Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Eilis O'Hanlon  Enoch Burke returned to Wilson’s Hospital School last week to continue his lonely vigil in protest at being dismissed from his job for refusing to go along with gender neutral pronouns.

The facts of the case are well enough known at this stage. There’s no need to rake over them again.

Interestingly, though, 60 years ago, another teacher was also in the news after being unceremoniously fired.

Copies of John McGahern’s second novel, The Dark, which dealt with child abuse, had been seized by Customs and Excise officers, and the work was subsequently banned by the Censorship of Publications Board.

McGahern, who worked at the time as a teacher in what is now Belgrove Boys’ National School in Clontarf, refused to take part in the protests which were organised on his book’s behalf, and was only moved to take action when the school’s principal said there would be some “difficulty” if he tried to return to his classroom.

McGahern decided “not to go quietly”. He describes in his 2005 book Memoir how he turned up at the school anyway.

The embarrassed principal read out a legal letter informing the novelist that he was “barred from entering the classroom". 

Continue reading @ Sindo.

How Is Cancelling Róisín Murphy Any Different From Cancelling John McGahern?

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ✏ writing in Socialist Democracy explores censorship in academia. 

14 December 2022

When we think of censorship and the suppression of ideas, we don’t usually think of academics engaging in either. 

 Historically, that is not the case. Academics have been wheeled out time and again to support reactionary ideas and even the suppression or censorship of ideas they do not agree with or offend their paymasters. Recently academics at Edinburgh University have engaged in both through their union, UCU, of all things.

The recently produced documentary Adult Human Female is at the centre of the controversy. The film deals with the issue of women’s rights and how those rights are being eroded, when not eliminated completely through the advance of a trans right movement that seeks to remove women only spaces, reducing the meaning of woman to that of a feeling any man can sign up to whenever he feels like it. The film is available online,(1) however, the decision by Edinburgh University to allow a screening of the film to be hosted by Academics for Academic Freedom provoked the ire of not only trans activists but also of other academics at the university. That a given group of academics would disagree or object on moral, intellectual or philosophical grounds to a film is not only their right, it is to be expected. The whole point of academic debate, peer review of articles, and debate is that all ideas are open to challenge, should be debated and argued about. Some ideas should even be opposed, in the sense of not being accepted as valid. But that is not what is happening here. The UCU called for the film not to be shown.(2) They asked for the film to be suppressed without actually seeing it. But even if they had seen it, the decision would be highly problematic for academics.

Yes, part of the problem is the vexatious issue of trans rights and the infringement upon women’s rights. It is difficult to separate the content and arguments of the film from the call to cancel the showing. In the end the film makers argue for the defence of women’s rights against the current fad and assault on science and reality that women don’t exist, outside of the mind and feelings of those who say they are women and that there is no material basis to being a woman. 

However, there is an issue with how academics approach such topics. Part of the current war on rational thought includes the slogan of no debate, no platform for those who disagree with the trans activists on this issue. Indeed, people such as Kathleen Stock, Germaine Greer and others have found themselves in situations where calls were made for them to be banned from events where they were due to speak on topics that had nothing to do with the issue of trans. A similar situation arises with increasing frequency in the US on the issue of Palestine, where academics and activists find themselves banned because of their support for Palestinians and even find themselves being accused of anti-semitism and losing their jobs.

Marxists and the wider left, including liberals have traditionally defended the right to freedom of speech to varying degrees. Some have at the same time defended their right to protest about the meetings, events etc. but not the call for censorship. Not calling for the censorship of a film is not the same as thinking it is a good idea.

Ireland has a long history of censorship. In a country dominated by Catholic dogmatists who wielded power in the state institutions and the universities, they attacked, vilified and suppressed those who disagreed with them on various issues such as the conflict in the north, divorce, abortion rights, contraception and books on abortion were still being banned as late as 2012. The Catholic high priests in the universities did their worst. The modern-day priests of the woke movement, just like the Catholic priests believe there are sins for which there can be no forgiveness and that the sinners must repent, though repentance is not always enough. The apology must frequently be abject and humiliating.

Films were regularly banned or denied a screening in Ireland. The Life of Brian was one such film and I listened to a pirate tape of it, long before I got to see the film. It was considered blasphemous. It does contain a scene where one of the protagonists says he wants to be a woman and have babies. He is ridiculed by the rest of the cast. That joke would probably be deleted if such a film were made nowadays. Likewise the French director Jean-Luc Godard’s film Hail Mary was also banned in Ireland as late as 1985. I had to see it in at an illegal showing. It was also considered blasphemous. Joseph didn’t believe Mary’s tale of how she became pregnant, so the Archangel Gabriel came down, gave him a few slaps and knocked some sense into him. And now in 2021, the new high priests are banning films such as this one and also the earlier film Dysphoric.(3)

What else does UCU disagree with? Are there are any books that UCU feel should not be stocked in university libraries? Let’s start with Mein Kampf, a thoroughly objectionable piece of work, but one that the late Marxist historian Rayner Lysaght once commented to me was worth reading if only to know what the enemy’s argument was. Or let’s pick a more mainstream book, The Clash of Civilisations by Samuel P. Huntington, a book that became a reference point for right-wingers as it put forward a basically racist argument about future conflicts being between “retrograde” Islamic societies and “forward looking” Christian societies and gave this nonsense an academic veneer. His book is widely available in university libraries throughout the world, despite its use as justification for Bush’s reactionary War on Terror.

No one called for it to be banned, withdrawn from university libraries or anything of the sort. Instead, Tariq Ali wrote a reply The Clash of Fundamentalisms which explained how in reality the US had and still finances Islamic fundamentalists and played a key role in their rise. He also spoke about US fundamentalism and modern-day colonialism. His book sold well but not nearly as well as Huntington’s and is not as widely available in libraries.(4) And of course his book is better than that pseudo intellectual rubbish from Francis Fukuyama, The End of History.

In the US, right-wingers have always sought to have books banned or removed from public libraries or school libraries. In 2021 – 2022, 1,600 books were banned in different school libraries in the country.(5) Some of them are books by transgender activists, in fact the number one spot is a transactivist book, showing that they are also victims of the same tactics they employ themselves. Amongst other titles are The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. Though over a longer time frame, books such as Animal Farm, 1984, Of Mice and Men crop up as clear winners of this “prize”. Anne Frank’s diary even gets banned.(6) Of course, other books such as Abigail Sheir’s Irreversible Damage was suppressed commercially with Amazon cancelling a paid advertisement. Amazon’s attempt backfired which frequently happens with attempts to censor.

If films screenings can be cancelled, so too can books as we have seen in the US. I shudder to think that UCU will soon call for Kathleen Stock’s book Material Girls to be banned as well. It is a slippery reactionary slope they are on. They are also wrong about the issue. No one can change sex and women’s rights are under attack by men. The union dragged its heels for years whilst Kathleen Stock was being harassed on campus by students, on whom a university education is wasted. The situation got to a point where cameras were installed to protect her, but the students were not expelled for their threats of violence. UCU eventually put out a mealy-mouthed statement about defending her academic freedom and then put in the big But about trans. In order words they essentially justified what had happened to her.

But they were very energetic and quick off the mark to get a film showing cancelled. It says a lot about academia, the current sorry state of universities and the churning out of molly coddled, highly sensitive idiots who think they should never have to face reality, that they can define reality away. It is as Engels put it about authority, “These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves.”(7) You can’t change reality by redefining it. You can call men women, but that doesn’t make them women. You can cancel films or ban books, that doesn’t and won’t make the issue go away, and you would think academics understood that. But apparently not. Those who support this nonsense deserve to have their doctorate’s cancelled, as they apparently can’t use their critical faculty at all and their support for censorship will go in history as the infamous act of cowards.

Notes

(1) The film can be seen at https://adulthumanfemale.info

(2) https://twitter.com/ucuedinburgh/status/1601225580565114881

(3) Film can be seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8taOdnXD6o

(4) The book can be obtained from Verso Books https://www.versobooks.com/books/852-the-clash-of-fundamentalisms

(5) CBS News (10/11/2022) The 50 most banned books in America https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-50-most-banned-books-in-america/

(6) See https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/decade2019

(7) Engels, F. (1872) On Authority https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist in Latin America.

Academics Supporting Censorship And Suppression Of Ideas

Matt TreacyIt is not every day that Sinn Féin pays homage to someone who has worked for the British Home Office (stop sniggering down the back ….)


But one such former servant of Whitehall and leading anti-racism guru, Dr. Lucy Michael, managed to get name checked on several occasions in contributions made by Sinn Féin TDs to the love in on the proposed “hate speech” Bill.

I say TDs advisedly as very few TDs write their own Dáil speeches and Sinn Féin is now top heavy with left activists on one part of the NGO circuit. The left- liberal NGO business is to the post bellum post-nationalist Sinn Féin what the ITGWU once was to the Workers Party. Which explains the Shinners’ almost total surrender of policymaking in key areas to “advocacy” companies, and the clear lack of historical self-knowledge on the part of the staffers.

No better illustrated than by the fact that it was left to Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín to point out the total incongruity of a party that was once banned under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act now indicating that it is supporting a Bill that “will encroach on people’s ability to speak freely and respectfully about issues of real importance.”

 

Now, others might claim that Section 31 was required because Sinn Féin at the time it was in force supported the Provisional IRA before it surrendered as part of Sinn Féin’s house training. However, as was pointed out by other opponents of Section 31, the atmosphere put in place by such state censorship – backed by the sacking of the RTÉ authority in 1972 following an interview with IRA Chief of Staff Seán Mac Stiofáin – led to much wider restrictions.

Soon it became the norm for RTÉ in particular, pushed by the same type of left activists now behind the current “hate” legislation, to cast suspicion on anything that they considered to be even vaguely nationalist, or reeking of “hush puppy” Provoism. We have exactly the same mentality now deployed against critics of a wide range of establishment holy cows. If this Bill is passed it will have the imprimatur of the state and the enforcing powers of some new form of political policing.

And all enthusiastically backed by Sinn Féin. It would be amusing were it not so pathetic.

Their enthusiasm for censorship is indicated by the fact that of the 13 speakers in the debate, 6 were from Sinn Féin and all basically parroting the same NGO script. Several of said NGOs got a mention including the far-left Far Right Observatory which was referenced as an alleged authority by Kildare SF TD Patricia Ryan.

Ironically, some might say, because it was not that long ago that Deputy Ryan herself was the target of a pile on by similar characters when she referred to a modular housing project for refugees in Newbridge. Indeed, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that had the legislation which is being pushed by the far left and supported by Sinn Féin was in place when she made her remarks that she might even have had her own collar felt by the Diversity Cheka.

Lest I be accused of exaggeration here, Ryan was accused of being one of “those who take advantage of vulnerable people to further their hateful agenda” when she rightly referred to concerns that her constituents had in relation to housing and the seeming priority given to refugee accommodation. Although perhaps after a visit to the FRO Room 101 she is now one of those “susceptible to this hateful messaging” who has taken advantage of the means she now recommends to “educate to prevent reoffending.”

Tóibín also pointed out to the ideological underpinnings of the proposed Bill and that it has specific targets. Not least being that persons who “adhere to the scientific understanding of gender” are potentially targets of this, as they have already been – and he referred to J.K Rowling and to the hysterical backlash against women who recently articulated that view on RTÉ’s Liveline – informally through the left liberal control of much of the means of cancelling dissenters.

He bluntly asked the Minister if she believes, as do many of the supporters of this Bill, that “women saying that a woman is an adult female is transphobic and hate speech?” We shall await her response with interest.

The whole problem with the Bill was similarly illustrated by Minister Helen McEntee in her opening speech. She referred to tackling “crimes motivated by prejudice, hate or bigotry” as the motivation of the Bill. Attacking people is already a crime, as are a whole range of other offences that in many cases are obviously motivated by hate. Presumably most murders, other than those carried out by professional hitmen, are motivated by some degree of antipathy to the victim.

Which leads one to question why there is a need for any other legislation, especially given that many actual crimes go undetected and leniently treated in the view of many, including the victims of such crimes. Would Urantsetseg Tserendorj have been less likely to have been murdered had this legislation been in place? Hardly. The person charged with her murder claimed that his intention was to rob any person he presumably believed to be less likely to be able to defend themselves.

Nor is there any reason why there ought to “protected groups” in Irish society who have their very own laws to protect them. Groups which the Minister defines on the basis of “race, colour, nationality, religion, ethnic or national origin, descent, sexual orientation, gender, including gender expression or gender identity, sex characteristics or disability.”

Pretty much everyone could be included in such a wide ranging definition, but of course they are not. What chances would Enoch Burke have were he to take a case against the avalanche of hate he has been subjected to in many quarters, not least the social media which the left liberal pearl-clutchers are so angsted about, were he to claim he was being hated on for being a white, Irish, heterosexual, Protestant male? None.

The reason being of course is that there is no NGO which has decided to set itself up as the self-appointed defender of such a minority. There is no money in culchie prods with Biblical names. There are hundreds of millions in claiming to be the protector of other minority groups, most of whom probably are not even aware of, and certainly do not benefit from, the existence of some of the groups reverentially referenced by leftie TDs.

The only other TD to place their opposition on the record was Paul Murphy who amidst a ream of slogans and crèche Marxism pliants about racism and fascism and capitalism – all of which are “disgusting” – did at least recognise that sections of the Bill provide the state with potentially sweeping powers to prosecute legitimate forms of protest and expression, including from the left.

Unfortunately, Sinn Féin have so immersed themselves in the Marxoid waters of resentment and victimisation while expelling any remnant of the republican defence of free speech, that they no longer even see that.

As Peadar Tóibín noted republicanism ought to mean that “each individual has and should have an equal right to that articulation of views and the equal articulation of speech.”

Something, of course, which the people who told Peadar to “fuck off out of this office before something happens” have never believed in.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Hate Speech Bill Is Section 31 For Our Times

Stanley Cohentakes Twitter to task for its persistent erosion of free speech and its decision to ban him from the platform.

16-September-2022
The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth … If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. The theory of our Constitution is that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market . . . The First Amendment itself ensures the right to respond to speech we do not like, and for good reason. Freedom of speech and thought flows not from the beneficence of the state but from the inalienable rights of the person … Society has the right and civic duty to engage in open, dynamic, rational discourse.”– United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709, 724 (2012).

With these words, the Supreme Court echoed an aged but essential ideal . . . a timeless reminder to censors everywhere be they the algorithm muzzle of trendy social platforms, arid academic institutions, or poising political pens that the voice of freedom demands more than pious inapt platitudes. It mandates an unfettered even clashing marketplace of ideas.

Although preached worldwide by pariahs for time immemorial, in its most recent historical iteration the marketplace of ideas traces back hundreds of years to the quills of John Milton and John Stuart Mill and is bottomed fundamentally on the premise that the free dissemination of ideas creates an essential social process where truth competes and will eventually win out over falsehood, if only left to its unbridled natural device. It is this air of fact over fiction; of surety over sophism; of particulars over proselytism that threatens the status quo ante of the privileged that maintain power no matter what its price against those that fight to rid themselves of that very occupation of narrative, be it physical or one of ideas.

The move from the abstract philosophical debate in the United States to practical First Amendment application finds its genesis in the dissenting opinion of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Abrams et. al v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919) an early case in which a constitutional challenge was raised to the conviction of anti-war dissidents under the Espionage Act for distributing leaflets calling for a strike at U.S. munitions plants. In finding such acts to be protected political speech enshrined under First Amendment jurisprudence, Holmes noted “that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas — that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.”

Challenged by the test of time and petty political posture to be sure, the marketplace of ideas has only grown in ardor and reach since Abrams. As reaffirmed most recently in City of Austin v. Reagan Nat’l Adver. Of Austin , LLC, 142 S. Ct. 1464 (2022) “[t]he First Amendment helps to safeguard what Justice Holmes described as a marketplace of ideas . . . A democratic people must be able to freely generate, debate, and discuss both general and specific ideas, hopes, and experiences.” Some twenty years earlier in Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343,358 (2003) the Supreme Court opined that “[t]he hallmark of the protection of free speech is to allow ‘free trade in ideas’ — even ideas that the overwhelming majority of people might find distasteful or discomforting.”

It is clear the dissent in Abrams is no longer a marginal voice in the wilderness looking for welcome for it has evolved to become the linchpin upon which speech–even painful, hurtful and disturbing speech– remains protected under now well-settled constitutional norms. Be it the obscenity of the Klan and neo-Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, the rancid screed of “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottsville or “death to Arabs” heard not just in the weekly Zionist pogroms in occupied Jerusalem, but from the thoughts, if not prayers, of its fanbase from coast to coast, these words may anger, they may hurt, they may intimidate but yet they are protected speech which play an essential role in the search for truth in the marketplace of ideas.

To be sure, the marketplace allegory is routinely used by the Supreme Court in the resolution of free-expression cases. Justices have used it to protect expression in virtually every area of First Amendment jurisprudence: prior restraint, libel, invasion of privacy, pornography access, advertising, picketing, expressive conduct, broadcasting, and cable regulation. The Court has repeatedly said the primary purpose of the First Amendment is to protect an uninhibited marketplace where differing ideas can clash. It is a fundamental rule of freedom, a bellwether of liberty, that Twitter in its ever-changing cherry-picks of good speech and bad, has not heard.

Social media was intended to unite the world in ways not known before: to move beyond the narrow artificial confines of state borders, banners and oaths to facilitate an exchange of ideas among a community of international strangers, but nonetheless a world of fellow travelers. Predictably, what began with the high hope of a legion of virtual street corner pamphleteers, has morphed to become another controlled megaphone of the rich, the powerful, the political class who sell costly shares in its commercial loudspeaker to the highest bidder, but yet the lowest of shareholder.

Over the years Twitter has grown from a platform of unbridled hope to orchestrated dictate as states have unleashed armies of paid trolls and bots to control the narrative. No one has spent more time or money in the effort to own the storyline than has Israel which has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into recasting its horrors and targeting those it sees as a threat to its tale of deadly fiction. It is clear I’ve become a favorite target of the Israeli/Zionist narrative with increasing complaints filed against me for nothing more than mere words. Be it a post of “Springtime for Hitler and Germany” from the famed musical The Producers, or another challenging the assertion that Judaism is a race, but wishing its author a good day at the tanning salon, on Twitter I have long used fact or sarcasm to challenge the palpably false sale of Israel as a democracy victimized by the world.

This past week I was permanently banned by Twitter for “hate speech” and “incitement to violence” without any example of where and when my words crossed that line. Twitter does not understand or simply refuses to accept a world where words, be they from the pen of the author to the book of their reader, are essential to the marketplace of ideas. It does not accept that one’s vision and voice is not a commodity to be owned by an algorithm be it a robot or private jet. Ideas are eternal. They bring friction, at times anguish, but ultimately no matter what their language they can bring boundless unity in a world of endless pain.

Twitter is a US-incorporated and US-based corporation. Unlike dozens of countries throughout the world, there is no “hate speech” or penalty for such within the United States. Though advocates of hate speech legislation have argued freedom of speech enhances an oppressive narrative disparaging equality and the Fourteenth Amendment’s purpose of ensuring equal protection under the law, it is an argument long in search of constitutional relevance.

From its earliest days the framers dispatched with little difficulty the notion of good speech and bad and rejected a test of ideas to be resolved through a balancing of the relative costs and benefits of a given declaration or debate. And though at times of great political tension or national peril, efforts have been made by some to tailor an otherwise unbridled pathway of words, the Constitution has held–foreclosing any effort to revise the First Amendment paradigm on the basis that some speech is simply unworthy of protection. More than 220 years ago the Supreme Court pronounced that the Constitution is not a mere abstract manuscript “prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 178 (1803).

Is speech absolute? No. Are there categories of expression that cross a very wide wall of shelter, along the way shedding First Amendment protection? Of course. For example… neither obscenity nor defamation; fraud nor actual incitement are protected speech. They represent “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem.” Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568, 571-572 (1942).

Yet, there is no constitutional exception for so-called hate speech. That some, perhaps many, may find expressions of bigotry, racism, and religious intolerance or ideas to be vulgar, offensive, profane is of no constitutional moment whatsoever. The First Amendment permits speakers to utter racially charged and offensive words in public directed at minorities and political groups. Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949). It permits them to express “virulent ethnic and religious epithets.” United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990). It allows sponsors to exclude members of the LGBTQ community from marching in a private parade. Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, 515 U.S. 557 (1995). It allows me to wear a jacket in a public building that says “Fuck the Draft” [Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971)] or to burn the American flag in protest. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1990). It even tolerates a call for the overthrow of the United States government. Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). The takeaway from these cases and many others is palpable and settled. Ultimately in a free society “[t]he right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is, therefore, one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.” Terminiello, 337 U.S. at 4.

Lest there be any question about the continuing protection of so-called hate speech any such concern was resolved twenty years ago, in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota, 505 U.S. 377 (1992). In R.A.V. the Supreme Court put to bed the notion that “hate speech” . . . words — actual or expressive– can, without more, be legislated against in almost all circumstances. R.A.V presented the high court with a particularly egregious challenge in that a group of white teenagers after a conversation fueled with racial hatred toward a Black family who had recently moved into the house across the street, made a cross and set it afire in the middle of the night on the lawn of their home. Later they burned another one on the street corner clearly visible from that home.

There could be no debate about the hate -filled motivation of the teens as historically, cross-burnings had been the trade-mark of the best-known hate group in America, the Ku Klux Klan, the penultimate white supremacist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, xenophobic organization which terrorized many communities by lynchings, murders and other acts of violence in the name of racial segregation. Arrested and convicted, the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision overturned their conviction for a hate crime striking down an ordinance against speech that causes “anger, alarm, or resentment” based on race or religion. Noting that the teens could be convicted for offenses such as trespass or mischief, the Court made clear that the injuries of racist epithets and symbols does not outweigh the right to free speech. As noted, R.A.V is not an anomaly but reflects a long unbroken line of constitutional matters in which offensive even hateful speech has been deemed to be protected by the First Amendment. In case after case where the issue of hate speech has arisen, the Supreme Court has held that statutes penalizing such speech “must be interpreted with the commands of the First Amendment clearly in mind in order to distinguish true threats from constitutionally protected speech.” Perez v. Florida, 137 S. Ct. 853 (2017).

Ultimately that distinction, like Twitter’s mantra of incitement, turns on the speaker’s intent and the likelihood of result. One of the landmarks of American political liberty is the celebrated case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) which finds its genesis in the Holmes dissent in Abrams some fifty years earlier. Originally arising in the political hysteria of the First World War, with the prosecution of activists for sedition and espionage on the basis of speech for its “tendency and the intent behind it,” Brandenburg raised the bar to heights that remain no less strong or compelling today. Under Brandenburg:

the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.

Brandenburg unmistakably insists that any limit on speech must be grounded in a realistic, factual assessment of harm. So, Twitter, tell me just what actual harm my decade on your platform has caused anyone. Where have my words these past ten years been directed to inciting imminent lawless action and such that they were likely to produce that result? Can it be using Twitter to share my numerous essays, opinion pieces and podcast interviews some of which, perhaps many, have caused unease or aggravated others? Or is it my public solidarity with oppressed peoples? Or my posts about the meaning and application of domestic and international law? Or my preach about the continuing injustice rained down by extant colonial projects on indigenous communities throughout the world? Or is it my expose on the American criminal justice system and its carceral state? Or has it been my challenge to a corrupt political process in the United States? Or my decades of representing political dissidents and movements and ideas throughout the world? Or my indictment of imperialist attacks and sanctions imposed upon states that say no to Western hegemony? Or my biting sarcasm that embarrasses cults of personality that are always the first to raise questions and challenge but last to provide seasoned consequential answers? Of course not.

Is it hateful or inciteful speech that brought me to address student bodies at Yale’s Divinity School and the law schools at Cornell and Pace; or involved me in the acclaimed international debates in Doha or Intelligence Squared in NYC; or had me lecture state and federal public defenders on criminal law; or selected me to serve as a mentor for young interns from top law schools throughout the country; or to appear dozens of times on live domestic or international televised forums discussing controversies of the day; or had me speak frequently at international conferences, or to advise foreign heads of state on legal issues and process; or has seen me regularly published in several languages in media outlets throughout the world; or had me designated as an expert on free speech by an administrative court in South Africa? Perhaps its decades of trying cases, writing briefs, and arguing appeals in state, federal, and international courts including the Supreme Court of the United States, six separate federal Circuit Courts of Appeal, the New York State High Court, the Hague, the ICC, and at INTERPOL that have left me woefully ill-equipped to convey the interest of clients or my own thoughts without digressing into so-called “hate speech” or “incitement to violence.” So just what is it that I did to invoke the wrath of the finely tuned, experienced, skilled censors of Twitter? In the first instance, I received a notice I was being blocked for a “hateful” post that said “death to Arabs,” death to Arabs,” and “death to Arabs.” Indeed, that was my post, but not my commentary.

Can it be the finely tuned sophisticated algorithms that flagged this tweet did not have the cognitive capacity to understand nuance or to juxtapose it to another’s the preceding tweet which, in essence, applauded Zionism and Israel as expressing the finest in the Jewish tradition of love and humanity? Is it possible the robot censor did not understand that my rejoinder was not of my own design but rather referred to that of Zionists chanting “death to Arabs,” death to Arabs,” “death to Arabs” during what has become their almost weekly pogrom in occupied Quds?

Full stop. Having filed my initial appeal pointing out the actual meaning and context of my “hateful” post, not long thereafter Twitter notified me that I was now blocked not on the basis of a single tweet but rather because of hateful and inciteful speech in general. In the days since I have filed several additional appeals requesting particularized examples to support this generic allegation that I am an inartful evil person, asking it to preserve related records and seeking the involvement of one of its attorneys. Twitter has gone silent not replying to any additional inquiries.

As the self-anointed protectorate of what it considers to be worthy values and speech as opposed to the unseemly, Twitter has long reserved unto itself the unitary power to impose sanctions for the daring of those who break with the arbitrary tenor and tone of its ever-changing “guidelines”. Putting aside for another day, but one surely yet to come, the constitutional question of whether and to what extent Twitter is mandated to comply with First Amendment edicts because it invites and serves as a public forum fulfilling a quasi-public function [Pruneyard Shopping Ctr. v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980)] nevertheless its subjective value-based edicts must be viewed in the light of settled constitutional law. It is there that Twitter and other social platforms will ultimately lose. Although the constitutional arguments that have addressed and rejected the Twitter pen pals of hate speech and incitement to violence are, by now, rich and legend, I will save for another time, perhaps another venue, a full argument as to why Twitter is bound by the same constitutional obligations that granted Citizens United and its private corporate cash cow the full protection of the First Amendment.

And what of the grand masters of the Twitter universe and their dutiful enforcers of good speech and bad … those who’s insight, experience and commentary about the pressing issues of our time is so widely respected and in demand as to be sought out not by political scientists, theologians and world leaders but by the sounding-board of their own cloistered mirrors. To be sure, the Board Chairman of Twitter, Bret Taylor has no doubt spent his life pursuing social justice for all as evidenced by an estimated net worth of $226 million dollars. This obvious sacrifice of personal reward for the benefit of those in need found its launch in providing software to businesses that were looking to increase productivity and massive profit. It worked. It still does.

Who is Parag Agrawal? Having been heralded by the Times of India with the headline of “India gets a handle @Twitter as Parag Agrawal named CEO,” the new chief executive officer quickly caved to the demands of the Modi Government when Twitter deleted accounts and tweets connected to farmer protests after the Delhi High Court authorized the government to take any steps against it should it refuse. Later when facing the prospect of criminal prosecution for any failure to observe new guidelines to regulate digital content on social media and streaming platforms, Twitter once again self-censored by adopting new local digital rules essentially promulgated to ensure content control of unpopular domestic speech or dissent in India. But alas, in banishing me from the marketplace of ideas, Mr. Agrawal’s censors failed to recall his own personal taunt at the hands of trolls who accused him of hate speech for his post “If they are not gonna make a distinction between Muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists.” No matter how upsetting that post might be, like mine, it was not his own original thought, but simply a recast of an earlier commentary of another.

What of Board Member David Rosenblatt? Although sure to draw the predictable tedious shriek of antisemitism for merely noting his devotion to Israel, can Mr. Rosenblatt’s presence on Twitter’s small Board of Directors and the special treatment Israel has long enjoyed from its platform be mere coincidence? A co-founder of the Arava Power Company, an Israeli solar development enterprise, Rosenblatt, known for his “strong ties” to Israel, where he is a frequent visitor, sits on a number of other Boards which maintain offices in the “nation-state” and which encourage and support Zionist activities there. Among their endeavors is the “Onward Israel” program which funds internships in Israel for young American Jews; Birthright Israel which sponsors trips to the occupied age-old communities of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights; the Center for Israel Engagement which subsidizes delegations between Israel and the US; sponsorship of programs providing economic and cultural support for the Israeli “sister-City” of Nahariya; and a college scholarship program which provides financial support to recent immigrants in Israel, with a priority for those who were in the Israeli Defense Forces.

What about this special relationship between Twitter and Israel? As a starting point, any examination of this bond and its impact on honest fact-based discussion and debate must necessarily begin from the recognition that Israel, like India, and a number of other autocratic regimes has stripped Twitter of any meaningful discretion let alone the ability to ensure an untethered exchange within the marketplace of ideas in the demanding state.

For example, according to Quds Press, Israel requires social media giants to permit it to have input, if not control, over the content of the posts which ultimately find their way into the stream of debate within the Israeli public at large. At one point Twitter allegedly deleted thousands of posts, pages and accounts following demands made by the Ministry of Justice based upon little more than vague unsupported claims that the information posed a threat to the safety of Israel. Elsewhere with unflinching regularity, Twitter suspends accounts of Palestinian journalists posting tweets critical of Israeli activity.

Recently the account of renowned Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti was suspended while she was reporting from a Sheikh Jarrah solidarity demonstration in the occupied West Bank. While Twitter later reported the suspension as “accidental,” it did not provide the specific grounds that had prompted its initial precipitous decision. Several years ago, Twitter precipitously suspended multiple accounts of Quds News Network with several hundred thousand followers based solely on the complaint of the Palestinian Authority that the accounts had violated one of their local rules in the occupied territory. Reportedly the PA action was a result of Israeli pressure. Last year it suspended the account of CODEPINK co-executive director Ariel Gold, a prominent Jewish activist known for her indefatigable support of justice for Palestinians. Long targeted by Zionist trolls, her suspension followed a number of tweets including one mourning the extrajudicial execution of a Palestinian man. So, too, famed Palestinian academic and author Ramzy Baroud’s account was recently blocked for unspecified violations of Twitter rules. After an international uproar, his account was reinstated with no particularized grounds provided for its suspension.

Elsewhere Twitter has permitted the Israeli government to use its platform not just for the dissemination of patently false information but as a cover for its military operations. For example, the Israeli military’s official Twitter account posted a clip that purported to show Hamas embedding missile launchers into civilian neighborhoods. In reality, the footage was but a decoy weapon used by Israel during a training exercise. On other occasions, the IDF posted images of buildings it bombed in Gaza, including one that housed various media outlets including Al Jazeera, the Associated Press and Middle East Eye journalists. Although the images are typically accompanied by blanket assertions the building harbored Hamas military assets, no evidence is provided to support these indiscriminate claims. In an even more brazen violation of Twitter rules, if not international law, the Israeli military once announced in a post that its troops had begun attacking Gaza. A deliberate lie, it was part of a scheme to draw Hamas fighters into exposing themselves by thinking an invasion was underway when one was not. Likewise, the English version of the IDF account falsely accused Palestinian model Bella Hadid of advocating for “throwing Jews into the sea”, when in fact she had chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” In none of these instances did Twitter take any action against Israeli state accounts, or its supporters, despite their willful dissemination of calculated misinformation and libel, or a clear intended purpose to bring about the loss of Palestinian lives.

In the light of what is very much a glaring all-out surrender to the political and military interests and demands of Israel and Zionists across the world, Twitter has increasingly, almost eagerly, forfeited any vestige of objectivity in the marketplace of ideas regarding the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, liberation and justice. Comfortable with accepting, indeed readily furthering, the Zionist narrative, it has unleashed its auto-censors against Palestinian voices and those that stand with them opting instead to market the distorted and dishonest Israeli tale of perpetual victim to overwhelm the reality of the life and death of Palestinians at their colonizer hands. I am but one of many such targets.

Over the course of my decade on Twitter, I have drawn to my voice some forty-thousand followers and published almost half a million tweets. While they have covered a wide, diverse range of topics and issues, much of my effort has been born of solidarity with my Palestinian cousins . . . a united family of resistance, one determined to expose and to defeat the criminal aims of a European colonial project.

For those reading this essay through a link on Twitter, unlike the dozens of occasions when it served as a launch for other controversial often uncomfortable views of mine, this missive posts not from me directly, but through a supporter, as I am banned: victim to Twitter’s corporate hypocrisy, one that gauge’s speech not by the value of its untempered exchange, but rather its monied popularity and cheap, political and social convenience.

Regrettably, over these years we have seen Twitter, once a largely independent platform of timely social and political discourse and conscience, essentially crumble to become an intimidating merry-go-round of often irrelevant thought and commercial sale that challenges little but what to eat; what to wear; how to look. This may be the public square of mercantile ease . . . it is not the marketplace of ideas.

Since the day when at age16 my nose was bloodied and eyes burned by police batons and pepper spray as one of the thousands who marched across the Brooklyn Bridge in an antiwar protest to shut down the headquarters of the New York City Police Department, I have fought against hate and state violence everywhere. As a student activist, community organizer, Vista, social worker, public defender and international human rights litigator, in and out of courts I have sided with the despaired, the despised the disaffected at every crossroad of my life. Although at times my journey has taken me into the midst of armed struggle, be it at Wounded Knee, Oka, or in Palestine, my personal passage has been that as an advocate, a wordsmith of sorts who has learned to navigate the marketplace of ideas with and on behalf of those whose voice, but not their vision, has been muffled if not muted by the state and its agents because of color, faith, poverty or principled politics. For me, nowhere has that fight been longer, louder or more essential than it has been in support of Palestinian liberation and justice.

So, Twitter, against the backdrop of your duplicitous corporate logo that exalts your multi-national empire as “a microblogging social media platform which gives you the freedom to post and share anything without any barriers or restrictions” . . . your words, not mine- do what you must.

At day’s end, you can take from me the virtual stairway to your trembling co-opted platform, but you will never silence my voice.
Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.
You can no longer follow Stanley Cohen on Twitter @StanleyCohenLaw

Twitter ✑ Platform of Exchange … Vehicle of Duplicity

Atheist Republic’s ✒Twitter account, the largest atheist account on the platform, has been suspended yet again.


Susanna McIntyre, the CEO of Atheist Republic, reports that she was met with an “Account Suspended” notification when she tried logging in to Atheist Republic’s Twitter on Friday, April 1st, 2022.

Atheist Republic’s Twitter account was previously suspended over a false DMCA copyright infringement claims in November 2021. “The copyright infringement claims against us were obviously false, so it was much easier to get our account back because we simply had to wait for our counter-notifications to be processed,” McIntyre explained.

What is unusual about this most recent suspension is that Atheist Republic has received no formal written notice that details what policy or community standard rule was violated and was therefore the reason for suspension. Twitter users are typically emailed a list of their tweets and/or content that broke the platform’s community guidelines when given restrictions or full suspensions, and these emails serve as an explanation for the punitive action.

You can help Atheist Republic by tweeting and tagging “@TwitterSupport” and asking Twitter to look into the cause of the suspension and to issue an explanation for the suspension.

Continue reading @ Atheist Republic.

Atheist Republic Suspended From Twitter Without Notice!

Atheist RepublicFor the last decadePatheos, a multifaith media platform that hosts commentary from writers of different religions and the religiously unaffiliated, has been going in a concerning direction. 

Abdulla Gaafarelkhalifa

According to departing bloggers and their manager, Dale McGowan, the nonreligious channel has been steered away from criticizing religion.

Fifteen bloggers left the site in the last days of 2021, including Hemant Mehta of the Friendly Atheist. He stated “The writing on the wall was that unless you’re prepared to say nice things about religion you need to find a new outlet.”

Adam Lee, who wrote the “Daylight Atheism” blog for Patheos, said, “What they were asking of us was not compatible with the editorial tone we had taken until then.” He added “Many of us felt this would require an editorial shift to such an extent as to make our blogs unrecognizable.” If one were to visit the nonreligious channel today, it's considerably more spacious than it used to be.

Everyone who left Patheos can now be found at OnlySky, where Dale McGowan will be their new editor and chief. The site will launch sometime this month.

Continue reading @ Atheist Republic.

Atheist Bloggers Told To Stop Criticising Religion

Information Clearing HouseOur world is increasingly living in a charged political atmosphere. This political chaos is cousin people to censor more than they might otherwise do. 

Brian Lamacraft

Censorship is not the way out of our current problems. In fact, censorship is going to make things worse. There are several reasons why you should not censor anyone.

I have No Control Over Censorship

First of all, I would like to say that I have no control over censorship. I’m not responsible for those that decided to censor. Perhaps those that are censoring other people are trying to hide something themselves. They simply don’t want to see the other side. We’ve seen throughout history what censorship does and where it could lead. I don’t want to see our world go in that direction. It’s increasingly looking like it might go in that direction. Censorship is not the way forward.
Sites Can Censor All they Want

Some of the sites performing censorship are doing so because they don’t want the content on their sites. Since these sites are not run by any government agencies, they are free to censor whatever they feel like censoring.  

Continue reading @ Information Clearing House.

Why Censorship Is Wrong

UnHerdIf you were bullied by 338 colleagues, what would you do?

 Suzanne Moore
It is March 2020. For several months now I have been trying to write something — anything — about the so-called “trans debate” in my Guardian column. But if I ever slip a line in about female experience belonging to people with female bodies, and the significance of this, it is always subbed out. It is disappeared. Somehow, this very idea is being blocked, not explicitly, but it certainly isn’t being published. My editors say things like: “It didn’t really add to the argument”, or it is a “distraction” from the argument.

Distraction has always been a triggering word for me. In a good way. My PhD supervisor told me I was “a woman of too many distractions”. This was because I was venturing into journalism, frustrated by the dead language of academia ...

Even though I’d been writing for them for decades, editors consistently try to steer me towards “lifestyle” subjects for my column. One even suggests that I shouldn’t touch politics at all. And yet I won the Orwell Prize for political journalism the year before.

Continue reading @ UnHerd.

Why I Had To Leave The Guardian

Juan David Ramírez Rubiano ✒ History has shown us that some authoritarian political regimes have displayed immense fear of certain ideas expressed in books, works of art and all types of artistic expression that was considered dangerous to the ideology of the government. 

To mention two well-known cases, the burning of piles of books carried out by the Nazis (mirroring the style of a Colombian ex-attorney in his youth), among which those of Bertolt Brecht could be found, to mention one of the greatest German writers or the censuring of the Russian writer and journalist Vasily Grossman by the Soviet regime which almost wiped out his written work Life and Fate. It was written in 1959 with strong criticism of Soviet bureaucracy and totalitarianism. 

It was the object of censure and persecution and could only see the light of day and be published in 1980 in Switzerland. It’s worth mentioning that this work also criticized Nazism.

This practice is not only specific to totalitarian governments; it has also been taken up by religious institutions. The Catholic Church is ripe with these types of acts ...

Continue reading @ Juan David Ramírez Rubiano.

Insolence That Troubled The Church

Information Clearing House ✒ Oligarchs and social media giants are now claiming a monopoly on “the truth”, that should worry everyone

Kit Knightly

November 09, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - The media have called the election for Biden, but the counting goes on and there is a legal case in the offing. But whoever emerges from this deluge of sludge, fraud and propaganda to become president of the United States, there has undoubtedly already been one big loser – freedom of speech.

Late on Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning, Donald Trump – the elected President of the United States – emerged from the White House to make a speech.

He accused the Democratic party, the political establishment, the media and tech giants/social media companies of working together to steal the election and put Biden in the Whitehouse.

You likely didn’t see all of it, because most of the mainstream news channels simply refused to broadcast it. Watch this clip: 

 
Earlier that night, MSNBC had cut away from Trump’s first speech claiming victory, with anchor Brian Williams claiming it was “not rooted in reality” and “dangerous”.

Continue reading @ Information Clearing House.

Censoring Donald Trump Is More “Dangerous To Democracy” Than Anything He Could Ever Say

UnHerdSome people would prefer you didn’t talk back — here's how they'll try to cancel you.

Peter Franklin

Suppressing free speech has a long and bloody history. To see how violence and intimidation can be used to silence opponents, just look at the record of any tyrannical regime that’s ever existed.

And then there are more subtle methods. ‘Cancel culture’ is spoken of as if it were something new. It isn’t. You don’t need social media to whip up a mob. And as for attacking your getting opponents fired, that too goes all the way back. Administratively competent dictators usually sack their enemies before jailing or killing them. The same goes for ‘no platforming’ — another new name for a very old practice. If you control the public square then you can deny dissidents a voice. 

This article is about the less obvious threats to free speech. I’m not referring to the constant bellendery of what happens online (and, increasingly, in the TV studio). Nor is this an article about the way in which spurious accusations of bigotry are used to tear down decent individuals (latest victim: Trevor Phillips).

Continue reading @ UnHerd.

Ten Woke Ways To Shut Down Debate

ICHThe same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles.

 
Glenn Greenwald


 Today I sent my intention to resign from The Intercept, the news outlet I co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, as well as from its parent company First Look Media.

The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.

The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.

Continued reading @ ICH.

My Resignation From The Intercept

The GuardianThe attacks on the signatories of a letter fearing the future of free speech proved the letter’s point.

By Nick Cohen

 The task that appears most urgent today is the destruction of the authoritarian right. Not because the authoritarian right is more malicious than the authoritarian left, but because it holds power across the west. Liberal-minded people making an informed calculation must surely decide to avoid distractions and concentrate their fire on the enemy that matters. Or so a seductive argument goes.

If you are an American voter, your sole priority should be the removal of Donald Trump. If you are British, you must concentrate on building a viable opposition to a Conservative party whose neglect and stupidity have wrecked the economy and killed tens of thousands. The slogan “no enemies to the left” is never more appealing than when it can be dressed in language that appeals to those who pose as tough-minded.

But it won’t wash, and not just because the motives of those who scour the web to find evidence of the sins of others are those of the inquisitor and stool pigeon. In the world of practical politics, refusing to confront leftish authoritarianism leaves you with two options. You will either lose and deserve to lose, for you should have known that every time the far left has taken on the authoritarian right in the west it has lost. Or, and this may be worse, you will win and repent your failure to check that your new bosses were worthy of your trust. 

Continue reading @ The Guardian

The Spectre Of Censorship And Intolerance Stalks Today’s Left

From Spiked Online Tim Dawson on the return of the book burners.

The Twittermob’s fury with un-woke novels has sinister echoes of the past.

 
The Book Community has jumped the shark. Who are the ‘Book Community’? Well, they’re the nebulous group of super-woke flakes who bullied young-adult (YA) fantasy author Amelie Wen Zhao into pulling the publication of her debut novel, Blood Heir. While it wasn’t slated for release until June, some review copies had been sent out. Apparently the book has already shaken some readers – and some people who obviously haven’t read it – to the core. Zhao’s depiction of slavery in one scene has been deemed problematic. Reverse racism, lack of genderqueer representation, and a central antagonist with a limp are some of the other criticisms levelled against it, and Twitter is fuming. Zhao has issued an apology and agreed with her publishers to cancel publication.

The novel is probably terrible. I’m not particularly into sword and sorcery stuff – though the fact that it has upset so many flakes has naturally piqued my interest. But you don’t need to like, or even read, a book to defend its right to be published. Of course, Amelie Wen Zhao halted publication herself. You could argue that she has ‘listened to feedback’ and acted accordingly. But the line between listening to feedback and being bullied by very angry zealots is a thin one, and this incident seems to have crossed it. Zhao relies on these people for her income and is scared. That’s understandable. And really, really bad.

Our cultural landscape is increasingly controlled by the permanently outraged. Books – even trashy fantasy novels – are a key component of civilisation. They are tangible, material repositories of humanity, in all its forms. Burning books is the sign of a society going wildly wrong. Banning books, also. Scaring authors into pulling the publication of their books surely sits in the same egregious territory.

Continue Reading @ Spiked Online.

The Return Of Book-Burning