Adelaide festival cancellation exposes progressive hypocrisy
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A free speech fight has collapsed one of Australia’s largest literary festivals
I’ve written for UnHerd about the implosion of this key elite sense-making event in the wake of the Bondi terrorist attacks. It comes as the Australian government is pushing radical new hate speech laws. These will be presented to parliament on Monday, with the public given just a handful of days to comment. More on that coming soon. I’ll be on Josh Szeps tomorrow at 8am Sydney time to talk about it.
Adelaide Writers’ Week has been cancelled following the withdrawal of more than 180 authors, with the director and almost the entire board resigning. The move came after the festival disinvited Palestinian-Australian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah, stating that it would not be “culturally sensitive” to keep her on the programme in the wake of the Bondi Beach massacre last month, where Islamic State-affiliated terrorists killed 15 people during the Jewish holiday of Chanukah.
High-profile withdrawals ensued, including authors Zadie Smith and Percival Everett, and UnHerd writer Yanis Varoufakis. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, hardly known for her free speech advocacy, also cancelled her appearance.
But as progressives rediscover free speech, it should be noted that Abdel-Fattah is herself no free speech warrior, and has been active in trying to get other writers removed from multiple festivals. In 2024, she and nine others signed a letter advocating for the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman to be removed from the line-up of the very same Adelaide Writers’ Week. Friedman did not appear, but reportedly withdrew for other reasons. Additionally, Abdel-Fattah was among 500 progressives who backed a campaign to have pro-Israel singer Deborah Conway removed from the Perth Festival’s 2024 Literature and Ideas programme.
Having been invited, Abdel-Fattah should not have been disinvited; instead, she should have been asked to explain her views. Yet cancellation has made her a martyr, one now likely to help her sell many more books and be invited to many more events. In that sense, it is hopefully a great victory against cancel culture and a mirror to hold up to progressives next time they target others. Panicked board members, politicians and lobby groups, desperate to be seen to be doing something about antisemitism, have taken action which has backfired.
Read the full article here.
