Is ANY social media platform REALLY "Free Speech"?
The horrors of the last week have exposed the fallacy that any social media platform is “free speech”.
We all have our favourites, and we all like to think our usual platform is “the one” that REALLY allows free speech and has minimal censorship.
The horrific attack on Israel by Hamas has also been an attack on our complacency.
I have never been on what I call the “axis of evil” (Twitter-Facebook-Instagram) because of the abuse and harassment on those platforms, preferring smaller outfits like spinster.xyz (Feminist) and GETTR (“free speech”).
The events in Israel/Gaza have revealed how little either live up to their supposed ideals.
For the last few days, GETTR users have been posting videos, from Telegram and elsewhere in the depths of the internet, allegedly by HAMAS, showing Israelis being killed, desecrated, and held hostage.
The worst of these are too awful to describe, and within minutes they have been scrubbed by GETTR, (and also by Twitter/X).
But at least on GETTR, which is predominantly American, there is SOME respect for individual opinions. I have been able to post links to our PM and Home Secretary’s statements supporting Israel, for example, without fearing a pile-on.
On so-called “Feminist” spinster however, I am sadly having to mute users who are unable to align their support for women’s rights generally with support for Israeli women and girls who have been murdered, raped, and kidnapped, to be abused and used as human shields, without crying “But What About…”.
I stand beside Douglas Murray, Kelly-Jay-Keen, the Spiked team, Mahyar Tousi, and a few other honourable mentions, who have stood in support of Israel’s victims.
How soon have we forgotten the horrific brutality perpetrated against women in the Bosnian war, and the Rwandan genocide.
Of course, both of them took place before the era of the “citizen journalist”.
Today’s fruit-fly brained internet generations demand to see the horrors live on their Smartphones.
“Show us the Dead Babies”, and “Paid actors” has been the despicable cry, from all corners of the internet. Including our own so-called “free” and “safe” corners.
I have never ducked commenting on Islamic terrorism - as a cancelled political cartoonist, I would be failing my own standards if I did.
Here is my article on the attack on Hatun Tash at Speaker’s Corner, London in 2021: https://uncommongroundmedia.com/the-bravest-women-in-britain-speakers-corner/
And the Batley School blockade, in which I referenced the murder of French teacher Samuel Paty. (As I write this, history repeats itself in France. Another teacher has been stabbed to death by an Islamist). https://uncommongroundmedia.com/the-batley-school-blockade-do-i-need-to-draw-you-a-picture/?expand_article=1
But on this “Worldwide Day of Jihad”, as HAMAS calls it, I really did not want to draw the cartoon at the top of this article. It’s not my style - I don’t normally draw blood and gore unless it’s humorous, like comical Halloween skeletons, for example.
But in this instance I feel I have no choice.
As usual, you are welcome to share the cartoon.
I support women and children - Period. They are always the invisible victims of war; now we see them (until censored) and people cry. But they will be forgotten amidst men's more pressing concerns - until conveniently dredged up to make some political statement. The women's and children's actual lives - and deaths - are thus reduced to talking points. Rinse and repeat.
It is inexplicable to me that this atrocity has produced both derision and even so-called ‘humour’ in some quarters, and that even the BBC has quibbled about using the word terrorists to describe Hamas. Shock and disgust just about covers it. Thank you for your reactions to the horrors and the shameful ways it has been covered and reacted to by too many of our news outlets.