Eleanor Goldfield hosts this week’s program.
First up, I sit down with professor Abboud Hamayel to discuss the misuse of history, in particular archaeology as a tool of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Abboud also deconstructs the performative solidarity of pity, the entangled histories that make Palestine a lens through which to frame our own struggles, the jealousy of the settler, and stepping outside of colonial time.
Next up, Meta’s censorship of LGBTQ voices brings together digital activists, legal experts and LGBTQ communities to combat invisibilization. We discuss the problematic dependency on social media platforms, how this can spur the creation of alternative comms and organizing methods, digital legal frameworks in the EU vs the US, and more.
Notes:
Abboud Hamayel is a Palestinian intellectual, lecturer, and political analyst. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University, near Ramallah.
Caspar Pisters is the head of communication for Amsterdam’s wonderful & notorious Club Church. With a background in journalism, currently Caspar does communications for the Dutch HIV organization.
Martha Dimitratou is the founder and Executive Director of Repro Uncensored, a global nonprofit documenting and challenging systemic online censorship, AI-driven harms, and the influence of Big Tech on access to information, freedom of expression, and democratic participation. Repro Uncensored’s research and investigations have been featured by hundreds of media outlets worldwide. Through Repro Uncensored, she also develops cultural initiatives and movement-building projects that bring together art, technology, digital rights, and social justice.
Lotje Beek is a policy advisor at the Dutch digital rights oranization Bits of Freedom, focusing on Big Tech and online platforms. She mainly works on digital rights within European platform regulation. In that context, she advocates for the effective enforcement of the Digital Services Act. Successfully so: Bits of Freedom recently won a court case against Meta Platforms based on that law.