Free Speech Union Australia

...And related matters

The purpose of today’s post is twofold.

First, I’m interviewing Father Ted and IT Crowd writer Graham Linehan on Thursday this week for my third Liberty Law Talk podcast.

Once again, I’m going to the floor for suggested questions: any subscriber, free or paid, can comment. I made extensive use of your questions in my last podcast (with real success), and I’d like to do it again.

Do be aware that the interview will be framed around Linehan’s new book, Tough Crowd: How I Made & Lost a Career in Comedy, which I’m reading now. That means it will help if you’ve read the book yourself, but I don’t think it’s essential. Linehan’s comedic creations and recent travails at the Edinburgh Fringe are part of many people’s mental furniture.

Secondly, I’d like to draw my Australian readers’ attention to a new organisation, the Free Speech Union Australia. A branch of the UK parent body, it has the same aims and objectives and willingness to speak up for speech without fear or favour. In the last fortnight, that’s included defending pro-Palestine speech in the UK but also meant providing a refuge for Australian academics whose union (the NTEU) has taken a partisan side on the same issue, leaving Jewish members especially unprotected.

Do be aware that the FSU Australia is a formally constituted trade union under Australian law so your membership dues are tax-deductible. I’ve joined as a Founding Member, on the basis that if I don’t put my money where my mouth is, other people can’t be expected to.

It’s become clear that many looniversities—especially in the US, but to a degree elsewhere across the developed world—have been overrun by postcolonial brain-rot. This has led a lot of Ivy League students to do the intellectual equivalent of running naked down Whitehall, complete with outré displays of performative Hamas-love.

They’re all now being cancelled left and right and it would appear many are going to struggle to get a job running the municipal dog pound let alone in BigLaw.

I haven’t formed a final view on this, although I do agree with Toby Young’s remarks above (in a UK context, discussing the FSU’s role). In my internet travels I also saw a thought-provoking comment from a large US account, “Cernovich”.

In response to an observation—from Glenn Greenwald—about pro-Palestinian students being cancelled to Hell and beyond, he said:

Sure. I’ll answer. These Harvard kids tho are the equivalent of throwing Nazi salutes. Cancel culture is a problem because one bad word and you’re cooked. Even false accusations ruin you. But if someone supports Hamas or Hitler, that’s truly sketchy and disqualifying from normal work at a hedge fund. We all have lines. And not being hireable by Goldman Sachs is different materially from being removed from public discourse or not being allowed access to banking. I could not ever be hired by a big corporation. That’s FINE.

There is something to this.

The few people I’ve frogmarched out of my list of friends and associates have been extremist ideologues. I’m quite even-handed about this, too. I’ve encountered quite a few commies and Marxists over the years to whom wider society (wrongly) has often given a pass. I’ll be courteous but they will never cross my threshold. Ditto with Nazis. I certainly wouldn’t want to employ someone from either group.

Probably an issue for a future piece on here, once I’ve thought my thoughts through to the end.