Sir, – Martin O’Quigley, chairperson of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (May 29th) denies that intimidation is used in appealing to Irish artists to sign up to a cultural boycott of Israel. This may be true as regards the very first request to the artist.
However, it is what follows that constitutes the intimidation. For when artists – like Gerard Donovan – simply fail to respond to or comply with the campaign’s requests the campaigners then proceed to post “open letters” on the web. These letters try to pressurise non-compliant artists into changing their minds by maliciously associating their names with a refusal to boycott “monstrous and evil” Israel.
So, what starts out as an innocuous looking request by a private e-mail to the artist quickly changes gear – should the artist refuse to sign up (or even simply not reply) – into the modern-day equivalent of a “McCarthyite” campaign, publicly accusing and stigmatising non-compliant artists on the web for choosing to hold the “wrong” political attitudes.
This trial-by-web involves the artists being bombarded with a concerted and venomous web onslaught from the campaign’s supporters and activists. Such attacks also serve to intimidate any other would-be refuseniks, by clearly showing what also lies in store for them should they too refuse to support the obvious “rightness” of the boycotters’ cause.
Then, to add insult to injury, as evidenced by some of your letter writers today, there is a continuing flat out rejection of the personal experiences of targeted artists (such as, Dervish and Gerard Donovan) who disclosed to the media that they have been seriously intimidated. Surely, the only people who are qualified to make a judgment of their painful experiences are the victims of those experiences? And certainly not those to whom the victims are attributing the said experiences. – Yours, etc,