→ French university cancels Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Palestine event
After the fiasco of the NatCon conference in Brussels yesterday, the assaults on free speech just won’t stop. Today the University of Lille announced the cancellation of a “Free Palestine” association event, which was set to be attended by former French presidential hopeful Jean-Luc Mélenchon and a raft of other Left-wing politicians.
Why? According to the university, “the conditions are no longer met to guarantee the serenity of the debates.” Defiant, Mélenchon announced on X that the event would take place on Thursday at a new location, but expressed his “sadness” in seeing the university cancel, saying the institution was a “victim of pressure”. But less than a week after police in Germany cancelled a pro-Palestine conference, there seems to be a trend forming. Why is Europe suddenly so afraid of free speech?
→ David Lammy outlines progressive realist vision
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “realism” has become a rather fashionable worldview in foreign policy circles. But over in the UK, it’s going through a mini-rebrand. In a new piece for Foreign Affairs magazine, UK Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy makes the case for “progressive realism”.
Progressive Realism will underpin @UKLabour‘s foreign policy approach.
It takes the world as it is. Not as we wish it to be. It is realist means for progressive ends.
Today I’ve published ‘The Case for Progressive Realism’ in @ForeignAffairs https://t.co/zjC13Qogf8
— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) April 17, 2024
According to Lammy, the goal of “progressive realists is pursuing realist means for progressive ends”. “Instead of using the logic of realism solely to accumulate power,” he writes, “progressive realism uses it in service of just goals — for example, countering climate change and defending democracy.” But crucially it is the “pursuit of ideals without delusions about what is achievable”. This all sounds well and good — but how exactly does a realist framework deal with issues as woolly and far-reaching as climate change and democracy?
→ EU farmers find unlikely ally for green transition
At least the farmers have a few allies in the corridors of power. Well, sort of. A new report from former Italian PM Enrico Letta has said that the cost of the EU’s green transition should be shared across multiple sectors and not just among agricultural workers. Letta goes on to warn that other groups may suffer too. “Today it might be farmers,” he writes. “Tomorrow automotive workers who feel they are disproportionately bearing the costs of transformation without sufficient support.”
The report comes after a series of protests across EU countries which, in some cases, led to street fires and clashes with riot police. But over the last couple of months, European officials agreed to walk back a few select climate policies in an effort to calm down the unruly farmers. We’re sure that has nothing to do with the upcoming EU elections…
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SubscribeUgh. Free speech is free speech. Doesn’t matter who it is. Every one of these countries have criminal hate laws.
Quite. Melenchon’s arguments can stand or fall on their own merit.
We must assume that the students and staff at the University of Lille are capable of dealing with competing ideas and accept the concept that meaningful debate is rarely “serene”.
As Patton said, “if everyone’s thinking the same, someone isn’t thinking”.
Might as well just shut the University of Lille down and save the money if you’re not going to allow them to think.
“Gentlemen, you can’t have free speech here; this is a university!”
One wonders why these universities block or disonvite conservative lecturers, speakers and scholars with regularity
These academics don’t punish hostile students who physically threaten and abuse views in classrooms and at events of speakers who are independent to the absurd self defined anti racist or colonialist propaganda ignorant students swallow.
“Gentlemen, you can’t have free speech here; this is a democracy!”
French free speech law is not American free search law with its largely court created application and creation
To safeguard the rights of the people henceforth all public meetings will be cancelled.
What is the lesson taught by closing down peaceful debate because those who oppose the debaters might cause a dangerous disturbance? If you want to shut down your political adversaries recruit thugs to threaten disorder. The rise of the NSDAP in pre-war Germany was fuelled by just such competitive thuggery.
I feel that there is some qualitative difference between tacitly supporting a terrorist organisation that wants to wipe out all the jews in/and Israel – oops I meant ‘to end Zionism’, silly me its so easy to confuse the two – (no doubt accompanied by antisemitic chanting and banners), and some elected politicians discussing different policies on the political spectrum in a democracy that supposedly respects freedom of speech.
No there’s no excuse for this, any more than some of the more extreme elements at the Nat Con event justify the attempt to shut that down. This type of quibbling is the beginning of the end of freedom of speech.
Freedoms are not protected by a document in the UN in New York. They need to be protected in real life and that means making difficult choices. Do you really think the people in Gaza are still living in a democracy since they democratically voted to have no more voting?
What? So you protect freedom of speech by shutting down pro Palestine meetings in France? Que?
Did you miss this bit “no doubt accompanied by antisemitic chanting and banners”? Presumably you are fine with that?
‘No doubt’? What does that mean? Was there or wasn’t there? If so shut down those elements. We don’t close White Hart Lane when opposing fans start hissing, but we might well identify, silence and apprehend those who do.
Surely there’s a difference between free speech & allowing proscribed terrorists a public platform? It’s my understanding that the German police were preventing the latter, not the former.
How do you all feel about the ‘death to America’ chants from pro Hamas protesters in the USA? Again, I believe in free speech but I also think treasonous speech should not go unpunished?