Scott Hunter, Swindon Socialist Party
Two popular online political commentators from the USA have been blocked from entering the UK by the Home Office.
Hasan Piker, who has an average audience of 30,000 for his daily twitch.tv streams, and Cenk Uygur, whose podcast The Young Turks has over six million subscribers on YouTube alone, were due to speak at the SXSW London festival but found they could not board their flights to London. The Home Office has not yet commented on its reasoning, but the pair and wider media have interpreted the ban as a response to their criticisms of the Israeli state and support for Palestinians. Visas can be removed if the government deems someone’s visit to be ‘not conducive to the public good’.
Mainstream opinion
The fact is, Piker and Uygur are more likely to be reflecting the existing views of their UK audiences rather than whipping them up into a frenzy. Even right-wing commentators like Piers Morgan have observed that their views are well within the political mainstream.
We also have to point out that the Labour government had no problem rolling out the red carpet for Donald Trump when he made a state visit last September. Whose presence in the UK is less ‘conducive to the public good’: two streamers or the President of the United States who is actively carrying out state terror at home and abroad? It’s also the same government which allowed central London to be handed over to far-right thug Tommy Robinson in May, when he organised a march in opposition to the Palestinian Nakba Day demo.
Clearly, ‘public good’ has nothing to do with it. Two years in, Starmer’s government is embattled and paranoid. Deeply unpopular and facing huge pressure from the super-rich to make attacks on the working class, the government is incredibly weak and fears even mild criticism. What they fear most of all is not individual speakers, but the potential mass movement they’re speaking to. They fear a mass anti-war movement drawing conclusions about the nature of the capitalist system, which is built on exploitation and division and inevitably leads to bloody conflicts.
The working class needs to organise to oppose all attempts at censorship and repression. These travel bans have happened at the same time as attacks on our rights to protest have increased. Trade unions – which organise more than six million workers in Britain and have the power to bring society to a standstill – should play a key role alongside anti-war and civil rights organisations in fighting against this. Not least because the government may attempt to use the same censorship against the workers’ movement, for example denying travel to visiting workers’ leaders. An injury to one is an injury to all.
