The Finding Out just rolls on and keeps getting funnier. From Clammy Fraud getting un-personed for good from Meta platforms to Mr FAFO getting shuffled off to Jehannum, it’s getting hard to wipe the smirks from our faces.
Now it’s time for a big ol’ shit-eating grin as the Oxford Union gets its long-delayed comeuppance.
A free speech row engulfing the Oxford Union has plunged the debating society into “complete and utter turmoil”, the Telegraph can reveal.
Dozens of speakers have pulled out from scheduled events and six-figure donations have been paused in an outcry over comments made by its president-elect about Charlie Kirk, sources have claimed.
Once again, the law of Go Woke, Go Broke has ground its wheels.
They claimed as many as 40 speakers have pulled out from scheduled events this year, with many directly citing [George Abaraonye’s] comments as their reason for withdrawing […]
A single donation worth around £500,000 has been put on hold amid the current unrest, with many more donors threatening to withdraw their pledged endowments, sources said.
The Oxford Union’s freshers week stall also recruited around half the number of students it has in recent years, one official claimed.
Utterly symbolic of the decline of these once-great Western institutions is George Abaraonye, who was due to take over as president of the debating society. Was.
The president-elect of the Oxford Union has been ousted following outrage over his apparent celebration of Charlie Kirk’s shooting.
George Abaraonye, who was due to take over as president of the 202-year-old debating society next term, was forced out following a vote on Saturday.
The Oxford Union published the results of the vote on Tuesday morning. Of 1,746 votes cast, 1,228 were in favour of no-confidence, meaning the no-confidence motion carried. Rules state that at least two-thirds of valid votes must be cast in favour for the motion to be passed.
Naturally, the intolerant promoters of violence are whining like little babies as they face accountability for probably the first time in their cosseted lives. You just know he’s crying the usual garbage about ‘racism’ and ‘violent and extreme rhetoric’, which is pretty epic projection.
But the question remains: why was someone who clearly has no interest in free speech, let alone the liberal Western tradition, and openly espoused ‘violent retaliation’, elected to what is supposedly the most prestigious debate society in supposedly the most prestigious university in the West? Even in the run-up to his election, he openly expressed his contempt for the union.
His election says a lot about the qualities his student peers are looking for in a leader.
Either way, Abaraonye’s potential presidency does not bode well for the reputation of the two-century-old debating society. His comments have already landed it in some very hot water. Kirk’s friends at Turning Point USA have even threatened to ‘personally contact every American political speaker who has ever graced the union’s chamber and urge them never again to lend their name, time or reputation to that institution that has betrayed its founding ideals’, if Abaraonye does not resign.
You do not need to have been a fan of Charlie Kirk to think Abaraonye is unfit for the role. Of course he should be free to hold whatever contemptible opinions he wants. But after publicly celebrating the brutal assassination of someone merely exercising his free-speech rights, he shouldn’t be heading up a society founded on the principle of freedom of speech.
When Abaraonye debated Kirk, Kirk had been civil with him. Abaraonye had perhaps been less so with Kirk. He showed up in sweatpants and slippers, tetchily engaged with his opponent, before sauntering away from the exchange while yawning. That his fellow students could have watched this display and still voted for him as union president a month later is baffling.
The Oxford Union will survive this controversy, just as it has survived countless others. What will be harder to recover is its reputation as a training ground for bright young minds, rather than a platform for mean-spirited provocateurs.
It has that reputation? According to whom? For most of us, I suspect, it hasn’t had any such reputation for decades.
