Meanwhile, I turn to the gathering storm over this weekend’s planned demonstrations.
The fallout from the horrific Hamas attacks has produced some strange bedfellows: LGBT rights campaigners with fundamentalist Islamists, “anti-racists” with anti-Semites, but also erstwhile free speech advocates worrying about demonstrations and “harmful” language, and liberal civil rights campaigners urging deportations and deprivations of citizenship. This sudden mix-up shows that there isn’t really a consensus across society on how we handle free speech.
I have seen many of my fellow travellers getting it wrong with this pro Hamas marching thing. The argument goes – and I know it well, because I’ve made it myself numerous times – that sunlight is the best bleach, that if you value free speech, then you are willing to protect it for those you despise. All perfectly correct. However, this is not a free speech matter, it is a broader liberty matter.
Liberty does not mean a free for all. There will always be constraints on liberty. The old adage that you have the right to swing your fist one works well for this situation. That is, your right to swing your fist ends with the beginning of my nose.
Armistice day is one day of the year. It is culturally significant to pretty much most of the Anglosphere. It’s a sombre occasion of quiet remembrance. Consider, for a minute, if a loud, riotous and violent mob were to march past a mosque during a Muslim holy day and see how the argument would pan out. Plod would run out of cells.
Yet this is precisely the same situation. Those who wish to commemorate the occasion should have the freedom to do so. I know I’m dangerously close to arguing ‘freedom from’ rather than ‘freedom to’ but I’m not. I’m saying that they should be free to do so without getting a bloody nose. Freedom works alongside mutual respect and decency.
Yes, I know, we are dealing with people who have no concept of either and tolerate neither. So, maybe it is time to enforce it. It is time that we stood up for our traditions, culture and liberty – and liberty does not mean tolerating the intolerable. Really, it is time for multiple arrests, prosecution and where appropriate, deportation. If we are to preserve our traditions, culture and liberty, then we have reached a point where we have no option but to curtail the liberty of those who will not honour such principles and are willing to use them as a weapon to destroy us.
So it must be right, if we wish, to act to shore up that kind of society – including by reducing migration or controlling demonstrations. Yes, it’s a paradox that sometimes only controls can help us preserve freedom – but it’s no less true for that.
Precisely. So, yes, the march should not be allowed to go ahead. I expect that it will though. The good thing to come out of it, is that the usual suspects who can always be relied upon to rally round the most repugnant causes, could possibly have pushed the envelope to breaking point.
Maybe that is what is needed.
My perspective is simple – everyone should be equal under the law. If a bunch of neo-Nazis wanted to parade through London waving flags that aren’t swastikas but look very like them, shouting some plausibly deniable anti-Semitic slogans (‘Time for the final solution!’ or ‘Work shall set you free!’) then I don’t think the Met police would be giving earnest explanations as to how such words could me one thing or they could mean another and we can’t make assumptions. No, they’d be shutting it down faster than you can say Kristallnacht. And rightly so. All I demand is the same attitude is taken with Islamic fascists. And if it isn’t then Suella Bravermann is right – the police ARE biased and we can all see it.
one of the arguments i often hear is that ww2 was fought to preserve democracy and free speech and that those who fought would be disgusted at any restriction, Various of my uncles fought during ww2 and they never talked in such lofty tones- they were fighting to preserve their way of life and protect their loved ones and to do their duty – remember their fathers had fought in ww1. Unfortunately they are all deceased now so i can’t ask them but i’m sure they would be disgusted at the denigration of this country and the outright anti semitism of the various cockroaches who have invaded the uk. They’d probably be hoping they were shot and free speech be damned.
I think that the problem with the radical Islamists is that the time to clamp down on their wayward behaviour was decades ago. Like children who grew up without their parents setting boundaries, when they get to be adults it’s then too late to straighten them out. The police force, particularly the Met, are now nothing but a disgrace. That, to the best of our ability, everyone should be equal before the law is an essential foundation stone of a civilised society. How will civilisation stand if that is gone? The answer is that it won’t, the police and the courts have placed certain people above the law, what do suppose will happen as a consequence of that?
I think that the divide in this dispute is between those who create and those who destroy. The destroyers never look further than their own noses, they just see something that they hate and want it destroyed. They never look ahead and think about what they will be left with once they have succeeded. Build back better is often the slogan, but having destroyed capitalism, how do they propose to do it?