The Censorship Crisis - "Hypocritical, Calculating and Suffocating"

An important staple of modern society is our acceptance of ethnic differences and since the last quarter of the twentieth century there has been a major improvement in the treatment of ethnic minorities. However, in the last few years there has been a heightened and suffocating misuse of censorship, often orchestrated by big corporations and the mass media, that has not benefitted tolerance but has instead narrowed the limits of free speech. There has been a move away from confronting genuine racism to an unreasonable and petulant scrutiny of inoffensive incidents. The likes of Sky, Microsoft, The FA, Netflix and the mass media have treated such incidents naively for fear of harming their reputations and have more calculatingly weaponised allegations against figures of opposition such as Corbyn. The growing population of minority groups at around 1 in 7 UK citizens has fuelled a better and more tolerant society but also forced corporations to adopt stances to appeal to a growing market. These corporations and the mass media have mishandled the approach to this growing demographic with a hypersensitive scrutiny and revisionism of many non-racist incidents. Such has occurred with the conflation of cultural, circumstantial, political and linguistic context with racism and offensiveness. Accordingly, corporations have misused censorship and recently engineered naïve schemes focused on equality of outcome in fear of tarnishing their own reputations. These clumsy solutions are not only disingenuous but also befitting of a neo-liberal climate that does not seek to bridge the gap between themselves and disadvantaged minorities through genuine economic change. Instead, these corporations merely echo insubstantial messages and the mass media increasingly mislabel instances of racism and plaster over a gaping socio-economic issue with lazy PR spins.

Notably, the mass media recently targeted former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, despite his lifelong devotion to anti-racism. There was no evidence of anti-Semitic misconduct despite the claims, exposing them as a meticulously targeted smear campaign orchestrated by the elite who wish to ensure Corbyn does not get elected. This is because Corbyn proposed greater taxation that would lessen the bulge of their pockets with a 50% tax rate on the top bracket of earners. In 2012, Corbyn expressed appreciation of a mural that featured a criticism of the wealthiest banking families in the world compressing the rights of workers both figuratively and literally as they played monopoly atop the backs of the underclass. The mass media have suggested, as a number of these bankers are of Jewish descent, that it is an anti-Semitic mural. However, this is an example of the oversensitive misuse of censorship as they are attempting to discriminate between the treatment of individuals based on race, almost suggesting that one should be exempt from criticism in a political sense if they are of Jewish descent. The mural features no anti-Semitic messages or features and even includes people of non-Jewish descent therefore indicating it is not a targeted anti-Semitic mural. Various news outlets have claimed its style is reminiscent of “Nazi propaganda”, however this is merely because it depicts a wealthy tier of society with many of them being Jewish. It would be lunacy to suggest any contempt towards the Jewish ethnicity is harboured. It is instead a comment on class and privilege. This shows the cynicism of the media’s approach as their flimsy claims were weaponised to smear Corbyn, a man strongly supported by the Jewish Voice for Labour, as being anti-Semitic. Corbyn was bullied into apology due to the damning nature of these claims on his reputation. Another of the claims against Corbyn was his anti-Zionist political stance and his meetings with militant Palestinian figures, however his meetings with such figures were due to Corbyn’s peaceful and diplomatic approach. Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Adolph Hitler, this does not mean they were politically identical. This shows how the media have feebly attempted to frame Corbyn. As for his politically anti-Zionist stance, Corbyn is critical of Israel’s bloody treatment upon the people of Palestine which has killed hundreds of children and innocents in the clumsy crossfire between the two rivalling countries. This does not show any hatred towards Jewish people but instead criticises the illegal actions of the Israeli government. Yet again, to label this as anti-Semitic is a tenuous claim and is another example of the layered smears against a democratic socialist loathed by the rich. Overarchingly, the reaction to alleged anti-Semitism with Jeremy Corbyn has demonstrably been centred around damaging reputation and the misuse of censorship is evident with the conflation of a non-racist political stance with anti-Semitism. The petulant extents of the sanctimonious and sinister crusade against Corbyn culminated in an article by The Daily Mail which labelled his supposed mispronunciation of “Epstein” as anti-Semitic. The paper proceeded to slander Corbyn’s supposedly “unpatriotic scruffiness” when they continue to support a man, in Boris Johnson, who resembles an overfed terrier shivering underneath a patchwork quilt after exiting a river. This astounding level of hypocrisy indicates the petulance of this smear campaign. Unlike other instances of misused censorship that are more naïve accusations, this was weaponised due to the media’s disdain for Corbyn’s social democratic politics and was an entirely calculated tirade against a staunch campaigner for social justice.

On the 31st December 2020, Manchester United striker, Edinson Cavani, was also sanctioned with an astringent 3-game ban and a £100,000 fine from the FA despite the fact he merely greeted his friend in his native Uruguayan. The veteran striker used the phrase “gracias negrito” in a post to his Instagram story and was consequently punished by the FA. The noun “negrito” is a Uruguayan colloquialism that has come to mean “friend” and is a term of endearment that has no racial connotations. To apply the linguistics of the English language to a Spanish sentence is an utterly nonsensical move and Cavani was evidently ignorant of any meaning in the English language as he speaks extremely minimal English as his manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, was keen to mention. The circumstances of the post were in endearment towards the friend of Cavani therefore there was clearly no implication of racial abuse. Resultingly, punishing a term of affection shows the dismissal of cultural and linguistic factors by the FA and intention should be crucially considered. If the FA were to punish his ignorance, it should have been with education as there was absolutely no racial venom to Cavani’s statement. This exposes the naïve application of the FA and highlights the misuse of censorship by an institution fearful of tarnishing their reputation. This fear could have arisen from a feeling to overcompensate and improve the FA’s image due to their previous mishandling of censorship incidents such as the lack of punishment on goalkeeper, Wayne Hennessey, whose Nazi-salute only a year previous was not penalised as he was proclaimed “ignorant”. This was an extremely feeble justification as anyone who has experienced any form of education from the UK will be fully aware of the implications of such a gesture. The fear of the FA could also have been further exacerbated subconsciously by the controversy surrounding a fellow Uruguayan striker, Luis Suarez, who used the term “negro” but in abuse towards former Manchester United fullback Patrice Evra in 2011. However, the circumstances here were completely different to Cavani’s Instagram post as the word used was not a term of affection but instead involved in Suarez’s threat to Evra that he “doesn’t speak to blacks”. Obviously, this was punished and rightly so. The Cavani punishment is therefore the result of the fear of an institution who have mishandled incidents of offense in the past and have applied censorship with a naïve disregard of context. This is becoming an unsettling trend among censorship.

Another example of a mishandling of an issue of offense or injustice is the recent attempts of many corporations such as the BBC and Sky to engineer the representation of diverse ethnicities, genders and backgrounds as of late 2020. The intentions to allow greater prosperity for an arguably disadvantaged demographic is not the issue, it is merely that the method of equality of outcome used is a foolish and disingenuous application. This is because it is in fact counterproductive as it suggests the prioritisation of ethnicity, gender and background in employment which should never be considered if racial equality is to be achieved. Equality of opportunity is the desirable alternative that ignores race and instead focuses on suitability as the most just outcome. The commitment towards a focus on equality by such corporations has been fulfilled following the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement provoked by the brutal death of George Floyd. The fact that they responded to such without a method that in fact ignores racial difference shows the disingenuousness of both Sky and the BBC and yet again proves a fixation with their reputations instead of actual improvements in the economic disparity between people from varying backgrounds. Poverty and race are indelibly threaded together with the poverty rate for Bangladeshi citizens at around 65% according to the ONS as of the 2011 census. This is due to the lack of greater taxation on the disproportionate wealth of the richest in society and investment in the public sector. This would arguably elevate the disadvantaged minorities and remedy a culture starved of academic achievement. However, this would involve trimming the wealth of the entrepreneurs who puppeteer the actions of Sky and the BBC and they would be unwilling to pursue this campaign instead of a more convenient but superficial stance on representation and inclusion. Sky are particularly hypocritical as their enforcement of staggering £500 annual subscription fees on sports fans (a predominantly working class or lower middle-class field) and the management of Sky Betting (that exploits many in the underclass with an illusion of success) only deepens the economic trench between themselves and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This exposes the flimsy attempts at appearing to assist the minority groups with “representation and inclusion quotas”. Quite bluntly, their “fight for justice” smacks of a sinister scheme to protect their own reputation as if they meant what they said: a more bulletproof campaign that would cost their shareholders and owners would be put forward. The tragedy is their main concern is a fear of damaging their reputation and their stance is a hollow repetition of taglines and gestures that will not provide opportunity. Diversity and tolerance against a neo-liberal backdrop are destined to fail. This is as a market of polarising competition will not help to elevate the disadvantaged more generally speaking. While there may be an increase in BAME celebrities for instance, the lives of many minority groups would remain unaffected.

The examples discussed are a handful of instances in which corporations have thoughtlessly mishandled censorship and created nonsensical solutions to rising concerns surrounding diversity and tolerance. As evidenced, this is often out of a simple desire to keep their reputations in order or in Corbyn’s case, to target a political enemy.