Monthly Archives: July 2021

The government has denied that its controversial new free speech legislation will provide a platform for Holocaust deniers on campuses, arguing that the bill is vital in order to tackle a growing intolerance in universities.

The higher education (freedom of speech) bill came under sustained attack from Labour, which claimed the legislation amounted to nothing more than legal protection for hate speech.

The House of Commons voted by 367 to 216 to reject Labours amendment that sought to deny the bill a second reading, which the bill later cleared and will undergo further scrutiny at a later date.

The shadow education secretary, Kate Green, told MPs there was no free speech crisis in universities that necessitated the proposed legislation, which she described as an evidence-free zone.

On the contrary, she said: This is a bill to enshrine legal protections for hateful, harmful and divisive speech. The kind of speech that we would not tolerate in this House would be protected in universities across the country.

It is a bill that creates a new legal framework to allow those responsible for such harmful speech to take legal action against universities, eating into the resources that ought to be educating our young people and supporting our world-class research programmes.

It is a bill that is unnecessary, it is poorly drafted, but above all it is deeply wrong, and on this side of the House we will not support it.

The bill proposes a raft of new laws that the government says are necessary to safeguard free speech in universities, including the introduction of a free speech and academic freedom champion to investigate alleged infringements of free speech in higher education and then recommend redress.

It will also require the universities regulator in England, the Office for Students (OfS), to introduce a new registration condition on free speech, with powers to impose sanctions including fines in case of breaches.

Higher education providers and student unions will have a duty to actively promote freedom of speech under the proposed legislation, which also seeks to introduce a statutory tort for breach of the duty, enabling individuals to seek legal redress for any loss they have suffered as a result of any breach.

Outlining the details of the bill, the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, told MPs: Our universities must not become spaces where ideas are debated within a narrow consensus with those who challenge majority views subject to censorship themselves.

He went on: Its absolutely clear that this bill will not and never will create a platform for Holocaust deniers. The 1986 Public Order Act, the 2010 Equality Act, introduced by Labour, as well as the Prevent duties in 2015 this bill if made an act will not create the space to tolerate Holocaust deniers and never shall.

Williamson added: These legal duties are key to ensuring that the higher education sector in England continues to be an environment in which students, staff and visiting speakers are not just able but welcome to freely express their views, as long as those views are lawful.

Green told MPs, however, that an assessment by the Office for Students found that just 53 of 59,574 events with external speakers were refused permission in 2017-18. So perhaps that was an unusually slow year for cancel culture, and there is a real problem. But last year, a survey found that of 10,000 events with external speakers, only six were cancelled.

She said it was not acceptable, when there were so many other priorities, to use valuable parliamentary time to introduce legislation to tackle a small number of cases that could in any case be dealt with more effectively without additional legislation.

Supporting the governments proposed legislation, former cabinet minister David Davis described so-called cancel culture as modern McCarthyism.

He told the Commons: The bill before us is to correct a small, and I grant you it is small, but extraordinarily important symbolic aspect of this modern McCarthyism, namely an attempt to no-platform a number of speakers including Amber Rudd, Julie Bindel, Peter Hitchens, Peter Tatchell and others. I hope it is just a first step actually in a programme to bring free speech back to Britain.

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Free speech bill gives legal protection to hate speech, says Labour - The Guardian

A stray thought for Hollywood: Just because Donald Trump is campaigning for free speechlast week, he announced a class-action anti-censorship lawsuit against Twitter, Facebook and Googledoesnt mean its a bad idea.

Free speech, that is. I dont know about the lawsuit, which will have to reconcile the tech giants First Amendment rights and legal protections with a claim that they have abused their immunity by acting as politically one-sided censors.

More heat than light will be shed as the suit works its way through the courts and media mill. But never mind Trump. Freedom of expression is something the movie business should start worrying about, sooner rather than later.

Its no secret that the movieslike the rest of pop culturehave been operating in an ever-narrower field when it comes to what can be portrayed on-screen, and by whom. Even to identify the growing list of prohibitions would invite attack.

Related StorySean Penn Slams Donald Trump's "Obscene" Covid Response; Likens It To Gunning Down Vulnerable Communities - Cannes

Suffice it to say that Sean Penn had a point when he suggested on a recent Conan OBrien podcast that today, as a straight person, he probably couldnt be cast as the gay activist Harvey Milk, a role for which he won an Oscar in 2009. You wonder at some point if only Danish princes can play Hamlet, he said.

On another front, Lin-Manuel Miranda apologized for his lack of racial sensitivity in In The Heights. Rita Moreno then apologized for defending Miranda. Meanwhile, John Cena scrambled to salvage F9 by apologizing for an offense to China.

In truth, Hollywood might as well be operating under the Hays Code, which, in a version adopted on June 29, 1927, outlawed the portrayal, irrespective of the manner in which they are treated, of, among other things, any willful offense to any nation, race or creed.

Obviously, this cant go onnot if a supposedly creative business that has long taken pride in its rule-breakers (Warren Beatty, Quentin Tarantino), anti-heroes (Super Fly, Thelma & Louise), and incorrigible irreverence (from Charlie Chaplin, through Monty Python, to The Hangover and beyond), is ever going to breathe again.

This isnt to say that the film industry, as a whole, has ever been especially brave when it comes to free expression. The aforementioned Hays Code, from a century ago, set a now familiar pattern. When under attack, the movie business and those in it tend to preempt censorship by censoring themselves. For a while, it seems to work. The Code, which sterilized American film for decades, certainly put a cork in dozens of local censorship measures that would have made national theatrical distribution impossible.

But the wonderful thing about Hollywood is its buoyancy. Just when you think its about to sink in abject surrender to finger-wagging moralists who object to gangsters, or sex, or cigarettes, or whatever, filmdoms rebel spirit bobs back up, like a self-righting sailboat.

Thus, long before it was abandoned in the late 1960s, the Code was defied by vibrant rule-breaking movies like The Pawnbroker, Anatomy Of A Murder, and Some Like It Hot. (It helped that the United States Supreme Court, reversing its own previous position, held in 1952 that movies are indeed a form of constitutionally protected free speech.)

In much the same way, the current film ratings systemdesigned to forestall next-wave censorship with age-restrictions at the theater doorstretched and bent until finally it allowed almost anything into PG-13 pictures, and just about everything else into accessible-to-all-but-kids R films.

Ultimately, even the anti-Communist blacklist didnt snuff free expression. Kirk Douglas hired the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo to write Spartacus, which won four Oscars. Jay Roach told the back story in Trumbo. The incorrigibly irreverent Coen Brothers had fun with it in Hail, Caesar!

But back to the present.

The uncodified but very real strictures on filmas with those curbing speech on campus, in social media, at comedy showsare piling up faster than offenders can Tweet apologies. Yet the industrys key players and institutions have been slow to campaign for free expression (as even Harvey Weinstein once did, with his endless ratings appeals). Sometimes, in fact, they have actually narrowed the movie safe zone, whether with disclaimers attached to classics like Gone With The Wind, or with forthcoming Best Picture inclusion and representation standards that will ask whether a would-be Oscar contender delivers a main storyline(s), theme or narrative that is centered on an underrepresented group(s).

Its another version of the old tactic, preemption. But that is a high-risk approachplaying along, while waiting for the boat to right itself in an online world where cancellation is immediate, and almost total.

Something more emphatic is in order. (Much more than the safely historical bravery of a Mank.)

Comedians like Ricky Gervais, Bill Maher and Jerry Seinfeld have already spoken up. Journalists like Glenn Greenwald have joined in. Musician Winston Marshall, late of Mumford & Sons, just took a stand.

Its time for movie people to do as much. No matter what Trump says.

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Without Apology, The Movies And Those Who Make Them Should Campaign For Free Speech - Deadline

We should not demonise those who disagree with us, writes Gavin Williamson in his latest free speech tirade in the Telegraph. The Education Secretary is out promoting the governments new Higher Education Bill, which would fine universities found to have stifled free speech and enable academics and speakers who feel they have been silenced to seek compensation.

A few months ago, I wrote on how the government was arguing with itself over whether its proposed legislation would protect legal but abhorrent speech such as Holocaust denial. But now I have a different question for Williamson, the free speech champion. Last week, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill passed its third reading, despite numerous proposed amendments and objections from human rights groups. This bill would enable police to shut down any demonstration if it could potentially cause serious annoyance or serious inconvenience, or if it is simply deemed too noisy. It is hard to imagine a protest that is quiet and polite enough not to annoy anyone making a stir is the point of protesting.

So what does Williamson think of the chilling threat to free speech from a law designed to curtail the right to peaceful protest? Or is he too busy playing at student politics to care?

Henry Dimbleby, the founder of the fast-food chain Leon and now on the board of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, thinks we should be eating insects. Hes drawn up a national food strategy for Britain, which includes prescribing free fruit and veg to deprived households and encouraging the nation to switch from meat to bugs and plant-based alternatives (algae, fermented meat substitutes) to save our health and the planet.

Conflating the environmental and health arguments for ethical vegetarianism has always struck me as unhelpful. For example, when land use and farming methods are taken into account, coffee and cheese rack up higher emissions than pork or poultry, while the asparagus, green beans and berries that fly to your plate have a much bigger carbon footprint than foods that arrive by boat. Calculations about the ethics of what we eat become even more thorny when considering lab-grown beef or highly processed meat alternatives. Are we trying to improve animal welfare, reduce emissions, make food cheaper, or become a healthier nation? All are admirable goals, but Im doubtful we could achieve them all at once.

At any rate, while Ive no objection to culinary adventurism (Ive eaten locusts), Im not sure that a pandemic which is thought to have begun in a market where bats are sold as food is the best time to convince people to experiment.

Snippets of positivity are hard to find mid-crisis, which makes the news that Oxford University has started trialling an HIV vaccine all the more uplifting. With the challenge unsolved after three decades of research, scientists are now embarking on a new strategy using techniques developed while working on the Covid-19 jab. The thought that lessons from this pandemic could yield a solution to another is a reminder that, however dire things may have felt at times, the past 16 months have been anything but wasted.

I was 17 when I was first accused of putting a male acquaintance in the friend-zone. By becoming friends with him I had, apparently, cruelly denied him the chance of pursuing a romantic relationship with me. This piece of Nineties internet slang, popularised by an episode of Friends, is so ubiquitous it made it into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013.

Except, it turns out its rubbish. Research from a new study finds that two-thirds of couples started out as friends, with the average friendship lasting 22 months before turning romantic. Rates of reverse friend-zoning were even higher among young people and LGBT couples.

So if your love life has been on hiatus during the pandemic, take heart. You dont necessarily need dating apps to find that connection the ideal partner for you may have been your friend all along.

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First Thoughts: The real threat to free speech, eating insects, and why you should ask a friend out to dinner - New Statesman

The Kurds

[W]hen we refer to all Kurdish fighters synonymously, we simply blur the fact that they have very different politics. . . right now, yes, the people are facing the Islamic State threat, so its very important to have a unified focus. But the truth is, ideologically and politically these are very, very different systems. Actually almost opposite to each other. Dilar Dirik, Rojava vs. the World, February 2015

The Kurds, who share ethnic and cultural similarities with Iranians and are mostly Muslim by religion (largely Sunni but with many minorities), have long struggled for self-determination. After World War I, their lands were divided up between Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. In Iran, though there have been small separatist movements, Kurds are mostly subjected to the same repressive treatment as everyone else (though they also face Persian and Shiite chauvinism, and a number of Kurdish political prisoners were recently executed). The situation is worse in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, where the Kurds are a minority people subjected to ethnically targeted violations of human rights.

Iraq: In 198689, Saddam Hussein conducted a genocidal campaign in which tens of thousands were murdered and thousands of Kurdish villages destroyed, including by bombing and chemical warfare. After the first Gulf War, the UN sought to establish a safe haven in parts of Kurdistan, and the United States and UK set up a no-fly zone. In 2003, the Kurdish peshmerga sided with the U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein. In 2005, after a long struggle with Baghdad, the Iraqi Kurds won constitutional recognition of their autonomous region, and the Kurdistan Regional Government has since signed oil contracts with a number of Western oil companies as well as with Turkey. Iraqi Kurdistan has two main political parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), both clan-based and patriarchal.

Turkey: For much of its modern history, Turkey has pursued a policy of forced assimilation towards its minority peoples; this policy is particularly stringent in the case of the Kurdsuntil recently referred to as the mountain Turkswho make up 20 percent of the total population. The policy has included forced population transfers; a ban on use of the Kurdish language, costume, music, festivals, and names; and extreme repression of any attempt at resistance. Large revolts were suppressed in 1925, 1930, and 1938, and the repression escalated with the formation of the PKK as a national liberation party, resulting in civil war in the Kurdish region from 1984 to 1999.

Syria: Kurds make up perhaps 15 percent of the population and live mostly in the northeastern part of Syria. In 1962, after Syria was declared an Arab republic, a large number of Kurds were stripped of their citizenship and declared aliens, which made it impossible for them to get an education, jobs, or any public benefits. Their land was given to Arabs. The PYD was founded in 2003 and immediately banned; its members were jailed and murdered, and a Kurdish uprising in Qamishli was met with severe military violence by the regime. When the uprising against Bashar al Assad began as part of the Arab Spring, Kurds participated, but after 2012, when they captured Kobani from the Syrian army, they withdrew most of their energy from the war against Assad in order to set up a liberated area. For this reason, some other parts of the Syrian resistance consider them Assads allies. The Kurds in turn cite examples of discrimination against them within the opposition.

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Arguments on the Left: Free Speech - Dissent

Opinion

Police allowed hate group Patriot Front to harass Philadelphians without much intervention. Compare that to their treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters, and the double standard is galling.

A white supremacist march was met with little police intervention over July 4th weekend. (Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto)

On the night before your July 4th cookout, nearly 200 masked white supremacists armed with shields, flags and banners flocked to Center City to throw smoke bombs and Reclaim America.

It was a scary scene as a handful of counter-protesters from the city fought against a mini-militia that roamed the streets for a while without much police intervention. After running from the counter-protesters, some members were briefly detained before being allowed to flee the city. Members of Patriot Front, a known white nationalist hate group with roots in the violent 2017 Unite the Right riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, didnt put in a request for a city permit they simply came to Philly to disrupt.

The contrast between the responses from the Mayors Office and the Philadelphia police department is rather telling.

Let me be very clear: Patriot Front is a group that openly advocates for White supremacy, Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement to the press. White supremacy and racism are among the greatest scourges this country has faced since its founding. While we respect everyones right to exercise free speech, our administration stands against everything these groups represent. Im personally appalled and disgusted these groups chose Philadelphia as the place to demonstrate their open hatred. Racism, intolerance, and hate have no place in Philadelphia. Were monitoring the situation very closely, and the Police Department and other public safety agencies are coordinating to ensure a safe Fourth of July holiday in Philadelphia.

But clearly, his police department handled the situation with kid gloves.

As a law enforcement agency, the Philadelphia Police Department is charged with the duty to ensure the safety of individuals who are exercising their constitutional right to speak freely and peaceably assemble, a spokesperson for the police department told the press in a statement. After police became aware of escalating tensions between those marching and bystanders on the street, police ensured that the march remained peaceful. Once Patriot Front members concluded their protest and departed the area, officers resumed normal operations.

Thats it? Thats really how were going to assess this situation?

So a group of nearly 200 white supremacists without a permit got to roam free in Center City on a lively Saturday night while chanting Take America Back, clashing with residents, and throwing smoke bombs and the police want to talk about the importance of free speech and how they ensured that the march remained peaceful? Fuck outta here. Take a second to imagine how differently things would have gone if those same actions were taken by Black Lives Matter protesters.

Considering that the city is now looking at paying out thousands of dollars in settlements and continues to face lawsuitsafter thepolice wrongfully tear-gassed innocent Black Lives Matter protesters and civilians during last summers racial uprisings, seeing the police caught up in yet another controversy involving racism is infuriating, if predictable. In 2020, peaceful BLM protesters were arrested and tear-gassed, while in 2021, white supremacists who clashed with counter-protesters and threw smoke bombs were not.

Translation: Our police care more about protecting and serving out-of-town white supremacists who seek to intimidate than they do about the safety of innocent protesters combating such hatred.

This is another textbook example of why Black people like me will never trust the police.

As City Council once again increases police spending, Im reminded why my tax dollars that help fund our police department are wasted. Hundreds of millions of dollars every year (currently $727 million) are given to an institution that will tear-gas its own civilians for speaking out against white supremacy but will bend over backward to protect the free speech of a hate group known for racism and anti-Semitism. Theres no way you can make sense of this; its such a blatant double standard.

To call for the city to hold the police department accountable at this point is like asking a parent to punish a favorite child. Its become crystal clear that the department that gets the biggest chunk of the citys budget is allowed as much free rein as the white supremacists it just let off easily. White supremacy and policing are proving yet again to be in full alignment, and it continues to reflect badly on elected officials who cower behind a veil of neutrality rather than hit the police where it hurts financially.

Thanks to the soft handling of white supremacists by the police, I fear this wont be the last time Philly encounters the Patriot Front. And unless things change, history will continue to repeat itself.

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ICYMI, Philly Police Made Sure to Defend the Free Speech of White Supremacists - Philadelphia magazine

To the editor There is no freedom without freedom of speech. The right to express and exchange ideas is basic to a free and healthy society. However, today we see an intentional effort by the elites in our country to stifle this basic freedom by censoring views that do not fit into the accepted narrative. These people are dominant in the media, government and big tech.

History shows us that this methodology is used by totalitarian regimes to gain power and control the populace. It appears that we are coming dangerously close to this happening in America.

Some figures from the past warned us: George Washington said, If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. One of our own from Yakima, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, warned, Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.

We need to collectively wake up, speak up and act to protect this most precious freedom.

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Letter: We must protect our right to free speech - Yakima Herald-Republic

On June 23, the Canadian government tabled a bill that would expand existing hate speech policy to better address online hate speech.

Over the coming weeks, the government will consult with the public on devising a regulatory framework around how to make social media platforms more transparent and accountable with their content moderation practices. But the growing popularity of Rumble, a Canadian video-sharing platform championing online free speech, foreshadows a tumultuous road to implementation.

Rumble is a relatively small (compared to YouTube) video-sharing platform that gained over 30 million monthly users almost overnight. Chris Pavlovski, Rumbles CEO from Brampton, Ont., has credited much of the platforms success to a surge in interest among American conservatives frustrated by big techs crackdown on hate speech and misinformation.

Rumbles lenient approach towards harmful and fallacious speech has attracted the likes of Dan Bongino, the popular American right-wing political pundit known for spewing COVID-19 and 2020 presidential election conspiracy theories.

Another right-wing American political commentator, Dinesh D'Souza, has also acquired a large audience on the platform. D'Souzas political commentary includes racist and conspiracy-driven content, such as attributing the 9/11 attacks to the cultural left.

Rumble doesnt just accept harmful content, it amplifies it. Journalists reviewing the platforms recommendation system found that if a person were to search the term vaccine on Rumble, they would be three times more likely to be recommended videos containing COVID-19 misinformation than accurate information.

Rumble launched in 2013 with the goal of creating a video-sharing platform that could compete with YouTube. Pavlovskis goal was initially too risky for investors, but the growing animosity towards big tech sparked new interest in the alternative streaming service.

Pavlovski recently received investments from Silicon Valleys leading conservative billionaires, including author J.D. Vance, venture capitalist Peter Theil and former Trump adviser Darren Blanton.

Pavlovski said that he never intended for Rumble to become a conservative hotspot. Rather, Rumble was developed for dedicated content creators who are being stifled elsewhere.

Pavlovski has described Rumble as different from YouTube and Facebook because it uses far fewer algorithms for recommending and reviewing content. Its promoted as a streaming service where creators can gain exposure without fear of suppression or censorship.

On Rumble, videos are displayed in chronological order to users based on who they follow on the platform. Algorithms are not used to filter high risk video content; video content is subject to human review. Algorithms are mainly involved when trying to figure out which videos are viral and which videos we need to put humans on to look at to distribute Pavlovski explains.

Rumble also has a more lenient approach to content moderation. Users are prohibited from posting videos that include illegal activities such as pornography, child exploitation or harassment. However, videos claiming election fraud and coronavirus conspiracies remain permissible on the streaming platform.

Pavlovski has remarked that Rumble will never censor political discussion, opinion or act like the arbiters of truth.

Pavlovskis criticism of big techs reliance on AI to amplify certain content over others is not unfounded. National governments are increasingly concerned by how the discoverability of content impacts their local creators.

In addition, new research indicates that deplatforming malicious content creators can lead them to alternative platforms that are more difficult to control. However, Pavlovskis claims should be taken with a grain of salt.

Tarleton Gillespie, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research New England, argues that the notion of neutrality advocated by platforms is a mere distraction. The same can be said of Rumble.

My goal is to keep it as fair as possible. Were not interested in taking any position on any type of content, we just want to be a platform, and I believe thats why weve seen so much growth, Pavlovski said in an interview with FOX Business, adding that the company has stuck to our core policies we started with in 2013.

The streaming service may list its content in chronological order, but it is not a mere conduit for information. Rumble still tags, categorizes and sorts content; selects which content is trending or viral; and determines which content to license and distribute. These practices are integral to the services business model.

Marketing Rumble as a champion of free speech is strategic because it helps the video-sharing platform evade liability for the content appearing on its website. However, a platform that promotes content via algorithmic manipulation and/or receives notice of unlawful content, is arguably a publisher according to Canadian common law and, therefore, liable for harmful content appearing on its platform.

Read more: Parler: what you need to know about the 'free speech' Twitter alternative

To combat online misinformation, platforms like Rumble, YouTube and Facebook must be more transparent about how their algorithms organize and promote content. Disclosing substantial information about their content moderation practices is key to enabling accountability, public trust and democratic deliberation.

Whether the Liberals will be successful in implementing the new bill and enforcing transparency among platforms remains to be seen. In the meantime, free speech platforms like Rumble will continue to attract users frustrated by the content moderation practices of incumbent platforms.

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Meet Rumble, Canadas new 'free speech' platform and its impact on the fight against online misinformation - The Conversation CA