Antifascism isn’t what it used to be. It used to mean signing up to fight Franco’s fascists in Spain, battling Oswald Mosley in the East End or exchanging blows with National Front thugs.
Now it means denying former ministers and parliamentarians a platform in front of snowflake students at elite universities, and occasionally punching elderly women in the face because they believe there are only two sexes.
What the British are experiencing in terms of attacks on free speech is simultaneously disgusting and pathetic, writes Spike editor Tom Slater in The Spectator.
The cancellation of Suella Braverman’s event in Cambridge last week – following threats of protests from various pseudo-radical groups, spearheaded by Cambridge for Palestine – was eerily predictable.
It follows a pattern that has become all too familiar for students who dare to hold views or invite speakers that upset the university’s hysterical, self-appointed censors.
Braverman was invited to speak on the anniversary of the terrorist attack on 7 October. She was invited by the Cambridge University Conservative Association (Cuca), which she herself chaired as a student at Cambridge 20 years ago.
But these anti-democratic and Jew-hating activists could not accept that Braverman was allowed to speak. They consider her “far right”, which in their world means people who don’t support Hamas and Hezbollah.
As usual, it was impossible for these tyrants to understand that they could simply stay away, lest their delicate souls be crushed by hearing the voice of someone with different opinions to them.
Braverman expressed his frustration to the Jewish Chronicle:
– A radical, militant student group has forced me to cancel my speech at Cambridge University using threats, intimidation and mob violence.
She described the incident as “a direct attack on freedom of speech and a calculated attempt to silence me”.
– This is not just an attack on me, but on the core British values that we must defend….This week, on the anniversary of 7 October, a day that marks one of the most brutal terrorist attacks in recent history, I refuse to be intimidated by the pro-Palestinian mob.
These Hamas-loving, Jew-hating students aren’t out to win a debate, they’re out to stop the debate. You’re supposed to love LGBTQ, Hamas and people with dark skin. You’re supposed to hate Jews, anyone who doesn’t believe there are 100 different genders and anyone with white skin, especially men.
Cuca was required to provide security, but couldn’t afford to pay £1,500 to fix the problems created by a bunch of students that a healthy university administration had expelled on the spot.
Those who organised the protests claim their only aim was counter speech – to exercise their own freedom of expression and show their displeasure with Braverman. They are, of course, well within their rights to do so.
But it would have been much more convincing if their own flyers didn’t declare in screaming capitals “NO PLATFORM FOR THE FAR RIGHT” – an explicit call to silence Braverman.
Also, we’ve found that the so-called “counter speech” such people are looking for mostly consists of shouting, screaming, name-calling, often amplified by megaphones and other sound equipment.
One of the few good things the previous Tory government did was pass the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. It was intended to ensure that freedom of speech was restored to British campuses.
The Act was, of course, immediately paused by Labour, and Education Minister Bridget Phillipson is considering scrapping it altogether. Labour is not a champion of free speech, to put it very gently.
The Labour government is more concerned with killing the loose and free atmosphere in British pubs, by monitoring the conversations on the tables, in case someone says something that some snowflake might find offensive.
The British are losing their property rights and freedom of speech has been largely abolished. They no longer have any civil liberties.
Like many other Europeans, they are led by green hysterics who want to decide what kind of car they buy and deny them the right to heat their houses in a way they can afford. Freedom of choice is hostile to the climate.
They also can’t send out illegal migrants, even people convicted of murder in their home country. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) controls British immigration policy.
In other words, there’s not much left of British democracy, and no angry and powerful barons seem to want to mobilise to demand a new Magna Charta.
Great Britain is in the process of changing its name to ‘Little Britain’.
