The Trump vibe shift was so powerful that its tremors have toppled the president-elect of the Oxford Union. The Anglosphere was a cultural and political continuum even before Elon Musk began to fret about free speech in the United Kingdom. Just as Britain caught the diversity, equity, and inclusion virus from the United States, it’s now getting the cure, though it has some nasty side effects.
First, though, let me try to give you a sense of the importance of the Oxford Union, a debating society founded 200 years ago by undergraduates. Although you generally have to be an Oxford student to join, it’s institutionally separate from the university and is managed as a private club.
No other country has a political system so dominated by a single university. Of the 18 British prime ministers since World War II, one graduated from Leeds, one graduated from Edinburgh, and three (including Winston Churchill) never attended college. The other 13 were all at Oxford, and most of them learned their debating skills at the Oxford Union.
To be president of the Oxford Union, following in the footsteps of W.E. Gladstone, Benazir Bhutto, and Boris Johnson, is a very big deal. Hence the intensity of the row when the current president-elect, a chap called George Abaraonye, gloated over Charlie Kirk’s murder on WhatsApp: “Charlie Kirk got shot loool.”
Abaraonye was slow to apologize, initially saying Kirk’s statements were at least as provocative as his own. Eventually, under pressure, he said his early reaction “did not reflect my values.”
Well, maybe, though I am reminded of something C.S. Lewis said in one of his wartime broadcasts:
“Surely, what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar, you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly.”
Abaraonye’s real error was failing to take account of the revolution in public discourse since the two pivotal events of the past three years: Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now X, and President Donald Trump’s election.
Had he spoken as he did during the demented Black Lives Matter summer of 2020, no one would have batted an eyelid. The media would have recycled Kirk’s most extreme statements, and anyone who criticized Abaraonye would have been called “far-Right.”
This was the line his supporters tried to take last week when it became clear that he was facing a confidence vote. As the ballots were counted, they realized to their bewilderment that dismissing critics as racists no longer worked. Abaraonye lost by more than the two-thirds majority needed to oust him — a majority, it must be said, made up of the exceptionally high number of alumni who felt strongly enough to cast their ballots. In normal times, it is unusual for former students to bother voting; this time, the adults had to step in.
That was not enough for numerous American conservatives, who called for Abaraonye to be prosecuted for incitement or at least expelled by his college. I found it depressing to see so many self-declared free-speech warriors becoming authoritarian the moment the shoe was on the other foot. A WhatsApp message about someone who had already been shot can hardly be incitement. And removing a student from a university because of something he said that was unrelated to his studies is what right-wingers used to call “cancel culture.”
Abaraonye did not break any laws. It was simply that he could no longer lead the Oxford Union, a society that exists to exercise free expression. Kirk, let’s remember, was touring campuses under a sign inviting students to “change my mind.” Instead, someone decided to shoot him dead, the bullet passing, with grisly symbolism, through his throat. If your first reaction is anything other than revulsion, you are the wrong person to preside over a debating society.
NOW TRUMP DESTABILIZES POLITICS IN THE NORDIC WORLD
Still, I feel sorry for Abaraonye. It’s not just that he was removed for saying the sorts of things that his recent predecessors could have said without consequences. It’s that no one should be judged by their worst freeze-framed moments. One of the things I used to loathe about Twitter was the gleeful leftist pile-ons. It’s a little sad to see the same thing from my own side.
Even sadder is to see free speech treated contingently, as something to uphold only when you agree. That attitude, in the end, will destroy our open societies.
