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”
Intolerant_Liberal
What I struggle to understand is that if largely working class white groups like the EDL and BNP and etc, are racist, anti Muslim, anti immigrant and right wing, they are roundly and quickly condemned, but when ‘Muslim’ extremists preach hatred of gay people, other religions, hatred of the West and etc, they are not condemned??? Confusing??? You betcha!!!!
Guy
They are condemned by any liberal, whether a liberal Conservative, a liberal socialist or a liberal Liberal Democrat. Similarly for Plaid Cymru, SNP, Greens, etc. But there are far too many authoritarians ready to silence victims and dissenters in each of those parties and in UKIP. 9I have never noticed any liberals in UKIP or the Northern Irish Parties.) But such condemnation generally doesn’t suit the agenda of the right-wing media, so isn’t reported.
Intolerant_Liberal
Yes, agreed. But mostly white upper middle class men!!! Not too many working class men in any spheres of power at the moment.
The reality of PC and all that jazz is that ethnic minorities, any kind of perceived minority like gay people, Muslims or what have you, are played off against each other. This is just capitalism, ultimately, in that every group perceive itself as special and therefore should be heard and have greater access to resources. It is nothing new. This has been helped along by phoney lefties infiltrating a genuine left that was about fighting for workers rights, fair wages, better living conditions, affordable housing and so on, and turned into an ideology that is far more about trendy lefty white middle class causes than anything that most people struggling economically at the bottom are really concerned with. Fighting for the rights of transgender people is all very well, but few people are that, and most just want a better slice of the pie, when it is all boiled down to brass tacks. Wealthy students can involve themselves in radical left politics because they can afford to. Those of us who live in the real world of crap jobs, hard struggles and so on have little time for it.
Woo11
well, if you can show me them I wont deny them!!!!!!!!!!LOL!
Grow up – was I denying that “some” idiots have ? no! Read my post again!!! LOL
Intolerant_Liberal
The Right wing are now using the ‘PC Intolerant’ card themselves as skilfully as those claiming to be on the Left. It was bound to happen. That is possibly why it is called POLITICAL correctness. When you have the establishment using an ‘ideology’ that was supposed to challenge the dominant culture in the UK and US and elsewhere, you know it’s a dead duck.