{"id":245195,"date":"2026-01-18T19:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T19:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/245195\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T19:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T19:09:08","slug":"the-adelaide-writers-festival-killed-by-hypocrisy-and-intolerance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/245195\/","title":{"rendered":"The Adelaide Writers\u2019 Festival: killed by hypocrisy and intolerance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Sally Rooney is a young author with a young audience and she\u2019s asking people to think about this issue, and that\u2019s a good thing.\u2019 That was the response<\/a> of Australian publisher Louise Adler in 2021, when asked about Rooney\u2019s refusal to have what was then her latest novel, Beautiful World Where Are You, translated into Hebrew. Five years on and Adler appears to have taken a different position on literary boycotts. This week, Adler quit<\/a> as director of the internationally renowned Adelaide Writers\u2019 Festival on free-speech grounds, following its decision to rescind the invitation of Australian-Palestinian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah. The board has since been dissolved and the festival sensationally cancelled. <\/p>\n

Adler\u2019s path was cleared for her when 180 writers who, in objection to Abdel-Fattah\u2019s disinvitation, announced they would also not attend. These included former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and novelists Zadie Smith and Percival Everett. Prominent Australian writer Helen Garner \u2013 last year\u2019s winner of the Bailie Gifford prize<\/a> for non-fiction \u2013 joined them. In the end, it appears Adler\u2019s resignation was of little consequence. There would have been no one speaking at the festival, anyway. <\/p>\n

Abdel-Fattah has described the decision<\/a> to rescind her invitation as a \u2018shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship\u2019. It is certainly true she has been censored, although that isn\u2019t the whole picture: Abdel-Fattah is not simply \u2018pro-Palestine\u2019 or concerned about the Gaza war. She has openly expressed support for Hamas\u2019s terrorism and repeatedly called for the erasure of Israel. <\/p>\n

A statement by the festival board<\/a> said Abdel-Fattah was removed \u2018out of respect for a community experiencing the pain from a devastating event\u2019 \u2013 that event, of course, being the anti-Semetic massacre<\/a> of 15 Jews in Bondi by Islamist terrorists in December. South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas has confirmed that he encouraged the board to remove Abdel-Fattah from the event after concerns were raised by the Australian Jewish community. <\/p>\n

Adler\u2019s resignation was a refreshing defence of free speech from an industry that, in recent years, has been a crusading force for censorship and cancellation. It was also a strange one. After all, of all the views Australians might want to hear in the wake of the worst terror attack in the nation\u2019s history, Abdel-Fattah\u2019s must surely be among the last.<\/p>\n

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Like many obscure academics, Abdel-Fattah \u2013 a sociologist at Macquarie University who specialises in Islamophobia \u2013 became a public name after Hamas\u2019s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. She did this by expressing her full-throated support for it, notably uploading a picture of a Hamas fighter paragliding into Israel, which she made her Facebook profile picture. <\/p>\n

She attracted more headlines in 2024. Firstly<\/a>, by taking a group of children to a pro-Palestine rally at Sydney University, where she encouraged them to chant \u2018globalise the intifada\u2019. Then, for her prominent role<\/a> in doxxing hundreds of Jewish artists and academics. She defended the leaking of what she referred to as a \u2018Zionist groupchat\u2019 which she said provided \u2018critical insight into how Zionists organise and operate\u2019. Yet despite her extreme views and risible conduct, Abdel-Fattah was still invited to Adelaide to speak about her recent novel, Discipline. <\/p>\n

Discipline, which is said to examine ideas of \u2018truth and censorship\u2019, doesn\u2019t seem to have passed muster with publishers in the UK. This is a small mercy, if the many, many social-media posts<\/a> she has authored since 7 October 2023 are any insight into her literary abilities. \u2018To hell with you all. Every last Zionist\u2019, she wrote in 2024. \u2018May you never know a second\u2019s peace in your sadistic miserable lives.\u2019 In the same year, she wrote that \u2018the goal is decolonisation and the end of this murderous Zionist colony\u2019, namely the Jewish State. In 2023, she claimed that \u2018Zionists\u2019 have \u2018no claim to cultural safety\u2019 (or physical, it appears) and that anyone who cared for the \u2018fragile feelings of Zionists\u2019 is \u2018repugnant\u2019. <\/p>\n

These views should not have excluded Abdel-Fattah from speaking at the festival. Even bigots are entitled to an opinion, and free speech ceases to exist as soon as \u2018hateful\u2019 opinions are proscribed. Alder was right when she said, after her resignation, that as the director of a literary festival, she \u2018cannot be party to silencing writers\u2019<\/a> \u2013 even if \u2018writer\u2019 is a generous description of Abdel-Fattah. <\/p>\n

It would have been better had Adler left it there. Instead, she went on to represent Abdel-Fattah\u2019s cancellation as symptomatic of a widespread cultural animus to pro-Palestinian views. This was evidence, supposedly, that cultural and political life is being suffocated by the Israel lobby. <\/p>\n

\u2018Are you or have you ever been a critic of Israel?\u2019, Adler wrote in the Guardian this week<\/a>. \u2018Friends and colleagues in the arts, beware of the future. They are coming for you.\u2019 She compared Abdel-Fattah\u2019s disinvitation to McCarthyism and \u2018Putin\u2019s Russia\u2019. It was a campaign that had been \u2018abetted\u2019 by the \u2018Murdoch press\u2019, Adler claimed. Ultimately, the Adelaide festival, she said, was the \u2018canary in the coalmine\u2019 for a looming purge of pro-Palestinian voices from the arts. <\/p>\n

To which only one response seems appropriate: give me strength. The response to Abdel-Fattah\u2019s disinvitation is itself proof that any threat to Adler\u2019s \u2018friends and colleagues in the arts\u2019 on the grounds of their \u2018criticism of Israel\u2019 is mythical. Indeed, as soon as reports of Abdel-Fattah\u2019s removal from the festival became known, a campaign to undermine it began. For instance, Britpop band Pulp, who were due to perform on the opening night of the festival, soon found their social-media accounts<\/a> littered with comments demanding they \u2018boycott\u2019 the event and show \u2018solidarity with Randa\u2019. And then there\u2019s the small fact that every recognisable name at the festival has since quit. Proof, if it were ever needed, that the alleged influence of the Israel lobby in the arts is imaginary. <\/p>\n

The literati\u2019s sudden reverence for free speech is also curious. Under Adler\u2019s watch, the Adelaide festival has cancelled multiple writers. In 2024, New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman was disinvited<\/a> after a number of academics \u2013 including, ironically, Abdel-Fattah \u2013 demanded his cancellation. Friedman is Jewish, and had used his editorials at the New York Times to make the case for Israel\u2019s defence. A former board member of the writers\u2019 festival, Tony Berg, said Adler\u2019s voice was critical in removing Friedman from that year\u2019s programme. <\/p>\n

At which point, an obvious question arises: where do Australia\u2019s cultural elites stand on the free-speech rights of Jewish artists? The example of Australian singer Deborah Conway immediately comes to mind<\/a>. For the sin of supporting Israel\u2019s existence, and doubtlessly also because she is Jewish, Conway has been effectively blacklisted from performing in Australia. In 2024, more than 500 writers \u2013 again, Abdel-Fattah among them \u2013 demanded Writing Western Australia remove Conway from its Literature and Ideas festival. Yet there was no outcry over Conway\u2019s treatment, no one mounting a principled defence of her right to free speech. The same argument could be made for the countless gender-critical authors who have been blacklisted by the arts cognoscenti in recent years. <\/p>\n

The collapse of the Adelaide Writers\u2019 Festival is not just a literary bunfight on a larger scale than usual. It is a symptom of a diseased industry. For years, these \u2018festivals of ideas\u2019 have been a welter of intolerance. Many of the most significant social and political issues \u2013 from Black Lives Matter to trans and the Israel-Palestine conflict \u2013 have been sealed off from debate by the very writers and curators now positioning themselves as brave defenders of free speech. The hypocrisy is visible to everyone.<\/p>\n

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Sally Rooney is a young author with a young audience and she\u2019s asking people to think about this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[37377,972,57122,42,20986,425,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-245195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-anti-semitism","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cancel-culture","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-israel-and-palestine","13":"tag-literature","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-top-news","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-topnews","18":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}