[Cross-posted from The Mushkush Miscellany]

Oh bloody hell. Often brilliant, often dire, one of the most popular British political blogs, Harry's Place (wiki), has been shut down by their ISP because a Sheffield academic was propagating a link to a far right website and when people paid attention and publicised the fact, they came out fighting dirty. And my union is at least partly to blame.

These people should either admit that they are in bed with the far right, or admit that they are shit academics who can't verify their sources for toffee.

edit The mighty Ministry of Truth has a fair and complete version of events.

Thanks to the marvels of Teh Internets, here's an archive of the relevant posts. Meanwhile, here's my take on what's going on:

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My glorious union, the UCU, has an activist mailing list. Now the UCU has been a touch controversial in recent years because a small but vocal group within the union has taken advantage of the general apathy of the other members, myself included, to push towards a boycott of Israeli universities in protest at the Israeli government policy in Palestine - which I think is a really bad idea, but that's a seperate post. This is something that gets discussed on the activist list (I'm not on it, so I'm going on what I'm told) but as part of a debate about the whole Israel relationship thing, Jenna Delich of Sheffield College posted a link to an article on David Duke's website.

David Ernest Duke is a proud member of the Aryan race, was a great moderniser of that august institution, the Ku Klux Klan, and much like that other great human being, Nick Griffin of the BNP, describes himself as a Racial Realist. He's not a nice chap - read on...

So Harry's Place done a post on the subject (copy here) including an image with the caption "Sheffield-based academic, Jenna Delich - links to far right websites associated with the Ku Klux Klan."

Despite the fact that this is, well, true (AFAIK), the response from the Delich camp has been... well, this:

From Mike Cushman:

I have complained about list members publishing to Hurry up harry before but no action has been taken and nobody who is praised by hurry up harryhas dissociated themselves from this scurrilous site or deplored theleaking of our postings to it.

In deleting, for good reasons, Jenna’s photo unfortunately Simon also deleted the caption. "Sheffield-based academic, Jenna Delich - links tofar right websites associated with the Klu Klux Klan”. This is a potentially libellous statement and I would urge Jenna to contact hurryupharry’s ISP.

I would hope that UCU centrally or failing that Jenna’s branch willpursue this on her behalf.
Mike

Is this Mike Cushman? Somebody needs to get the difference between libel laws and, well, the truth straight in their head.

Somebody - by all that is good and holy I hope it wasn't an official UCU complaint - has done exactly this and, with a little help of the threat of UK's stupid libel laws, got Harry's Place taken down.

Cunts.

Authoritarian, ass backwards, dumb fucking cunts.

This "academic" who in her "anti-racist" fervour can't even recognise one of the highest profile racists in the world (one wonders what her academic work is like if this is the calibre of her research) and doesn't wonder that there's any need for self examination when you start linking to people like this, admits to making a "mistake" and she's free to carry on trotting out simplistic rhetoric about the genocide of the palestinian people, while Harry's Place posts something moderately - not it's not even moderately controversial - it was a factual piece - and the fuckers get them shut down.

This is the response of authoritarians running scared. It depresses me and makes me wonder where I'm meant to go. I don't know what I can do within the UCU to change anything, I'm not eloquent or connected enough to do anything but quitting doesn't feel like the right thing to do.

What doesn't depress me, and in fact never fails to amaze me, is the fact that, in the words of Mr. Universe: You Can't Stop The Signal... These people just don't get it. Indeed, because of their bullying, Jenna Delich is more famous that she ever would have dreamed. Her name is ringing across the internet - and not in a good way - this story has more legs than it ever would have otherwise, and with any luck it will raise the profile of the shit that is going down in the UCU just now.

So I'm doing what little I can with this pathetic little blog o' mine, in my own wordy manner.

Just to try to improve the Google results for Jenna Delich further still, here's the first few articles on the story I could find:

The Full Story, Post by Post
Engage Online's Blog
Boycotted British Academic's Post
Modernity's Update Post and Original Post and another one
Duke Of Chaos Post
The Contentious Centrist
Mr Eugenides
Ignoblus
Bob From Brockley
El Nuevo Pantano
Max Dunbar

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