Geert Wilders and Nigel Farage test the limits of free speech

[Hopeless Romantic]

You cannot force people to have liberal opinions, or legislate for good manners. A free country must tolerate obnoxiousness. An open society must allow eccentricity to the point of insanity.

These things shouldn’t need saying. Yet we seem to have lost sight of some basic principles.
Nigel Farage was extremely rude to the President of the European Council last week. But rudeness is not against the law. Geert Wilders has some asinine opinions; but being asinine is not a criminal offence. Yet Nigel Farage has been fined by the European Parliament for insulting the dignity of Herman Van Rompuy, and Geert Wilders finds himself facing a possible prison sentence of 16 months for saying unpleasant things about Muslims.

Many people who think of themselves as lion-hearted liberals are keeping quiet about these cases, both of which have been largely ignored by the BBC and the Left-of-Centre newspapers. Yet there is nothing brave about standing up for the freedom of speech of people with whom you agree: it’s the difficult cases that count.

In which spirit, imagine a converse case. Let’s say that, instead of Nigel Farage being disobliging about a former Belgian prime minister, a former Belgian prime minister had been rude about Euro-sceptics. Let’s conjecture – for the sake of equivalence – that this former Belgian prime minister were also an MEP. Let’s suppose that he had said something truly appalling: for example, that Euro-sceptic beliefs lead logically to the gas-chambers. Would I call for him to be fined? No, of course not. But here’s the thing: neither would anyone else. We know this, because precisely such a thing has just happened (see here http://bit.ly/bZd66i )

Half a century ago, when challenges to free speech tended to turn on issues of obscenity, blasphemy and public sensibility, Lefties were loud in their denunciations of censorship – and rightly so. Will they now extend that logic to those of whom they disapprove?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100028613/geert-wilders-and-nigel-farage-test-the-limits-of-free-speech/

[non sociopath skin]

1. And your reason for posting this, HR, is ......

.....?

The Skin

[Hopeless Romantic]

2. I don't know. It's tricky for me. While agreeing fully that both of them

have behaved reprehensibly, I am troubled by the free speech aspect and I do feel that we are sometime guilty of being selective as to whose free speech we are prepared to support.

I think the article may have some merit. And that troubles me.

[non sociopath skin]

3. I can't get worked up about Farage ...

... indeed, the idea of one colourless right-of-centre politico calling another colourless right-of-centre politico colourless I find more amusing than anything else.

But Wilders is a truly nasty piece of work, a demagogue out to empower himself by peddling hate, fear and divisiveness. Can we really afford him to be allowed to peddle his venom unchecked?

The Skin

[Hopeless Romantic]

4. That is what I'm struggling with. I've forgotten who said it but there is that quote

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

and I agree with that. I do believe in free speech, and I am prepared to defend it, but the likes of Wilders challenge that.

It's difficult.

[non sociopath skin]

5. A crude instrument, I know ...

... but I've always tended to have as a rule of thumb that any individual or group whose views would mean that, once in power, they would immediately seek to restrict others' freedom, are exempt from my general tolerance.

The Skin

[Hopeless Romantic]

7. By that measure, Blair should have been gagged 15 years ago

[non sociopath skin]

8. You have a point.

The Skin

[TheBigotBasher]

17. Banning him gave that odious windbag more publicity though.

As with the Radio Shock Jock who was not even coming to the UK.

It was a put up to put a fig lea over an Islamaphobic ban list by the Home Office.

[TheBigotBasher]

6. In the 90's I defended the rights of Socialist Worker, Militant and the BNP to speak

at my then Labour student controlled Poly. I disliked all of their opinions. In fact their views were not that far removed from each other. Almost all worse bovver boots.

My views have very much changed since then but my views on the right to free speech have not.

Farage is an extreme Euro Sceptic. The electors knew his views. He was elected because of that and therefore, no matter how rude he has a right to say them.

Never mind Farage, he can afford it, free speech is being eroded if you happen to be Muslim. Remember the prosecution of the girl for her poetry?

[non sociopath skin]

9. "In fact their views were not that far removed from each other"

No fan of Militant or the SWP but I was unaware that they were advocating compulsory repatriation in the 90s. Quite a turnaround from their 80s stance, then ...

The Skin

[TheBigotBasher]

10. No they weren't

but they were thugs, different reasons to wear similar bovver boots.

[non sociopath skin]

11. Check your post. That isn't what you said.

The Skin

[TheBigotBasher]

12. The differences

were the BNP things like nationalising the banks and ending free trafde was based on hate of jews, blacks and anyone else they could add you the list. The ultra far left had the same opinion off capitalist pigs.

Both groups nutty and from where I stood, not far removed from each other.

[non sociopath skin]

13. I can see a difference.

The Skin

[Anarcho-Socialist]

14. I see big differences

While the Fascists and Nazis did indeed employ anti-capitalist rhetoric, it was aimed at international banking which they considered to be controlled by "Judeo-Bolsheviks". Nationalising banks is not of itself an anti-capitalist move. Right of centre parties until the 1970s often proposed it as a means of supporting the interests of industrial capitalism, as opposed to other sectors such as finance capitalism. The Nazis themselves owed their coming to power to the support of industrial capitalists, which allowed them to use a prolific PR machine.

The nationalisations of banks as advocated by socialists, Marxists and Trotskyists is simply a step towards moving the sector to democratic control, rather than using government power to give advantage to one sector of capitalism.

I know SWPites but never have known them to be thugs. The most offensive thing they seem to do is to try and sell me Socialist Worker.

[Dutch]

15. Are you asserting a moral equivalence

between hatred of capitalism and racial hatred of blacks and jews? :crazy:

[TheBigotBasher]

16. No

but not too deeply hidden in some of the anti-capitalist rhetoric was some extreme forms of anti-semitism and not just hatred of the Bush/Reagan presidencies hatred of American people.

It was never the hatred of capitalism that was the issue - it was the hatred of capitalists.

There were however few actual fights, just lots of chairs being moved and shouting. Most of the fights and shouting matches at my poly though tended to end up between members of the SWP and WRP. Most of them started by the WRP.

Student politics in the early 90's was enjoyable, loud and raucous, but it never amounted to anything real.

[non sociopath skin]

18. I think you're wrong. But go ahead, prove it. I'm listening. Examples, please.

The Skin