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Ukraine Solidarity Group ✊ A Digest of News from Ukrainian Sources ⚔ 15-June-2026.

In this week’s bulletin

⬤ Freedom of speech and the Ukrainian Civil Code.
⬤ The budget crisis in Russia.
⬤ Internal migration within Ukraine.
⬤ Russian killing of Ukrainian children.
⬤ Russian execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
⬤ Europe and Russian fossil fuels.

News from the territories occupied by Russia

Three children orphaned for Russia's new Crimean `treason trial’ and huge sentence (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, 11th June)

Russia uses Gestapo-like torture for `international terrorism’ trial and massive sentences over death of a Ukrainian traitor (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, 10th June)

Weekly update on the situation in occupied Crimea on June 9th, 2026 (Crimea Platform, 9th June)

News from the front

Ukraine’s security service reports hit on oil and gas terminal in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai (Ukrainska Pravda, 13th June)

Ukraine’s defence forces strike oil facility in Russia’s Volgograd oblast (Ukrainska Pravda, 13th June)

Russian losses in the war with Ukraine. Mediazona count, updated (Mediazona, 5th June)

News from Ukraine

Zelenskyy sanctions Russian telecoms operators and internet service providers (Ukrainska Pravda, 13th June)

Inside Ukraine’s campaign to force Putin to the negotiating table by fall 2026 (Meduza, 12th June)

This June marks our fourth anniversary (Solidarity Collectives, 11th June)

Drink to the death of dictators (Solidarity Collectives, 11th June)

A former brick seller, a Navalny supporter, holidays in Crimea: the Rosatom employees who helped occupy the Chornobyl nuclear power plant (Ukrainska Pravda, 9th June)

Statement on threats to freedom of speech in the draft new Civil Code of Ukraine (Zmina, 8th June)

War-related news from Russia

Communist party lawmaker warns Russia is `on the brink of a social explosion' and demands a `clear plan’ to end the war (Meduza, 12th June)

Abducted Melitopol journalist Anastasia Hlukhovska went on hunger strike in notorious Russian prison (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, 12th June)

“My charge is a prison regime screw-up in itself”. Political prisoners moved to supposedly “lighter” prisons are isolated in cold dark cells for months (Mediazona, 11th June)

Russia’s central bank chief disappears from public view as resignation rumors swirl: one report links her future to fears of border closures and martial law (Meduza, 11th June)

Russia just rushed through a law to lift limits on borrowing and spending. Is the budget starting to crack? (Meduza, 11th June)

Escape from the “Digital GULAG”: Ordinary Russians are finding ways to bypass the Kremlin’s internet restrictions (The Insider, 11th June)

Criminal kingpin Artur Denisultanov killed in the war in Ukraine. He had been accused of an assassination, kidnapping and murder attempts (Mediazona, 10th June)

High oil prices and tax hikes aren't enough to offset war spending and keep Russia’s budget on track (Meduza, 9th June)

“You are not Russian anymore”. How Alexandra Pugach, the daughter of Vladimir Putin's trusted representative, was convicted for supporting Ukraine (Mediazona, 5th June)

Analysis and comment

Outpacing Albania. How Ukraine should meet most critical benchmarks in EU accession negotiations (European Pravda, 11th June)

In the end, only crumbs may arrive for military aid sent to Ukraine: not enough money in the European Peace Facility (Eastern Frontier Initiative, 11th June)

“Invisible migration: Analysing mobile operator data in light of the need to verify the state voter register (Opora, 10th June)

Updating the state voter register in the context of relocation of citizens: Scale, behaviours and barriers (Quantitative Study) (Opora, 10th June)

Statement by the Priama Diia trade union at the meeting organised by the International Trade Union Network for Solidarity and Struggles on 8th June 2026 (Labour Solidarity, 8th June)

Russia attacks gas production. Will Ukraine have enough gas and money for the winter? (Ukrainska Pravda, 7th June)

Report: Europe’s break from Russian fossil fuels (Razom We Stand, June 3rd)

How the UK and Europe play vital roles in Russia’s LNG exports: Sakhalin 2 (Razom We Stand, June 1st)

Research of human rights abuses

How Russia is killing Ukrainian children (Tribunal for Putin, 12th June)

Russians cause abducted Melitopol woman's death, hold her husband incommunicado for 3 years (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, 12th June)

Law enforcement agencies are investigating 306 instances of the execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war by Russian forces (Tribunal for Putin, 11th June)

11th EU-Ukraine human rights dialogue held in Brussels (Crimea Platform, 11th June)

Ukrainian sentenced to 16 years for resisting Russian occupation gets new sentence for `extremist’ tattoo (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, 9th June)

Tortured but unbroken: Four Ukrainians expose Russian fabrication of trial over death of a traitor (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, 8th June)

International Solidarity

Russian musician's performance in Budapest is cancelled after Ukrainian efforts’ (Ukrainska Pravda, 13th June)

All the warning lights were on: Toward Kharkiv, Two thousand kilometers in a dying ambulance (Nomadic Mind (Substack), 4th June)

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Have you seen TRY ME FOR TREASON yet?

Free to watch and download on Youtube. Russian anti-war protesters’ speeches in court. More information at Try Me For Treason

YouTube

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YouTubeFree to watch and download on Youtube. Russian anti-war protesters’ speeches in court. More information at trymefortreason.org

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FHacVH8tK8
  
🔴This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. More information at Ukraine Information Group.

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News From Ukraine 💣 Bulletin 200

Tricontinental ★ Recommended by Tommy McKearney

Although modern structures of extraction attempt to mask old systems of colonial plunder, the living legacy of anti-colonial resistance across Africa remains a decisive force in the struggle for sovereignty and genuine freedom..

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On 11–12 May, at the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, French President Emmanuel Macron stood in front of more than thirty African heads of state and announced, ‘We are the true Pan-Africanists’. This was an extraordinarily obnoxious comment that was sandwiched between bureaucratic banalities about ‘growth’, ‘innovation’, and ‘partnerships’.

In an open letter, Togolese writer Farida Bemba Nabourema responded that ‘Pan-Africanism is, at its most fundamental, the political philosophy that said no to everything France spent three centuries saying yes to: slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism’. This philosophy, ‘born in the holds of the slave ships, in the plantation fields of Saint-Domingue’ by people who ‘believe that African and African-descended people deserved to govern themselves’, Nabourema wrote, cannot be laundered by Macron’s charm offensive.

This was the 29th France-Africa summit (rebranded for Nairobi as the Africa Forward Summit), yet the first to take place in a non-Francophone African country. 

Continue @ Tricontinental 

We Shall Not Host Our Executioners:

Friendly Atheist ★ An Illinois woman says anti-abortion policies delayed treatment, cost her fertility, and nearly cost her life

Anti-abortion laws are ruining lives, even in blue states that aim to protect women’s rights. And a new lawsuit is a perfect example of that. It involves the traumatic episode experienced by 28-year-old Harmonie Perrone, an Illinois woman who had an ectopic pregnancy (where the fertilized egg implants inside the fallopian tube).

Perrone had been pregnant before—and had suffered ectopic pregnancies before. In fact, the first time that happened, she required surgery and lost her right fallopian tube. The second time it happened, she was treated with methotrexate, which stopped the egg from dividing, effectively inducing an abortion without the need for surgery.

When she became pregnant this time, she knew there was a possibility that something similar could happen, so when symptoms began to appear, she knew exactly what had to happen: She needed the methotrexate and she needed it fast.

Unfortunately, her local hospital, Advocate Good Shepherd, was a religious hospital with abortion rules similar to Catholic hospitals where anything involving contraception or abortion is forbidden. That meant treating ectopic pregnancies was even more of a hassle. 

A Religious Hospital Refused Critical Ectopic Pregnancy Care 🪶 Now The Patient Is Suing

Right Wing Watch 👀 Written by Peter Montgomery.

Rooting out pluralism is central to the plan for colonizing sparsely populated rural counties.


A pastor aligned with the hard-right Reformed theology of influential Christian nationalist Doug Wilson is promoting and pursuing a plan to fulfill the “dominion mandate” by moving like-minded people into sparsely populated rural counties, colonizing and discipling “Christian settlements,” and building miniature civilizations based on their religious worldview.

Raymond Simmons, a pastor and podcaster based in Red Oak, Iowa, is the author of “The Confessional County: Realizing the Kingdom through Local Christendom, which was published in 2021. Simmons talked about the book and his current colonizing project in a podcast interview posted on June 2 by Kevin Swanson, a promoter of Christian-right homeschooling curricula who spreads his ideas via a newsletter and radio show. Simmons promotes his own religious and political ideology at “The Confessionalists” website.

Here’s the basic idea behind Simmons’ plan: The U.S. is under a “land curse” from God because it has allowed abortion, sexual immorality, sabbath-breaking, and idolatry to go unpunished. The nation as a whole is not going to make sufficient repentance to get out from under the curse . . . 

Continue @ RWW.

The Dominionist Plan To Create Theocratic ‘Confessional Counties’ In Rural U.S.

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Nine

 

Pastords @ 49

 

A Morning Thought @ 3182

Anthony McIntyre ☠ Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani have become known as the Filton Four.

Activists with Palestine Action, they were handed down prison sentences totalling more than 25 years for employing the tactic of direct action against genocide, the result of an attack on Elbit Systems close to Bristol. They very plausibly claimed that the action they took against Elbit was necessary to protect Palestinians being murdered by 'Israel’s genocidal army with killer drones for use in Gaza,' weapons the company was supplying to Israel. The group's position is that when the British government has abandoned international law its members have a duty to uphold that law. 'British collusion in Israeli crimes is the reason Palestine Action was originally founded six years ago.'

The judge who imprisoned the Filton Four, No Justice Johnson, had ruled earlier that they would be sentenced as terrorists, something facilitated by the UK Court of Appeal that upheld the Starmer government's claim, rejected in a lower court, that Palestine Action was a terrorist organisation. Jonathan Cook has offered the insightful observation:

It is the first time that a direct action group, whose form of civil disobedience is damaging property rather than using violence against people, has been declared a terrorist organization, on a par with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group. Under this new interpretation of the law, the Suffragette movement — which fought to gain women the vote in Britain over a century ago, and whose members are uniformly extolled as role models by the very politicians who support Palestine Action’s proscription — would undoubtedly have been declared a terrorist organization.

Protestors who gathered outside Woolwich Crown Court in solidarity with the activists on trial faced harassment from the Metropolitan Police who in a statement said:

Seventy-two people have been arrested for supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation – Palestine Action – at a demonstration outside Woolwich Crown Court.

As a teenager I was well used to being arrested by British police or soldiers. There were so many arrests that I no longer remember them all. Being arrested on the street in Belfast by the British military or RUC for so called screening purposes was a routine hazard for nationalist youth in particular. It could happen going to work, playing handball on the street, coming out of a pub, shopping. On my last arrest as a teenager the investigating cop simply said to me he was arresting me because he believed me to be a terrorist. It didn't upset me then. It doesn't annoy me today. If for uttering the simple phrase 'I support Palestine Action' I am labelled a terrorist then I am happy to respond that I agree wholeheartedly with a placard held aloft by one of the arrested protestors proclaimed 'Saving lives is not terrorism.'

Just contrast this very humane sentiment about saving lives with the murderous Nazi-like reasoning from Israel's Nazi Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir:

For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn!. . .  Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not forfeit. All of Lebanon must burn. Our supreme duty is to protect the citizens of Israel and the soldiers of the IDF, and this commitment takes precedence over every other consideration.

Yet while there are many of us extremely reluctant to approve the use of political violence to resolve problems we find it impossible to disagree with the logic that if you hold a member of the terrorist IDF under water long enough they stop being a member of the terrorist IDF. And it does seem a plausible way of combatting terrorism. The Filton four were not even attacking IDF members but merely taking measures that would help prevent the IDF massacring civilians. 

British justice is an oxymoron on a par with the IDF being described the world's most moral army, rather than its most murderous.  The credentials of the judge in the case were set out for all to see by Jonathan Cook:

Judge Johnson made it to the bench after years serving as the most favoured barrister of the “secret state”, representing the intelligence services, the ministry of defence and the police. His working environment of choice as a lawyer was behind-closed-doors prosecutions held out of view of the public or proper legal scrutiny.


Seriously, what justice could be expected from 'the UK judge whose job is to protect Israel’s genocide.'?

Craig Murray answered that question pretty comprehensively.

Judge Johnson ruled that the defendants were not permitted to refer to their motives.
He ruled that the jury may not be informed of their absolute right to acquit.
He attempted to have the leading defence barrister, Rajiv Menon KC, prosecuted for contempt of court for informing the jury of their rights.
He ruled that terms including ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ may not be used in court.
He ordered that the notebooks and other writings of the accused be redacted to withhold from the jury any information related to Elbit’s supply of weapons to Israel.
He enforced the concealment from the jury of the nature of the weapons and equipment that had been damaged.
He granted anonymity to senior Elbit staff and admitted their evidence without the defence being able to cross-examine.
He ruled that the trial had *not* been prejudiced by the Secretary of State [Yvette Cooper] and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police [Sir Mark Rowley] stating the offences as fact throughout national media.
He allowed the release to the media of highly edited and selective prosecution video footage during the trial which gave a false impression of events.
He permitted the admission of Metropolitan Police video evidence which they had given over to Elbit’s sole custody for an entire year.

Be in no doubt, this is the judge Starmer pinned his hopes on, much like Widgery of Bloody Sunday infamy was the judge Ted Heath picked to rule in favour of a mass murder machine. Accused of being a terrorist by Keir Starmer carries the same moral authority as an accusation from Bertie Ahern of being a crook

Faced with that, there is only one thing left to say regardless of the cost: I support Palestine Action. 

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

The Filton Four

Geordie Morrow ðŸ–Œ with a painting from his collection of art work. 

Oil on daler board

⏩Geordie Morrow is a Belfast artist.

Killynether

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ The race riots of recent weeks, and the responses they produced, revealed something uncomfortable about the North. 

Despite decades of peacebuilding, racism remains embedded in our society. So too does sectarianism. The two are often treated as separate problems. They are not. Increasingly they feed one another.

I write as an Irish republican, not as a northern nationalist. One of the most damaging developments in recent years has been the tendency to treat racism as a problem that belongs exclusively to the Protestant, Unionist and Loyalist community. When racist incidents occur in loyalist districts, entire communities are condemned. When similar hostility emerges elsewhere, particularly within nationalist areas or across the south, they are explained away as isolated incidents, a product of deprivation, or an unfortunate exception.

Neither approach survives serious examination.

If one community can be judged collectively by the actions of its worst elements, then every community can. The logic is identical. The result is absurd. Neither the PUL nor the CNR population is a single political or cultural bloc. Both contain decent people, prejudiced people and people who simply wish to get on with their lives. Racism does not recognise constitutional preferences. It is carefully constructed and crosses every boundary that we know.

By turning racism into another front in the constitutional argument, the political class and the community gatekeepers have managed to sectarianise a human rights issue. The result is predictable. Communities retreat into defensiveness. Politicians score cheap points. Nothing changes.

The language employed in these debates exposes the contradiction. Terms such as “hun”, “planter” and “knuckledragger” are frequently deployed by Republicans under the banner of anti-racism. They are sectarian slurs. Their purpose is not to challenge prejudice but to reinforce it. They reduce complex communities to caricatures and then they congratulate themselves for doing so.

When Irish Republicans use sectarian slurs to condemn racial prejudice, they are not fighting intolerance, they are simply engaging in a different form of it. Weaponising anti-racism to score points against a traditional constitutional rival strips Republicanism of any moral authority it may hold.

Sectarianism and racism share the same intellectual foundation. Both begin by reducing individuals to a category. Both rely on inherited assumptions. Both permit collective guilt. The target changes. The method does not.

Nowhere is the reality of prejudice within the broader Irish population more starkly exposed than in the treatment of Irish Travellers. This is why the treatment of Irish Travellers matters. Travellers experience levels of discrimination that would provoke outrage if directed at any other group. They are refused access to businesses, excluded from opportunities and treated with suspicion based on surname, identity and background. Their health and social outcomes remain among the worst in Western Europe.

Yet this reality rarely features in conversations about racism within Irish society. Shared religion, shared geography and shared history have not protected Travellers from discrimination and racism. The lesson is obvious. Racism and exclusion are not confined to one tradition. They emerge wherever societies decide that some people matter less than others.

The institutional response in the North has been no more impressive.

The Executive’s record on racial equality is defined less by achievement than by inertia. The Racial Equality Strategy for 2015–2025 was widely criticised throughout its lifespan. During the same period race-hate incidents and crimes continued to rise. The most recent figures recorded by the PSNI are the highest since records began.

Faced with this reality, the Executive led by Sinn Fein has produced another framework. In March 2026, First Minister for All, Michelle O’Neill launched a public consultation on a new draft Race Relations Framework. Critics from across civil society responded with unusual consistency. Amnesty International described it as unfit for purpose. Others called for its withdrawal and redrafting. The criticism centred on a simple point. The framework treated racism as a problem of community relations and integration rather than a problem of structural inequality and discrimination.

Without targets, funding, timelines or accountability, strategy becomes performative. The draft strategy creates the appearance of action and change while avoiding its substance.

Alongside political failure sits another problem. Over the past three decades a substantial industry has developed around conflict management and community relations: the peace industry. Much valuable work has been undertaken by some within the community and voluntary sector, but the funding environment has also produced perverse incentives.

For years organisations relied upon large-scale peace funding. As those resources diminished, new funding priorities emerged. Anti-racism became one of them. The danger is not that racism receives attention. It should. The danger is that racism replaces sectarianism as a funding opportunity.

When organisations depend upon demonstrating crisis in order to secure resources, crisis acquires value. The problem is no longer solved. It is managed. This year, community organisations that once argued there was no racism in Republican areas in Belfast for example were to the fore in claiming funding allocated by the British Home Office to tackle anti-migrant sentiment.

Good relations funding is now allocated to the established gatekeepers, often to the detriment of the emerging support and advocacy groups established by the new migrant communities themselves.

Cultural awareness workshops, diversity seminars and performative events do nothing to address racism or sectarianism. They serve a dual purpose for both community gatekeepers and the political and social elites. It is highly cost-effective theatre. It is significantly cheaper for the Stormont Executive to throw a minor grant to a local community group for an "anti-racism workshop" than it is to build social housing.

Workshops, awareness sessions and symbolic events have their place. They may improve understanding. They may challenge ignorance. What they cannot do is substitute for aspiration, education, healthcare and economic opportunity.

The consequence of this approach is visible in working-class communities across the North. Areas experiencing poor housing, weak services and limited opportunity become vulnerable to resentment and manipulation. Far-right activists exploit those conditions. Migrants become convenient targets. The underlying causes remain untouched. There were no riots on the Malone Road.

When disorder follows, entire communities are denounced as backward or racist. This approach absolves government of responsibility. It transforms political failure into a cultural defect.

The North will not address racism through moral grandstanding. It will not address it through sectarian score-settling. It will not address it through endless declarations of concern.

It will address it only when we are prepared to apply the same standards to ourselves that we apply to others. True anti-racism requires looking inward with an unblinking, critical eye, regardless of the flags flying at the end of the street

That requires several things.

First, collective guilt must be rejected. Individuals should be held accountable for their actions. Communities should not.

Second, racial equality policy must move beyond rhetoric. Strategies require measurable objectives, funding and enforcement.

Third, public funding should be linked to demonstrable outcomes rather than the perpetual management of social problems.

Finally, inequality must be addressed directly. Housing, healthcare, education and economic opportunity are not distractions from anti-racism. They are part of it.

The recent riots did not create these problems. They exposed them.

The choice now is whether we continue to explain racism through the comforting language of tribal politics, or whether we recognise it for what it is: a societal failure shared across communities, institutions and governments alike.

⏩Muiris Ó Súilleabháin was a member of the Republican Movement until he retired in 2006 after 20 years of service. Fiche bhliain ag fás.

After The Riots

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Eight

 

A Morning Thought @ 3181

Maryam Namazie ✊The following, first published in The Freethinker, is an expanded and updated essay based on Maryam Namazie’s remarks at the launch of Steven Greer’s book, Islamophobia and Free Speech, on 15 April 2026, hosted by the Free Speech Union. 

Maryam Namazie speaking at the launch of Steven Greer’s book, 15 April 2026. Photo: screenshot from Free Speech Union’s YouTube recording.

Greer is Professor of Law at the University of Bristol. He was accused of ‘Islamophobia’ in 2021, a charge that was not upheld following a university investigation. (See here and here for an interview with Greer and a review of an earlier book of his, respectively.) The discussion included Sir John Jenkins, a former British diplomat, and was chaired by Free Speech Union’s David Rose. You can watch the discussion here.

Maryam Namazie ðŸª¶Accusations of ‘Islamophobia’ and the like control dissent. I know this from experience. I have been labelled an ‘Islamophobe’ for criticising Islam, Hamas, and the Islamic regime of Iran; an ‘antisemite’ for criticising the Israeli state; and an ‘undercover jihadi’ for defending Muslims and migrants. The aim is always to silence dissent.

It is important to state at the outset that anti-Muslim racism is real. Whether or not Muslims are a ‘race’ is beside the point. Anti-Muslim hostility operates like racism, through name, appearance, and background, not merely belief. This reflects a broader shift in how racism operates. Biological racism has largely been discredited, but it is often rearticulated through culture and religion. Muslims are racialised not as a biological group but as a cultural one. This shift has been reinforced by a cultural relativism that treats Muslims as a homogeneous population defined by fixed ‘authentic’ beliefs and behaviours.

It is precisely because anti-Muslim racism is real that the language of Islamophobia is used to conflate the distinctions between Islam, Islamism, and Muslims. Islam is a body of ideas, subject to criticism and contestation. Islamism is a far-right political project. Muslims are diverse individuals.

‘Islamophobia’ is mobilised by authority to deflect criticism, determining what can be said, who can speak, and which forms of dissent are permissible. It protects authority by repackaging criticism of an idea or a religious-right political project as racism. In doing so, it disciplines dissent, stabilises authority, and shifts attention away from the structures of power being criticised. That is the crux of the matter: obfuscation in the service of power.

Of course, Muslims may be influenced by Islam, just as Italians may be influenced by Catholicism. But religion, even as a reactionary set of ideas, is also a lived experience. People are mainly born into it due to a lottery of birth. As Kenan Malik has consistently argued, sharia is not stitched into the DNA of every person from a Muslim background. People are not collectively good or bad.

Despite this, the default is to conflate people with the belief. The implication is that Islam is uniquely hateful and misogynistic, and this results in an inevitable ‘clash of civilisations’ narrative. But you can find similar forms of hate and misogyny in the Bible and Torah. And the same political project in other religious-right movements.

A recent example illustrates this conflation. I was misquoted on the back cover of Islamophobia and Free Speech as stating: ‘Greer’s book offers a compelling repost [sic] to the current campaign to denounce any criticism of Muslims and Islam as “Islamophobic”.’ The original statement was reduced to a sentence about ‘Muslims and Islam’, collapsing the distinction I had made.1 This is analogous to conflating criticism of Judaism into hostility toward Jews, and labelling both as ‘antisemitism’.

It is true that the failure to distinguish between criticism of Islam and Muslims is being politically weaponised to restrict free speech. But it is also true that the conflation between Islam and Muslims is used to promote hatred against people, to homogenise and place collective blame.

For me, any criticism of an idea is legitimate. It does not have to be measured, evidence-based, or polite. Free expression is an individual right, not a group right. Its limits cannot be determined by authority or claims of offence. It doesn’t even have to conform to existing law. Otherwise, how would women in Iran oppose the hijab? Expression is legitimate as long as there is no incitement to violence. Free expression is not an abstract principle; it is a precondition for all rights—a demand from those without power against authority.

Yet the institutions that claim to defend free expression do not apply this principle consistently. Organisations such as the Free Speech Union present themselves as defenders of free expression, yet their most visible interventions are in cases framed around Islam and ‘cancel culture’, even though restrictions on speech are not limited to accusations of ‘Islamophobia’. Academics face exclusion when accused of ‘antisemitism’ for criticism of Israeli state policy, and those supporting Palestine Action have been arrested under expansive public order and counter-terror frameworks. In each case, a similar mechanism operates: criticism of power is reframed as harm to a people or a nation, not to protect people, but to protect authority and manage dissent.

This is why the focus of the debate is often misdirected toward an ‘unholy alliance’ between Islamism, sections of the left, and liberal institutions, while the primary role of the state is disappeared.

The language of ‘Islamophobia’ is useful to authority. It allows the state to appear protective while controlling dissent. On the one hand, the state imposes surveillance frameworks such as Prevent, counter-terror powers, and protest restrictions, producing a chilling effect on speech. On the other hand, it co-opts and selectively recognises and funds particular ‘community representatives’, marginalising dissenting voices and managing ‘the Muslim community’ through established authority structures. Disruptive feminist dissent, which cuts across family, religion, community, and state, is consistently marginalised.

Authority benefits in multiple ways. The state manages minoritised populations through its recognised representatives. Religion is shielded from criticism. And religious-right political movements are insulated from challenge.

Moreover, the focus on the left obscures the fact that Islamism did not emerge in isolation. It was significantly shaped by Cold War geopolitics, including US support for Islamist groups to create an Islamic belt around the Soviet Union, alongside the suppression of left and secular alternatives.

Identity politics, particularly in the form of state-led multi-faith policy, reframes conflict horizontally, as communities set against each other, rather than vertically, as citizens against power. It fragments opposition and redirects anger. It obscures class and material conditions. In doing so, it displaces conflicts rooted in labour and inequality into the language of culture, where they can be managed rather than addressed.

Economic insecurity, austerity, housing inequality, lack of local resources, and low wages are recast as problems of culture or demography. The result is that structural issues are left untouched while the most vulnerable are made the focus of political ‘solutions’. We see this clearly in anti-immigration and anti-Muslim narratives. When structural inequality is reframed as a problem of demography or culture, the solution becomes exclusion, deportation, community management, or surveillance rather than redistribution, housing, wages, and democratic rights.

The most powerful restrictions on speech come from the state, through law, surveillance, and protest controls, but the focus of this debate is only on the left and ‘cancel culture’. State controls are rarely described as censorship, precisely because they are embedded in law and governance rather than framed as cultural conflict.

This has material consequences for how harm itself is understood.

Take the example of the ‘grooming gang’ scandals. Of course, fear of being labelled Islamophobic could have played a role. But official inquiries document decades of institutional failure rooted in victim blaming, contempt for working-class girls, and systematic failures of safeguarding. The same report that documented ethnic patterns in certain regions also concluded that the ethnicity data across the UK was not sufficient to support statements about the ethnicity of group-based child sexual exploitation offenders at the national level.

Data on child sexual abuse shows that most identified perpetrators in the UK are white and that abuse is not confined to any one ethnic or religious group. Most violence against women and girls is committed by someone known to the victim, often a partner or former partner. The focus on ethnicity has been used to externalise male violence, treating it as something that arrives with particular communities rather than something structural that cuts across all sections of society.

When abuse is committed by white men, whether by the likes of Jeffrey Epstein and Jimmy Savile or within the Catholic Church and elite institutions, it isn’t treated as a problem of ‘Christian culture’ or ‘Western culture’. A Guardian investigation found that 41% of those arrested during the Southport riots had prior domestic abuse reports. In these circumstances, it is analysed in terms of male violence, power, misogyny, and institutional failure. But when perpetrators are racialised minorities, violence against women and girls is instrumentalised and the frame shifts to culture, religion, and ‘community’.

During the panel discussion, a member of the audience associated with the Restore Britain party responded to the fact that most perpetrators are white men by stating that Britain is a ‘white country’. If demographic majority explains why most perpetrators are white, then it cannot also explain the disproportionate focus on minorities. Violence is analysed structurally when it is associated with white men, but culturally when it is associated with minoritised men. Her remark made explicit what often remains implicit in debates on Muslims and migrants: that the purpose is not safeguarding women or protecting free expression, but reinforcing the false assumption that violence is inherent in minority populations and to defend whiteness and the Christian right. Britain is, as I said then, not a ‘white country’, but a country with a diverse and plural population.

Misdiagnosing violence as ‘Muslim culture’ is politically useful. It externalises the problem, shifting responsibility away from institutions and toward communities, while reinforcing narratives that justify exclusion and control. It provides cover for racist movements that promote white nationalism by presenting minorities as inherently criminal. At the same time, it obscures a feminist analysis: that violence against women is not a cultural aberration imported from elsewhere, but a structural feature of society. This fails victims and survivors. Addressing it requires investment in services, legal reform, and accountability.

The same dynamic operates in debates on migration. The right to asylum is recognised under national and international law, and those fleeing persecution often have no choice but to travel without documentation. Yet they are increasingly labelled ‘illegal’, transforming vulnerability into criminality.

In each of these cases, social and political problems are reframed through identity, allowing power to present itself as protective while exercising control.

Religion is central to this process. It is not just belief, but a system of authority, one of the oldest and most effective in human history. It organises social reproduction, regulating women’s bodies, labour, and sexuality in ways that sustain existing social and economic hierarchies. It shapes law and governs dissent. And this is not unique to Islam. When religion is fused with state power, whether in Christian, Jewish, Hindu or other contexts, it shapes society in similar ways.

What we see today is not new but a modernised form of older mechanisms of blasphemy, heresy, and sedition, translated into the language of identity and harm. The term ‘Islamophobia’ is a case in point. Like older mechanisms, it does not protect people but religion and, through it, the structures of power. The issue, then, is not simply speech, but the organisation of power itself: how criticism is reframed, how populations are managed, and how structural problems are disappeared.

Any serious position must insist that no belief system is beyond criticism and that no people are subject to collective blame. Where that distinction is erased, criticism is not merely discouraged; it is made structurally impossible. That is how power reproduces itself, and it is why the demand for free expression must be, at its root, a demand against power.This is the original quote I sent to Greer:

Steven Greer’s book is of special relevance to those of us who have faced accusations of ‘Islamophobia.’ Islam, like all religions or beliefs, must be open to criticism. The right to blasphemy is a cornerstone of free expression. It is not limited to or dependant [sic] on one’s ‘identity’ or lottery of birth. In fact, it matters most to those living under or fleeing from totalitarian and theocratic states where it can be punishable by death. In countries like Iran and Afghanistan, being a woman in and of itself is an act of blasphemy—her hair, voice and body; being an atheist, gay, apostate or ex-Muslim and opposing a religious state or the rule of clerics are all blasphemies. The struggle to blaspheme is a struggle for the right to be fully human. Conflating blasphemy with bigotry only serves the fundamentalists in imposing de facto blasphemy laws and further vilifies dissenters whilst doing nothing to combat racism, xenophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry.

Greer told me that he sent me the edited version of the endorsement and, not having received a reply, assumed I was content with the changes. This is not the case. I did not respond because I did not agree to the revised wording. I had already provided a quote reflecting my position and did not want one written for me that departed from it. The edited version alters the meaning of my original statement by collapsing a distinction I consider essential. Greer responded that the distinction between criticising Muslims and criticising Islam is ‘subtle and not well understood’.

First published: ‘Islamophobia’, identity politics, and free speech, The Freethinker, 30 April 2026.

Maryam Namazie is a  is a British-Iranian secularist,
communist and human rights activist, commentator, and broadcaster.

‘Islamophobia’, Identity Politics, And Free Speech

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