UK Jewish Chronicle Editor Stephen Pollard and freedom of speech

February 6th, 2018

Awake Goy

Gilad Atzmon writes:

Stephen Pollard, the caricature of an editor for the rabid Zionist Jewish Chronicle, an outlet that operates as an Israeli mouthpiece and has openly waged intense campaigns against freedom of speech, has once again expressed his support for elementary rights, including the right to offend. In today’s Daily Mail, Pollard writes: “Snowflakes? They’re today’s fascists!”

Pollard often champions “freedom of speech”. This time he was probably trying to gain credit with the UK Prime Minister’s Office following the attack on Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg as he attempted to give a talk to students at Bristol University. I need not mention that I didn’t see Pollard or the Jewish Chronicle denouncing Zionist hooligans who interfered with my right to play Jazz. Nor did I see the Jewish Chronicle or Pollard fight for Alison Chabloz’s right to perform her cabaret. Maybe in Pollard’s universe freedom of speech is an exclusive realm.

When Pollard writes “through editing the newspaper (the Jewish Chronicle), I am confronted daily with the legacy of that unique evil, including the suppression of debate, the distortion of truth and even the burning of books at the heart of that terrible chapter in our history”, it is hard to figure out whether he is describing the “Third Reich’s totalitarian impulse”, as he calls it, or his own editorial decisions. After all, before my literature event at Reading International Festival two months ago, Pollard’s Jewish Chronicle published the following headline: “‘Horror’ over appearance of Gilad Atzmon at Reading International Festival.”

Pollard’s Jewish Chronicle wrote: “Berkshire Jews are ‘horrified’ over the scheduled appearance of an anti-Semitic author at the Reading International Festival.” Is this how Pollard defines “welcoming debate”? In my universe the above line fits nicely within “suppression of debate” and is an extreme form of book burning. I can see a clear contradiction between Stephen Pollard “the advocate of freedom of speech” and the outlet which he edits that employs every trick in the Hasbara book to close debate on Israel, Zionism, Jewish identity politics, Jewish lobbying and the holocaust.

Pollard, article in the Daily Mail makes a surprising pivot and repeats the arguments I raised in my recent book, Being in Time. “We are now witnessing our own version of Newspeak, in which a form of cultural fascism masquerades as caring concern.”

In November Pollard’s paper campaigned to suppress a proposed debate on my book, and now he repeats the message of that book almost word for word. But, in my opinion, Pollard makes an error in his use of terminology. It is not “cultural fascism” that introduced the current tyranny of correctness. It was cultural Marxism, a bunch of post-Marxist tribal ideologists who thought and still think that it is down to them and only to them to decide who deserves a platform and what are the boundaries of freedom.

Listen to Stephen Pollard in advocacy of “freedom of speech”. His point seems to be: “You can say whatever you see the need to say as long as I can denounce you as an anti-Semite, a racist and a bigot.