FSU General Secretary Toby Young has written for the Spectator about the shocking case of FSU member and diehard Newcastle United Football Club (NUFC) supporter, Linzi Smith.
On 31 October last year, Linzi was banned from St James’ Park for the remainder of this season and the next two. Why? Not for getting into a fight in the stadium or abusing a steward. No, Linzi’s ‘crime’ in the eyes of NUFC was to express online her ‘gender critical’ belief that men who identify as women should be treated as if they were indistinguishable from biological women, including being able to access women’s changing rooms, and compete against women in sports like football and rugby.
That part of the story is, in itself, bad enough. But what the FSU has also uncovered while providing Linzi with support and assistance is an investigation unit embedded in the Premier League. The way it operates is secretive, and its remit is unclear, but one of its jobs appears to be prying into football fans social media, checking their accounts, and then determining if they’ve engaged in wrongthink.
In Linzi’s case, NUFC reached out to the Premier League to help investigate her and the League then tasked its spy unit with compiling a dossier on her, which it then handed over to the club. At that point, NUFC took the decision to ban her from attending games for the rest of this season and for the next two.
Toby’s piece continues:
As the head of a free speech advocacy group, I’ve taken up Linzi’s case. M’learned friends think the fact that the Premier League handed over a file of Linzi’s personal data to NUFC is a breach of privacy law, so with our help she’s submitted a complaint to the information regulator. We’re also exploring other legal remedies that will stop Premiership clubs – and the League itself – behaving like this in future.
Policing what football fans tweet about matters of ongoing public debate is an example of extraordinary overreach. What business is it of theirs what Linzi says about the trans issue, particularly outside the stadium? This is a level of monitoring you’d expect to find in communist China or Putin’s Russia, not in a liberal democracy – particularly not one that’s been led by Conservative prime ministers for the past 14 years.
The only explanation I can think of is that policies and enforcement mechanisms put in place by the Premier League that were designed to combat racism have gradually grown in scope until they’re used to monitor and punish any form of ‘wrongthink’. It’s a cautionary tale about how a benign policy intended to protect the vulnerable can morph into an instrument of oppression.
And it’s not just in football, obviously. As a society we are drifting, little by little, into a form of hyper-liberal totalitarianism, and all in the name of being ‘kind’. At some point, we have to draw a line and say: ‘Enough!’ Linzi is my line.
Worth reading in full
