The Chair of the Education Select Committee Robert Halfon, has accused the National Union of Students (NUS) of institutional antisemitism, after the rapper Lowkey was booked to appear at the annual conference.
Lowkey recently claimed that the legacy media had “weaponised the Jewish heritage” of Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to “stave off” inquiries about far-right groups in Ukraine.
The rapper has also been associated with the academic David Miller. Miller has in the past been accused of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories. When Jewish students learned that Lowkey was booked to appear at the NUS conference, they complained. Loudly.
The NUS advised them to find an “existing safe space designated for students who are sensitive to loud noise during his (Lowkey’s) performance”.
Speaking to LBC Radio this morning Education Select Committee chairman Robert Halfon said:
“I really worry about what’s going on with the NUS – it appears to be almost institutional anti-semitism within that organisation – telling Jews to sit away or be segregated, inviting this controversial rapper who’s accused of all kinds of conspiracy theories and anti-semitic statements which have caused grave upset to Jewish people and people of other faiths as well. It’s quite extraordinary.”
Halfon is emerging as quite the Witchfinder General isn’t he? The Tory MP believes in de-platforming people who are “controversial” or who have been accused of antisemitism. Really? Shouldn’t he be compelled to provide some hard evidence first?
Lowkey was absolutely right when he said that the MSM dismissed the existence of far-right groups in Ukraine by pointing to Zelensky’s Jewish heritage. As for his association with David Miller, what has that got to do with anything?
Are we to accept that by speaking to David Miller, Lowkey must therefore share his opinions or indeed his world-view?
Free speech isn’t dead just yet, but it is on life-support.
As for tory-boy Robert Halfon, he’s behaving like a jumped-up Nazi thug. Earlier this month, he accused a number of British academics of spreading “pro-Putin propaganda.”
One of them, Edinburgh University Professor Tim Hayward, had simply pointed out that the facts surrounding the alleged bombing of a maternity ward in Mariupol by Russian forces, were in fact disputed. He tweeted, “what do we really know of the reality?”
Halfon asked his colleague, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi, to instruct universities to censor the academics named and shamed as Putin’s apologists.
These are dangerous times.
Education Select Committee Chair Robert Halfon says he could refer the NUS to the Equality and Human Rights Commission to 'see if there is institutional anti-Semitism' within the organisation.@NickFerrariLBC | @halfon4harlowMP pic.twitter.com/pPPR4Pq4s2
— LBC (@LBC) March 23, 2022
