Organisations including the National Union of Students have made silencing 'controversial' voices a priority
Last week saw yet more attempts to silence dissenting voices among the Left – from the Chambers of the House of Commons to a lecture hall at a London university. While they were unsuccessful, questions need to be asked about the far-Left’s aversion to allowing those who disagree with them the same freedoms as those who do not.
Despite threats of deselection from Left wing activists, 66 Labour MPs voted against leader Jeremy Corbyn in favour of extending airstrikes against ISIS in Syria. Among the ‘traitor list’ drawn up by hard-Left party Left Unity were Hillary Benn and Neil Coyle, both of whom have since received death threats via Twitter.
Stella Creasy was sent pictures of dead babies, had 500 people march on her Walthamstow constituency office and has received abuse on Twitter comparing her to ISIS.
Meanwhile, over on the other side of London, yet another university student society was trying to silence a dissenting voice through fear and intimidation. Goldsmiths Islamic Society (ISOC) attempted to stop Left-wing Iranian-born Maryam Namazie from giving a talk on blasphemy and apostasy to the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society (ASH).
The ISOC President wrote to ASH claiming Namazie’s presence would violate their ‘safe space’. This so-called ‘polite request’ warned ‘we advise you to reconsider your event tomorrow’. When the event went ahead regardless, the ISOC members did everything they could to disrupt Namazie’s speech.
According to Namazie: “After my talk began, ISOC ‘brothers’ started coming into the room, repeatedly banging the door, falling on the floor, heckling me, playing on their phones, shouting out, and creating a climate of intimidation in order to try and prevent me from speaking.”
The national confederation of these unions, the National Union of Students (NUS), claims to be the ‘national voice of students”, but has made silencing ‘controversial’ voices a priority. Back in May, numerous delegates who attended the NUS annual conference reported an ‘atmosphere of intimidation’ at the event.
An open letter signed by 43 of the event’s attendees claimed that many students ‘felt too scared to speak on stage out of fear of the response they would get’ and that there was an ‘atmosphere of intimidation, fear and inaccessibility that perpetuated during the entirety of conference’.
According to the letter, ‘there seemed to be a general lack of tolerance for opinions which aren’t the mainstream view’, and ‘we frequently saw the same faces speaking on stage, time after time, creating an atmosphere that this was a conference for the few, not the many’.
Student unions’ decisions to ban speakers are often due to pressure from a student society on campus, who will more often than not claim their own ‘safe space’ is at risk. The Goldsmiths ISOC, for example, claimed that ‘the university should be a safe space for all our students’. Claims like this are often taken seriously enough to ban someone from coming onto campus and sharing their ideas with students, despite the fact that students are free not to attend such an event.
The decisions taken by a few from within student unions to ban speakers have however crumbled under external pressure in the past. In September, when Warwick University’s student union banned Namazie from speaking on campus, the decision was quickly overturned by widespread criticism in the national press and on social media. Suddenly the union’s big talk about having ‘a duty of care to conduct a risk assessment for each speaker who wishes to come to campus’ went out of the window.
A month ago, University College London Union reversed its decision to ban former YPG fighter Macer Gifford after facing online criticism. Last year, the University of Derby’s students’ union overturned its ban on UKIP members speaking at events.
The far-Left’s attempts to shut down debate among its ranks are resulting in a stream of embarrassing own-goals. MPs are threatened with de-selection if they vote against the worldview of their leader. MPs exercise their right to vote however they like, and Corbyn’s sinister tactics make the headlines.
University student unions and societies attempt to silence speakers who deviate from their worldview, making those who threaten their supposed ‘safe space’ feel as unsafe as possible. But, almost every time, they are exposed for the fascists they really are.
Emily Dyer is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society
46 Responses to “Comment: Silencing dissenters is key to the survival of the far-Left”
Cole
That the New Politics with Comrade Corbyn!
K A James
Blair is not in Westminster: Murphy is not in Westminster. What other parts of your contribution collapse under the slightest scrutiny?
K A James
I see immediately that many who have difficulty challenging the points raised have resorted to the “kill the messenger” style of argument. You don’t crush right wing philosophies simply by declaring them right wing. It is not that easy. If you find the Henry Jackson Society to be too right wing for you, take care that your personal animosities don’t lead you into the ultra right IS and Taliban-supporting ultra-loonies masquerading as a “hard left”.
Richard MacKinnon
I accept that Blair and Murphy are no longer MPs but don’t try and tell me they do not still have influence, also, that there are many within the Labour parliamentary group that hold similar views.
The Henry Jackson Society is an influential anti muslim pro Israeli interventionist organisation and the truth is we don’t know much else and that includes who within UK politics are members or supporters.
What we do know is the HJS has influence enough to get articles published on Labour websites.
Intolerant_Liberal
Liberal fascism, pure and simple! I’m amazed at the general culture of Political Correctness, and how it has morphed from a genuine challenging of racism, sexism and homophobia into a mish mash of nonsensical ideologies, with the basic underlying premise that anyone anywhere challenges any thing put forward by a Left leaning PC liberal is a ‘racist, effing fascist, Nazi,’ ad nauseum!!! The so called democrats have become as intolerant, probably more so, than the people they see as their enemies.
It has become, quite simply, the tolerance of intolerance, or the intolerance of tolerance. Whichever, they are all on a power trip, and the bubble is sooner, or later, going to burst. Ego trips always do end badly, after all.
The underlying issue is that as the economic divisions grow in the UK, and anger and dissent towards both left and right have emerged, the idea of ‘protecting minorities’ is now just a tool to silence any genuine criticism of those in any kind of political or other power. The powers that be everywhere want to silence critics and want to silence any real debate, because they will be the first people to be criticised. That is the REAL agenda. Not to protect minorities or any other marginalised group, but to preserve the positions of pretend lefties and those who are on the gravy train or their own personal power trip.