A letter signed by such luminaries as environmental activist Greta Thunberg and artists Tracy Emin and Peter Doig is presently circulating in support of Misan Harriman, chair of the London-based arts organization Southbank Centre, reports the Guardian newspaper.
The letter asserts that Harriman is the victim of what it calls a “dishonest smear campaign” by British newspaper the Telegraph and other right-wing news outlets, which accuse him of promoting conspiracies and comparing the British Reform party voters to Nazis.
The controversy surrounding Harriman centers on comments he made on social media about two recent incidents in the news. In the wake of a knife attack on April 29, in which two Jewish men were stabbed in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in London, Harriman questioned the amount of coverage given to a Muslim man whom the attacker had stabbed earlier that day. The Telegraph defended its reporting on the episode, and critics of Harriman said that his comments minimized the antisemitic nature of the attack.
Then, on the weekend of May 9, Harriman posted a video on Instagram in response to the right-wing Reform Party’s win in the UK’s local elections. In it, he cites a conversation between writers Susan Sontag and Kurt Vonnegut about the Holocaust and the nature of cruelty. Right-wing activists alleged that Harriman was comparing the rise of the right in the UK to the Holocaust; Harriman has denied he made that analogy.
The public has been swift to defend Harriman, with 70,000 people writing to complain to Britain’s media watchdog Ipso about the Telegraph and other newspapers, and 15,000 signing the current letter. However, others have questioned whether or not Harriman, as head of a charity organization’s board of governors, should be making public political statements.
For his part, Harriman—who garnered a large online following with his photographs of the Black Lives Matter protests—says he does not regret his posts, telling the Guardian: “We have reached the point where truth itself is being crushed by the very institutions that are supposed to uphold it. I will never whisper about the oppressed. I stand with truth; I stand by my right to use my voice to help others.”
The Southbank Centre, which runs the Hayward Gallery, has not issued a statement on the controversy.
