The SOAS Manifesto

2008 November 19
tags: , , ,
by Oliver Cooper

Anyone that’s taken a stroll through the School of Oriential and African Studies’ so-called campus* knows how much so-called ‘radicalism’ the SOAS students engage in.  Every lamp post, pillar, and fluorescent orange palm tree is covered in flyers for communist, socialist, Islamist, “London Citizens”, and a host of popular, trendy, left-wing causes.  It’s no surprise that the Socialist Party chose to hold half of its Socialism 2008 at SOAS - half their party members probably go to SOAS.

I’ve just looked at the agenda for their Union General Meeting today.  Unions are often bastions of leftism, and goodness knows that must be pretty bad at SOAS, but wait for it.  The agenda motions are:

  • Rebranding the ‘Free Education’ campaign as ‘Another Education is Possible’ with a ‘vision of education accessible to all’.  They think everyone should go to university on the taxpayer.  Standard fare for the leftist agenda, but as the only person (out of 400-odd) at this year’s UCL Union AGM to vote to lift the top-up fee cap, I still don’t like it!
  • Recognising the Armenian Genocide.  Uncontroversial, right?  It’s only on the agenda because the genocide-denier is a Jewish professor on JewishExponent.com.  They don’t criticise the Turkish government for its policy of denying the Armenian Genocide (or committing it in their past life).  What’s the difference?  Oh, yes, most Turks are Muslims.
  • “Preserving Autonomy of Students’ Union and Societies” is a motion proposed by the Islamic Society (ISoc), so you know it’s going to be good.  Basically, it says the universities should have no veto over extremist chaplains offering pastoral assistance to the ISoc - so they can have whichever nutjobs they want.  Nice.
  • Banning Scientology.  Yes, that’s right.  They’re not disaffiliating the Scientology Society or something (perfectly acceptable, given that’s taxpayer-funded).  They’re voting on giving funding to support a nation-wide ban on Scientology.  OK, OK, I’ll admit, I’m not the biggest fan of the inter-galactic warlord Xenu and all that mischief he got up to with L. Ron Hubbard on their DC-8 whilst streaking through the Milky Way, but that’s a fundamental infringement on freedom of speech and freedom of association.  So now Students’ Union and societies are allowed autonomy (per the ISocs above), but not the rest of the country?!
  • “Improving Higher Education in Iraq” is a hybrid between a resolution that lobbies to give material support (books and bursaries) to Iraqi universities and a rant about how awful the American occupation has been.
  • Reaffiliation of the SOAS Union to Unite Against Fascism (a front organisation of Socialist Workers’ Party and Socialist Action) and Love Music Hate Racism (a campaign by Unite Against Fascism) under the guise of promoting ethnic minorities.  It also takes a nice swipe at “the Tory Party” (although on the count of their immigration policy, which deserves to be criticised - in the right forum).
  • Affiliation to London Citizens.  Doesn’t sound so bad.  But the main focus is on that organisations ‘Living Wage’ campaign, which aims to raise the minimum wage substantially.  And make hundreds of thousands of poor people unemployed and thousands of businesses insolvent?  Sign me up.
  • Every socialist’s favourite motion: affiliation to Stop the War Coalition and opposition to NATO!
  • “Sod Sodexho”.  Don’t have a clue what they’re on about, but they want to boycott SOAS’s catering company because it also has contracts with the imperialist US and UK militaries.  And “make efforts to unionise Sodexho staff“, obviously!

There are a couple of other motions; my favourite is obviously a Happy Hour in SOAS bars!  But the above?  It’s bollocks.  It’s worse than that.  It’s an affront to the student political process that they waste students’ time and taxpayers’ money on stupid little crusades.  Why should the taxpayer be paying to lobby against a catering company?  Why should it be spent on all their pet left-wing causes and fronts?

It nullifies the students as a real voice (real people in the real world don’t give a shit about socialism!), undermines their function as a representative body for raising grievances and injustices, and hinders the societies that make university more than a series of lectures.  However, it’s also predictable, especially at SOAS.  Students think it’s terribly avant-garde of them to hate capitalism, but it’s not.  Nowadays, it’s radical and rebellious to set up a capitalist society - so why not do that?  The student union might not like it, though.

* Does it count as a campus if it comprises three buildings annexed to the side of a night college?

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10 Comments leave one →
2008 November 19
David Davis (not the one you think!) permalink

You might like to link to our libertarian blog on:-

http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com

2008 November 19
Oliver Cooper permalink

You’ve been on my RSS reader for a while, and with good cause, too! I had linked to you, but under organisations, which I think is a bit of an oversight. Duly moved to ‘bloggers’ (with http://www.libertarian.co.uk now under organisations).

Thanks!

2008 November 20
Dave permalink

Regarding the ban on Scientology: if you Google ‘anti-democratic movement with a criminogenic structure’ you’ll arrive at a German government report. The German constitution explicitely states they have to pro-actively act against such groups, after a certain failure to do so back in the 1930’s.

As an update, the ban will not be pursued - the 4.000 scientologist in Germany just aren’t enough of a threat to an extreme measure as banning. And I agree.

But rather than protesting a ban, would you perhaps consider that, maybe, just maybe, a government has informed itself better than you have about the true nature of this violant, abuse criminal organisation?

Are you aware for example that they have their own gulags and employ slave and child labor?

2008 November 20
Oliver Cooper permalink

If you are hinging your argument on the government being better informed, you’d better become more cynical of government’s supposed benevolence and omniscience ASAP. If they know of something, maybe, just maybe, they could tell people just what they find so objectionable, rather than glibly dismissing them as ‘unconstitutional’. I do know, as a matter of fact, that Germany’s Basic Law guarantees “freedom of faith, of conscience, and of creed” (Art. I, §4(1-2)). I think all religion is as mind-numbing as Scientology - does that mean that none of them ought to be covered by the Basic Law?

No, I’m not aware of their gulags and use of child labour. I am, however, aware that those practices are against the law themselves, so no further laws are required. Please provide me some evidence that (a) such practices exist and (b) the existing laws against gulags and child labour do not cover them.

2008 November 20
Dave permalink

Hi Oliver, cool! A debate. That’s nice. When talking to members of Scientology you usually don’t get that, being as cultic as they are.

First of all, it’s a very complicated matter and I am not sure of my own stance on this. It’s easy to agree on that it is best not to walk into a Scientology centre. However, they are a religion, and banning immediately brings you in potential violation with freedom of religion and other freedoms. So, the question on how to treat them is not easy.

You are right in that laws cover some of the criminal stuff that Scientology does. Their policies violate labor laws (in most countries at least, it depends on how laws for volunteers work), privacy laws (pretty much all parts of it), medicine laws (lots of problem with telling people regression therapy gets rid of cancer and such), consumer laws (a 20K dollar course to be able to travel in time is obviously a fraud) and child laws. Scientology is currently under investigation in the UK for violation of labor & immigrant laws and in Australia for child and labor laws violations. There is also an FBI and SEC investigation going on, but it’s not known to be what that is about (although SEC points at financial irregularities).

So yeah..it partly works. There’s three problems though:
1) A lot of the abuse is ‘voluntary’. If you go to the detention camps they run (called RPF), people will tell you they are there voluntarily. Even if people are locked up there, they will still tell you it’s for their own good and safety. The are kept there through emotional blackmail, but that is not illegal. France has developed laws for this reason, which deal with using psychomatic techniques to enforce destructive behavior in others.

2) Scientology cannot reform. They are a fundamentalist religion per decree of the founder. This makes it very very difficult to transform Scientology into something more benevolant. So eventually, although you should initially work with fines and prison threats to prevent further abuse, it won’t work. They’ll only put more pressure on their members not to talk to outsiders.

3) Not really a valid argument, but because they hide behind a religious cloak and have heavy PR, governments are reluctant to send in their agencies, particularly in the US. So, any attention on government who ARE acting I perceive as good. It may help other governments into looking past the religion thing and act on criminal violations.

Ok..so that’s one question. Although I haven’t really answered it, I hope you respect that it’s not an easy and straightforward to have an opinion on this.

The other in a next post. Otherwise wall of text effect.

PS. Not native English, so please look past grammar issues.

2008 November 20
Dave permalink

Your other questions is about their abuses. Now, I appreciate your defence of the religious freedom, but Scientology is far more harmful than you realise.

The evidence of that is a-plenty, rather the problem is that it is too much to get a grasp on it. But it consists of:
- Leaked internal documents. For example, Google ‘wikileaks RPF’. It gets you to the policies that prisoners cannot talk to others and cannot walk (they have to run instead), amongst other ‘Stanford prison experiment’-like conditions.
- Ex-member statements. There are not a couple of dozen of them, not even a few hundred. By now, there must be well over a thousand stories on the net. They are very consistent. Forum.exscn.net is a forum with stories, counterfeitdreams.blogspot.com is a good recent story and this site has some 250 stories: http://alley.ethercat.com/cgi-bin/door/door.cgi?1)
- Government reports/judge rulings. Judges are trained to assess evidence and they have called Scientology sinister, corrupt, dangerous, evil, socially harmful, anti-democratic, paranoid amongst others (Google ‘Scientolgy convictions’)

I know a lot of this appears tin-foiled hattery. However, if you do the research you’ll find out Scientology is far far worse than you imagined.

You have to the research though. I remember it took me a couple of weeks to get through the evidence. But eventually I found evidence of even the most shocking statements (view ‘BBC 5 volunteer ministers’ on YouTube and hear Scientologists say they go to 9/11 and London Tube bombings primarily to obstruct mental aid workers).

I hope you will spend some time on the research. You intentions are good, but you are defending the wrong party!

Again, not saying Scientology need to be banned, but why is there so little education to our children on how cults operate?

I think that’s something worth fighting for.

A site which is a good starting point is xenu-directory.net - things are nicely structured there.

2008 November 20
Dave permalink

One more thing:

‘ABC Nightline Miscavige’ and ‘Today tonight Scientology’ will get to television programs with evidence of child labor.

2008 November 21
Anonymous permalink

The motion on Scientology was predominantly about supporting those protesting it. The proposer specifically stated that they are not protesting the beliefs of Scientologists, rather the practices of the organisation.

As an aside, the whole Xenu story is something most Scientologists don’t know about unless they are OT3, something which will cost over £8,000.

SOASians against Scientology are welcome to get in touch with the Anonymous cell at SOAS by sending an e-mail to sonofxenu (at) googlemail (dot) com

2008 November 21
Andrew R permalink

“They think everyone should go to university on the taxpayer. Standard fare for the leftist agenda, but as the only person (out of 400-odd) at this year’s UCL Union AGM to vote to lift the top-up fee cap, I still don’t like it!”

If this is true, you’re following in sound footsteps.

2008 November 21
Oliver Cooper permalink

Dave: thank you very much for your contribution and consideration. I don’t have time to research it fully now, but I will do over the weekend and come back to it in a new post. Brainwashing, if that’s the right word, poses a number of problems for various branches of libertarianism, so I think it’s worth addressing in full.

Andrew: not so sure I belong in the same category, but it just goes to show that there’s no shame - and a lot of pride - in standing in a minority of one! Although there are a few months left, I will definitely propose a motion against the cap on top-up fees at the 2009 AGM, or at least make a speech to that effect.

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