British Debate Society Presidents - Public Disagreement & Harassment

A few weeks ago, a fifteen-second clip of me went viral. Last week, the person it was “aimed” at apologised. It did not undo the doxxing, harassment, and being told across various platforms that I should be deported, imprisoned, and worse. I do have to appreciate all those who spent an extra £15 on LinkedIn Premium to leave a little hate in my inbox! Above all, those who sent me unfailingly kind messages through the storm. On a more serious note, everything about that time taught me something uncomfortable about how we now handle disagreement. The labels applied to me could not all be true at once. You cannot be a traitor to your faith and a zealot for it in the same breath. When accusations contradict each other this completely, they stop describing the accused and start describing the machine that produced them. That machine has a particular appetite now. It takes a fragment and treats it as the whole of a person. It rewards speed, so the less anyone knows, the faster they get to be certain. The bill is not always paid in weeks of abuse. Sometimes it is paid in a life. An MP stabbed to death at his surgery for being reachable. This week a professor found dead, after what his family call years of sustained abuse that was simply too much to carry. We hound someone for months, then gather to ask “How did it come to this?” I am not setting my weeks beside a death. I am saying they lie on the same road, and it begins the moment we decide someone we dislike has stopped being quite a person. I wrote an article about my experiences and views in the Independent- https://lnkd.in/eqEesVHw I am producing a media project, supported by the Avicenna Foundation about whether Britain can still disagree in public without destroying the people who try. It brings together voices from student societies to politics and journalism who have paid a price for standing up, or who have watched someone else pay it. I want to hear more from Presidents/Ex-officers from student debating societies, those in political life, and journalists. I am as interested in the people who disagree with me as the people who agree. That is the whole point If this is you, or if you know who I should be talking to, please connect and get in touch!