Beginning today, June 2, the Left Forum (formerly the Socialist Scholars’ Conference), will conduct a three-day event featuring panel discussions on all manner of topics. As the organization states on its website: “Continuing a tradition begun in the 1960s, we bring together intellectuals and organizers to share perspectives, strategies, experience and vision.”
Unfortunately, this year the board, or at least a majority of the board, of the Left Forum has caved in to pressure from a Zionist individual and a group in Germany to cancel panels that include two individuals whom these critics condemn as being “anti-Semitic” or “holocaust deniers.” All four of the cancelled panels were part of a group of five panels organized to discuss issues involving the so-called Deep State and its impact on US and global affairs. The two individuals who were the target of the complaints are Islamic studies scholar and Veterans Today editor Kevin Barrett, and Anthony Hall, a tenured professor of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, whose position was attacked by the Canadian B’nai B’rith organization.
According to the organizers of the banned panels, the first decision to ban three of the five planned Deep State events was announced by the LF board on May 8, in a brief email message that offered no explanation for the decision, and that was reached without first offering either the panel organizers or the individuals defamed a chance to respond to the…