Thread by @therubykid

Possibly controversial opinion, this, but I’m pretty generally opposed to artists’ work being banned, censored, or removed from public view because they’ve done or said something bigoted. #Wiley

Obviously this is an old debate, made up almost entirely of grey areas, and there are definitely circumstances in which I’d moderate that opposition, but the idea that YouTube removing #Wiley tracks does anything to combat antisemitic ideology seems ludicrous to me.

We need to tread carefully here. Already I’m seeing takes along the lines of “this will boost antisemitism because it makes it look like what he said is true.” I get where people are coming from but that’s a form of victim-blaming-at-one-remove.

Jews aren’t responsible for YT’s actions and we shouldn’t encourage the idea that antisemitism is somehow an understandable, if mistaken, response to the actions of powerful corporations. “It’s wrong to be antisemitic but can you blame people after what YT did to Wiley?” Nah.

But what this *does* do is encourage the idea that censorship and bans are a necessary and perhaps even sufficient response to bigotry, even if the censored and banned material doesn’t even express the bigotry its creator is guilty of expressing elsewhere. That’s dangerous.

People are also right to point out double standards. “Why is Katie Hopkins’ stuff still up if Wiley’s isn’t?” is a fair question, and an even fairer one might be... “why are Mel Gibson’s films still on Netflix?”, for example.

The latter question is even more pertinent given the strong case one could make that many of Gibson’s films *do* express his (patriarchal, homophobic, antisemitic) bigotry in a very direct way, whereas Wiley’s music is hardly threaded through wth antisemitic allusion.

I’m not calling for Gibson’s stuff to be censored or banned; I’m calling for ideological confrontation with bigotry, rather than demands for corporate or state censorship of art, to be our response when artists express bigoted ideas. #Wiley