Novara Media was cancelled by a culture it helped to create

Something stirring happened online yesterday. People rushed to the defence of a media outlet they dislike. In the name of standing up for freedom of speech, political differences were put aside and the case was clearly made that even people we passionately disagree with must be at liberty to speak and publish. This was freedom of speech in action. People of all political persuasions rallied together to demand ‘freedom for the thought we hate’.

The outlet in question is Novara Media. When YouTube temporarily suspended Novara’s channel, it wasn’t just the middle-class millennial Corbynistas who make up the bulk of its viewership who rushed to its defence. So did many centrists, right-wingers and what we might call ‘proper’ leftists (the ones who, unlike Novara, prefer class politics to identity politics and don’t think you should be strapped to a stake for thinking people with penises are men). As we put it at Spiked,