‘Silence isn’t peace’: We must fight for people’s right to say things we don’t approve of

Defending to the death the right of another person to say something of which you disapprove has gone way out of fashion. We are deeply entrenched in a rolling festival of censorious silencing, with a sideshow of disingenuous posturing. Where is it taking us?

Festivals are lightning rods for outraged campaigns of censorship; the purpose of their existence is to provide a platform for contestable ideas. That irony seems to be lost on many.

So it is that the Adelaide Writers’ Week finds itself in the eye of a storm, as a calibrated campaign is rolled out against its organisers’ decision to include two particular writers on its program this year.

Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian American novelist, and Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian poet, are polarising figures, part of a contemporary tradition of extremely outspoken critics of Israel and in particular Israel’s attitude towards, and treatment of, Palestinian people.

Incendiary language

Both have made many public statements that could be described as incendiary. They have used language of which I definitely disapprove to promote ideas, some of which I think is indefensible.

The Israel and Palestine dispute is the most intractable in human history and there seems to be no hope that will ever change. Everything anyone says about it is contestable and contested. Both sides deploy logic and language that match the actual violence on the ground, as a direct reflection of how little respect and goodwill remain. Without taking a side, that much should be obvious.

Caught between these eternal antagonists are festival organisers, sponsors and speakers. When the Israeli embassy gave some sponsorship money to the Sydney Festival in 2022, supporting a Sydney Dance Company production of an Israeli choreographer’s work, a boycott was called and intense pressure was placed on anyone connected to the event to pull out. Many performers did. Afterwards, the festival’s board announced it was suspending all foreign government funding. How exactly that was a good outcome for the arts I don’t know.

Likewise, the situation in Adelaide now. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has already buckled, extraordinarily announcing he will boycott his own state’s literary festival.

MinterEllison, a law firm that is a major partner of the Adelaide Festival (of which the Writers’ Week is a part), has announced it is removing its “presence and involvement” with the writers’ festival and, for good measure, its branding from the entire wider festival program.

Why? MinterEllison says: “We have recently been made aware of the participation by Ms Abulhawa and Mr El-Kurd … and, in particular, of certain public statements made by Ms Abulhawa and Mr El-Kurd. We do not agree with those views. We have strongly expressed our reservations to the festival. We have sought the festival’s assurances that no racist or anti-Semitic commentary should be tolerated as part of Mr El-Kurd’s or Ms Abulhawa’s or any other festival session or any other festival session.”

Irreconcilable differences

Notions of racism and anti-Semitism are at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Some advocates for the Palestinians argue they are the victims of ethnic cleansing, an apartheid regime or even genocide. On the other side, criticism of Israel or its actions is fairly routinely equated with anti-Semitism.

Rather than try to arbitrate the irreconcilable, I’ll point this out: there is an obvious paradox presented when you have both sides of an argument insisting the other should not be allowed to voice their views, because they’re racist, while maintaining with equal force that they themselves should not be silenced.

One solution might be to allow those views to be expressed. This is where the position taken by MinterEllison meets a difficult challenge: it has adopted the stance that certain speakers must not be heard, because somebody else has asserted that what they will say will be racist. That is both pre-emptive (nobody knows what they’re going to say) and controversial (will it be hate speech, or just a radical opinion?).

It’s the last place a sponsor wants to find itself. However, it was sponsoring a writers’ festival, as part of an arts festival. It’s fair to wonder what it was expecting, given the purpose of the arts is to open space for ideas and let them be explored. The Writers’ Week’s theme is “Truth Be Told” — according to its director, “the notion of truth — truths we acknowledge, truths we feel are debatable and those beyond debate”.

Of course, blaming sponsors for running for the exit, or presenters for deciding it’s too hot to turn up, is pointless. No individual or company has a responsibility to risk their personal or commercial interests for a principle, even one as profound as free speech. We’re all free agents, and we can avoid conflict if we choose to.

I just wonder what is achieved by this desperation to prevent voices from being heard, artistic expression from being experienced, opinions from being challenged, in conditions that don’t involve rockets or guns. 

Silence is not peace.

Disclaimers: Michael Bradley will be a panellist at Adelaide Writers’ Week. Private Media, parent company of Crikey, is a client of MinterEllison.