MPs raise fears Kanye West ‘Hitler worship’ would be allowed under Online Safety Bill
Labour MPs - including Christian Wakeford and Alex Davies-Jones - express fears in the Commons that the Government's new online safety proposals would allow the antisemitic rapper's 'abhorrent' behaviour go unpunished
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
Labour have raised fears that antisemitic rapper Kanye West’s “Hitler worship” would be allowed to continue online as a result of changes made by the government to the long-awaited Online Safety Bill.
Speaking in the Commons Bury South MP Christian Wakeford warned:”No Jewish person should have to log online to see Hitler worship.
“But what we have seen in recent weeks with Kanye West has been nothing short of disgusting from saying, and I quote, ‘I love Hitler’ to inciting online pile-ons against Jewish people, and indeed magnified by his sheer number of followers, with Jews actually being attacked on the streets in the US.”
Wakeford then questioned whether “the government’s decision to actually drop the ‘legal but harmful’ from the Bill will actually allow this deeply offensive and troubling behaviour to continue.”
Shadow digital minister Alex Davies-Jones then told MPs:”Let us be absolutely clear, everything that Kanye West said online is deeply abhorrent and has no place in our society.
“It is not for any of us to glorify Hitler and his comments and praise him for what he did. It is absolutely abhorrent, it should never be online.
“But sadly that is exactly the type of legal but harmful content that will now be allowed to proliferate online because of the government’s changes to this Bill.
“Meaning that will be allowed to be seen by everybody – the 30 million folllowers Kanye West has online.”
Davies-Jones added that “some of the content will be deeply offensive to the Jewish community, but it could harm wider society.”
Earlier digital minister Paul Scully had issued a staunch defence of theonline safety bill, the government’s flagship internet regulation, which returned to parliament after a five-month delay, with right wing Conservatives attempting to kill it off citing free speech concerns.
There was cross-party support for often “complex” issues contained in the Bill.
Dame Margaret Hodge praised amendments aimed to tackle the problem of “intimate image abuse.”
But the Jewish Labour Movement’s parliamentary chair also called for the chairman, directors and senior executives to be made “personally liable” for the behaviour of social media platform.
Originally proposed by Theresa May in the online harms white paper, the bill has changed substantially.
Issues such as antisemitic hate online was described by former Culture minister Oliver Dowden as a “priority” of the legislation.
But it’s main focus has become issues around child safety concerns, including preventing high profile tragedies involving suicide and self-harm.
Attempts to tackle so called “legal but harmful” abuse – including some content deemed by many in the Jewish community to be antisemitic – became a focal point of the debate around free speech, that surfaced during the recent Tory leadership contest.
The new proposals for the bill would drop the legal but harmful clause, to satisfy the criticism of free speech campaigners.
Legal but harmful content includes specific topics that platforms would be required to have a policy on.
This includes some antisemitism, not yet illegal under the law, and content promoting self-harm.
If platforms fail to apply their stated policy, they could be subject to fines by Ofcom.
But Labour express fears that Ofcom’s powers do not go far enough in the proposals, and could suffer as a result of government interference.
Several Tory MPs also raised concerns about lack of legal but harmful clause saying the issue over when online comments strayed into more damaging material was “opaque” and a “grey area”.
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