Stalin
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A week after the Adelaide Festival board “disinvited” academic and author Randa Abdel-Fattah from the city’s prestigious Writers’ Week, the organisation is in a total meltdown.
The flagrant censorship of the author, because of her hostility to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, has produced an enormous backlash. That included the vast majority of authors scheduled to appear at the Adelaide Writers’ Week pulling out in opposition to the censorship.
The institution has responded with a desperate and incoherent attempt at damage control.
On Tuesday, Adelaide Festival management announced that the Writers’ Week was being cancelled altogether for 2026. It refused to relent on its censorship of Abdel-Fattah, instead blowing up the event altogether.
The shutdown followed resignations last weekend of four Festival Board members, including its chair, and Tuesday morning’s announcement by Louise Adler, the highly respected publisher and director of Adelaide Writers’ Week, that she too was quitting.
Then, on Thursday, the newly appointed Festival Board suddenly issued an apology to Abdel-Fattah. “Intellectual and artistic freedom is a powerful human right,” it stated. “Our goal is to uphold it, and in this instance Adelaide Festival Corporation fell well short.”
“We apologise to Dr Abdel-Fattah unreservedly for the harm the Adelaide Festival Corporation has caused her,” the new board stated, before inviting her to participate in next year’s iteration of the Writers’ Week.
The statement, suggesting that Adelaide Festival violated human rights, is a damning indictment of the censorship that it carried out.
The statement, issued publicly last week, “disinviting” Abdel-Fattah was an outrageous attack on the author. While acknowledging that Abdel-Fattah had no connection at all to the terrorist atrocity that claimed 15 lives in Bondi last month, it nevertheless declared that it “would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”
That was a clear racist dog-whistle, and a declaration that any opposition to Israeli war crimes was tantamount to support for terrorism and antisemitism.
comrade stalin
moscow
The flagrant censorship of the author, because of her hostility to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, has produced an enormous backlash. That included the vast majority of authors scheduled to appear at the Adelaide Writers’ Week pulling out in opposition to the censorship.
The institution has responded with a desperate and incoherent attempt at damage control.
On Tuesday, Adelaide Festival management announced that the Writers’ Week was being cancelled altogether for 2026. It refused to relent on its censorship of Abdel-Fattah, instead blowing up the event altogether.
The shutdown followed resignations last weekend of four Festival Board members, including its chair, and Tuesday morning’s announcement by Louise Adler, the highly respected publisher and director of Adelaide Writers’ Week, that she too was quitting.
Then, on Thursday, the newly appointed Festival Board suddenly issued an apology to Abdel-Fattah. “Intellectual and artistic freedom is a powerful human right,” it stated. “Our goal is to uphold it, and in this instance Adelaide Festival Corporation fell well short.”
“We apologise to Dr Abdel-Fattah unreservedly for the harm the Adelaide Festival Corporation has caused her,” the new board stated, before inviting her to participate in next year’s iteration of the Writers’ Week.
The statement, suggesting that Adelaide Festival violated human rights, is a damning indictment of the censorship that it carried out.
The statement, issued publicly last week, “disinviting” Abdel-Fattah was an outrageous attack on the author. While acknowledging that Abdel-Fattah had no connection at all to the terrorist atrocity that claimed 15 lives in Bondi last month, it nevertheless declared that it “would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”
That was a clear racist dog-whistle, and a declaration that any opposition to Israeli war crimes was tantamount to support for terrorism and antisemitism.
Adelaide Writers’ Week cancelled, new board apologises for censorship of Randa Abdel-Fattah
South Australian Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas has intensified his vicious denunciations of the Palestinian academic and writer.
www.wsws.org
comrade stalin
moscow
