When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 he framed the acquisition as a battle to safeguard free speech. Twitter, he said, was “the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated”. Last week I, a grooming gang researcher and journalist, posted a video to X laughing at the ineptitude of the Rape Gang Inquiry report’s writers in tackling the subject. Musk’s contribution to that vital debate, delivered to his 240 million followers, was to demand I be sent to jail. “To prison for her,” he wrote.
Like Elon I consider myself a “free speech absolutist”. Like Elon, I believe that “If free speech is lost… tyranny is all that lies ahead.” Free speech is absolutely foundational in a liberal civilisation, because if we can’t rationally discuss and debate we will quickly descend into tyranny, or anarchy or anarcho-tyranny.
That’s why for most of my adult life I’ve been working hard to air heterodox positions: as a journalist with Breitbart London, where I interviewed grooming gang survivors following the release of the Alexis Jay report in 2014, and more recently as the founder of the Survivors, an organisation dedicated to researching the issue and supporting survivors.
When I took a first glance at the report issued by the Rape Gang Inquiry last week, my initial response was one of despair. Full disclosure here, I was originally invited to be on the panel of the inquiry. I was quietly dropped when I offered to bring in the very standards they failed to deliver.
We will never solve the grooming gang problem until we can first understand it, and sadly the report brings us no closer to understanding it. I spoke to a fellow researcher in the field. We agreed that the report was so poor as to be laughable – and a huge disservice to the survivors who engaged with it. And then I turned on my camera and recorded a quick, off-the-cuff response in which I laughed at the writers for failing to understand the basics of the issue.
By the next morning, the video was nearing a million impressions. A short while later someone sent me a link to Elon’s single line response, and then came a tsunami of hate: antisemitic cartoons depicting me as the classic hook-nosed Jew, rubbing my hands together. Kevin Sorbo thinks I’m “evil”. The Babylon Bee told me to “seek Jesus,” and of course, it being the internet, thousands of people were happy to take two minutes out of their day to tell me that I’m a terrible person.
But, okay, free speech includes the right to be rude and dismissive, and to not always have a rational, nuanced argument cleanly laid out. A sharp ‘f– off’ can be just as effective, sometimes more so, than pages of carefully evidenced rebuttal, and I can take it. Cancel culture isn’t ‘disagreement done disagreeably’.
Some of it, however, wasn’t criticism at all. A few people used the contact form on the website for the Survivors to issue graphically violent death threats. Others tracked down my email addresses to do the same. My home address was doxxed, photos of my home were lifted from Google Maps and posted alongside it and pictures of my family were also circulated. Some people came after my organisation, the Survivors, attempting to have it shut down. A coordinated campaign to send code of conduct complaints to the county council I sit on was launched; the council have had to bring in outside solicitors to deal with them all.
This is the Left’s cancel culture: a coordinated pile-on designed to prevent the target from being able to make a living or have a voice, in order to make an example of them, with the aim of forcing the wider population to self-censor. And it’s now playing out within sections of the online Right.
For me, the most laughable (if I’m still allowed to use that word) part of all of this was the community note that was at one point attached to a follow-up video I posted the following day, explaining my position. It read: “This is a very serious topic, yet she approached it with a jovial tone.” So the online Right has now discovered tone policing. Once the domain of the Left’s New Puritans, it is increasingly being co-opted by certain factions on the Right, particularly those within Restore’s ranks, to protect their power structures and shut down dissent.
Because let’s be clear here about what this episode reveals. Ultimately, cancel culture exists to preserve institutional power structures. The Left have plenty of institutional control, in academia, the public sector, the media. But the Right are not powerless in that regard. The richest man on Earth using his platform and his algorithm to call for a journalist to be jailed isn’t free speech, it’s a call for state-sanctioned censorship. A political party setting its supporters on a researcher who undermines their position isn’t free speech, it’s the political power-base protecting its own interests.
For some on the Right, then, it appears that their objection to cancel culture was never a principled stand in favour of free speech at all. Rather, it was the Left’s grievance culture transferred to the Right and used in exactly the same way. The proof is how the Right acts when it gains power over platforms and institutions: if it’s using them to cancel, it can’t rightly claim to be in favour of free speech. It’s just tribal loyalty with better branding.
Donna Rachel Edmunds is a British-Israeli journalist, formerly in-house with Breitbart, based in London, and then the Jerusalem Post, based in Jerusalem. There she specialised in the radicalisation of the Palestinian people by their own leaders.
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From the comments it sounds as if the video was in very poor taste and not well thought through. I strongly disagree with people saying this isn’t cancel culture though:
Did this happen though? Who exactly doxxed? How does she know they were ‘right wing’? A term barely understood these days. What’s going on with someone who seems more offended that their own project wasn’t welcomed to take part in the report, than the actual crimes? Someone who seems to want to make it about themselves. I could be wrong but from what I understand she has links with Reform, probably the party most hostile to Rupert Lowe.
I watched the original post. And I have to say that the tone of the post was all wrong.
Sure this person may have legitimate concerns, however by first stating that she did not read the whole report and then using ridicule she undermines her argument and comes across as extremely condescending. Not surprising she got a massively negative response.
How do I know how someone is politically positioned? They don’t understand the difference between laughing about young girls being raped – and doing so in a condescending, superior, know-it-all, way – and an old school professor telling a clumsy joke about female researchers crying a lot. If both things can be made to be the same then “Gotcha. You do it too!”. But, they’re not the same thing. Not in any way. Another thing that is fundamental to the arguement is the very idea of ‘canceling’ someone. As far as I can see, nobody has been demanding that the author lose her livelihood, they’re just appalled by her apparent lack of humanity. And the sneering. People are tired of the misplaced, I’m better than you are, sneering.
I think, if left alone, society will naturally police itself. I believe that you should be free to say absolutely anything you want, but that thing you say should be measured by a society that shares a common set of moral beliefs and that society is also free to crack a fist on you’re chin if your loudly airing views that are incompatible with that of the whole. The incentive to not… Read more »
Argument. Your chin. Damn autocorrect. Damn wine.
Because someone believes the report to be risible does not mean they believe the subject of the report to be risible.
Really? Thanks for pointing that out. Very insightful.
You are the Left. I don’t care that you blagged your way into Breitbart somehow. Your response was that of a psychopath, but they usually have more intelligence. ‘I laughed at the writers for failing to understand the basics of the issue’. Now you are here to ‘both sides’ and try to spread obfuscation.
Also, cancel culture is trying to get someone fired from their job and made unemployable, it isn’t disagreeing, whether that be done agreeably or aggressively.
The basics were well-covered in the report – they are not hard to understand – and the causes were not hidden under legalese, or other technical jargon that you likely employ in your self-described expertise. You tried to pedantically pick-up on ‘county lines’ as an error and only succeeded in betraying your own lack of understanding and reasoning.
You only have assertions yourself and bring nothing but rancour to this issue.
Are you certain she’s the Left? Because if you go check out her substack ( which looks interesting and is free to access ) she seems to write about the Right a lot and uses ”we” to include and identify herself as part of them. I’ve glanced at a few of her articles now and nothing screams ”Lefty” to me, I’ll be honest. Example;
”Spend a few minutes on political Twitter and you could be forgiven for thinking the right is winning. On issue after issue, public opinion leans in a conservative direction. Immigration, crime, national identity, the limits of the state: poll after poll shows majority support for positions broadly associated with the right. Reform UK leads national polling. Millions of voters are desperate for real change. People are waking up.
Now is our time, right?
Wrong.
We’ve been here before: Brexit was a real shock to the political establishment, the voice of 17 million people, as Dominic Frisby so eloquently sang, telling the establishment to f*ck off.
Capture of Britain’s institutions by the progressive left has meant that they now follow their own agenda, no matter who wins Westminster elections. What this tells us is that we’re fighting… Read more »
I think her articles refute your claim without question;
”What a difference 15 years — and the almost complete capture of Britain by the woke left — makes.
Y’see, dear reader, I’ve been here before. The report I posted last Thursday on the need for the right to organise didn’t come from nowhere. It’s been fifteen long years in the making, as I explained on Twitter in early February.
Now I’ll admit it, I’m as guilty as anyone on the right of perpetuating the failure. Look at what I’ve done here: spotted the problem — that while the left organise, the right write papers — and immediately… reached for my laptop to write a carefully argued paper on why we shouldn’t do that. Oh, the irony!
Partly I think we’re like this by nature: wonkish, keen on analysis, and above all possessed of a deep instinct to conserve rather than break up and try something radical and new. Partly I think it’s a habit we’ve learned. It’s just ‘how things are done’ on our side. Leave it to the green-haired septum-ringed lot to do anything as crass as organise.
But whatever the reason, the lesson we need to learn… Read more »
She’s ‘Right’ like Blairite, liberal Conservative MPs are ‘Right’.
It’s not looking that way. This is her here, from when Advance UK were still in existence earlier this year. Would a psychopathic Lefty set up an organization to put a spotlight on grooming gangs and support the victims?
”Donna Edmunds was part of Reform UK when she won the Hodnet seat at last May’s local elections.
However, she was suspended just days later for “bringing the party into disrepute” having posted on social media about her plans to defect.
She has been an independent councillor and sits on the council’s economy and environment overview and scrutiny committee.
Now Councillor Edmunds has joined Advance UK, a party that says it stands for “nation, freedom, democracy, and equality under the law.”
She is the founder of The Survivors, a community-led organisation which seeks to “understand the grooming gang crisis and support survivors”.
https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/politics/former-reform-councillor-joins-far-right-party-6530869
She ain’t no Farage fan, is she?
”A reminder that I was thrown out of Reform last year for publicly calling for Farage to step down. Looks like I was way ahead of the curve again. But honestly, his resignation would be the best thing to happen to Reform – and Britain – by a country mile.”
https://x.com/Donna_Rachel_/status/2071288493116952830
Well, a migrant ‘community’ of over 100 are to be dumped in her ward of Hodnet (Stoke Heath) so her and the ‘limp dum’, ‘we welcome refugees’, lot at the County Council have got something to think about now.
Happening all over. This village has only 700 inhabitants, yet the Home Office want to dump 1,200 migrants on them. If that doesn’t meet the definition of ‘replacement’ I don’t know what does;
”Community leaders have said they will “campaign to the end” to prevent a former RAF station being turned into a centre for more than 1,000 asylum seekers.
The Home Office has announced it will seek planning permission to use RAF Linton-on-Ouse, near York, to house asylum seekers while their claims are processed.
A similar plan was scrapped in 2022 after public protests and the threat of legal action from the former Hambleton Council.
North Yorkshire Conservative councillor Malcolm Taylor, who represents Linton-on Ouse, said: “This was the wrong place in 2022 and it is the wrong place now.”
Meanwhile, parish council chairman Marc Goddard said: “We fought this before and we’ll fight it again.”
Linton-on-Ouse is one of three Ministry of Defence (MoD) sites the Home Office has proposed using to house almost 4,000 asylum seekers, as the government seeks to move people out of hotels, with other proposed sites in Oxfordshire and Suffolk.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke, Wetherby and Easingwold MP, said: “Linton-on-Ouse has been shown to… Read more »
I think the problem is that most ‘right’ leaning people are fairly libertarian and just want to be left alone to live as they wish. The Leftwaffe are the exact opposite, they like organising, they like committees, they like control, they want to tell people what to do.
It’s why it’s been so difficult to fight them over the last century.
No matter the quality of the report the testimonies are heartrending. I agree, the reaction is of someone who has trouble experiencing human emotion. Therefore this person is to be avoided and definitely someone whose motives are to be questioned.
Perhaps this shows the danger of making improvised video commentary on sensitive subjects. I read quite a bit of the report and the personal testimonies are galling. The video does come over as insensitive in respect of the material which the report contained. If the author had simply posted her analytical comments on its professionalism, I imagine there might not have been such an unwarranted overreaction. This kind of abuse is why I have given up on social media and try to find platforms populated by people who want to learn from others.
The internet people are a pretty autistic and aggressive bunch, regardless of which “side” they fall on. They have very little meaning in life and are entrenched to their world view, regardless of what nuance is brought to the table. I am sorry that you’ve had to deal with them.
However, for the same reason, I do think you’ve probably done more harm than good to the entire rape gang topic and probably a disservice to the victims in this case. Your initial reaction and wording will be all that people will see, and unfortunately “the left” (see: the establishment) will use what you’ve said to totally undermine the entire thing. I’d rather it be over estimated and become public outrage, than have it get scoffed at by the luvvies and open border cults then dismissed as conspiracy theory.
Either way though, I think it’s already f*cked and will be totally glossed over, ridiculed and white washed. Once again, “the far right” will be the most evil people in the world for suggesting that Asian grooming gangs exist.
Why is the report junk?
At least someone has tried to document the appalling abuse involved which is way ahead of the official “enquiry”.
If you like, here’s Pete North’s analysis of the report. But bear in mind he’s hardly impartial as he seems to have a constant downer on Restore anyway;
https://www.northernvariant.co.uk/p/analysis-the-rape-gang-report
Also, here’s 7mins of Donna explaining why she laughed and her issues with the Rape Gang Inquiry report. She gets a lot of hate and pushback online, not just because she’s Jewish ( which is a red rag to a bull for scumbags of a particular mentality ) but primarily because she spends her time fighting for victims and raising awareness of grooming gangs which are not exclusively of the Pakistani Muslim variety, and where the victims are not just white.
Although her laughing may have been deemed poor taste under the circumstances, I don’t think anybody doing good work in supporting victims of child sex abuse and exposing the perpetrators, regardless of race/religion, should be bullied and made targets of hate campaigns like this. Surely we don’t have to share the same political views in order to agree on something as basic as this;
”I wasn’t laughing at Rape Gang Survivors. I founded an organisation dedicated to supporting rape gang survivors. I was laughing at Charlie Downes, Harrison Pitt, and… Read more »
Thanks for the links, I will try to read/listen when I get a chance.
I have no idea how you stay on top of all this stuff Mogs, pretty much everything here has your view in detail with links. I don’t know how there are enough hours in the day.
Donna, I can totally see how easily the clip of you chuckling about the Rape Gang Inquiry report could be taken out of context ( I believe Pete North agreed with you on your assessment of it ) but nothing can justify the levels of abuse and hostility you’ve had to contend with. Those of us with accounts know what a toxic cesspit Twitter can be, but it’s also a goldmine if you can navigate all the crap, AI and general misinformation on there. So it doesn’t surprise me at all to hear about what you’ve had to deal with because I see it all the time. Not just on Twitter, but the online sphere in general. There are many people who don’t do objectivity or nuance, who aren’t interested in the bigger picture or correct context, and are consequently primed to behave hatefully and abusively ( pitchfork always at the ready ) at the drop of a hat, and they rarely operate alone.
What you’re describing above illustrates the Horseshoe Theory perfectly. It’s the same tactics and behaviour, the same energy and authoritarianism that we’re used to seeing from the Left but mirrored by the Right. This would be… Read more »
Musk was being ironic.
If so, his audience didn’t understand what irony is