Pigdogfucker has started to eat his own tail.
Last week we had this:
Everyone should have the right to say appalling and offensive things. If you don’t believe that, your opinion is worthless.
Quite right, too – although that doesn’t necessarily mean that the opinion is worthless; depends on the opinion. However, this week, this little gem:
If your attitude to Holocaust denialists being locked up is anything other than “fuck yeah; although it’s a shame they don’t just gas them and their families”, you are a cunt.
Ditto climate change denialists. And Tories.
PDF’s response when this mismatch is pointed out is to cite “incoherent gibbering rage”. Okay, fine. We all do that from time to time. But:
I find it quite difficult to care all that much when they are.
If you believe in freedom of speech, then you believe in it for everyone – including those opinions you deem worthless or offensive. If you cannot bring yourself to support the freedom of speech for holocaust deniers, then you don’t believe in freedom of speech and you are a part of the problem. You bloody well should care if they are locked up for voicing an opinion – it might be you locked up tomorrow.
Why do I support the right of holocaust deniers to speak freely? Apart from the matter of those arguments being in the open and vulnerable to challenge and ridicule; one day, it will be my freedom of speech under attack and I would hope that someone, somewhere will help keep me from gaol. So, you see, while I find some of PDF’s comments pretty vile; I support absolutely, unequivocally and unconditionally, his right to make them. And, yes, I would care if he was sent to gaol for voicing them.
Quite right too – it’s a slippery slope. It might be us one day. People have the right to say that paedophiles are right to go about their business – doesn’t stop their opinion being the reserve of cunts and ill people. But there should be no sanction for making it.
Except that none of us truly believe in completely free unfettered free speech. Oliver Wendel Holmes (Senior Supreme Court Justice from yesteryear) said that the right to free speech does not encompass the right to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre. US and British law does not grant direct incitement to violence immunity under freedom of speech laws. So the line will have to be drawn somewhere. However British law is increasingly drawing it inappropriately. Silly Christians saying that gay men will face eternal hellfire should not be criminalised, just laughed at. But if they start arguing that gay men should be killed for being gay then they’ve crossed a line and have lost the right to be simply laughed at. The same with holocaust deniers. We do not have offence of holocaust denial and nor should we and most certainly should not be extraditing people to countries that have such an offence.