Bloggox shite with something important thrown in
by hakmao, 28 August 2008
This is a guest post by SP
At one time Harry’s Place was somewhere I regularly went. I often commented there and occasionally guest posted. I have no personal gripe with its founders but it has changed politically to a point where it now infrequently attracts my interest. Neither am I partisan in the dispute between it and this site (I have however had sight of private e-mail traffic involving some of HP’s nouveau posters which is in stark contrast to the ‘raffish, witty and debonaire’ swagger they carefully try to cultivate).
Consequently I ‘get’ the tone behind yesterday’s post here regarding the HP shutdown. This lead a former Drink Soaked Trot (http://sedgemore.com/2008/08/hooray-the-saucy-comrades-return/) to dishonestly and ignorantly conflate this with a piece by Lenny at Stalin’s Tombola (http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/08/not-free-speech-martyrs.html). Whilst superficially there is some congruence, a (currently too time consuming) thorough fisk would demonstrate that this is really not the case (no need to say that Len’s take on the David Hirsh quote is entirely flawed).
It is possible to paint the issue in any number of ways including the ridiculous hyperbole of this piece of self justification (http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/08/27/a-line-must-be-drawn/). You could agree with Lenny, for instance, that it involves a Union busting, right-wing blog getting some timely comeuppance. This is less attractive when you realise that the union in question is somewhat blasé about breaching progressive anti-discrimination legislation and one which refuses to address allegations of institutional antisemitism, raised by Jewish activists. Ultimately campaigning against the latter is likely to get my vote ahead of vagaries regarding ‘breach of confidentiality’ on the ‘activists list’ and the union rule book.
You could argue that this is simply the conduct of the pro and anti boycott campaigns by other means. It certainly looks like a bar brawl breaking out onto the street. Most striking is that the original suggestion to utilise reactionary defamation law, against HP, should come from shrill opponents of the ‘legal threat’ posed by an application of progressive anti-discrimination legislation to the proposed boycott.
It can certainly be seen in the context of the application of reactionary slander and libel laws, and how they are used to intimidate political opponents. This is of course something HP is no stranger to. It should be taken as read that these laws are the plaything of the wealthy and powerful — though you may be surprised who said — ‘and [I] also think there is a place for laws on slander and libel. It is often the only recourse that people on the left have to the right wing press…’ in a comment at Shiraz Sauce recently. They are not commonly used as the above commenter asserts. A call for their urgent repeal should be equally uncontroversial, not least to stop the type of knee-jerk reaction from an ISP we have recently witnessed (their replacement — libel laws — is a subject for another day).
This event can be considered as primarily involving any or all of the above, and more besides. This is not however, an issue of ‘freedom of speech’. Even the most vindictive HP opponent would stop short, one would think, of calling for the site to be banned. Nobody has, to my knowledge, done so. As we can now see this was a day or so long hiatus which, one could reasonably surmise, will go no further. Should litigation follow HP they have, in my lay opinion, a simple defence.
The best, and most temperate response is here. The underlying and ongoing issue is that of institutional antisemitism on the left, which Jewish activists, especially in the UCU, have suffered, and continue to oppose, with comparative silence from anyone else.
