Social Items

TPQ
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Substack on 29-June-2025.

Photo from Palestine Action https://palestineaction.org

Kneecap’s music is not really my thing. I am perhaps too old, or maybe my musical tastes are more conservative. But I do love their politics and their stance on Palestine. I don’t think much of Hezbollah, but I do think waving their flag is not a criminal offence. The BBC think otherwise as evidenced by their decision to not broadcast Kneecaps’s performance at the Glastonbury festival. The only reason for this was their support for Palestine. There was no other reason. Though, it didn’t work out well for the BBC as Bob Vylan who was broadcast live got the crowd to chant Death to the IDF, one of the noblest of chants ever to be heard at Glastonbury.

But there is a long history to the BBC and other British media censoring musicians. The BBC in its statement said:

Whilst the BBC doesn’t ban artists, our plans ensure that our programming meets our editorial guidelines.
We don’t always livestream every act from the main stages and look to make an on-demand version of Kneecap’s performance available on our digital platforms, alongside more than 90 other sets.[1]

In other words, the BBC does ban artists. It is not like this is the first time they have banned some of them. Following the Bloody Sunday massacre by the British Army in Derry in 1972, Paul McCartney, penned a song titled Give Ireland Back to the Irish.[2] It was the debut single of Wings. It was instantly banned in Britain by the BBC but managed to get to No. 16 in the British charts nonetheless and got to No. 1 in Ireland. They banned songs that mentioned sex, even Shirley Bassie’s Burn My Candle[3] and they banned songs that were considered more political such as The Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UK,[4] a song that wasn’t really political at all. And not surprisingly they banned the then relatively unknown Heaven 17’s debut (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,[5] over concerns it might upset the then recently elected US president Ronald Reagan, a man whose government through the CIA went on to support deaths squads in Latin America and set up cocaine smuggling networks to finance them through his loyal servant Oliver North.[6] Reagan of course is referred to in the song.

Democrats are out of power
Across that great wide ocean
Reagan's president elect
Fascist god in motion

That wasn’t the last of it either. The BBC went on to ban a song by The Police, Invisible Sun[7] because of a possible slight on the British Army contained in the lyrics and of course the official video to the song.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life
Looking at the barrel of an Armalite
I don't want to spend the rest of my days
Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say

I don't want to spend my time in hell
Looking at the walls of a prison cell
I don't ever want to play the part
Of a statistic on a government chart

The BBC would, during the 1st Gulf War ban a total of 67 songs for the duration of the war, amongst them songs by such establishment figures as Elton John whose song Act of War [8] recorded in 1985 with Millie Jackson was put on the list as was Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield,[9] recorded even earlier in 1983. It takes little to upset the BBC it would seem.

The former Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar criticised Keir Starmer’s call for Kneecap to be not allowed play at Glastonbury stating that:

It’s not great for politicians to get into deciding which artists should be allowed to perform where or not.
To me, that’s illiberalism. Part of the whole point of art and music and literature is to be inappropriate, is to be challenging, is often to be anti-establishment,” he said.
We’ve had a situation now for quite some time in Ireland and in Europe and Britain, where politicians didn’t get into the space of saying who should be allowed to perform, who shouldn’t, what books you should be allowed to read, and I hope we don’t slip back into doing that under the guise of national security and anti-terrorism when it isn’t really about that.[10]

Varadkar tut tuts the BBC and Starmer. Sounds great, except his party and the Irish state in general does not have a great record in the matter. The state broadcaster took an insidious approach to censorship with songs rarely being banned outright. Rather, they were just not simply played on the radio station. Hint hint, nudge nudge. A very Irish way of doing things. The Irish group The Wolfe Tones released many songs over the years about the conflict in the north of Ireland and got little to no airtime. Such was the situation that they even recorded a song about it, called Radio Toor I Li Ay (sometimes called They Don’t Play Our Songs on the Radio) [11]. The lyrics are pertinent to Kneecap and Starmer and sum up exactly what the Establishment are about.

You don't play our songs on radio
You say they're too political!
Who controls the mind, where's the mind's control?
For the music on the airwaves
Follows empty minds, those empty heads
Play songs of sex and drugs instead
Don't tell them how it really is

Won't MI5 look after you, control your thoughts
Feed information to your hearts and minds
To save you all from thinkin', thinkin', thinkin', thinkin'

It is a fact that RTE didn’t give them much airtime and still don’t. So much so that in 2024, Derek Warfield the lead singer with the group said it was time to end the ban on them.[12] It still hasn’t happened, nor will it. In fact, the Irish women’s football team got into trouble for singing one of their songs, Celtic Melody,[13] and were excoriated by British sports journalists, who are not renowned for their knowledge of music, politics, history or much else aside from who ran how fast and where. Not exactly intellectual heavyweights. Nonetheless these idiots led to the Irish women’s team being eventually fined €20,000 for singing the song.[14]

The Irish singer Christy Moore found himself on the wrong end of state repression in Ireland on many occasions and his songs, like those of The Wolfe Tones were not banned per se, but they never received much airplay, except those that were considered to be humorous and non-political, such as Don’t Forget Your Shovel.[15] But other songs of his were censored on the radio without the need for an official ban, such as Ninety Miles From Dublin,[16] which was about the IRA and INLA prisoners on the Blanket and Dirty Protests in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh. Likewise, other songs he recorded about the prisoners and later on about the Hunger Strikers equally received no airplay. There was one brief exception to this.

Patsy O’ Hara (INLA) died on hunger strike on May 21st 1981 after 61 days. His mother Peggy O’Hara was initially adamant that she would not let her son die and that when he lapsed into a coma she would intervene and give the doctors the order to break his strike with an intravenous drip. However, in her last conversation with her son, he said to her that he was sorry they had not won and asked her to let the fight go on, before lapsing back into unconsciousness. Christy Moore wrote a song about that exchange called The Time Has Come.[17] It was well received and got airplay and praise. Then someone informed the ignorant and arrogant mandarins at RTE what the song was about and suddenly it got no more airplay. Listening to the song, it is obvious what it is about.

The gentle clasp that holds my hand
Must loosen and let go
Please help me through the door
Though instinct tells you no

Our vow it is eternal
And will bring you dreadful pain
But if our demands aren't recognized
Don't call me back again

Ironically Christy Moore would record another song that got no airplay. It was called Section 31,[18] a reference to the article of the Broadcasting Authority Act (1960) that gave the minister power to ban interviews with members of Sinn Féin and proscribed organisations such as the IRA, but in effect led to RTE’s scant reporting of or carrying out of few interviews that were critical of state policy on the conflict. The song explained exactly why some issues are censored.

Who are they to decide what we should hear?
Who are they to decide what we should see?
What do they think we can’t comprehend here?
What do they fear that our reaction might be, might be?

It is always about silencing the opposition and preventing a reaction to their repression and in this case genocide.

So back to Kneecap. They stand in a long line of artists who have put their money where their mouths are. They stand side by side with giants from other musical genres such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger who were repressed by the McCarthyite wave in the US in the 1950s. The BBC for its part continues to be the propaganda arm of the British Empire, or what is left of it, covering up, lying about or justifying murder, massacre, torture and plunder from India to Kenya, Ireland and now Palestine.

Woody Guthrie had the words This Machine Kills Fascists carved into his guitar, a slogan that might earn him a jail sentence nowadays. It was meant more in the sense that his music was part of the struggle against fascism, carrying political messages to workers, dustbowl refugees and migrants. It didn’t literally kill anyone, though in his song Ludlow Massacre,[19] Guthrie celebrated the workers taking up arms to kill the scab thugs that came to shoot them. Scabs at the behest of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, owned by the infamous Rockefeller family, murdered 26 people, mainly the wives and children of the striking miners. However, the massacre was just one large incident, the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency had harried and harassed the striking miners, murdering them in ones and twos. The detective agencies celebrated in comics and films were what would later become known in Latin America and elsewhere as death squads. The miners fought back and Guthrie celebrated this in his song. Resistance, including armed resistance was legitimate.

The state soldiers jumped us in a wire fence corners,
They did not know we had these guns,
And the Red-neck Miners mowed down these troopers,
You should have seen those poor boys run.

The press, at the time, described the striking miners as savages. Any similarity to the current media onslaught on Palestine is not a coincidence, it shows the class interests of the media moguls and the western states. Working class people, foreign resistance movements will always be savages to the media. And the use of armed masked thugs by the state is not new either. Before ICE, there were the detective agencies. Most of the dead at Ludlow were migrant workers. The final death toll according to Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the US was sixty six men women and children.

Kneecap have contributed to the fight against fascism and Bob Vylan’s chant Death to the IDF should be on everyone’s lips. There is no reforming the IDF, just like there was no reforming Hitler’s SS. Only the complete destruction of the IDF will bring any change.

Can their music, like Guthrie’s be said to kill fascists? I don’t know, time will tell, but from the reception they got at Glastonbury it is looking good.[20] What I do know is Keir Starmer and Trump finance fascists. Starmer like a fascist wants to ban Palestine Action. The BBC covers up for fascists, praises them and censors those who stand up to fascists. I know who is on the right side of history.

References


[1] The Guardian (28/06/2025) Kneecap’s Glastonbury set Will not be broadcast live, BBC confirms. 

[2] See.

[3] See.

[4] See.

[5] See.

[6] Jacobin (12/11/2021) What We Really Know About the CIA and Crack. Daniel Finn. 

[7] See.

[8] See.

[9] See.

[10] The Journal (27/06/2025) Varadkar on Kneecap row: Terrorism is bombs and guns, not music. 

[11] See.

[12] Newstalk (11/09/2024) ‘Systemic ban’ on The Wolfe Tones should be lifted – Warfield. Jack Quann.

[13] See.

[14] Sky News (08/12/2022) Ireland women footballers fined €20,000 for singing song referencing IRA in World Cup celebration. 

[15] See.

[16] See.

[17] See.

[18] See.

[19] See.

[20] See alburujpress.


A post shared by @alburujpress

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

BBC, Kneecap And The Long History Of Censorship

Sindo ⛔ Written by Sam McBride. Recommended by Kate Yo.

Senior party members are selecting the social media replies they want to shield from the public.

As an election looms, unwelcome comments on immigration, housing and tax are disappearing, 

For more than three months, Sinn Féin has been quietly censoring criticism of the party — and even some praise. Analysis by the Sunday Independent shows how the practice was started by Mary Lou McDonald in June, then followed by her party.

It has gone to considerable effort to hide claims that it is soft on immigration, is cynically changing position in an attempt to win back votes and is part of the establishment.

Criticism of its transgender policy and of McDonald's leadership, and claims that it has lost touch with its voters, plus reminders of IRA atrocities and criticism involving IRA victims such as murdered Jean McConville and Máiría Cahill have also been censored.

In June, McDonald quietly started to "hide” unwelcome replies to her posts on X.

Among the hidden tweets were vile abuse, conspiracy theories, open racism and the automated spam that pollutes social media.

Many would argue that removing such material improves the quality of debate for others. However, Sinn Féin has been going far beyond removing insults and abhorrent views. Much of the censored material was respectful and did not involve personal abuse, but raised points of legitimate political debate.

​Continue reading @ Sindo.

Censored ⛔ The Online Criticism Sinn Féin Is Trying To Hide

Anthony McIntyre ☠ For those of us old enough to recall it, Section 31, as it was known, was an instrument of state censorship. 

For the most part it was a cudgel wielded initially by fascistic elements in the Dublin government, before becoming normalised, to break the mouths of republicans during the North's violent political conflict.

Section 31 was part of the Broadcasting Act that set up RTE in 1960. It was wide in scope, allowing the government to virtually ban anything it chose. Ministers promised to use it only in exceptional circumstances which they deemed had arrived with the emergence of the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein. The Act fully came into its own in 1976 when Conor Cruise O'Brien unabashedly dedicated its usage to the censorship of one political party - Sinn Fein. Eighteen years would pass before Michael D Higgins opted not to renew the ban on Sinn Fein from the airwaves.

Fast forward twenty eight years from the Cruiser muzzle, and Sinn Fein is the party now most in favour of gagging political opponents. Poacher turned gamekeeper, its weapon of choice is not Section 31 but Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, otherwise known as SLAPP. This has been largely responsible for Ireland's decline in the annual global index of press freedom. It now lies eighth, having dropped from second behind Norway, making this part of Ireland a place “where politicians have subjected media outlets to judicial intimidation”. Don't expect that to feature in any of the party's election literature.

The index is the project of Reporters Without Borders, which last year wrote to Mary Lou McDonald expressing its concerns at the deleterious effect on media freedom occasioned by Sinn Fein's use of SLAPP:

We are writing to you to express our alarm at the news that Sinn Féin TD Chris Andrews is taking legal action against The Irish Times and its political correspondent Harry McGee in response to an article about Sinn Féin’s response to the Hamas attack published last month . . . This is the latest in a series of legal actions taken by members of your party in recent years, including against journalists, an author, a publisher and the public service broadcaster RTÉ.

While a point of convergence between Sinn Fein and the far right, thus far Sinn Fein has not had things all its own way, meeting stiff resistance to its strategy of intimidation. Its career politicians have failed repeatedly in the courts with legal actions against those who express opinions the party would rather see suffocated. Gerry Kelly, now trying to fill the jackboots of Conor Cruise O'Brien, has suffered two defeats, first against Malachi O'Doherty and most recently against Ruth Dudley Edwards. The views of both O'Doherty and Dudley Edwards do not have to chime with our own for us to realise that their victories for freedom of inquiry over Kelly's attempt to stymie it are as crucial as they are welcome.

There should only ever be one response to SLAPP. When it raises its ugly head, slap it down.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Slap SLAPP

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Socialist Democracy.

German police shut Pro-Palestinian conference

There is no doubt that the ghost of Joseph McCarthy wanders the earth through many a hallowed university hall, newspaper editorial room, police headquarters around the world and of course the cabinets of many western governments.

Censorship when it raises its ugly head, does so in a similar fashion to its past incarnations, though with new twists and turns that perhaps take us by surprise. However, it should come as no surprise to see that voices on Palestine are being shut down, though the recent German police assault on an international conference in Berlin was a major escalation in government attempts to criminalise those critical of the genocidal regime that holds sway in Tel Aviv and the white supremacist philosophy that is Zionism.(1)

Various issues are thrown into the mix. Palestine and Palestinian demands are presented as hate speech by governments and right-wing media, but so too is any defence of women’s spaces, though in this latter case the right-wing governments find some support from sectors of the Left who think that when they argue for censorship and the suppression of freedom of speech that somehow it will never be applied to them.

The German police stormed the three-day event as the first speaker was addressing it. They claimed they did so to prevent antisemitic statements being made i.e. not only are we in McCarthyite land of criminalising certain ideas by labelling them as antisemitic but we are in the land of Minority Report(2) where thought crimes can be punished in advance, before they have been committed. This is not that far removed at all from the Irish Hate Speech Bill that some on the Left have given support to, as the Police may inspect computers and phones and you may be charged with possession of material that may be used to commit hate speech. It was laughable and ironic that one of the photos of the police intervention of the Berlin event was the arrest of a young Jewish man, wearing a Kippa, who was there in solidarity with Palestinians. Following the event a number of Jews were charged with antisemitism.

Not only that but some of the speakers were banned from entering the country, amongst them Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah who was an eyewitness to what was happening in Gaza and is also the Rector of the University of Glasgow. The former Greek politician Yanis Varoufakis was also banned from entering Germany and both were warned that they could not participate even by Zoom from another jurisdiction, an unlawful extension of German jurisdiction and a suspension of the free movement of European citizens within the EU.

This is part of a wider criminalisation of protest and the criminalisation of thought. Though some on the Left in Ireland such as People Before Profit T.Ds like Paul Murphy who support hate speech legislation believed in the benevolence of capitalist leaders when restricting commentary on women’s rights would never be extended to them, it has and for obvious reasons. Most right-wing governments, particularly those that claim some liberal kudos on certain social issues have taken advantage of the defeat of workers, critical thinking and any opposition at all to capitalism to advance right-wing hate speech legislation and restrictions on academic freedom, including the dismissal of staff, limitations on the right to voice opinions that go against government policy and in the process have garnered the support of many liberal currents and of course major NGOs who depend on government largesse to finance themselves.

The German event is not an isolated incident. Over the years various lecturers in the US have been suspended or not had their contracts renewed for speaking out about Palestine. Zionists were the original cancel culture specialists who managed to turn spoilt students whining into action, getting staff sacked and silencing other students. Recently, a professor of 30 years standing at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in the US was suspended over a contribution made to a blog. In their suspension of the employee the president stated that “I find her comments repugnant, condemn them unequivocally, and want to make clear that these are her personal views and not those of our institution,”(3) 

 It was liberals, the wokerati and even some Marxists who pushed for employers to take action against employees for their personal views and activities outside of the workplace and now it has come back to bite some of them, though not all, as many liberals and wokerati in the US are Zionists. Some of those who had been targeted were vile racists who shouted “Jews will not replace us” as they marched with torches. But you fight Fascism, you don’t give employers control over employees’ lives, ever. As Trotsky once quipped, if you can’t convince a Fascist, acquaint their head with the pavement. He didn’t say give your boss and the state more control over you and beseech them to act in your interests. A few days prior to that, Columbia University had suspended six students for allegedly participating in a panel discussion on Palestine.(4) And in a further sign that jackboots are once again goosestepping through Germany, the University of Cologne rescinded a job offer to Nancy Fraser, a Jewish American professor of philosophy, over her condemnation of killings in Gaza.(5)

They will not stop at that and it is not limited to issues such as genocide, but even local domestic politics. In April 2023, a French journalist Ernest Moret was arrested by British anti-terrorist police due to his involvement in protests in France against the Macron government’s pension proposals. He refused to give the police access to pass codes for his electronic devices and was charged with obstruction.(6) There are other precedents for this, one of them being the arrest of David Miranda, Glen Greenwald’s now deceased partner, in Britain when returning from a meeting with another journalist who had also worked on the files released by Edward Snowden.(7) The courts later upheld his detention to be lawful. Police held him and demanded access to his electronic devices. Then there is the jailing and punishing of Julian Assange. The charges against Assange were dressed up in various disguises. The first of them was the now discredited rape charges in Sweden which were dropped and also espionage charges when the real reason for jailing Assange is that he, as a journalist, exposed US war crimes in Iraq. The message is clear, censorship is the order of the day as is the hounding of journalists who hold unpopular views and expose the crimes of the state. Assange did not receive the support he should have, due to the trumped-up rape charges, with many on the Left, like the cowards they are running for cover. Even today, when the rape charges have been exposed for the lies they were and have been dropped there are those who refuse to speak out on his behalf for this very reason.

There is no world in which right wing governments suppress freedom of speech, academic freedom, freedom of assembly and criminalise broad opinions that they label as hate speech and don’t target the Left. It has never happened and never will. When they stood aside on Assange, they prepared the way for the assault on the Berlin Conference. When they harassed and tried to silence women defending women’s spaces they prepared the ground for the assault. When they advocated and supported right-wing governments’ attempts at introducing hate speech legislation they paved the way for the criminalisation of solidarity with Palestine. When the Hate Speech Bill comes back before the Irish parliament, they should take note and do the correct thing and oppose it, unequivocally.

Leftists who advocated employers taking control of employees lives and opinions, those that demanded that JK Rowling and others like her be hounded from the public sphere and that what they termed hate speech, in reality thought crimes, should be punished in law have aided and abetted right-wing governments in getting us to where we are now, which is that it is now very easy to criminalise pro-Palestinian voices. All you have to say is Hate Speech! Meanwhile Rushi Sunak in Britain is pushing ahead with a very broad and loose definition of extremism which will see almost everyone who does not support Sunak or Starmer in the dock.

Notes

(1) See interview with Yanis Varoufakis.

(2) Minority Report is a Tom Cruise film in which three mutants can see the future and predict who will commit crimes and they are arrested, charged and sentenced in advance before the crime is committed. In the film the system unravels.

(3) WXXI News (16/04/2024) Hobart and William Smith Colleges professor suspended for comments on Israel-Hamas war. Noelle E.C. Evans. 

(4) WSWS (09/04/2024) Columbia University suspends and evicts pro-Palestinian students. Tim Avery. 

(5) The Guardian (10/04/2024) German university rescinds Jewish American’s job offer over pro-Palestinian letter. Kate Connolly. 

(6) The Guardian (18/04/2023) French publisher arrested in London on terrorism charge. Matthew Weaver. 

(7) The Guardian (19/08/2013) Glenn Greenwald’s partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours.

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

A New Wave Of Censorship And Repression

Middle East Monitor ✏ Recommended by Sarah Kay.

A bill to close the offices of foreign networks that “work against the state”, including Al Jazeera, passed its second and third reading in the Israeli Knesset, the Israeli Public Broadcaster reported yesterday.

The draft law, which aims to prevent the operation of the Qatari media network Al Jazeera and similar entities within the occupation state, authorises the minister of communications to take measures against foreign channels which Israel deems to be working against the security of the occupation state, after the approval of the prime minister and the Council of Ministers or the government.

Measures which can be taken against such media companies include: closing their offices, confiscating broadcast equipment, preventing the broadcast of the channel’s reports, removing the channel from the cable and satellite network, and blocking its websites, among other measures.

The bill was proposed by Minister of Communications, Shlomo Karhi, who said: 

Despite all the legal blunders and ridiculous balances, we have obtained an effective and quick tool to act against those who use freedom of the press to harm the security of Israel and the army’s soldiers. The law will be approved next Monday in the Knesset’s plenary session, and then we will begin taking urgent measures against a number of foreign channels that harm the security of the state.

Committee Chairman, Knesset member Zvika Foghel, said: “Approval of this draft law constitutes an important part of the defensive wall of the State of Israel.”

Bill To Close Al Jazeera Offices Passes Second, Third Knesset Readings

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 Treacy ✍ It 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

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)