The censorship of pro-Palestinian voices and the real cancel culture- Dead Boy Detectives
Pro-Palestinian voices are being censored, silenced or harassed all over the Global North: this is actual cancel culture. Plus, a new Neil Gaiman's work adaptation comes to Netflix.
A ghost wanders around the Global North, a ghost of cancel culture, filled with “political correctness” and to silence supposedly liberal and right-wing voices. This is a widespread narrative, but also a fictional one, and a perfect way to distract from real suppressions and crackdowns on free speech.
The global pro-Palestinian movement is a perfect example of this in the Global North: we are talking about a movement that involves different voices, from Muslims to Jewish people against the occupation. A movement that has seen students taking to the streets and challenging their universities for their links with Israel ( we are also talking about research on military technology used to repress and brutalise Palestinians), from New York to Sidney.
This movement is global, like Fridays for Future and the international climate movement ,as well as the peace movement against the Iraq War in the early 2000s. Similarly, the suppression and the attempts to silence it are international.
In Italy, for instance, student protests (both university and secondary-college-high school students) have been faced with violence by the Italian authorities. Similarly, voices for Palestine are largely absent in the Italian media debate, differently from the pro-Israeli government ones; this is made by design. Giorgia Meloni also concentrated her influence on the Italian public broadcaster RAI in an unprecedented way since the days of Silvio Berlusconi, wielding great influence on the issues that public TV will, or will not talk about.
This goes beyond demos as well. When Italian singer Ghali said “Stop genocide” following a performance at Sanremo Festival, the main music festival in Italy, the Israeli ambassador Alón Bar expressed outrage and said that the festival had been used to spread hate, criticising vehemently the organisation and the singer.
To add further context on how freedom of speech is being endangered in Italy, it is possible to look at how the writer Antonio Scurati had an anti-fascist monologue censored close to Liberation Day (April 25 in Italy, when we celebrate the defeat of Nazifascism and the Italian Resistance), or even worse at how three journalists of the newspaper Domani, Nello Trocchia, Stefano Vergine and Giovanni Tizian face up 9 years of prison for investigating the conflict of interests of Defence Minister Guido Crosetto. You can find and share the petition in English against the attack and for freedom of speech here. I wrote about how much journalistic freedom is under severe duress in Italy, due to fascist laws back and Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government back in 2022 for the Lead.
Germany is one of the most concerning cases globally. We have seen former Greek ministers and political leaders like Yannis Varoufakis being banned from entering the country and even joining events via video-link, due to his views pro-Palestine. Specifically, as Varoufakis wrote also in the New Statesman what was issued against him was a “Betätigungsverbot – a ban on any political activity that has been used only a few times against Islamic State operatives.”
In addition to this, we have seen the deportation, from Berlin to London, of Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian doctor who has volunteered in Gaza hospitals, stopping him from joining the Palästina Kongress conference in Berlin.
The level of crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices by German authorities was described in detail by British journalist James Jackson in his report for Novara Media .
Then there is the US of course. The protests for Palestine have spread throughout other universities in the country and inspired the launch of a similar movement in Australia. These protests have not only faced police repression, made all the more troubling by the fact that this escalation was driven by the university’s leadership.
US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar challenged on this front the Columbia University President, Nemat Shafik. The Congresswoman’s daughter, Isra Hirsi was arrested and suspended from Barnard College, which is close to Columbia University, for joining the pro-Palestian protests. Hirsi was interviewed alongside Maryam Alwan, a fourth-year Columbia University student, by Ayman Mohyeldin on MSNBC.
Unsurprisingly, as this has been happening all over the globe, the Columbia protests have been blasted by conservative and right-wing voices as “pro-Hamas” and anti-semitic, even though US Jewish organisations like Jewish Voice for Peace are involved and engaged in these protests. This is also part of the reason why Shai Davidai, who is an assistant Professor at Columbia Business School, whose badge has been deactivated, has been accused of harassing pro-Palestinian students, is being portrayed by some as a champion of free speech.
PhD student in Sociology at Columbia University, Jonathan Ben-Menachem, wrote in Zeteo “Here’s what you’re not being told: The most pressing threats to our safety as Jewish students do not come from tents on campus. Instead, they come from the Columbia administration inviting police onto campus, certain faculty members, and third-party organizations that dox undergraduates” “ I have not seen many pundits hand-wringing over the safety of my Palestinian colleagues mourning the deaths of family members, or the destruction of Gaza’s cherished universities.”
The fact that PM Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the protests at Columbia University as antisemitic, while he has never shied away from sharing a platform with Hungarian PM Viktor Orbàn, widely known for his antisemitic tropes against George Soros is quite telling. The global movement for Palestine continues, resisting all intimidations and suppression attempts.
Dead Boy Detectives
Are you looking forward to the second season of the epic The Sandman? Fancy a series from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman universe in the meantime? Here are the Dead Boy Detectives, focused on the titular ghosts buddy detectives, Edwin Pain (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri), supported in their endeavours in investigating supernatural cases by Crystal Palace (Kassius Nelson, seen in Hollyoaks and Out of Body) and Niko (Yuyu Kitamura).
The two detectives and friends for the afterlife were introduced by Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner in The Sandman 25, in 1991. In keeping a connection with The Sandman show, we see the return of Death, played by Kirby-Howell Baptiste.
The two characters were then the protagonists of the homonymous series, mini-series and appeared throughout the Vertigo DC’s division.
Edwin and Charles have a buddy and charming dynamic, being two teens whose lives before death were separated by decades ( the first growing in the 1910s and the second in the 1980s), made it even more interesting by their encounter with the medium Crystal and Niko. The action quickly moves from London to Port Townsend, in the State of Washington.
In Port Townsend, the four will meet witches and demons, pixies, and Cat Kings, and a great variety of supernatural threats and dangers, with gore and scares, comic relief and horror, and great rhythm from case to case.
The show has been developed for television by Steve Yockey , writer and executive producer of HBO’s The Flight Attendant , starring Kaley Cuoco (The Big Bang Theory). Cuoco’s sister, Briana plays the role of butcher and landlady of Crystal and Niko, Jenny the Butcher. Yockey also wrote Doom Patrol, where the Dead Boy Detectives were played by Ty Tennant and Sebastian Croft.
So, how can the Dead Boy Detectives agency help you today?
That is all for today. Brit Beats will be back on Sunday, and later today I will be discussing with the talented Anna Lekas Miller a variety of topics, from pro-Palestinian voices in US universities to how we can all support Palestinians. You may join us this evening at 8:30 PM GMT on my Instagram page. Buona Festa della Liberazione, and Bom Dia de Liberdade!
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