Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s tweets were wrong, but he is no ‘anti-white Islamist’. Why does the British right want you to believe he is? | Naomi Klein

I have no interest in defending his social media posts, but calls to strip the newly freed activist of British citizenship pile torment on top of torture

What is the proper punishment for hateful social media posts? Should you lose your account? Your job? Your citizenship? Go to jail? Die? For the people who have launched a campaign against the British-Egyptian writer and activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, no punishment is too great.

I have no interest in defending the awful tweets in question, which Abd el-Fattah posted in the early 2010s. Many are indefensible and he has apologised “unequivocally” for them. He has also written movingly about how his perspective has changed in the intervening years. Years that have included more than a decade in jail, most of it in Egypt’s notorious Tora prison where he faced torture; missing his son’s entire childhood – and very nearly dying during a months-long hunger strike.

Naomi Klein is a Guardian US columnist and contributing writer. She is the professor of climate justice and co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia

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