The march of progressive censorship

It’s official: criticising Black Lives Matter is now a sackable offence, even here in the British Isles, thousands of miles away from the social conflict currently embroiling the US. As protesters again fill the streets of a rainy London on Saturday, as part of a now internationalised backlash against the brutal police killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, those who criticise them do so at their peril – as two men have recently found out.

Stu Peters, a presenter on Manx Radio, has been suspended, pending an investigation, for an on-air exchange with a black caller. He said nothing racist, you can read the transcript for yourself. What he did was rubbish the idea of white privilege: ‘I’ve had no more privilege in my life than you have.’ And he questioned the wisdom of staging a protest on the Isle of Man against a killing in Minnesota: ‘You can demonstrate anywhere you like, but it doesn’t make any sense to me.’