6pm debate tonight - Julie Bindel & Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Poor volume made it difficult to hear some of it, particularly Kehinde (so I didn't hear the Mein Kampf) and it took ages to get started, with Freedland wittering on and on.
It was confusing because it's a ridiculous term to begin with, so it's foreseeable that the question would crop up. No point in setting that as the topic only to be asking in the middle What does it mean to cancel someone? Well you can't actually. You can cancel an appointment and event or an arrangement. Then 'no platforming' was mentioned and did someone suggest it was unsatisfactory too? And they all have different agendas, so...off it went in various one-sided ways.

The most amusing thing was when Julie Bindel suddenly got up and wandered off to search for something at the back of the room! It must have been her glasses as I noticed her wearing them later.

Yes, his question was so stupid - especially after AHA had just been talking about JKR and how the attacks on her were silencing other women. That just having a platform didn't mean that cancelling didn't have an effect. So even if he had just been ignorant, he could have listened to her words and not asked her such a stupid question. AHA was the only one who knew what she was talking about and had the ability to express it clearly and powerfully.

She made it clear that she supports cancel culture as long as it's not directed at her or people she likes! I thought that was so stupid, and I'm amazed that even the intellectual slugs arguing on the other side couldn't do anything with that.

This is one of the inherent problems with figuring out what is and isn't free speech, where the line is drawn as to what warrants deplatforming or someone losing work opportunities.

It's not easy because to be consistent you do have to defend things you consider dreadful in order to retain the right to speak about things you consider important (which other people may find dreadful).

I've thought about it a lot and like most people I don't think my position is completely consistent 100% of the time.

I only heard the opening statements, but I agree with pps that AHA was very good indeed - lucid and focused. JB was not good - came across as someone with an axe to grind and didn't even attempt to define terms. BB started quite well, but also wasn't clear. KA was shambolic, and spoke so sloppily that I couldn't follow his argument even when I could understand what he was saying...

I was surprised that JF questioned whether AHA had personally suffered from cancel culture, knowing she has been subjected to death threats and fatwa due to expressing her opinions, and her collaborator was actually murdered.

I did like Julie's point about there being a difference between not being invited to speak/work somewhere and having an invite publicly rescinded because Twitter makes a fuss.

JB was terrible. She was so insistent that this was all about feminism and could not seem to get off that point. I know that's her experience but literally every point she made was about transactivists attacking feminists, and although I didn't disagree that's a problem, it detracted from the debate because she refused to look at the bigger picture. She made it clear that she supports cancel culture as long as it's not directed at her or people she likes! I thought that was so stupid, and I'm amazed that even the intellectual slugs arguing on the other side couldn't do anything with that.

I agree, BB was better than I expected but he kept changing the goalposts every time a point was rebutted. He isn't a very good debater or a very clear thinker. I think the debate would have gone better if it had just been him versus AHA. She would have wiped the floor with him, of course.

Towards the end, when AHA defended free speech and KA and BB started yelling 'Mein Kampf' at her and interrupting her and calling her a bigot - I thought that was despicable behaviour. AHA was just way too good for all of them.

AHA was excellent- she argued that its lazy thinking to label people like Starkey and Katie Hopkins bigots and shut them down, you need to let them speak and people can make up their own minds. I agree with her.

Kehinde Andrews' response, accompanied by a lot of patronising eye rolling was to suggest that 'well we should just let everyone read Mein Kampf'. (First person to reference Hitler loses). He was a pretty poor debater.

I like AHA's point. Let people hear offensive, distasteful ideas. And make up your own mind about it.

The main issue seemed to be there was no consensus on what cancel culture is.

Billy seemed to be focusing purely on social media/celebrities where as Julie moved more to real life examples of ordinary women. Ayaan was basing a lot on her own life experience of feeling cancelled/silenced and I'm not entirely sure about Kehinde - he seemed to be having a slightly different debate to everyone else.

I didn't really get a chance to listen to this properly. I really liked AHA's speech. I too was quite baffled and annoyed by JB's assertion that cancel culture is ok as long as it's not feminists affected by it.

I caught the end. At that point it seemed that Ayaan Hirsi Ali was on the ball but I wasn't convinced that Julie Bindel was being clear enough, or perhaps I mean focused enough on the point at issue. The two blokes were rubbish, for example Kehinde Andrews shouting out "Mein Kampf" to prove that anyone who disagreed with him was the sort of person who loves that book. What a div.

I didn't agree with Billy Bragg on a number of things but he did come across better than he does on Twitter. Which I guess is why Twitter is a dreadful platform for any kind of proper debate.

Wow. I thought JB was terrible. She seemed to be arguing that cancel culture is fine as long as it's not directed towards feminists. KA hadn't seemed to have prepared at all. BB flopped around completely uselessly. Only AHA was worth listening to - and she was BRILLIANT.

Billy deliberately quibbled about the definition to avoid the issues imo

I don't think the term cancel culture has ended up being defined at all. Some interesting points made but I don't think any of the four fully agree on exactly what it is.

I remember the anarchist book fair hounding of Helen Steel, it's what got me involved in this. Well done those activists, you certainly woke me up to campaign against you.

Julie did very well there. Got a lot of information across.

Go Julie!

julie is answering billy (very well imho)

"the victims are always defenders of the status quo"

'Diversity' that is

billy bragg talking about diversity on Britain's got talent...

AHA is a very clear speaker.

AHA is brilliant

Morton is my fave

Corbyn - bloody autocorrect