If you send 50 per cent of youth to university it’s self-evident that most of them will be as thick as mince and easily radicalised across every ideology going. Plus the fact that they know nothing of their country’s history or any others. It’s depressingly obvious whenever they are interviewed- we no longer produce people with analytical skills,just self- righteous emotions.
I'm not meaning to minimise the reality of either (a) campus islamic radicalism or (b) violent anti-semitic attacks, but from my understanding of recent attacks, they aren't being carried out by recent university graduates. They might be arising from a similiar pool of sentiment, but I think Prevent & mental health services are probably in a better place to catch these attackers early, than universities are.
It's not just a case of removing the platforms of dangerous, hate-spreading individuals, however. The ocean of disinformation and outright lies on social media is a real problem. In pre-internet times, broadcasters would have broadcasting standards, which meant that unfounded nonsense conspiracy theories, such as those we currently see spread about Jews and Israel, would have never been broadcast in the first place. Now, the internet is the Wild West, the BBC has been found to falsify stories and the Guardian frequently parrots disinformation. X at least has community notes, but rarely takes down demonstrably untrue or illegal posts. But Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook...all of them could be deploying sophisticated AI to test for AI-generated images, fake news and verifiably nonsense non-facts. When found, they should be taken down, because huge swathes of the public are gullible and susceptible to propaganda. Social media platform owners must take some responsibility for allowing the spread of Jew-hate, Hamas propaganda and contemporary blood libel. It wouldn't be censorship so much as the modern day equivalent of upholding broadcasting standards.
I think that the uncontrolled access to social media is the source of many of the world's problems. When I was younger, I was a fanatical enthusiast of "free speech", but now that I have retired and have time to read the unfiltered garbage that is spread, I am firmly in the camp of censorship, because there is no longer a source I can trust. The laws must be changed so that only accredited sources are spreading this garbage, and any site that propagates these unconfirmed reports must be registered and policed.
It must be Poster -> Posting site -> Independent authority that verifies the post-> authorises the Posting site to publish.
The posting site must NOT be the arbiter of the post, as it is incentivised to grow its audience. They must be controlled by law.
When I was a graduate student in Manchester in the mid nineties I shared a lab with a chap from Pakistan. Lovely fella, bit naive, but really friendly. (Took me to this really excellent place for Indian food one time. I also recall he was totally shocked when George Michael came out - couldn’t believe such a masculine man would be gay).
Anyway he was friends with a nasty piece of work, British born Pakistani (Hamas supporter irc) who took him to the university Islamic society after Friday prayers….
Guy comes back ranting and raving about sanctions on Iraq and just really really angry with everyone…
I’m guessing if he’d stayed in academia in Pakistan he wouldn’t have been exposed to that kind of extremism.
If you send 50 per cent of youth to university it’s self-evident that most of them will be as thick as mince and easily radicalised across every ideology going. Plus the fact that they know nothing of their country’s history or any others. It’s depressingly obvious whenever they are interviewed- we no longer produce people with analytical skills,just self- righteous emotions.
I'm not meaning to minimise the reality of either (a) campus islamic radicalism or (b) violent anti-semitic attacks, but from my understanding of recent attacks, they aren't being carried out by recent university graduates. They might be arising from a similiar pool of sentiment, but I think Prevent & mental health services are probably in a better place to catch these attackers early, than universities are.
It's not just a case of removing the platforms of dangerous, hate-spreading individuals, however. The ocean of disinformation and outright lies on social media is a real problem. In pre-internet times, broadcasters would have broadcasting standards, which meant that unfounded nonsense conspiracy theories, such as those we currently see spread about Jews and Israel, would have never been broadcast in the first place. Now, the internet is the Wild West, the BBC has been found to falsify stories and the Guardian frequently parrots disinformation. X at least has community notes, but rarely takes down demonstrably untrue or illegal posts. But Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook...all of them could be deploying sophisticated AI to test for AI-generated images, fake news and verifiably nonsense non-facts. When found, they should be taken down, because huge swathes of the public are gullible and susceptible to propaganda. Social media platform owners must take some responsibility for allowing the spread of Jew-hate, Hamas propaganda and contemporary blood libel. It wouldn't be censorship so much as the modern day equivalent of upholding broadcasting standards.
I think that the uncontrolled access to social media is the source of many of the world's problems. When I was younger, I was a fanatical enthusiast of "free speech", but now that I have retired and have time to read the unfiltered garbage that is spread, I am firmly in the camp of censorship, because there is no longer a source I can trust. The laws must be changed so that only accredited sources are spreading this garbage, and any site that propagates these unconfirmed reports must be registered and policed.
It must be Poster -> Posting site -> Independent authority that verifies the post-> authorises the Posting site to publish.
The posting site must NOT be the arbiter of the post, as it is incentivised to grow its audience. They must be controlled by law.
When I was a graduate student in Manchester in the mid nineties I shared a lab with a chap from Pakistan. Lovely fella, bit naive, but really friendly. (Took me to this really excellent place for Indian food one time. I also recall he was totally shocked when George Michael came out - couldn’t believe such a masculine man would be gay).
Anyway he was friends with a nasty piece of work, British born Pakistani (Hamas supporter irc) who took him to the university Islamic society after Friday prayers….
Guy comes back ranting and raving about sanctions on Iraq and just really really angry with everyone…
I’m guessing if he’d stayed in academia in Pakistan he wouldn’t have been exposed to that kind of extremism.