This Is Not a Free Speech Issue

Few subjects attract quite so much ignorance, hypocrisy and outright bullshit as free speech, mostly because too many people operate under the principle of ‘free speech for me, but not for thee’. As the great Winston Churchill said, “some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage”.

Worse, the most loudmouth opinionators seem to be almost wholly ignorant of the principles of free speech.

Let’s get a few things straight. First, free speech is not just ‘the government can’t censor you’. In both law and in principle, free speech means the government has an obligation to protect free speech, not just permit it.

This doesn’t mean, though, that free speech means anyone can say whatever they like. Free speech does not protect defamation. More importantly, it absolutely does not protect incitement. This has been reiterated from the earliest theorists of free speech.

Nor does free speech guarantee a platform. While the state is obliged to prevent people being actively silenced, free speech does not mean anyone is obliged to listen, or to hand a speaker a megaphone.

All of which us brings us to the ridiculous hissy-fit over the so-called Adelaide Writers Week. So-called, because ‘writer’s festivals’ invariably have bugger-all to do with writing, and everything to do with rigidly enforcing far-left groupthink.

Case in point: when Adelaide Writers Week declined to platform an anti-Semitic Muslim extremist, the luvvy left went into a collective meltdown. Almost the entirety of the rostered speakers took their little bats and balls and huffed off, the board quit and it looked like the whole thing would be cancelled. Oh, and Jacinda Ardern won’t be coming.

All of which is threatening the rest of us with a good time – and absolutely jack-shit to do with free speech.

The cause of all the lefty flouncing was that the Adelaide Writers Week withdrew their invitation to ‘Palestinian’ hate-academic Randa Abdel-Fattah.

They were entirely right to do so. Abdel-Fattah is an anti-Semite who has repeatedly incited and glorified violence against Jews.

Her own boss, Macquarie University vice-chancellor Bruce Dowton, conceded that she had made anti-Semitic statements but weaselled out of sacking her, claiming that “the term was not well-defined in law”. Which is a load of bollocks.

Abdel-Fattah has publicly called for the destruction of Israel. The very day after October 7, she changed her online profile picture to a Hamas terrorist carrying out the massacre. She was also filmed leading kindergarten children in a chant of “Intifada” (violence against Jews).

If that isn’t incitement to anti-Semitic violence, then it’s driving a crammed cattle-car right up next to it.

This is what the left are so desperate to hand a platform and a megaphone to. And woe betide anyone who tries to demur. Such as Iranian-Australian writer Shokoofeh Azar, who was deliberately wedged by the Guardian, on whether she would join the anti-Semitic boycott. She declined, explaining to the lefty Bible that, now more than ever, it was important for Iranian voices to be heard.

The publication of this response quickly led to a co-ordinated attack on my Instagram page, and the tone of the messages soon became openly threatening. One person wrote, “Go back to your country, you fat ugly woman.” Another wrote, “Death to Iran and the Pahlavis.” In a private message, someone even wrote, “You should be killed like the Israelis.” Several people threatened to boycott my books. By the end of that day, I was forced to delete the post in order to return to the solitary life of a writer.

And to completely fail to understand what just happened.

Silencing a voice – even one we strongly disagree with – does not bring us closer to truth or justice.

No one’s voice has been ‘silenced’, here. Abdel-Fattah is still perfectly free to spout her hate – just not from the Adelaide Writer’s Festival’s platform. To reiterate: protecting free speech does not mandate providing a platform.

Nor has the Adelaide Writer’s Festival caved to a heckler’s veto (an abrogation of free speech). Unlike an event featuring, say, Milo Yiannopoulos, Jordan Peterson, or Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, there were no violent mobs besieging the venue, no concerted boycott campaigns. This was not a ‘cancellation’.

It was a declination to platform a person who has repeatedly spouted anti-Semitic rhetoric and incited violence. Abdel-Fattah was, for instance, one of the key people behind the infamous ‘Jew list’.

Dr Abdel-Fattah was among a number of high-profile figures who two years ago publicly shared a link to a private WhatsApp group that included 600 Jewish creatives, leaking their names, photos and personal details in the process, which prompted the Albanese government to introduce new doxxing laws.

In a social media post that has since been taken down, Dr Abdel-Fattah invited her tens of thousands of followers to access the link to the “leaked Zionist group chat”.

Let’s not buy what was always a threadbare lie, here. When these people say ‘Zionist’, they mean ‘Jew’. The Jewish Australians doxxed (now a criminal act) by Abdel-Fattah and her cronies endured death threats, harassment and job losses.

That’s how free speech is really censored.

This brings me to a final point: anyone who denies the free speech of others deserves no free speech in return.