No-platforming anti-vaxxers is a mistake
A DECISION by Education, Sport and Culture to ban a local 'health alliance’ group from holding a public meeting in taxpayer-owned premises was an error of judgment – and highlights the growing enthusiasm for bureaucrats to exclude politicians from ‘operational’ matters.
At a stroke, it turns a minority fringe gathering into the oppressed, and provides a platform to claim state bullying and political censorship.
For the disputed venue to be the Performing Arts Centre – supposedly welcoming of open expression and challenging takes – makes the ban even harder to comprehend.
No-one remotely believes the views expressed by deputies in the Royal Court chamber, where the Assembly sits, reflect the views of the court itself. Yet the decision is defended on the spurious grounds that the Education Committee might be seen as supporting 'anti-vaxxers'.
Those opposed to the jabs that have turned a lethal global pandemic into a serious, but containable, endemic disease, may be misguided and, ultimately, anti-social for not being inoculated. But they are entitled to their views.
The best the president of Education could manage when challenged about the gagging order was to ‘understand’ the supposedly challenging position the centre found itself in. Note the absence of endorsement or agreement with it.
This episode is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. The chief one is the added appeal the ban has provided – best go along to hear what the States tried to silence.
The other is more fundamental. In these increasingly polarised times, where alternative views are shouted down and cancel culture is weaponised against freedom of expression, ‘no-platforming’ should be used only in exceptional circumstances. This was not one of them.
If senior Education staff truly felt the political board might be embarrassed by having anti-vaxxers speaking at the centre, they should have asked them, rather than making the decision in their name, which turned it into a political issue.
Islanders are left wondering what other events could be cancelled if they upset the bureaucrats.