London music prof is permanently banned by Twitter
NewsIt has been reported that Twitter has permanently suspended the musicologist and critic Mark Berry.
Berry, who is professor of music and intellectual history of the Department of Music Gender Institute at Royal Holloway University of London, is not a wallflower academic who shies away from a fight.
But to be banned for life?
It’s apparently down to a misunderstood description of the opera plot of Dialogues des Carmelites. Mark Berry has shared this on another network: I received a message this morning informing me I had been suspended from Twitter. It was for saying the guillotine was too good for some people, which Twitter claimed to be glorification and possible incitement of violence. It was actually in the context of followers tweeting about the opening night of a new production of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites at Glyndebourne, with its concluding tragic guillotine scene
As many of you know, Mark Berry (@boulezian) has been permanently suspended from Twitter. Numerous messages sent to @twittersupport asking for his restatement have been ignored. Mark knows that many people tried to help and has asked me to convey his thanks for all your support.
— Christian Hoskins (@aquilanebula) June 13, 2023
AI rules.
Artificial Stupidity
I’m not certain it’s ‘artificial’ stupidity. There does seem to be a lot (too much?) of natural stupidity around these days.
There’s likely to be an excess of stupidity in any company run by Elon Musk. The fish rots from the head.
And what, pray, does the RHUL ‘Gender Institute’ do – and why? I’d genuinely like to know!
Well, regarding Elon Musk’s (mis)management of Twitter….
I guess he won’t be “burning the planet” by wasting electrons on tweets.
Just shows how headless Twitter has become.
How is saying “the guillotine is too good for some people” NOT an incitement to violence? It is clearly a suggestion that some people deserve a painful death
Well, as long as I get to choose who the people are who deserve the painful death, I’m game….
What if he meant, “the guillotine scene was too realistic for some people”?
I have no idea if that is what “followers” were “tweeting” about or that he was commenting on that, but it is easy to imagine an exculpatory context like that.
Without having read the context, I understand the phrase to mean that there are some people so vicious as to think that guillotining (designed as a merciful death) is not sufficiently cruel as a fate for their enemies.
And here I was led to believe that all Goodthinkers say the death penalty is barbaric.
The bien pensant has a lot to answer for in terms of hypocrisy. Maybe they just need to get out more!!
Let’s just forget Twitter.
Hear, hear! I never saw the point of it – it does more harm than good. Besidrs, it is Donald Trump’s favourite means of communication so it must be enturely execrable.
It really is time those at Twitter who enjoy the intelligence of gnats should be wrapped up and thrown away !!!!!!!
Until we know the full context it’s vain to speculate. In any case, is Mark Berry’s life liable to be permanently damaged by not being able to post on Twitter? Not having an account and being perfectly happy I honestly can’t see the need of it.
Totally agree.
What a joke. The new boss the same as the old boss. But most online forums (both users and admins), including this one, has its fair share of people (certainly in anonymous cyberspace) who like doing an impersonation of the Gestapo. Or a way of life that, for example, folks in post-Mao China are very familiar with.
Is there no possibility of meaningful Twitterless afterlife?
You have to repeatedly violate Twitter’s ToS (or make fun of Elmo once) to get suspended.
Perhaps being headless struck a nerve for Twitter.
He posted a Guardian article titled “Disco then shower at 33,000ft: Dubai hotelier launches £10k-an-hour ‘party jet’”, accompanied by the offending caption. There’s no reference in the tweet to Poulenc or Carmelites, though he’s since explained a connection should have been inferred because there were posts about Carmelites in his twitter timeline.
For those who are interested, another twitter user has posted a screenshot of the original tweet here: https://twitter.com/TuThanhHa/status/1667946768430931976?t=AMSiDycFA0_AMM9l1H2FQg&s=19
Banned from Twitter? He should be punished, not rewarded!
It’s a hateful tweet. Seems to enjoy fantasising about painful deaths in his quest for ‘social justice’.
I was banned on Twitter for 12 h for asking if the carving on the back of a violin changed its sound. Banned for promoting self harm. I guess the algorithm just saw carving and back and ignores violin and sound.
Was your account restored? I’m trying (in vain so far) to make contact with a human being in the Twitter administration to discuss the tweet (which I have since deleteed) that mentioned the “guillotine” in reference to the final act of Poulenc’s ‘Dialogue of the Carmelites’.
He has form. He’s been briefly suspended before. This is nothing new. He has distain for anyone with a different political view to his own.
Exactly. The revolution ion always eats its own.
What’s the problem? You just open a new account using a different email address. A whole sector of Twits do so at least once a week!
All wrong thinkers should be banned. If they persist in expressing wrong think in public venues, they should be deplatformed, debanked, and left to starve in the cold as they deserve — ostracized, like Spinoza, but more thoroughly. The safety of our community demands it. Fascism is not something to take casually.
I’m afraid that he is a somewhat performative left wing hothead, a Corbynista opera and music man (there are quite a few), who has received his comeuppance in this case. However, he should not be permanently banned, that is absurd.
He has enjoyed insulting anyone he deems middle class, either socially or in their musical tastes, and his jibe here about the guillotine being ‘too good for’ luxury travellers is all of a piece. He is clearly internally conflicted about attending opera and being kettled with those he instinctively dislikes.
But an attention seeker will find seeking attention more difficult off Twitter. Hence his mistake. He will learn, and Twitter should allow him back.
Please be aware that Mark Berry is a very sensitive intellectual. I’ve personal experience of the action he may take to protect his ‘reputation.’ I received a communication from the Chief Legal Officer of Royal Holloway, demanding that I remove from my Website all material relating to Dr Berry. I found the clumsy attempt at censorship hilarious as well as disturbing and didn’t comply, of course. Anyone who would like to see the material will find it on my Website http://www.linkagenet.com on the page http://www.linkagenet.com/themes/cambridge-university.htm
Although the Website isn’t a prominent one, Google has been good to me in many ways. To give just a couple of examples, the current ranking for the search term Cambridge University excellence stupidity is 1 / 2,840,000 and the current ranking for the search term ethical depth is 3 / 272,000,000.
A short extract from the page:
[There’s] a contradiction between so many of his tweets, disturbing, disastrously misguided
– amongst the tweets of Mark Berry quoted and discussed below are ones in which he gives an opinion of this country
‘I hate this country so much’,
his call to the civil service
‘Surely it is time for the entirety of the civil service to go on strike. Bring this rotten, fascist government down for good.’
(I point out that this grossly stupid recommendation, if acted upon – but it never would be acted upon, a civil service strike to bring down the government is perfectly possible according to his political ‘thinking’ but the real world operates in accordance with different principles – would halt the payment of benefits and pensions, and, of course, have a damaging, destructive impact on so much else)
his call for insurrection
‘ … No one will take to the streets to rid us of Johnson and his fellow fascist criminals …’
(He studied history at Cambridge University but seems not to be aware of a much earlier recommendation to ‘rid’ the world of an unwanted person: Henry II’s ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’ Four knights took the king’s words literally and assassinated Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Does Mark Berry advocate assassination of Boris Jomnson? [the Prime Minister at the time the material was added to the site] I hope not, but he isn’t advocating the methods of democratic politics.)
this, on the former Labour MP Kate Hoey
‘the Nazi Hoey … ‘
this, on eliminating New Labour
‘The racist obscenity that is New Labour must go’
(and again, not by the methods of democratic politics)
this opinion of the Spectator magazine
‘a cesspit of unabashed Nazism’
(he didn’t provide any quotes from the Spectator to support his deranged claim)
this vile description of Sarah Ludford
‘mass murderer’
– and his academic writing, on the music of Wagner and other composers, his co-editing (with Nicholas Vazsonyi) of ‘The Cambridge Companion to Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, his concert reviews on his Boulezian blog, his writing on music on other sites. I’ve been reading the blog for years, finding faults there, such as very stilted language on occasion, but more often, I’ve appreciated his comments, conveyed in language not in the least stilted, or showing only moderate signs. There are far better musical blogs, but his is far from negligible. [Since I wrote this, I’ve stopped reading his blog.]
Many pages of the Website make use of Large Page Design – the pages are wide as well as long. A screen which is bigger than the small screen of a mobile device is needed, realistically, although the page on Cambridge University (as well as other universities) isn’t one of the wider ones. The very comprehensive material on Dr Berry is in the second column of the page.
Mark Berry is humourless and intolerant of other opinions. He blocked me for one comment when I criticised Jeremy Corbyn.
As soon as I saw the headline, I knew the professor would be Mark Berry. Probably just a matter of time.
Oh dear. Suggest he starts his own democratic site specialising in freedom of speech
I would ban anyone who taught at a “Department of Music Gender Institute”.
If anyone believes Twitter is the vehicle to promote sensible conversation then are you a Twit or a Twat? I don’t know why Classical music organisations feel it necessary to jump on this bandwagon of social media to promote their case anyway. Artificial Intelligence is a name used for something that is not real anyway. We need to get away from all this crap and lead simpler lives again. Folk are using things that they don’t really understand. Like the customer who went into a HiFi shop to buy a new CD player and told the shop assistant, ‘I’d like one with the dil*o system.
Why are the most ardent capaigners for social equality so full of hate? It’s a phenomenon becoming increasingly easy to witness now that we have social media. I’ve often wondered if, for some, those politics are merely a sublimated expression of jealousy.
I used to be his friend. Complicated guy, but there’s a side to him that’s a real jerk and a fanatic. It speaks to how smart he is that he rose this high in musicology in spite of it, but his penchant for wanting to murder those who disagree (and he wasn’t kidding) could get easily him fired before he learns to rein it in.
I too made a lighthearted comment on the Glyndebourne production, referring to the “guillotine” in the final act of the Poulence and have been likewise banned. The Twitter appeals department hides behind an inpenetrable wall of automated replies, a terrifying mark of an individual’s impotence against the forces of a AI-controlled global medium. I sympathise with the Just Stop Oil movement, so to suggest my quip was a violent threat against the protestors is absurd.