Yesterday’s cancel culture zealots are today masquerading as free speech warriors. Don’t fall for it
Story by Tom Slater •
19h
Am I dreaming? The woke Left are suddenly worried about freedom of expression. The very people who have spent years calling cancel culture a myth, and dismissing the rise of censorship as some pearl-clutching moral panic, are now railing against the clampdown on dissent and protest, specifically Suella Braverman’s attempts to ban tomorrow’s “pro-Palestine” Armistice Day march.
Owen Jones, Guardian columnist and Corbynista TV personality, has slammed what he calls the “deliberate and hysterical campaign” to ban the march. In a video, he took aim at those Right-wingers who have forgotten their supposed liberal principles where these demos are concerned: “
ome of those who talk about threats to free speech, cancel culture, ‘the Left are dangerous authoritarians’, they’re the ones leading the charge, trying to ban a mass, peaceful protest because they don’t like it.”
Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar has also been getting in on the act. “Why is it that supporters of Israel have such a low tolerance for dissenting opinion?”, she asked on Twitter / X.
The University and College Union (UCU) is similarly up in arms after the government sent a letter to UK Research and Innovation, the national funding agency for science and research, demanding to know why it had appointed two people to an advisory group on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) who had made questionable comments in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict. (One had said the government’s planned crackdown on “Hamas support” was “disturbing”.) The EDI group has since been disbanded and UCU chief Jo Grady has written to the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, Michelle Donelan, expressing her concerns about a “chilling effect on freedom of speech and academic freedom”.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/yesterday-s-cancel-culture-zealots-are-today-masquerading-as-free-speech-warriors-don-t-fall-for-it/ar-AA1jJ1nX?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=77f7fed60dde4e7f90d54364b41b78ab&ei=110
