Free speech

Sheffield University: drop the investigation!

Student protesters at the University of Sheffield are facing the threat of expulsion or a large fine for their alleged involvement in a protest. From September 2022 to January 2023 the University employed private investigator Intersol Global to look into students’ involvement in protests. University Regulations state that the investigator may require students under investigation to respect the confidentiality of the investigation. But we know from a report in the Guardian that in March the University investigated two students for their alleged involvement in the occupation of a building...

Letter: Musk’s banning culture

Matt McGowan’s article in Solidarity 668 , misses one side of the problem. The purported “free-speech absolutism” of twitter’s new dictator, Elon Musk, only applies to his allies. In December several journalists and other accounts who criticised Musk were suspended from Twitter. After push-back this was reversed. Facing a mass exodus the same month, Twitter blocked links to other platforms — Mastodon , Facebook, etc. — and threatened suspensions . This too was reversed following outcry. Sustained silencing of easier targets is more concerning. Numerous accounts of USA antifascist organisers...

Protest hits Sheffield snooping

As part of a crackdown on student activism, the University of Sheffield has hired Intersol Global, a private investigator firm, to investigate its own students for building occupations. It paid Intersol Global £40,000 in an extraordinary escalation against free expression on campus. On 15 April, Sheffield Solidarity Group organised a protest during the university’s offer-holder open day. The goal was to rally students and the local labour movement in support of the investigated students. Student offer-holders wield economic influence, and universities try to entice them with slick marketing...

Musk, Twitter and the far right

It is now nearly six months since Elon Musk was forced to honour his pledge to buy the social media platform Twitter. Musk parted with $44 billion for the loss-making platform: some Schadenfreude for us there. But the potential political damage of Musk’s “free-speech absolutism” is real. Twitter is one of the smaller social media platforms. It does have its niche, being described by one (cynical) online media editor as “a medium for people with high opinions about themselves [and for] pseudo-elites and their supporters.” More generously, it is the first stop for politicians, journalists and...

Iran’s regime shifts tactics: Schoolgirls under attack

Video of girls dancing in Ekbatan, Iran, released on IWD 2023 According to the US news station, NBC, 2000 Iranian schoolgirls have reported symptoms of poisoning. One member of Iran’s parliament suggests that the numbers may be far higher, and that 5000 girls have been poisoned. 800 girls from 58 schools across ten provinces have been hospitalised. Alireza Monadi, head of parliament’s education committee, has admitted that schools have been deliberately attacked and that 30 toxicologists in the Health Ministry believe the toxins are nitrogen gas. Although no deaths have been recorded the...

Cuban feminists arrested for asking to protest on International Women's Day

Official FMC slogan reads "Cuban women: united, firm and committed." Cuba’s “socialist” regime generally represses not only anti-government protests, but any protests organised without permission – which means virtually any. In connection with this year’s International Women’s Day, however, it went further. In January activists from Cuba’s growing feminist scene requested permission to organise IWD demonstrations on 8 March. They were arrested and interrogated just for asking. (More on this and on Cuba’s feminists from France 24 here .) In the early 1960s, the Stalinist government dissolved...

Thirty years since The Satanic Verses

Last month [September 2018] saw the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses . Rushdie’s sprawling novel defies summary: interlinking stories meld scurrilous fantasies, dark humour and cutting political satire directed not only at Islam, but British racism and Indian immigrants’ attempts to adapt. It is an honest attempt to deal with the warping pressures of racism, religion and cultural dislocation. When it was published in September 1988 there was no spontaneous grassroots opposition. According to Kenan Malik in From Fatwa to Jihad , one early move...

The Lady of Heaven row: no to religious censorship

See also this piece by Kenan Malik. Following protests organised by right-wing Sunni Muslim groups outside cinemas showing the film The Lady of Heaven , the Cineworld chain has cancelled all screenings of it. (Read the Guardian ’s report here .) We have not yet seen the film, but this is how things look to us. The writer of The Lady of Heaven is himself a right-wing religious bigot – a Shia Muslim sectarian hostile to Sunnis. From what we understand the main purpose of the film is to promote such sectarianism. But a film having politics judged objectionable is not a justification for it being...

A ban on publishing?

Eric Lee in Solidarity 623 says he leans towards the “No platform for Nazis crowd” on the issue of access to Holocaust denial, Nazi and presumably neo-Nazi material. I agree with Eric that socialists should mobilise to oppose the far-right when it organises. Does that extend to wanting governments to ban the actual publication of their texts? Even if you would prefer people access Mein Kampf through an edited volume with critical commentary, does that have enough weight to make us positively support bourgeois government restrictions on publishing? The neo-Nazi movement has grown in Germany and...

Joe Rogan, Neil Young and me

Let me start by declaring my ignorance. I never heard of Joe Rogan until a few weeks ago. When Neil Young recently announced that he was pulling all his music off Spotify, I took an interest. And the more I read and listened, the more I admired what Young had done. Watching Rogan engage in friendly banter with the likes of Canada’s Jordan Peterson or Britain’s Douglas Murray, you can instantly spot the appeal. Rogan is a smarter, friendlier version of Trump. People who listen to him a lot will challenge that, of course, but I wasted several valuable minutes of my life watching Rogan’s video...

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