they will visit you.
Can U Not Think, Sir?
Spotter: Brendan
Matthew Doye: locked away in the Met’s trawl for Islamophobia
This week the Metropolitan Police arrested Matthew Doyle for tweeting: “I confronted a Muslim woman yesterday in Croydon. I asked her to explain Brussels. She said ‘Nothing to do with me’. A mealy mouthed reply.”
When I read that I saw irony, a lampooning of the berks who seek to blame an entire race or religion for the actions of a few. Did the confrontation actually happen? If it did, it would take an utter pillock to then boast about it on twitter? It must be a parody, a neat skewering of fools?
The police saw the tweet as an example of alleged hate speech, nicking Doyle on suspicion of “inciting racial hatred”. The police then locked him up, removing the tweeter from his keyboard for the good of society.
Good? Surely not.
Doyle deleted his comment, but not before it had been retweeted, held aloft by the right-reminded as an example of Islamophobia and used to advertise the Met’s anti-racism credentials.
As his name rode high on the news cycle, we got to know more about Mr Doyle. He works in PR – something that recalls the joke about Max Clifford: “If he’s so good at PR, why does everyone think he’s a cunt?” Other comments on his twitter feed have been broadcast in the media. He appears to very much an irony-free idiot, a pillock’s pillock. The HuffPost featured more from his social media feeds:
Doyle was ridiculed:
Isn’t it enough that we know of Matthew Doyle and his talents in PR? He might win the EDL contract, but it’s unlikely any other outfit will be hiring him. But to make his stupidity a crime is bizarre. Are we so divided, fearful and weak that an idiot’s idiotic tweet constitutes a criminal offence? The answer is yes. And that’s depressing.
Posted: 25th, March 2016 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Free speech: police prevent more violence at Ami Ayalon talk to King’s College Israel group
What do we make the news that an Israeli students’ event at King’s College University, London, was attacked? The event held by students from the KCL and LSE Israeli societies was disrupted by what many think were supporters of KCL Action Palestine (KCLAP), who let off fire alarms, threw chairs and smashed a window.
The invitation to the event went like this:
KCL Israel Society are pleased to bring you this event. Admiral, Ami Ayalon is the former director of Israel’s Security Agency (the Shin Bet/Shabak) between 1996 and 2000 and is a former commander of Israel’s Navy. He has served as a cabinet minister and as a member of the Knesset for the Labour party. With much of the Middle East in turmoil and a stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, he will focus on discussing the steps that are needed to bring stability and security to the region from a military perspective. He will also examine the question, ‘is there a partner for peace?’ and look at what relationships need to be built in the region to create a viable future peace agreement. He will also discuss his experiences as head of Israel’s main agency that combats terrorism, and to what extent the Israeli experience might be relevant to our own safety and security in the UK (in light of recent events in Europe).
Expect an evening of challenging discussion and, of course, free refreshments. Looking forward to seeing you all!
Richard Millett was there:
Ayalon was head of Israel’s Shin Bet between 1996 and 2000 and then served as a Labour MK. He also launched a peace initiative called The People’s Voice. He’s now in the UK being whisked around by Yachad to give various talks, the gist of which seem to be Israel needs to mend its ways.
The activists’ leaflets, after falsely incriminating Ayalon and Shin Bet in war crimes, accused Ayalon of being “overtly racist” for supporting a two state solution because this implies “Israeli Jews must always be a majority…due to a fear of losing the ethnic and colonial supremacy Israel has enjoyed since 1948”.
As soon as the doors shut the frustrated anti-Israel activists pounded the doors and the windows looking into the talk. They screamed “Free Free Palestine”, “Viva Viva Palestina” and “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be free” and smashed a window…
Ayalon’s talk lasted an hour. Ironically, Ayalon was talking in front of a white board describing the rules for “safe spaces” at universities. But there is no “safe space” for an Israeli-Jew at British universities.
KCL Action Palestine issued a statement:
In light of the accusations surrounding yesterday’s events, KCL Action Palestine would like to categorically condemn any aggression that took place at the Israel Society’s Ami Ayalon event.
KCLAP had planned to challenge Ami Ayalon and inform the audience of his complicity in the torture of Palestinians as former head of the Shin Bet and the problems surrounding his current views – as is within our rights and detailed on our blog (https://permissiontonarrate.wordpress.com/…/kclaps-stateme…/). Our intention was to attend the event and shed light on Ayalon’s crimes and views through deliberation.
That the event escalated into a disruption was beyond our control and not incited by any member of our committee. KCLAP is not connected and does not control the actions of external attendees. As stated we do not condone any aggressive reaction on our campuses. Some of our members protested after they were left out and people were arbitrarily selected to go into the event, we refute any involvement with what took place beyond this.
That blog has the stated aim “to rewrite the fabricated and falsified histories of yesteryear and presenting a more balanced take on contemporary affairs”.
They also declare:
“That the event escalated into a disruption was beyond our control and not incited by any member of our committee. KCLAP is not connected and does not control the actions of external attendees.”
Esther Endfield, President of KCL Israel society was also there:
Protests by KCL action Palestine at this event was inevitable but it was never inevitable that it would turn violent, not to the point that I have just reported being assaulted to the police (which is also being investigated under a hate crime), not to the point that there were chairs thrown at the room and at me, not to the point where they were so violent that Kings College London windows have been smashed, not to the point where two police cars and two police vans along with 15 + officers came to protect the people inside the room, not to the point that in a 4 story building that on each floor the fire alarms were set off 15 + times, not to the point where my event had to be stopped and the building evacuated because college security and the police were so scared that they would light a real fire and that we wouldn’t know because of the false alarms. When did I become so unsafe in one of the global universities in the world that we can no longer hold an event without being scared for our safety.
Former communities secretary Sir Eric Pickles told the Commons:
“(Labour MP Wes Streeting) mentioned that we travelled together to France in the autumn of last year to look at anti-Semitism there and I vividly recall meeting with Jewish students and their talk of how frightened they were, of how wary they were on campuses. I can’t help but reflect at the disgraceful attack upon Jewish students in King’s College in London just two nights ago, where a peaceful meeting – literally about peace – was broken up with obscenities and with the breaking of a window and the breaking of glass and the offering of violence. Frankly, we’ve seen this before – we have seen broken glass, we have seen Crystal Night and if we need to know where the neo-fascists are then they truly represent the neo-fascists in that attack that occurred in King’s College.”
Tom Slater (Spiked):
The rage against pro-Israel students, speakers and societies is, without question, the most flagrant political censorship taking place on campus today. While petty, hysterical and often hilarious restrictions on fancy dress and pole-dancing have stolen focus in recent years, pro-Israel students are being shut down because student politicos simply don’t like what they say. And, while policy after policy are passed at students’ union AGMs in the name of protecting ethnic minorities from offence, anti-Israel fury, so often bordering on out-and-out anti-Semitism, is tacitly ignored.
The Daily Mail:
Tonight Universities Minister Jo Johnson criticised the protesters. He told MailOnline: ‘Britain and Israel share many important academic links and speakers must be able to address meetings peacefully. ‘Our universities should be safe spaces for students to expand their minds, and there can be no justification for violent intimidation that curtails free speech.’ The angry protest is the latest in a series of oppressive incidents reported at universities across the country.
Iranian-born human rights activist Maryam Namazie faced intimidation from members of a student Islamic society when speaking at Goldsmith University in London.
Students at Cardiff University also campaigned to ban Germaine Greer from speaking. At Oxford University, students have called for the pulling down on a statue of 19th Century mining magnate Cecil Rhodes over claims of racism.
Well…
Posted: 23rd, January 2016 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Chris Gayle fined for asking weak, pathetic woman out on a date
Jamaican Chris Gayle plays cricket. He’s pretty good at it. He’s a big wham-bam thank you, ma’am sort of player. He attempts to obliterate the ball in the Big Bash T20. During a match in Hobart, Tasmania, on Monday, Gayle asked sports reporter Mel McLaughlin out. That he did this during a live interview shows us that Gayle is brave. But, then, he is man who wears brightly coloured pyjamas to work. He is always bed ready.
“To see your eyes for the first time is nice. Hopefully we can win this game and we can have a drink afterwards. Don’t blush, baby,” said Chris. McLaughlin moved on. Gayle tried again. The interview ended.
Poor Chris struck out. He did not – ouch! – bowl the maiden over.
Cricket Australia chief James Sutherland was aghast. He said Gayle’s actions were a form of harassment. Stuart Coventry, chief executive of Gayle’s team the Melbourne Renegades, called the player’s words “completely inappropriate and disrespectful”.
Oh, gawd. ‘Inappropriate’ is the dread word of our age. It smacks of prudes and censors. We are living the Mary Whitehouse experience. Purse your lips. Breathe in. Never exhale.
Gayle was fined AU$10,000. The cash will be donated to a breast-cancer charity – why?. McLaughlin’s bosses at Network Ten say Gayle will no longer be given an on-field microphone or helmet-cam during live broadcasts.
Gayle says it was all a “joke”, a form of “entertainment”.
You might laugh at this. “What really disappoints me,” says Fox Sports journalist Neroli Meadows, “is the fact that people still laugh and the fact that when somebody like myself or Mel says it’s not okay… It happens, situations likes that, 10 times a day when you’re a female in this sports industry and that’s just a fact.”
She called it “the sports industry”. We’ve heard enough from her.
Over to McLaughlin, then, who says she feels “nothing but respect” for Gayle. Yeah, she took it in her stride. She did not cry foul. It turns out that – get this – an adult woman can take being asked out by a cricketer on the telly and not call in lawyers and therapists.
Who knew?
Posted: 5th, January 2016 | In: Sports | Comment (1)
Ursula Haverbeck gets prison for Holocaust denial: free speech under attack
If you believe in free speech, the idea that nothing should be censored, that nothing is unsayable, then you should defend Ursula Haverbeck’s right to liberty. Haverbeck, a far-right Nazi fan, has been convicted of sedition in a German court for denying the Holocaust.
Ursula Haverbeck is a deeply-unpleasant individual. Her repeated Holocaust denial makes liars of the ghostly murdered and the honourable living who vow to never forget the German-state’s industrial murder of Jews, gypsies and other Untermensch who fell short of the ideal. At 87-years-old, it’s unlikely she’ll read any more books, listen to the facts and change her mind. Her cherished bigotry defines her. And that’s the way she likes it. In 2010, a Munich court gave this racist a suspended sentence of six months for much the same offence. She didn’t stop.
The question we are concerned with is why her words constitute a crime?
Haverbeck has been sentenced by the district court Hamburg to ten months imprisonment for telling a German TV show that Auschwitz was not an extermination camp, but a work camp, that millions of Jews were not murdered. Perhaps she thinks they drowned in their own sweat? But let’s not now delve into the Haverbeck mind. We’ve seen books, films, bones, tattoos, scars and testimonies to know the inside of her head is a poisonous and cramped place. The German prosecutor spoke of her “hair-raising bullshit” and “fanatical blindness”. We’ve seen enough.
Our problem is with the State deciding what can and cannot be said. Haverbeck and her supporters should be out-thought in open debate, their twisting of history and perversion of the mighty human spirit shown for what it is.
But criminal? If expressing your beliefs is criminal, then what of the ritualistic way in which Halal meat is killed? Those liberal Danes want it banned, reasoning that slitting an animals’s throat is barbaric and far less morally right than firing a bolt into its brain. Denmark’s minister for agriculture and food Dan Jørgensen told Denmark’s TV2 that “animal rights come before religion”.
In 2013 the Council of Europe read a report by former Germany MP Marlene Rupprecht, thought it rather brilliant and passed a resolution stating how it “is particularly worried about a category of violation of the physical integrity of children, which supporters of the procedures tend to present as beneficial to the children themselves despite clear evidence to the contrary. This includes, amongst others… the circumcision of young boys for religious reasons…”
Hang the Jews’ covenant with God that makes circumcision a must. The rights of a cow are more vital than Islamic mores and spiritualism. Ban it all. The defiant can wait for the glare of the searchlight and the Gestapo knock.
Let us be in no doubt. Once you allow the State to tell you what beliefs are criminal, however well-meaning the impetus behind the purge, the result is the same: repression, censorship, division and an abdication of free thought and will.
You wonder who is playing God – and why we let them…
Posted: 26th, November 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
Anti-Semite Dieudonne becomes a martyr
Anti-Semetic, Jew-obsessed French comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala has been sentenced to two months in jail by a Belgian court for being an anti-Semite. A Belgian court says Dieudonne broke the law when he spoke at a show in Liege in 2012.
The Belgian court’s judgement rules that “all the accusations against Dieudonne were established – both incitement to hatred and hate speech but also Holocaust denial”.
Dieudonne is best known for his racist hand-gesture the “quenelle”, a demented Nazi salute. To say he has a problem with Jews is to put it mildly. He portrays Jews as the sum of all and any ills oppressing the goodly.
He’s an arsehat. He comes across as horribly unfunny, a right-on comic for brazenly weak victimhood bigots. Supporters are a mix of the conniving and ignorant, a composite blend of those who deny the Holocaust but think it a good idea.
But he should not a be a criminal for saying something. His is a crime against freedom of speech.
And that should be no crime at all. Let’s not be scared of words.
Ursula Presgrave: idiot sent to court of saying something idiotic
Free Speech is under threat. The Mail says the “star of BBC reality TV show The Call Centre faces JAIL after posting ‘sick’ Facebook message that ‘anyone born with Down’s Syndrome should be put down’.”
Being a Call Centre star must be a bit like being a Jeremy Corbyn’s tailor or Ricky Hatton’s nutritionist. So much for the billing. What did Ursula Presgrave says?
Anyone born with down syndrome should be put down, it’s just cruel to let them lead a pointless life of a vegetable
Not nice. Pathetic. Deliberately designed to cause offence. But prison?
Hundreds of people posted their disgust and many then went to the police
Can we put down the ones who called in the cops? Only joking. Really. JOKE!
The 23-year-old pleaded guilty to an offence under the Malicious Communications act and now faces a maximum sentence of six months in jail or a £5,000 fine.
What utter balls. What horror. What ridiculous, snide-mouthed toss.
Presgrave, who was known on the BBC show for her tattoos, piercings and foul language, told Facebook followers…
You kind of get what it says on the tin, with Presgrave.
More than 550 people commented on the post and described it as ‘vile’, ‘sick’, and ‘attention-seeking’.
Well, a small comment made it all the way to the national press and the police Narks Hotline.
The call centre worker, who appeared alongside Nev Wilshire in the BBC Three fly-on-the-wall series, was arrested after police also found photos joking about the disabled on her phone, Swansea Magistrates’ Court heard.
It went to court!
Ursula, who worked at the Save Britain Money call centre in her home city of Swansea, told police ‘she wanted people to notice her’ when she wrote the post.
And that’s a crime?
Mark Davies, defending, told Swansea Magistrates Court: ‘There is genuine remorse, and she would like to make a public apology.'”
Better she told every one to ‘F*** off!”
Presgrave, of Swansea, was released on bail for reports and will be sentenced later this month.
We really are in a mess.
Posted: 6th, November 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
How to have sex and not have sex at Warwick University
George Lawson, 19, a student at Warwick University, won’t comply. Invited to a I Heart Consent workshop via Facebook to discuss sexual consent, Lawson wrote:
Why I don’t need consent lessons
He held up a sign declaring:
‘This is not what a rapist looks like’.
Lawson says the invite felt like “‘a massive, painful, bitchy slap in the face”.
“It implies I have an insufficient understanding of what does and does not constitute consent and that’s incredibly hurtful. I don’t have to be taught to not be a rapist. That much comes naturally to me, as I am sure it does to the overwhelming majority of people you and I know. Brand me a bigot, a misogynist, a rape apologist, I don’t care. I stand by that.”
Lawson tells the Mail:
“I know a rapist can look like me. A rapist can be white. A rapist can be attending a Russell Group University and a rapist can be young. But the photo was supposed to be satirical. It was me playing on the ‘this is what x looks like’ trend and people didn’t get that. That was a massive faux pas.”
Adding:
“There is sexual assault and rape among students, but they’re blaming the wrong people. It’s a massive broadside against everybody. If you’re going to commit rape you’re not going to go to one of the lectures. They’re trying to help, so I support that. I just don’t think its the best way to help people. I think it’s wasted efforts.”
What he wrote was:
I want to call the people leading the charge behind these classes admirable, I want to call them heroic, but I’m afraid they’re not. There are countless other more useful things they could be doing with their time. They could be making a difference by actually going out and campaigning, volunteering and caring for other people. Instead they selfishly make themselves feel better by indulging in the delusion that all that’s needed to save the vulnerable from foul predators is to point out the blindingly obvious.
Self-appointed teachers of consent: get off your fucking high horse. I don’t need your help to understand basic human interaction. Secondly, go and do something. Real people need your help and they deserve better than you. Next time you consider inviting me or anyone else to another bullshit event like this, have a little respect for the intelligence and decency of your peers. You might find that’s a more effective solution than accusing them of being vile rapists-in-waiting who can only be taught otherwise by a smug, righteous, self-congratulatory intervention.
Over on the Tab website, the top story is:
You can read George’s article full here.
Posted: 16th, October 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Baharhahahahahaha Mustafa: hilarious student union wonk says only whites can be racist
Bahar Mustafa tweeted“kill all white men”. Most white men ignored the threat. Most tweeters did not obey. Mustafa used to be Goldsmiths University’s welfare and diversity officer. It’s lamentable that she did not also tweet “kill all white women”.
What with it being twitter, someone complained and called the police. And what with the police being enemies of free speech, Scotland Yard investigated the complaint of “racially motivated malicious communication”.
The Met tells us:
“A woman interviewed under caution regarding a complaint of racially motivated malicious communication made on a social media network has been summonsed to court. Bahar Mustafa, 28, of Edmonton, Enfield has been summonsed to appear at Bromley Magistrates’ Court on 5 November to answer charges of sending a threatening letter or communication or sending by public communication network an offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing message.”
Who was menaced?
In a Facebook post promoting an event to diversify the curriculum, she allegedly wrote:
“Invite loads of BME Women and non-binary people!! Also, if you’ve been invited and you’re a man and/or white PLEASE DON’T COME just cos I invited a bunch of people and hope you will be responsible enough to respect this is a BME Women and non-binary event only.”
She says she’s the victim of a “witch hunt and shameful character assassination”.
She says:
“There have been charges laid against me that I am racist and sexist towards white men. I, an ethnic minority woman, cannot be racist or sexist towards white men, because racism and sexism describe structures of privilege based on race and gender. Therefore, women of colour and minority genders cannot be racist or sexist, since we do not stand to benefit from such a system.”
Hahahahahahaha. She’s a great act. Who says women can’t do comedy?
Posted: 7th, October 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Free speech: Milo Yiannopoulos hones his karate, Julie Bindel is banned and Manchester University is wrapped in cottonwool
To Manchester University, where “Transphobe” Julie Bindel is banned! She’d been asked by University of Manchester Free Speech & Secular Society to speak at a debate called – irony of ironies – “From liberation to censorship: Does modern feminism have a problem with free speech?”
The ban was decreed by the Students’ Union Executive Team (SUET). Bindel’s presence, say these wise heads, is “potentially in breach of [the] safe space policy”. Adding with hubris:
“The Students’ Union has decided to deny this request based on Bindel’s views and comments towards trans people, which we believe could incite hatred towards and exclusion of our trans students.”
Women’s Officer Jess Lishak opines:
“The proposed society event requested to invite two highly controversial and offensive speakers; radical feminist and famous transphobe Julie Bindel, and journalist and ‘men’s rights activist’ Milo Yiannopoulos.
“We unanimously decided to not allow Julie Bindel to be invited to speak at an official SU event. We also approved the request for Milo Yiannopoulos on the provisos that, should the event go ahead, there will be extra security put in place for everyone’s safety.”
They have doubtless heard that Milo knows karate.
Lishak adds:
“Julie Bindel is a journalist and activist who’s been on a crusade against the trans community, and trans women in particular, for many years. She abhorrently argues that trans women should be excluded from women-only spaces, whether that be through feminist organising or women’s sexual and domestic violence services.”
So much for free speech. So much for debate. The laughable, censorious, dictatorial Lishak “refuse[s] to allow our campus to be poisoned by this woman’s tireless campaign to deny trans people their basic human rights and… to subject our students to a campus that puts Bindel’s wish to spread and incite hatred above the safety and inclusion of our trans members.”
One word from Bindel and students will be all catching transphobia. The University must be kept safe from words.
“This is not about shutting down conversations or denying free speech; this is about keeping our students safe,” says Lishak. “If this were about silencing people we happen to disagree with or avoiding uncomfortable conversations, we would be denying the application for Milo Yiannopoulos to speak.”
But it is about denying free speech. That’s exactly what it is. Lishak speaks with the authority of someone who has read one book and found it spot on.
“The difference in these two cases is inciting harm to a group of our students. Yiannopoulos is very careful to criticise feminist thoughts, theories and methods of research or statistics rather than calling for active discrimination against women like Bindel does to trans women,” she continues.
His free speech is within the boundaries of Lishak’s realm of acceptable free speech. Of course, free speech either is free or else it is not free. It can’t be a bit free.
The Mancunion website adds: “She [Bindel] is included on the NUS’s no platform list, alongside George Galloway, Julian Assange, and any member of the BNP.”
Wear your bans as badges of honour. Manchester Uni students are so thick and suggestible, one word from the banned and they’ll be goose-stepping to Bradford. Thank god Lishak’s there to protect these empty heads from ideas and challenging their own beliefs.
The Free Speech and Secular Society have released this statement:
“We were very sad, though in no way surprised, to be notified today that our Students’ Union is seeking to censor our upcoming of event [sic]. We were expecting a good turnout from pre-existing and new students alike, and as such are sad and frustrated to delay the event for the time being. [The Students’ Union] have banned Julie Bindel from speaking outright, and deemed Milo Yiannopoulos sufficiently dangerous to warrant a closed event, where admissions will be limited.
“The reasoning… centres around the safe space policy and her falling foul of it. We have always argued that this flimsy bit of legislature is nothing more than an insidious piece of weaponry used by our SU leadership to fashion the university in their own image, and this current act of censorship proves it.
“Speakers far more controversial and ‘offensive’ than Julie have been permitted and even suggested by the SU on previous occasions. Yet they have decided to apply the principles of the safe space policy now and on us. We feel that the manner in which it has been done is at best sloppy on their part, and at worst inconsistent to the point that it suggests an abuse of power.
“Free speech is not just an abstract concept debated upon in academic circles. It is a discernable and essential good, as well as an inalienable right for one and all. We plan on fighting for it tooth and nail on our campus. We are a nonpartisan organisation that does not promote one ideology over another. We simply argue that the freedom to express a controversial or challenging opinion is held equally and by all.”
Hurrah!
Yiannapoulos added:
“I’m astonished that I wasn’t outright banned as well. I’ll have to up my game!”
Stick a copy of the Sun to your nose and just sing Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines. You’ll get your badge soon enough, Milo.
Free speech: watch bigots on both sides at Liverpool’s National Action White Man March
There was a chance for anti-fascists to dust off the football-style chants in Liverpool when the neo-Nazi National Action held a White Man March.
It was always going to be nasty. The Liverpool mayor tweeted a letter he’d received:
The threatening blackmail letter from National Action Group to Liverpool. Racist thugs. #loveworldinoneCity pic.twitter.com/bbSIQgWjLB
— Joe Anderson (@joeforliverpool) August 9, 2015
It threatened:
“If our march is stopped or heavy handed policing tactics are employed against us, your city will go up in flames. It’s fairly easy to do this, 3 or 4 people in 3 or 4 ethnically enriched areas after dark wearing masks & gloves, a few niggers beaten up, a few cars set on fire & a few shops smashed & your own non-whites will erupt like a volcano, all we have to do is prove them”.
That’s it’s pretty much the kind of view the Government’s has of working-class whites, who are always a race riot waiting to happen. It’s why any footballer who utters a racist word is held up an “role model” whom the proles slavishly follow, paying no heed to their own morals, friends and ethics as they hunt the Jew, black and Muslim.
The Liverpool Echo says what happened:
Neo-nazis who were chased out of Liverpool after hiding in a left luggage office in Lime Street station from protestors say they plan to return to the city.
Here’s one video. The adapted football chants include:
“If it wan’t for the bizzies you’d be dead”
The video contains swearing. It also features the filmer abusing a black officer because, apparently, defending the right to protest when you’re non-white is unforgivable.
Now spot the bigotry and the equality:
The better chant was:
“Master race, you’re having a laugh”
In the Indy, Kevin Maxwell says:
The humiliation of neo-Nazis in Liverpool makes me proud to be a Scouser
He had us right up this line:
I’m all for free speech and tolerating other people’s beliefs, however unpalatable they may be. But…
But!
No buts. It’s either freedom of speech or it isn’t freedom at all.
At the time of writing this is the top comment beneath Maxwell’s Indy article:
Let the bigots talk. Ridicule them. Don’t ban them.
Free speech. No buts.
Now altogher: “Master race, you’re havin’ a laugh…”
The age of knowing: college students fail to study literature because they fear free thinking
Prof. Gary Saul Morson of Northwestern University considers why college students are not longer studying literature. In Commentary magazine he wonders why it is “that students are choosing to study economics or chemistry rather than literature?…Could it be that the problem lies not with the students but with the professors themselves?”
What can students learn from literature that they cannot learn elsewhere? Why should they bother with it? For understandable reasons, literature professors assume the importance of their subject matter. But students are right to ask these questions. All courses are expensive, in money, time, and opportunity costs.
The teacher is failing:
One faults or excuses author, character, or the society depicted according to the moral and social standards prevalent today, by which I mean those standards shared by professional interpreters of literature. These courses are really ways of inculcating those values and making students into good little detectors of deviant thoughts.
“If only divorce laws had been more enlightened, Anna Karenina would not have had such a hard time!” And if she had shared our views about [insert urgent concern here], she would have been so much wiser. I asked one of my students, who had never enjoyed reading literature, what books she had been assigned, and she mentioned Huckleberry Finn. Pondering how to kill a book as much fun as that, I asked how it had been taught. She explained: “We learned it shows that slavery is wrong.” All I could think was: If you didn’t know that already, you have more serious problems than not appreciating literature.
In this approach, the more that authors and characters shared our beliefs, the more enlightened they were. This is simply a form of ahistorical flattery; it makes us the wisest people who ever lived, much more advanced than that Shakespeare guy. Of course, numerous critical schools that judge literary works are more sophisticated than that class on Huckleberry Finn, but they all still presume the correctness of their own views and then measure others against them. That stance makes it impossible to do anything but verify what one already believes. Why not instead imagine what valid criticisms these authors would advance if they could see us?
Banish the trigger warning:
We all live in a prison house of self. We naturally see the world from our own perspective and see our own point of view as obvious and, if we are not careful, as the only possible one. I have never heard anyone say: “Yes, you only see things from my point of view. Why don’t you consider your own for a change?” The more our culture presumes its own perspective, the more our academic disciplines presume their own rectitude, and the more professors restrict students to their own way of looking at things, the less students will be able to escape from habitual, self-centered, self-reinforcing judgments. We grow wiser, and we understand ourselves better, if we can put ourselves in the position of those who think differently.
Democracy depends on having a strong sense of the value of diverse opinions. If one imagines (as the Soviets did) that one already has the final truth, and that everyone who disagrees is mad, immoral, or stupid, then why allow opposing opinions to be expressed or permit another party to exist at all? The Soviets insisted they had complete freedom of speech, they just did not allow people to lie. It is a short step, John Stuart Mill argues, from the view that one’s opponents are necessarily guided by evil intentions to the rule of what we have come to call a one-party state or what Putin today calls “managed democracy.” If universities embody the future, then we are about to take that step. Literature, by teaching us to imagine the other’s perspective, teaches the habits of mind that prevent that from happening. That is one reason the Soviets took such enormous efforts to censor it and control its interpretation.
Read it all – it’s superb.
Trigger Warning: free speech is being attacked and downgraded in Anglo-American culture, says Mick Hume
Anorak asked journalist Mick Hume about his new book, which looks at the highly topical issue of free speech…
Your new book is entitled ‘Trigger Warning’. For those not familiar with the phrase, could you explain its origin and its relevance?
A ‘trigger warning’ is a statement stuck at the beginning of a piece of writing, video or whatever to alert you to the fact that it contains material you may find upsetting or offensive. For example, ‘TW: Islamophobic language’, or ‘TW: references to sexual violence’.
Trigger Warnings took off in US colleges (where student activists want classic works to carry them, suggesting for example that The Great Gatsby should have one along the lines of ‘TW: suicide, domestic abuse and graphic violence’). They have since spread across the Atlantic and the internet. If you are not familiar with ‘TWs’, they are coming soon to a website near you.
For me the mission creep of trigger warnings symbolises the stultifying atmosphere surrounding freedom of expression and debate today. They are like those ‘Here be dragons’ signs on uncharted areas of old maps, warning students and others not to take a risk, not to step off the edge of their comfort zone, not to expose themselves to ‘uncomfortable’ ideas, images or opinions.
What is the book about?
The sub-title of the book rather gives the game away: ‘Is the fear of being offensive killing free speech?’ To which its unsurprising answer is yes, unless we do something about it.
Trigger Warning is about all the various ways in which free speech is being attacked and downgraded in Anglo-American culture today. It describes ‘the silent war on free speech’. It’s a silent war because nobody in politics or public life admits that they are against freedom of expression; all of them will make ritualistic displays of support for it ‘in principle’, as they did after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. In practice, however, they are all seeking ways to restrict freedom of expression, whilst insisting that ‘this is not a free speech issue’, it is merely an attempt to protect the ‘vulnerable’ against offensive and hateful words.
To that end, the book examines the complementary trends towards official censorship, unofficial censorship and self-censorship in the West today, covering everything from online ‘trolls’ to football and comedy as well as more conventional political issues.
Of these three, the most insidious is the informal, unofficial censorship promoted by Twitter mobs and assorted boycott-and-ban-happy zealots. They are a relatively small minority, but they exercise disproportionate influence by preying on the loss of faith in free speech at the top of our societies.
I describe these people as ‘reverse-Voltaires’, who have taken the famous principle linked to Voltaire – ‘I may hate what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ – and twisted it into its opposite – ‘I know I will detest what you say, and I will defend to the end of free speech my right to stop you saying it’. They do not want to debate arguments they disagree with, but merely to close them down as offensive. Trigger Warning takes on their most powerful excuses in a section entitled ‘Five good reasons for restricting free speech – and why they’re all wrong’.
What is the main message of the book?
The main message of the book – and I fear it is a ‘message’ book, or ‘polemic’ as we pretentious authors say – is twofold, I suppose. That we have forgotten how important the fight for free speech has been in the creation of something approximating a civilised society, and that we are in danger of giving it up without a struggle. It is not so much that we are losing the free speech wars: we are not even fighting them!
Few of the great advances in politics, science and culture over the past 500 years would have been possible without the expansion of free speech and the willingness of heroic heretics to question everything and break taboos. None of the liberation movements of the recent past could have succeeded without putting the right to free speech at the forefront of their campaigns (which makes it all the more bitterly ironic to see restrictions on free speech being demanded today in the name of protecting the oppressed).
Free speech was never a right to be won once and then put on a shelf to be admired. It always has to be defended again, against new challenges and enemies. The big danger today is that so few are standing up for unfettered free speech against the reverse-Voltaires and their like. Where are the young Tom Paines, JS Mills, John Wilkes’ or George Orwells of our age? Instead we have characters like the US liberal professor who just wrote a (pseudonymous) article about how he is too ‘terrified’ of his ‘liberal’ students to raise a potentially offensive idea or even ask them to read Mark Twain. Time to take a stand before it’s too late.
You have been outspoken about the right to offend. But some people seem to believe they have a duty to offend, and we have seen public examples of this recently. How does your opinion differ from theirs?
I have been writing about the right to be offensive for some 25 years, since the crisis over Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. It is the cutting edge of free speech. After all, what use is it is we are only ‘free’ to say what everybody else might like? If we defend free speech for those views branded extreme and offensive, the mainstream will look after itself. This is not about offensive language, but opinions – as JS Mill pointed out long ago, the more powerful your opponent’s arguments are, the more offensive you tend to find them!
The importance of that issue was brought into sharp focus by the reaction to the Charlie Hebdo massacre of course. As the book describes, behind the apparent displays of Je Suis Charlie solidarity, the powerful message was that those cartoonists had gone ‘too far’ in offending Islam. Those gunmen might have been inspired by Islamist preachers, but they can only have been encouraged by the loss of faith in free speech at the heart of Western culture.
None of this means, as you mention, that anybody has a duty to offend. The right to be offensive is not an obligation. One problem today is that the response to the conformist culture of You-Can’t-Say-That tends to be a few comedians and others trying to cause offence for the sake of it. That’s infantile and useless. As William Hazlitt wrote, ‘An honest man speaks the truth, though it may cause offence, a vain man, in order that it may”. A good distinction, so long as we remember that the vain man gets the freedom to speak his version of the truth, too.
Trigger Warning: Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech? is published by Collins.
Mick was answering questions put to him by Ed Barrett
Posted: 17th, June 2015 | In: Books, Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
