The real pandemic

The last thing we need is a future generation who can think for themselves

There is a pandemic sweeping the globe and it has to be stopped. It is called “free speech”.

I do not like Amber Rudd. She is a Tory (which makes her evil) and her name sounds like some kind of fungal skin complaint. So I was delighted when she was recently No Platformed by students at Oxford. Universities exist to educate, not to challenge. The last thing we need is a future generation who can think for themselves.

It was the second successful No Platforming in a single week, after historian Selina Todd was excluded from sharing her deviant opinions at an event at Exeter College. Todd is one of these transphobic halfwits who doesn’t understand that sex is a social construct designed by the patriarchy to impose a rigid hierarchy onto peoplekind. The gender binary is a myth that never actually existed, like male feminists, Islamic terrorism or Bruce Jenner.

It is entirely correct that the likes of Rudd and Todd should be silenced. They are the sort of people who constantly go on and on about the importance of free speech, but when I say that it should be illegal to express offensive ideas I’m told to shut up. This is a clear case of double standards.

And in these days of the internet, it’s even easier for people to say wrong things to a wider audience. This is why we must campaign for tighter controls on internet freedom. As committed left-wing activists, our priority must be to ensure that corporations in Silicon Valley are empowered to set the limits of what we can and cannot say.

As the great social justice pioneer Mary Whitehouse put it, “Bad language coarsens the whole quality of our life. It normalises harsh, often indecent language, which despoils our communication.” Today we call this “hate speech”, a crime for which the death penalty ought to be reinstated. Militant state control of citizens’ thoughts is a small price to pay to enforce a tolerant society.