This Royal Throne of Feels, This Sheltered Isle, This England
By Ken White
When I talk about how completely appalling the United Kingdom's approach to even mildly upsetting speech has become, I am aware of the mote in my own eye. The United States has all sorts of speech problems too, many of them related to a broken legal system that favors cash over justice, and a populace with an increasing appetite to go as full-on censorious as the UK.
But the UK's just so openly and obviously awful about speech.
Case in point: Bahar Mustafa, a "welfare and diversity officer" for a student union at University of London, is being charged with a crime for mean tweeting.
Mustafa rose to attention when she suggested that men and white people shouldn't come to a protest event. This, combined with her use of the ironic hashtag #killallwhitemen on her personal Twitter account, made her a target of right-wing pearl-clutching and hand-wringing. But she didn't engage in that fatuity in America, where she might have just been the talking point of the week. She foolishly did it in England, where trespass unto feels, particularly online, subjects you to actual criminal charges. As a result, she's been charged with two crimes: "sending a threatening letter or communication or sending by public communication network an offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing message."
Seriously.
The hashtag "#killallwhitemen" is an in-joke, an example of somewhat belabored signalling and irony with a dash of trolling. It's meant in part to ridicule overblown rhetoric directed at people like Mustafa. It's not a true threat (no men are specified, no time or place is specified, no means are specified, and it's obviously not meant to be taken literally) nor a genuine exhortation to violence (ditto). In a sensible legal system it shouldn't generate anything more than an eye-roll. But in a feels-based legal system, it's actionable.
And it teaches a few lessons.
First, you censorious Guardians of Feels on the Left: if you thought that the norms you created wouldn't be used against your "own side," you're fools. It is apparently your theory that the law is sexist, racist, and every other -ist, driven by privilege and wealth, and that free speech norms serve to protect rich white guys — yet somehow exceptions to free speech norm will be imposed in an egalitarian, progressive way. That is almost indescribably moronic. Go sit in the corner and think about what you have done.
Second, purveyors of speech-scandals of every sort: you think it can't happen to you? Mustafa complained:
She also accused the media of embarking on a 'witch hunt and shameful character assassination'.
Gosh, really? You mean a joking, satirical, off-the-cuff in-joke can be twisted into a media shitstorm? Do tell. You mean that people will pretend not to understand humor or irony in order to whip up outrage about a reference or in-joke? Imagine. So — will you participate in the next orgy of outrage against someone you don't like?
She said: "There have been charges laid against me that I am racist and sexist towards white men.
"I, an ethnic minority woman, cannot be racist or sexist towards white men, because racism and sexism describe structures of privilege based on race and gender.
"Therefore, women of colour and minority genders cannot be racist or sexist, since we do not stand to benefit from such a system."
Cool story bro. But nobody outside of academia is obligated to pretend to take it seriously. If you become indignant when someone calls you a racist or sexist because dogma says you can't be, you are (1) not a serious person and (2) playing into the hands of your most bad-faith critics and (3) missing the point, which is that accusations of racism and sexism untethered from reality can be pointed at anyone.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
October 6, 2015 at 11:43AM
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