Cancel culture, an anti-intellectual weapon frequently utilised by fascists, runs against the grain of diversity, inclusion and equality on all counts: it seeks to exclude a diversity of voices and deny the owners of those voices a claim to an equal right to be heard.
Cancel culture meets three, and possibly four, of the fourteen criteria set out by Umberto Eco as constituent elements of Ur-Fascism. David Miller's legal victory this week at a UK Employment Appeals Tribunal over this invidious phenomenon is not merely symbolic but hugely important for those activists opposed to Israeli genocide. It is a landmark ruling in the battle of ideas.
Miller who had earlier left the British Labour Party after it had suspended him as a result of his accusation that the execrable Keir Starmer had taken Zionist money, saw his contract as a professor with Bristol University cancelled in 2021 because he spoke out against Zionism. He had described Israeli government policy as “all out onslaught… on the left globally.” He further called for “the end of Zionism as a functioning ideology”. He accurately described Jewish groups that sought to have him cancelled as pushing 'to stop anyone speaking out about Palestine”.
In a nine minute video he hit out at the Israeli state's policy of cancel culture being allowed to infiltrate and permeate campus life, asserting that 'no university should allow itself to be held hostage by the State of Israel’s campaign of censorship.' He also praised University College, London (UCL) for the decision by its Academic Board to recommend replacing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, lauding the decision as the “beginning of the fightback”. As we are aware the government in this country too has sought to rely on the muzzling device crafted by the IHRA to cancel out anti-Zionist voices through resort to the antisemitic label.
Miller outlined what the IHRA was aiming to achieve:
Manufactured controversies around Judeophobia — such as in my case — are being used to silence criticism of Zionism and Israel. That is the purpose of the IHRA definition in practice. If Saudi Arabia was engaged in a similar censorship campaign on British campuses, we would laugh it out of the room . . . We have to fight back . . . and the way to fight back is to organise proper debates to understand these issues and not to be fooled that there is some kind of liberal Zionist panacea which is not as bad as the IHRA… This is a problem for freedom of speech and also for academic freedom.
Proper debate is anathema to cancel culture so Miller lost his job. In 2024 he won an appeal against being fired, The university sought to defend its decision by claiming that Miller's views were political beliefs rather than philosophical ones and should not therefore be covered by the Equality Act. However, the chair of the Tribunal pointed out that there was:
no good reason why the beliefs relied upon by the claimant in this case should be excluded from protection simply because they related to an issue of social importance which might, broadly, also be categorised as 'political'.
The university lodged an appeal which this week also collapsed after a hearing in the Employment Appeal Tribunal. The upshot: it is now officially accepted that Professor Miller was the victim of wrongful dismissal and, of crucial significance, that anti-Zionism is a protected belief.
The EAT upheld the findings of the earlier tribunal that Miller “did not oppose or hold antipathy towards Jews or Judaism” and was not supportive of violence as a means of opposing Zionism. This drew a clear demarcation line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism
The ruling is a crucially important legal victory in the battle against Zionist cancel culture that has become so prevalent throughout the academic world. It will prove a serious obstacle in the way of those who seek to muzzle anti-Zionist voices with the label antisemitic.
Miller has crossed a line in the sand drawn by the Israeli state and its academic apologists in the UK. Welcoming the verdict, he stated:
I am very pleased that the Employment Appeal Tribunal has dismissed the case put forward by the University of Bristol. It is a remarkable and extremely welcome vindication of my long fight to defend myself and all those who hold and express anti-Zionist beliefs. This judgment has now firmly established that anti-Zionist views are a protected belief under the terms of the Equality Act 2010.
Anti-Zionism is a protected belief in the UK. People can't be discriminated against for holding it. Anti- Zionist speech has won the day over the silencing efforts of hateful Hasbara.
