by Fraser Myers, spiked
How did this great institution come to be led by someone who holds free speech, and human life, in contempt?
The ghoulish celebrations of Charlie Kirk’s shooting are sadly not confined to the most deranged corners of the internet. Even those you might expect to uphold free speech and promote open debate have been among those gleefully cheering this act of murderous intolerance. Most shocking of all was the reaction from the incoming president of the Oxford Union, the world’s most prestigious debating society, which has offered a forum for free speech for over 200 years.
‘Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s fucking go’, posted Oxford Union president-elect George Abaraonye on WhatsApp on Wednesday, when footage of conservative activist Kirk’s final moments spread around the world. ‘Charlie Kirk got shot lool’, he also posted on Instagram, in case he hadn’t made his view clear: that Kirk’s shooting was something to cheer, or at the very least find amusing.
For the leader of a university debating society to celebrate the slaying of a man for his beliefs, while he debated them on a university campus no less, would be horrifying enough. More chilling still is that Abaraonye had personally met and debated Kirk in the Oxford Union, only a few months before his untimely death.
The backlash to Abaraonye’s remarks has been understandably furious. He has since offered a half-hearted non-apology, although this has only inflamed matters further. He said he ‘reacted impulsively’ to the news of the shooting, and that he swiftly deleted his comments after Kirk was pronounced dead. Then, he doubled down: ‘At the same time, my reaction was shaped by the context of Mr Kirk’s own rhetoric – words that often dismissed or mocked the suffering of others.’ Kirk’s right-wing views, in other words, justified the gleeful response to his shooting.
So what is to be done about Abaraonye? It is clearly perverse for someone who holds free speech in such contempt to lead the world’s most prestigious debating society. It is as preposterous as letting Tommy Robinson run the Liberal Democrats, or putting Abu Hamza in charge of Prevent.