 Hello, hello, hello and welcome, I'm Meryl Kilili, we are DM 25, a radical political movement for Europe and this is another live discussion with our coordinating team featuring subversive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. And today we'll be asking, is it ever okay for power to attack the civil liberties of its political opponents? Like taking away their freedom of speech, their right to participate in political or economic life, their right to a fair trial, that sort of thing. In recent years, we've seen a marked increase in such attacks in the name of political disagreement towards people from across the ideological spectrum. Jeremy Corbyn, once leader of the Labour Party in the UK, was a victim of a frivolous lawsuit to stop him from participating in public life. Nigel Farage, the right-wing politician, had his bank account closed because of his controversial values, according to the bank's own internal investigation. And across both sides of the Atlantic, prominent activists, influencers and journalists have been de-platformed ostensibly as a consequence of their political views. So what's going on here? Is curtailing civil liberties just the latest tactic of an increasingly authoritarian establishment to silence dissent? What is it about today's discourse that makes this kind of cancelling so effective? Should it ever be justified when the individuals involved hold polarising views? And as anti-establishment activists ourselves, how can we push back against this dangerous trend? Our panel will be examining this issue today and you, you out there, if you've got thoughts, rants, comments, questions, ideas, things that pop into your head, then just put them in the YouTube chat and we'll put them to our panel. Let's kick it off with Julia Moore from the UK. Julia, the floor is yours. Hi, Miren. Hi, Miren. Hi, everybody. Thank you. Are the acoustics OK? Everybody can hear me? Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for that introduction, Miren. Thank you. You made, in your statement just now, you made some good references to some of the UK linked examples, Farage and Corbyn being on the receiving end of their lives being impinged on in the name of civil liberties. And they're very good examples. Now, on the basis that we are a transnational organisation, we shouldn't specifically look at country examples as typical, but the UK actually can shine a light on this particular topic as historically, maybe mistakenly now as history starts to look at issues such as decolonialisation, but historically being looked at as one of the countries in the world that honoured fair play and at least presented an outward face at treating people fairly, etc., etc. Maybe scales falling from eyes historically now, but nevertheless with that influencing the legal and the policy system here, it is interesting that the UK now is falling into the trap of an authoritarian backlash and starting to nibble away at those areas of civil liberties. And for those who are interested, if you have a look on any sort of past news item this week, there's been a very effective protest. In fact, Jeremy Corbyn's Justice and Peace Project have been promoting it. Very interesting campaign to remind jurors who sit on our criminal trials. For those people not aware of the English legal system, we have a criminal system, criminal legal system where members of the public sit in a group of 12 in judgment of their of their defendant. And it is beginning to be a worrying trend that judges are directing juries too much. This has always been a part of a concern in the legal system. It's nothing new in terms of its existence. But of course, where it starts to impinge on civil liberties with the aspect of sending people to prison, of course, it does come into direct focus as a civil liberties issue. And members of the public from various campaigning groups have been part of a very effective street protest effectively in bringing this issue to the purview of effectively a UK watching public. And it has been actually quite effective. It's rippled some some political feathers and that's good because now it will be acknowledged and now it will be scrutinized. So that's an issue that's actually happening at the moment and anybody from any country can click on to a BBC news item maybe or another news item and maybe have a look at more in-depth at that issue because that will then link it specifically to what we're doing tonight. So the issue for DM 25 as we should always do with these topics is to say well what should the DM 25 positions should be on civil liberties and on attack of civil liberties because we're certainly under attack into the issue of civil liberties is certainly under attack. It's on the spotlight every day with the current home secretary in respect to many issues. And so the issues we should be looking at who are the key actors? Who are the people who are taking the decision for example to close Farage's bank account to enact the austerity against Corbyn? Where are the gatekeepers and effectively where there is an issue of civil liberties? One has to say as with any issues of constitution would you like the current government to be the gatekeepers on deciding whether or not this issue is something that the general public should have free rein on or be curtailed and of course as we're looking at our constitutions at the moment we're saying we probably wouldn't want this series of institutions very longer into the future to be the ones that rewrite a constitution let alone be the ones who sit in judgment of a civil liberties. So it may be feeding into more progressive issues along the line of participatory democracy, participatory deliberative democracy where we take more control in groups of citizens to inform policy and policymaking. So civil liberties itself is a global issue. It's a very wide issue but broken down to its component parts. DM25's processes now can pluck this as a specific issue and say it is one of those things that feeds into the democratic process that we are looking to change and looking to campaign on. So I hope that gives you a broad brush Mira and it may have been a bit too broad brush but the UK is in the spotlight at the moment on this issue. Thank you. Thanks Julia. No that's very good to describe you know what the M25 is doing on that issue. I want to ask though I mean the intro I said that this is a you know I asked the question is this like a new kind of go-to tactic of the establishment to silence political dissent would you agree with that characterization based on some of the cases that we've talked about here or would you say that's you know there are issues where things can fall the other way and actually no it's not the case. I mean how would you how would you characterize it? When there's a yes there's I'm sorry to be on the fence here there's a yes and no for this nothing is new as we know and if we were if we were doing this live stream bizarrely 50 years 100 years ago in a virtual weird digital world it would be the curtailment of liberties of suffragettes for example you know nothing is new and who takes those decisions so obviously it's the it's the power of that moment who are sitting as judge, jury and executioner and therefore that is not a balanced fair system because you you can't have a balanced view of a decision when the same people who have the power will be the same people who make the decision and and spin forward 100 years and dim 25 and the progressive movement are saying transparency accountability a break on establishment is what it's all about whether it's climate change or whether not it's civil liberties climate change is is a mindset change to save natural resources and the very planet itself and civil liberties is a mindset that says we have to protect human beings and we have to give human beings the security of protection from those who rule in their name but then who go horribly off message and and we can end that discussion at Trump and and Johnson. Thanks for that Julia and I should say although the intro I talked about you know let's say leading anti-establishment voices or influential anti-establishment voices being debanked or de-platformed it has happened to regular activists last year at the beginning of last year there was a the so-called freedom convoy in Canada against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions and the Canadian authorities froze hundreds of bank accounts of those protesters setting a very dangerous precedent freezing the accounts not only of the protesters but of people who had donated to the cause via I forget which which funding website it was so you know this can this can happen at all ends of the spectrum and at all levels of anti-establishment participation. Okay Amir, Amir Kiayi our policy coordinator based in the Hague for yours. Thank you Mehran and greetings everybody I wanted to just maybe take this topic and extend it to the general public and particularly people who are let's say in low-income neighbourhoods or are having a difficult time at the moment in general and I'm sort of talking about the Netherlands as a case study but this is a trend that we've picked up we've talked about it briefly in previous discussions and that's the the loss of civil civil liberties you know due to public mismanagement and here in of course in the Netherlands we we know about the use of algorithms at municipal and national levels to ostensibly predict fraud or even you know to predict violent crime this people might remember the movie Minority Report so we actually have this or just recently it was recently officially stopped quote-unquote but it was the ATA program that was designed to identify people who will in law likely would commit violent fraud and it does that because it classifies people according to their background so if you're from the Caribbean, Moroccan or Somali ancestry you are automatically according to the system of course and we know this is racism more you know more likely to be violent but of course we see the other kinds of violence that the that's the Netherlands has put on over centuries on its colonies or what happened in Indonesia you know in the 60s and 70s and that's of course not the case right so there's always a script discrepancy about perpetuating certain groups of people as more violent and now this is not and maybe moving out of the police aspect and more to the municipal aspect what are the this overall apparently from what activists have been able to find out there's 315 risk factors that can put somebody on their additional investigation so this is if you are a single mother for example if you are well groomed but you speak poor Dutch if you have a foreign surname if you have problems finding work if you're depressed if you are not using the average amount of water in your house or apartments how outgoing you are if you are divorced your food risk goes up etc etc so you can imagine that all these different 315 factors you know it can of course be very different for everybody but somehow the algorithm has this decides that if you are at far risk and when you are under investigation and there's a lot of cases about this and people can of course read about examples online but it takes years for a person to clear their name they often have to they get their benefits cuts they have problems with the various kinds of government bodies etc and so on and it oftentimes you know leads to broken homes broken families the Tuuslaak affair for example resulted in over a thousand children being moved out of their homes wrongfully and those children are still out there in foster care so this is a real problem and it does affect people's civil liberties and most of the time it's just being used in low-income neighborhoods to further perpetuate the class for that we all aware of thank you Amir uh what a shocking intervention that was um but very important and I'm glad you made it Ivana Ivana Nenadovich from Serbia thanks my friend and uh yes Amir uh said some things here uh while you all also mentioned uh an example about the truck drivers from Canada which is another real life you know real people's example it's not from the realm of politicians or celebrities so it seems very far away for for an average person it can happen you know for the political opponents it already sounds very high level and not like it can happen to everyday person and it can uh I wanted to point out that too may be more of a pop culture examples of cancel culture and how you can get the platformed and uh I think it's a very dangerous trend of uh cancel culture and trial by the public not so much by the media the media launches the initial information and then there is a mob uh also almost psychology going on with and that's how trials that should be placed at ports are taking place in the public sphere um I was uh I must admit that it was one of my guilty pleasures I was following the trial of Amber Heard and Johnny Depp that was another example of you know taking sides immediately because something is right and something is wrong and you should believe uh a victim and so on and so on so to cut a very long story short but my belief is it was a spin from what was more important and going on at that point and I think it was one of the first reality shows trials that took place on YouTube and other platforms more than in a courtroom uh so bottom line my conclusion about who is right and who is wrong is that these two people are highly dysfunctional uh and were in a toxic relationship so it was mutually abusive cool stuff so you know judging too soon and jumping into conclusions just based on something that is a prejudice or something that is a trend also uh can be and is very dangerous because anybody who was uh in any way in press knows that there is no demand so when something goes in ether you can deny it as much as you want but you you it the information is out there and you cannot take it back and the character assassination is real and now we are also witnessing that demonetization deep platforming etc is happening and we might like it when character that we don't like it such as Trump gets cancelled from from ex twitter but uh then we should think that that can happen to characters that we like and ourselves as well thank you thank you Ivana and continuing your theme of the of celebrities who have been rather unfairly targeted will note that the actor Kevin Spacey has been cleared of all charges of sexual assault uh earlier this year um after having his career completely ruined but but just to focus on what you said there a little bit about how once the once that message is out there in the ether there's no coming back um and looking at how it can be used to silence political dissent do you think there's anything about the nature of our discourse today or very online discourse that that makes this a go-to weapon for establishment um establishment media establishment organizations to to to target their critics and if so what is it I think it is and I think it's a new uh weapon very little one and uh because it's easy because it's the oldest script in the book basically and it's uh divide and conquer you throw a bone and uh people are you know biting the bone uh and that pun intended because we are that poor if we were not that poor to bite the bare bone uh we wouldn't be doing that so the system the machine has the majority of people right where it wants us thank you Ivana just two quick comments from the chats one referring to Jonathan Heights work um the author of uh what was it called again the coddling of the American mind and other things um explaining that he has he has a model to explain why cancel culture is in overdrive and the tolerance for different viewpoints seems to be at a historic low um yes he's he's very good on that and I appreciate his work uh and another comment from who was that Gilgamesh talking about how he's he says all unacceptable speech in quotes is now defined as quote far right unquote even when that accusation is ludicrous that's a point of view okay up next we have David David Castro I'm getting lost in all these names here David Castro thanks based in Brussels go for it sorry can you hear me yeah no problem uh I just I want to I mean Ivana mentioned the deep platforming part and I think that's an important aspect of this conversation and I want to go a bit in that direction but also talk about freedom of speech now there's somebody in DM who's like 95 years old now if I'm not mistaken or 94 one of the founders of our movement Noam Chomsky and there's something that he says in manufacturing consent uh the the book that he wrote um but also co-wrote but also the documentary uh where he says that if you're in favor of freedom of speech then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views that you despise otherwise you're not really in favor of freedom of speech um let me give you an example from the country that I'm in right now right I'm in Portugal where I'm from originally and you know a couple of years ago the far right was nowhere to be seen now the far right is the third largest political force in the country there was a presidential election what two years ago or something they came third as well this one guy managed to you know cut across the political arena and get where he is right now his name is André Ventura of the party called Xiega and at the time when there were debates going on the leftist parties were refusing to participate in debates because they said that they did not want him to be part of those panels and of course that has completely backfired uh the people that I speak to on the street are telling me well you know uh if the left just is acting like that and they refuse to counter ideas with ideas then what's the point we'll just support this guy because at least is uh you know he's probably saying something that the establishment as the people perceive does not want to hear um and so his popularity has been increasing rapidly so and it's quite dangerous if I have to if I best say so the thing is that once the bastions of freedom of emancipation the left has really succumbed I would argue to a new form of totalitarianism one that puts equality over freedom but we can't really conceive of a progressive society unless we place them on equal footing the enormous failure of since the onset of financialized capitalism has been to accept the former and neglect the latter so we shouldn't be surprised I think by the far rights over by the far rights rise across Europe over the last decades I mean we've been governed by centrists and so-called left parties which have been all too happy to manage the system but instead of actually transforming it um and under a system that alienates individuals like the one that we live in does that negates possibilities for free exchange it stifles public spaces and in this political situation uh things will only deteriorate now if you move forward to 2023 uh not only have we lost democracy as we argue in dm to a system of oligarchy but we're seeing human rights trampled on everywhere outside our borders within our borders you know in our regions towns and cities and yet the majority of us still refer to this system as democracy even when the democracy in which we live has been kidnapped amputated sequestered and so on in this system the power of the citizen in the political sphere has been literally constrained to removing a government that we don't like and replacing it with a government that we might come to like a little bit better I mean that's not obviously the analysis that I have of course there are political parties are really making a difference in trying to fight the good fight but when you go out there on the streets and you talk to people about political systems and stuff and their freedoms and their how much they feel like they've been attacked by this system um that's how they perceive it so I think we have a long fight ahead of our our hands both to defend equality for everybody but also freedom and to fight ideas with ideas and let the better ones win thanks David a question on your analysis that you refer to the left in general is that the whole of the left or are you referring to a subset of the left because I might agree with what you say in terms of the you know if you're looking at the left liberals the very online cultural left the more identity focused left because they're you're quite right that there is this idea that certain certain um certain thoughts certain views are out of bounds there they're in the sphere of deviance and they must not be engaged with and by extension certain people holding those views must not be engaged with um but would you extend that to the whole of the left no I wouldn't and uh in fact what I said was that the centrist and left so called left parties so there I'm already qualifying it by saying so called and uh the ones that have been governing right so they're not really leftist parties as far as I can tell so in that context I'm referring to those alone the ones that have been in power the ones I call themselves socialist but you know they're only socialist in name so that's the one that those are the ones I'm referring to of course it doesn't apply to every strand and every political party that classifies itself on the left spectrum but you know many left parties have not been able to govern including us at least our political parties so you know anyways if you're out there live in one of the countries where we have a political party maybe consider giving us a vote the next time around in 2024 or joining us or join us um not to plug too much but the website is dm25.org slash join if that's what you'd like to do and you can become a member in a couple of minutes Eric Eric Edmund our political director based in Brussels go for it thanks man that was a great ad there word from our sponsor um yeah there's a lot to unpack here uh something that we haven't been touching upon and I think is equally important to who is being cancelled is who is not being cancelled so I was thinking of maybe taking that on I was recently and I make a point of this because it doesn't happen very often I was recently exposed to a speech by Joe Biden and honestly the man is a ruin and I don't say that lightly he can barely articulate a sentence he is incoherent he I think today was revealed that he had a little walkthrough card telling him walk into the room greet everyone ask questions walk out and he was caught holding this to the media he turned the paper around so the media could see it right now why am I bringing this up this isn't trump apologism at all I'm just saying that when trump was pulling his act he was being torn 50 different ways and rightly so let me just make that abundantly clear rightly so why is Joe Biden off the hook the man is a disaster he is dragging us blindfolded into a revamping of nato a one-way street to higher stakes more intense conflicts around the world he's barely articulate himself suggesting that he is not even entirely in control of his own bodily functions rather than running the state the United States of America the most powerful nation in the world and yet the kind of public scrutiny and not just public scrutiny the the the kind of cancel culture as we're calling it in this in this live stream that was being used against Donald Trump again rightly so is not being armed against Joe Biden why so this partisanship of the media this fact that they are very clearly taking sides and the sides are not liberal or or far right it's not about politics it's about the establishment it's about the person who threatens the status quo and the one that doesn't and the reason why Joe Biden is not being threatened although he is a catastrophe as a politician is because he doesn't threaten the US status quo if anything he is absolutely allowing it to function without any impediments and that is fantastic and that is why he's not under attack this is why people are losing their trust in politics it's not just the fact that they feel that media is partisan politically it's the fact that it's function is to make sure that nothing ever changes something that our mainstream political parties are already doing regardless of whether they are republicans democrats social democrats conservatives whatever sort of division exists in our various countries everybody's job is really not to threaten the way the system functions and then the media is comes and perfectly fits into this now unfortunately and this is where things get complicated I think we not we as in us in DM but us on on the left let's say for example sometimes unwittingly and that becoming accomplices to this cancel culture in this system they kind of push our buttons if you like and we rise to the bait very often so somebody I think I can't believe we have Gilgamesh in the chat what an honor I think it was Gilgamesh who said that that everything that people don't like is being labeled as far right I think that isn't accidental even when the person that's being labeled far right is actually a leftist because very often the left is its own worst enemy and the people who will come after fellow leftists with the most vehemence and single-minded sort of frustration is fellow leftists and there's no better way to trigger a leftist by calling somebody far right for them to latch on and attack that person I'm not saying I'm not using any particular example for this I'm not saying that this is the case for X Y or Z I'm just saying that this is a strategy that more often than not works incredibly well it's divide and conquer and it's being used again and again and again and we keep falling for it that is not to say that some people who present themselves as left are not actually harboring right-wing sentiments far from it we can all use our critical thinking to analyze who is what but this way of like really very in an oversimplified way labeling people a certain way and then throwing them to the dogs is basically a strategy that has exactly the same aim as the mainstream media which is to uh sustain the status quo and anybody who feels like a sort of establishment threat being labeled as far right because the far right uh all the the main proponents right now of of anti-establishment uh sentiment unfortunately uh and that is a huge failure of the left one that we keep coming back to I think as DM so and to wrap up because I'm speaking for what there are some overall tendencies I think in our society that lead people to this kind of cancel culture you know we are very intolerant of people who we disagree with because we're not exposed to them media bubbles social media bubbles uh we we have lost the kind of the thin skin necessary in order to live in a sort of multipolar society so our usual instinct when confronted with somebody who doesn't agree with us is we can't even fathom it we don't understand how anybody could possibly not agree with what we're saying when it's so obvious and the same goes for the other side they feel exactly the same way and it's incredibly dangerous because when you don't understand why somebody's might be holding a certain view your natural reaction is to delegitimize that view and say it's not legitimate to think that way therefore you have no right to say this and this is where cancer culture comes from this idea that there are certain things that you simply are not allowed to say but that doesn't stop people from thinking them and this is where society ends up getting into a lot of trouble and our ability to speak with each other and persuade anybody beyond our tiny little cliques comes into trouble in the 21st century because if we simply get rid of everybody who disagrees with us that leaves us with a very very small subsection of society and possibly small part of the bigger group that we're surrounded with for us to ever be able to not only peacefully live together but also for a democracy to function because a democracy requires for those separations to be flexible the moment they are inflexible democracy doesn't exist it's not about persuasion anymore you cannot persuade anyone which is the whole point of a democracy that people will be persuaded by points but rather people simply need to trust the other side and that is how you get people like trump who simply base what they say not so much on persuasion but on trust on creating this persona that you should trust like a superhero persona if you like and that way lies basically the slow corrosion of the fundamental pillars of democracy and cancel culture unfortunately is very much at the heart of this tendency and therefore is very dangerous. Thanks for that Eric. Yeah and maybe one issue that we could pick up on there is the issue of labeling things as a conspiracy theory as a way of delegitimizing it that doesn't mean that everything has to be we have to believe everything and question everything add ad infinitum but I've seen this again and again and again and whether it's about issues like the russia gate the russia gate story that donald trump was a russian asset or the lab leak theory which suggests that covid leaked from a lab which is now considered a mainstream possibility for the origins of the pandemic which disrupted all our lives or maybe the iraq war and the weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist each time time and again there's no accountability there's no acknowledgement even that that they were wrong and instead there is this this idea that well okay here's this here's this view you've got that's a conspiracy theory because it's a view that I don't like and that's very very very disturbing and I think also which is something that you alluded to it demeans the people that do subscribe to it and it makes them feel like you know ridiculous and spoken down to and they will never you've lost them after that in the same way that hitory clinton her campaign really suffered once she called some of donald trump's supporters deplorables that was the beginning of the end of her campaign yes it's a very elite approach and I think it doesn't serve our democracy never mind the left okay juliana juliana zeta based in germany for us yours yeah thank you mahal um so i'm sorry i'm a bit sick so i hope my voice uh will go through it so um yeah i've i have to rethink of it because i wanted to say something else initially but i would start with i remember last year what was it this year i don't know that you know last generation was under attack they froze their bank accounts they froze their web page and so on and the only thing that reversed that and had you know they had to apologize for it the police had to apologize for the measure uh was that there was some sort of accountability that so many people publicly were outraged about it and this is why they didn't go through with it but i think it's it's a certain way of testing the boundaries of how far you can go and how far you can paralyze certain people in um in society and if last generation is a pain in the ass so to say for the system they will check the boundaries of how far society will let them go with you know oppressing them or freezing their accounts and so on so i think it's super important that as as common people even though we tend to think that we have no power that we uh when we stand against those injustice when they happen because now really since the internet and since corona and since this mass opinion pool of what that exists out there everyone can be under attack it's just a question of which ideology is dominant in the culture that we live and you can become an enemy overnight and with all of that content that people share on the internet it can be a photo of you on holiday it can be you shaking somebody's hand whom you didn't know was a certain person that that might break your neck someday so and the most dangerous thing i believe is that at some point it won't be somebody who has something against you it will be an automatic ai that searches for you know for a certain group of people and furthers them out and um i mean this sounds dystopian but we're not far away from from that point that kind of people who think differently get filtered by an automatic system uh i mean you have all of these social points starting in china where they test all those things nothing is said that that cannot come worldwide so i think there is a really big danger to lose social liberties and i think all of these discussions which include left and right and so on are really a bit too confusing for me because to be honest yes it has been said like the last years that the left has done a lot of cancel culture but the right wing are doing it also it's not like it's just the left people it's not really a compliment to be woke so if you get labeled as woke because you said something because you said you're not against gay marriage the right wingers want to cancel you out of their bubble as well so i think we are at a point where you can cancel from all directions um and one last point because i have a voice right now it's functioning is that when it comes to the media i think we always forget that media for them it's a business model it's like a lot of content creators out there who are also into conspiracy theory they make money out of it sometimes they don't even have good content but they have this you know great titles where they uh you know um they say they do a big statement and then people will click on it and they make money out of it the media has done this since its existence i mean we have in the 90s the michael jackson trials for example to go a little bit back in pop culture the media took that for what because they wanted the people to buy their newspapers to watch their channel so um i don't think with the media you have to think too complex because it's really how they make money and nowadays also people how people make money in the internet um so it's really very confusing and we have to you know if it's about politics and if it's about the political competitors you know picking on each other that's one thing but when it comes to the common people i think uh literally it can happen to anyone and the danger is not just for ideological reasons but it can be anything it can be very trivial while you're under attack at the end of the day it can be because somebody wants to make money so yeah that's why point thanks juliana and a very good point that this also occurs on the right i mean now the the u.s are literally banning books in classrooms because they don't adhere to their value system although i would say perhaps that this is kind of without getting all kind of you know political theory that this is kind of a center right center left establishment phenomenon and i would include in that left liberal people when you have true anti-establishment views there's no possibility for them to really out outlaw topics and people and cast them into the sphere of deviance because they don't have the the power to do it uh then they don't have the monopoly on the discourse in the same way that the establishment does no no any any comment on that juliano or shui is your silence complicity no i think you know it's um it's really i think you i think that there is a majority opinion um and you kind of have to entertain that and this is what's what's happening at a large scale that to uphold the system you have to kind of entertain the majority opinion and whatever threat means that you can you know it doesn't matter if it's left left or right you want to sound you want to silence that noise kind of so um so this is i think why biden doesn't get canceled because he's not harmful he's not that harmful to the system but he's also not um you know not a threat for anyone he's not a threat for anyone like the way he is he's really to say like a puppet so and also people from his party can advance take advantage of of the situation so um so this is why i think we are in this situation where um yeah as we said it to not repeat now okay thank you juliano noma noma that based in germany for yours thank you it is a really it is a tragedy on the african perspective you know um countries african countries they look to the west for values you know so when they see those values that emphasize you know freedom freedom of speech you know democracy then they are questioning themselves seriously because as we all know african countries are autocratic and um yeah this you know democracy you know is coming to them is imposed upon them you know to act so when they see you know they're developing develop the countries you know behaving the way they are doing you know counseling you know um people like uh um and we despair but anyway what i wanted to say is that you know this is a council culture in african societies is gender based you know um a woman who is voiceful you know is cancelled by men he is made to be silent and it happens in many societies that's why you find that a woman would like to go to politics you know they are fearful all the time because you know you know the anger that can come from both men and women is so much to bear you know and also the other countries that can be progressive they fear of being labelled you know a puppet of the west you know so they find themselves talking the language that is acceptable by african societies more than what is progressive in that particular culture so um yeah this is how i see it you know on the african perspective thank you thank you very much noma and yes you mentioned the case of russell bram which is a a story which is quite fresh and is evolving fast um i would say that there at least my personal view on that is that we should not rush to judgment either to condemn russell brand as a sexual predator or to say that it's an orchestrated establishment hit job and there's a piece on dm25.org that that i wrote if i can just plug that on the front page um making that case death me death me del cara based in france through us hey oh good that kind of uh circled around to russell i was just going to say not particularly about brand but i think there's something deeply pernicious also about limiting people's ability to earn money or get fired in terms of this and i don't think anybody of course i mean bio means i mean i don't think uh it will do any substantial damage to uh russell brand or any other celebrity who are i imagine very wealthy uh but even if it's for it's happening to celebrities that's it's not only happening to celebrities but also that that message is very powerful i think uh in turkish we call it like disciplining people with bread like you punish people by prohibiting them from making a living or earning their living as they say fit so right um this is a way of discipline in a way and it really really um worries me that anybody who would make any allusion to being on the left would be so easily okay with this it's very um i mean and this is also like a story as all this time right i mean you you will be you will lose everything if you're a dissident that that's the threat of power i mean i mean maybe if it wasn't for i don't know i'll be a bit caricatural here but like if it wasn't for frederike engels's money it would probably be like carl who you know uh so it's very important that we never forget this long history of um controlling narratives and limiting who can dissent and at what price uh and the relationship to people's livelihoods or a big ability to make money uh and make a living in the way they say fit so i think this is um i just want to add that thanks thank you very much deafney a couple of comments on the chat anton i mean this has been referenced rossel brand anton says personally i find brand repulsive and his politics horribly sloppy but this attack is clearly about speech constant says celebrities having it off with 16 year olds are still pretty sleazy laughing out loud i think that the divide is uh is very evident on our chat um some other comments relating to other issues michael kennedy says unfortunately you don't solve problems by agreeing with everyone good point david certain notes that an illustrated version of an frank's diary was removed from school libraries over a racy part of it um here in texas this surprise is absolutely nobody and another person in the chat is asking about the golden dawn affair in greece the greece's neo-nazi party that was once it's uh i think third largest force in parliament um so i'd like to bring eric edmund back in whose half greek and served also as mayor of 25 spokesperson our political party here in greece to uh to tackle that and maybe in the context of the what we've been discussing here about far right voices and and demonizing go for it eric thanks mehan yeah no i think this is an excellent case study to exhibit exactly what we're talking about this is a topic that i i experienced to the bone uh in the last six months because i was dragged in front of numerous television cameras and asked to apologize for the fact that our party was defending golden well people's right to run an election regardless of their political views so this is the context for those of you that didn't follow the golden dawn case in greece golden dawn was named a uh illegal organization on the basis of them having orchestrated a number of illegal uh acts including the murder of a rapper in greece pavlos fesus and they were condemned as a illegal organization of course it's a illegal organization they had to disband and they were not able to run in elections that goes without saying now what's a court in greece wanted to do uh that was orchestrated by the governing um new democracy party the right wing most people by now would argue pretty far right party in greece that's currently in government was to make it illegal for people to run in elections regardless of whether they are members of golden dawn but simply by association uh with golden dawn especially people who who are in prison uh or numerous cases and the rest of now already in greece there are laws prohibiting people from running in elections if they are condemned if they are imprisoned so this was a moot point what this argument really was about by the governing party was to police uh political opinions and of course given the fact that they've been flirting with a far right for the past couple of weeks this wasn't so much about condemning far right political views but eventually setting up the ground uh to allow them to also condemn far left what they consider to be far left views so to prohibit people from running in elections for holding unacceptable views in our opinion as matter 25 uh that is a one-way road to authoritarianism and the collapse of democracy if you give the power to anybody to decide who is uh allowed to run in an election and who isn't and who can say what uh that is basically the last step towards an authoritarian state and that was the kind of foundation that uh new democracy was building on top of this our argument was that by turning these people into martyrs by suppressing them and not allowing them to run you are elevating their profile and you're making them even more popular than they were before you did this this was something that we kept trying to argue and we were vilified for it we were called uh Nazi apologists we were called um they said that we were trying to fish for votes from the far right Merah right Merah the party that defends refugees uh in immigrants in the country the country the party that is uh that has fought for the past six years on a daily basis against racism in the streets that has been there in a number of court cases organizing our membership to rally around these cases um but yet the media tried to portray us as as being basically friends to the far right for cynical vote hunting reasons and this is my point from earlier that they will label anybody far right simply to discredit them and indeed anybody who truly is far right should be discredited I think but on the basis of what they say and what they do uh not on the basis of a label and a trial by media uh sort of a fight of impressions social media arguments or the rest of it which is more often than not worn by the capitalists and by that I mean the people with capital the people who have these means to to rally to their cause they can pump money into these propaganda campaigns and discredit anybody who they wish to discredit this was a very hard fight for us to fight now just to prove our point um they were not able to run but because of the kind of publicity that these people got and the fact that they were portrayed as martyrs a bit like Hitler after the failed putch in munich who is in prison the golden dawn one of the golden dawn leaders gassidiaris uh directed the former membership of golden dawn to vote for a new neo fascist party and that neo fascist party um came forth in the election out of nowhere they didn't exist until two months before the election then the party was created and within two months they got almost 10 of the vote proving exactly the point that when you try and suppress these thoughts and voices you strengthen them because you give them anti-establishment legitimacy they say that if the establishment the hated establishment is against them then they must be doing something right and this is how you legitimize them in the eye of the in the eyes of the people who you're trying to discredit them and which is why this kind of suppression council culture um and and the rest of it is so incredibly dangerous for our democracies not just from a moral perspective not just from a philosophical perspective but practically it is exactly the kind of uh rhetoric and the kind of action that creates the breeding ground um that legitimizes fascists as we saw in Greece and delegitimizes those who try and fight them in this case matter and we were the only part that tried to to fight this argument and you know we were incredibly vilified for it and again sorry to end it on the same point as last time but I find that very very dangerous thank you very much Eric and with that I'm afraid we're going to have to close because it is the top of the hour let me just read two last comments from the chat and thank you all of you for posting your your questions and comments in the chat the first in an individual's rights will be protected only so long as they don't conflict with the state nothing is so dangerous to a society and Gilgamesh again says we need the self-confidence to allow dangerous opinions otherwise we'll face the greater danger of any opinion being arbitrarily silenced furthermore we need constant practice in persuading people well said so thank you to our panel thank you to you out there if you'd like to join us if you believe that the answer to bad ideas is to challenge them with good ideas if you'd like to bring down the establishment fight for regular people or at least have a damn good time doing it then there is one address that you can put into your browser and in a couple of minutes you'll be a member that is dm25.org slash join thank you again to our panel thank you again to you guys for watching and for your questions and comments join us at the same time same place