After the whole pro-Brexit ordeal, John noticed a suspicious increase in the amount of students attempting to engage him in political discourse, which yes, sounds brilliant, debate is exactly what we need, however, their true motives behind this were rather sinister and John himself was oblivious to what was actually going on.

The university’s actions so far blatantly disregard both their own internal policies and procedures, and arguably even the law. Despite the fact that students don’t have the same legal protections as employees, it’s clear that John has been subjected to gross mistreatment and unfair discrimination. Unfortunately, seeking legal recourse through a judicial review is prohibitively expensive, with costs exceeding a hundred thousand pounds. This means that access to justice is largely reserved for those who can afford it, leaving individuals like John at a severe disadvantage. It’s possible that the university was aware of this fact and exploited it to their advantage, knowing that John would be unable to obtain legal justice for the unjust actions they had taken against him.

Leaflets

James Harvey keenly wrote to me just after our interview, clarifying that SAT also does not accept any “pro-Hitler” beliefs. John submitted all this evidence in a report to a higher power within the university, with the hopes he could stop the administration from targeting him for “wrongthink.” Because of this report he’d made, they assembled an entire team of administrators to monitor John’s social media presence without his knowledge. The entire purpose of this group was to find things they considered to be “objectionable”. They took numerous out-of-context comments made by John and twisted them to portray him in a negative light. The group’s actions were subjective and unfair, and it was a clear attempt to silence John and suppress his freedom of expression. I asked Shaw how he felt about the University of Manchester’s treatment of rent-striking students and their freedom of expression – arguably one of the most prevalent free-speech issues facing students here at the moment.

Seemingly very aware of the police presence, and as I found out from later conversations, informed by some unpleasant past experiences of ‘kettling’ (a police tactic used to contain protests) – the counter-protesters eased the pressure and slowed the pace. no one really knew in the summer of 2020 how far this BLM thing was going to go so obviously it was a genuine concern at the time.” There seems to be a cognitive dissonance between the claims of taking “responsibility” for one’s words and then denying culpability in contributing to a hostile atmosphere. Once the protest wound down, I spoke to one of SAT’s guest speakers, Tom Shaw, a dentistry student at Newcastle University.Because of this, Christian rightly decided to complain to a higher power within the university. During this complaint, he’d made references to files in his GDPR request and them not allowing him to attend many meetings as direct proof that many lecturers, research professors, administrators, etc were not only trying to get students to make complaints about him but just conspiring to have him taken off the PhD program and were attempting to persecute him into leaving. They are posing as ‘free speech activists’ but actually they want to create division, transphobia, racism. As a union and as activists, we won’t stand for it.

The extra money will go towards extensive advertising and marketing, maintaining and the continued development of this platform. Were Hans’s actions acts of resistance? If so, resistance against what? What difference did his actions make? So what was really going on? As it later turned out, some of John’s fellow students were trying to bait him into making offensive statements, so they could report him to the university administration and lodge a complaint against him. Harrison, Rhodri (2021-09-21). "Students spreading Covid misinformation could face discplinary action". WalesOnline . Retrieved 2022-01-27. One day he came home with another prohibition. One of the leaders had taken away a book by his most beloved writer, Stellar Hours of Mankind by Stefan Zweig. It was forbidden, he was told. Why? There had been no answer. He heard something similar about another German writer whom he liked very much. This one had been forced to escape from Germany because he had been engaged in spreading pacifist ideas.James Harvey’s cause of the day, and his reason for being in Manchester, was the experience of a University of Manchester postgraduate student, ‘John Christian’ (pseudonym). We know what happens when hatred is used to divide the working class – we work for the government and the government is doing this every day.” Sarah Ensor, PCS Union Branch Secretary, pictured left holding a sign that reads: “Don’t let the far right divide us.” It’s worth noting that disciplinaries must be initiated within four weeks of receiving a complaint – similar to a statute of limitations. However, in John Christian’s case, the disciplinary process was delayed for several months, which took a significant toll on his mental health. The delay in initiating the disciplinary process added unnecessary stress to an already challenging situation, exacerbating John’s struggles. In the meeting I was like ‘this was ridiculous, I never said this’ and obviously I didn’t really understand what it was in relation to” additionally telling me, “I thought they misunderstood what he was saying. What I didn’t realise at the time was that they were actively trying to get rid of me because of the whole Brexit thing. So they were deliberately taking these half truths that people were feeding to them and blowing them out of proportion and then using that as a reason to make a disciplinary.”