‘No platforming’ is arrogant and dangerous

On International Women’s Day a former conservative home secretary was abruptly ‘no platformed’ by students at Oxford University – thirty minutes before a scheduled speaking engagement.

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The event was supposed to be about encouraging young women into politics but amidst much public hullabaloo the student society decided that Amber Rudd wasn’t the kind of woman they wanted to speak. Now don’t get me wrong – if anyone is going to get ‘no platformed’ then few deserve it more than the egregious Rudd – but it got me thinking about no ‘platforming’ and I am against it .

Writing in defence of the decision in The Canary, Afroze Fatima Zaidi made the following points:

(a) Rudd is a snake – look at her track record at the DWP and as Home Secretary and how she was caught lying to Parliament.

(b) Rudd’s victims, those who suffered as a result of her ‘work’ at the DWP and as a result of the Windrush scandal had no platform to speak so why should she?

(c) What kind of a role model is Rudd for young women wanting to enter politics?

In addition to these points various people have added the following in discussion with me:

(d) Rudd isn’t entitled to every platform she covets

(e) Rudd is a sophist who shouldn’t be given ANY opportunity to spread right wing propaganda in bad faith – she has the corporate media for that.

All fair enough up to a point – but to my eyes these justifications are only grounds for passive disapproval – not active censorship which is what ‘no platforming’ truly is.  There is an attractive (to some) but dangerous conflation at work here. 

I wouldn’t invite Amber Rudd to my birthday party or to anything I was involved in – just as the Windsor Young Conservatives are unlikely to invite me as guest of honour to their gala dinner. This is how groups divide along fault lines of class, moral tribe, music taste and so on – it is a passive deselection, an en passant exclusion. This very normal group dynamic doesn’t proactively attempt to shut down other people’s views – at worst it ignores them and at best promotes a tacit acceptance that society must allow opposing views to exist. 

‘No platforming’ is different  – it is the active and (purposefully) very public exclusion of people and ideas regarded as beyond the pale. Who gets to decide what is heresy? It seems to be a straightforward  process of mob rule via societal shaming. Once the mob is aligned in a particular direction it takes a brave person to take a contrary view and risk pariah status and exclusion – so all you need to do is generate momentum behind a moral idea and then undermine detractors with condemnatory language and threats*.

( * Some of you may recognise that these patterns have been active throughout recorded history!)

What is also interesting is that ‘no platforming’ is not limited to events that advocates are running – opposing activists campaigning about trans rights for example, will picket neutral forums to demand very forcefully that speakers they disapprove of are excluded. 

Let us assume for sake of argument that I don’t believe that trans women are in fact – women. In the eyes of a certain tranche of political activists, I have now committed a deeply offensive heresy and in public – one that marks me out as a certain kind of bigot. On this basis I could be ‘no platformed’ for the rest of my life at left wing events (or until I recant) and picketed at neutral forums. Is this a good thing?                

I try (and regularly fail) to approach dialogue with at least a degree of Socratic Humility. What do I mean by that?

I proceed on the basis that any certainty I might have about topics of any import is almost certainly hubristic nonsense – my starting point ought to be that I am full of shit and need as many balancing points of view as possible in order to reach a more enlightened view. Conversely I think that others need my input to balance their views and that we must work together as a species to achieve as good a resolution of our conceptions of truth as we can. 

Built into this view is the (attempted!) humility that truth exists independently of our notions about it. We don’t  get to make up our own truths or ‘win’ truth by shouting the loudest or manipulating group dynamics – indeed if we believe that truth is ours to fashion as we please then we annihilate all possibility of its existence .

The truth will exist whatever our view and we need each other to have any hope of a better understanding of it. It stands to reason that the views most in need of balance are those that are diametrically opposed. 

‘No platforming’ proceeds from an entirely different basis – it assumes that the moral issues it is preoccupied by are culturally constructed and thus we are all in a cultural war to determine their nature. In such circumstances it seems perfectly reasonable to some (many?) that they try to suppress those that might hinder the triumph of their view.

‘No platforming’ is a symptom of a much deeper societal malaise – one that transcends the entire spectrum of left and right politics. Many people believe that moral truths are a subjective free-for-all in which ‘victory’ is all that matters. This is why Amber Rudd must be silenced, why somebody drove a car into anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville. why online hatred is directed at Greta Thunberg and why the ill tempered Brexit debate became and remains bitterly divisive.

What begins with an unwillingness to listen to opposing views leads to a bitterly divided society, those with opposing views are banned from speaking by each camp. Deprived of a method of engaging with each other the alienation grows, pressure builds inside echo chambers of black and white certainties, anger leads to hatred…

…and hatred inevitably leads to violence.

Those on the left who delight in the tactic of ‘no platforming’ need to realise that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

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On the day when hundreds of right wing protesters aggressively shut down left wing events and gleefully post videos on Facebook – the left will only have itself to blame for effectively legitimising mob rule and active censorship. Conflating the issue of free speech with its content is an arrogant and dangerous path to go down – it is always self defeating.

How great it would have been if the shambolic and amoral hubris of Amber Rudd had been skillfully and publicly picked apart by the savvy questions of students at Oxford University? What a perfect incentive for young women to enter politics if they could see how desperately they were needed? Instead what did we get? Rudd got off Scott-free, back to  Westminster with an easy PR victory about the ‘intolerance of the left towards free speech’. 

What kind of example does ‘no platforming’ set for students interested in public life generally? Simply that if they don’t agree with the prevailing sentiment of the mob and the scuttling obedience of their peers that they will be excluded and attacked. Surely we have a massive surplus of intolerance and witless obedience already? What we need is more engagement across the lines, more novel critical thinking – not less!

‘No platforming’ is a daft strategy which will only serve to divide and dumb down the left, depriving it of its ability to think and debate while handing easy propaganda victories to the usual suspects – its high time for it to be abandoned for the juvenile and naive posturing that it is. 

Since 2013 I have worked between 4-6 hours a day on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and uncovering truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.

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Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.