The University College London's student union has banned The Nietzsche Club from holding meeting on campus because they feared discussions about right-wing philosophers could encourage fascism, The Daily Beast reported.
The student organization was barred from holding public meetings after a series of posters advertising the group and discussions of the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Julius Evola, who have been cited as inspiration for far-right politicians. One of the posters asked if there was "too much political correctness?" And another claimed: "Equality is a false God."
"Far-right racists, sexists, and homophobes trying to organize on campus is a direct threat to the student body, and if our efforts at their disaffiliation have been at all successful in preventing them from organizing, then, yes, we are pleased," Timur Dautov, one of those who formerly proposed the ban to the students' union, told The Daily Beast.
Dautov said one of the names on the posters gave away the groups intentions completely.
"Julius Evola criticized fascism from the right, was a rabid anti-Semite, and wrote of the superior 'Nordic race,'" Dautov said. "It is like starting a society to study Hitler."
According to Inside Higher Ed, the motion to ban the group -- passed March 11 -- expressed that the philosophers the Nietzsche Club proposed to study were "on the extreme-right, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, homophobic, anti-Marxist, anti-worker and have had connections, direct or indirect, with Italian fascism and German Nazism."
Tom Slater, "whose "Free Speech Now!" Campaign calls for open dialogue on campuses," told The Daily Beast that the student organization had joined an absurd list of people, objects and pop songs banned from colleges.
"In the [United Kingdom] over the past year alone, we've seen everything from Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' to tabloid newspapers like The Sun and The Daily Star banned by scores of student unions on just as tenuous grounds," he said. "Not only does this censorship undermine the very ideal of a university as a place where even the most abhorrent ideas are aired and contested, but it projects a lowly view of students.
A student union official told The Daily Beast Wednesday that the ban has been temporarily suspended pending legal review.
