On disagreement and loathsome speech
I love me the pretentious titles.
I see that loathsome Holocaust-denying "historian" David Irving has been sentenced to prison for, well, denying the Holocaust today. Irving is a truly horrible human being who has done more harm in the service of pretending the Holocaust never happened than probably anyone else. That said, this is absurd.
The government of Austria is sending a man to prison because of books he wrote. The books were vicious, hateful lies masquerading as works of history, but they advocated violence against nobody-though, of course, they sought to whitewash mass murder-and did real, concrete harm to nobody that I'm aware of. I don't mind-hell, I approve-if people want to throw rotten eggs at Irving or call him nasty names or refuse to publish or stock his books, but putting him in prison for three years? That's nuts.
Irving is a spectacularly unsympathetic case for free speech absolutists like myself, but you have to fight them all (or impotently blog about them all, I suppose) because it really is a slippery slope. In Britain, it is now illegal to "glorify terrorism," which seems like a terrifyingly broad basis on which to prohibit speech, while the American government is talking about prosecuting the journalists who published the story about their secret illegal surveillance program.
And then there's the Danish Mohammed cartoons. First, let me say that it's my opinion that the editors of the Jyllands-Posten were being intentionally offensively provacative-the cartoon equivalent of shouting insults across a playground. That said, the riots and flag burnings and embassy stormings and so forth were, of course, appalling and far worse than the cartoons.
But it's crazy to insist that newspapers and magazines in the West have some sort of obligation to run these cartoons as some sort of expression of freedom of speech. I think the paper had a perfect right to run them, just as I believe that David Irving has and had a right to say that the Holocaust didn't happen, or wasn't Hitler's fault, or whatever other ahistorical lie he chooses. But that doesn't mean I have an obligation to run sections of Hitler's War on this blog, and there's no reason that less immaturely anti-Muslim papers than the Jyllands-Posten should feel obliged to run their cartoons. To be sure, there's an important differences between the thoughtless, callow cartoons and the conscious, sophisticated smears of Irving, but it's the same principle. We all have, or should have, freedom of speech, and we all have the responsibility to use it responsibly. The important thing to remember, which Tony Blair and his allies have forgotten, is that responsibility is ours to exercise, not the state's to proscribe for us.
I see that loathsome Holocaust-denying "historian" David Irving has been sentenced to prison for, well, denying the Holocaust today. Irving is a truly horrible human being who has done more harm in the service of pretending the Holocaust never happened than probably anyone else. That said, this is absurd.
The government of Austria is sending a man to prison because of books he wrote. The books were vicious, hateful lies masquerading as works of history, but they advocated violence against nobody-though, of course, they sought to whitewash mass murder-and did real, concrete harm to nobody that I'm aware of. I don't mind-hell, I approve-if people want to throw rotten eggs at Irving or call him nasty names or refuse to publish or stock his books, but putting him in prison for three years? That's nuts.
Irving is a spectacularly unsympathetic case for free speech absolutists like myself, but you have to fight them all (or impotently blog about them all, I suppose) because it really is a slippery slope. In Britain, it is now illegal to "glorify terrorism," which seems like a terrifyingly broad basis on which to prohibit speech, while the American government is talking about prosecuting the journalists who published the story about their secret illegal surveillance program.
And then there's the Danish Mohammed cartoons. First, let me say that it's my opinion that the editors of the Jyllands-Posten were being intentionally offensively provacative-the cartoon equivalent of shouting insults across a playground. That said, the riots and flag burnings and embassy stormings and so forth were, of course, appalling and far worse than the cartoons.
But it's crazy to insist that newspapers and magazines in the West have some sort of obligation to run these cartoons as some sort of expression of freedom of speech. I think the paper had a perfect right to run them, just as I believe that David Irving has and had a right to say that the Holocaust didn't happen, or wasn't Hitler's fault, or whatever other ahistorical lie he chooses. But that doesn't mean I have an obligation to run sections of Hitler's War on this blog, and there's no reason that less immaturely anti-Muslim papers than the Jyllands-Posten should feel obliged to run their cartoons. To be sure, there's an important differences between the thoughtless, callow cartoons and the conscious, sophisticated smears of Irving, but it's the same principle. We all have, or should have, freedom of speech, and we all have the responsibility to use it responsibly. The important thing to remember, which Tony Blair and his allies have forgotten, is that responsibility is ours to exercise, not the state's to proscribe for us.
posted by Ian Gray | 4:54 p.m.
1 Comments:
Glad to enter the online version of Stately Gray Manor - perhaps we can call it Shady Gray Manor, or perhaps I should just be quiet.
In any case, it has been far too long since I have been able to argue regularly with you, and while typing is not as conducive to constant bickering as talking is, I will give it my best shot.
Well, actually, as usual, I don't disagree with you all that much. I think it's ridiculous that Irving is being put in jail for voicing an opinion about history, however malign his motivation or stupid his opinion. I will say that I don't think Holocaust-denial laws are as clearly wrong in Germany and Austria as pretty well everywhere else in the world. There's an imperative in those societies to break with the past, and for the state to make clear to its citizens that it will not entertain the sorts of hatreds that destroyed Europe in WWII, and indeed to prevent the resurgence of extremism, especially anti-Semitism. Having said that, I don't think that laws banning speech do much more than create martyrs out of monsters. I wobble back and forth on whether hate speech laws are justified, and if it crosses into incitement to violence I have no problem throwing someone in jail. But it's interesting to consider that we don't consider "incitement" to violence against another country to be objectionable - only to people in our own country. Not that it should be any different - I don't want to live in a pacifist police state. I'm just saying...
On the subject of this ridiculous cartoon debacle: I don't agree that the newspaper was being deliberately provocative. They were making, I think, an important point about self-censorship by Danes in the face of intimidation and fear caused by Muslim extremists. (As I'm sure you know, a book publisher had been unable to find an illustrator for a book about Mohammed.) The one cartoon that might have crossed the line was the one that depicted Mohammed with a bomb on his head, but I would point out the irony that in reacting to this cartoon, Muslims in many countries confirmed the connection the cartoon drew between Islam and violence. In any event, I think that the substance of the cartoons is beside the point: they did no harm. The people who did harm were, first of all, the Danish Muslims who travelled around the Middle East inflaming sentiment by handing out the cartoons, along with other, much more offensive ones, that had never been published. I was happy to see a number of Canadian Muslim leaders write in the Toronto Star today that those two mean should be charged criminally. But the only real harm here has been done by rioters who can't seem to handle the idea that something insulting to them might be taking place anywhere in the world.
What I find most distressing in all this is the reaction of many in the West, which has amounted to, "I disagree with you, and so will not defend your right to free speech, especially if someone else is threatening your life." The bromides about exercising free speech responsibly might have a place in the abstract - but when your right to free speech is being threatened with violence not only abroad but in your own country to vacillate and monder on about responsibility is to capitulate to intimidation, saying essentially that we won't defend speech when it becomes uncomfortable for us. I think political leaders have also been afraid that by standing up to the thugs they will somehow appear anti-Muslim. If that is the case, then Islam has just had its status in our society exalted, because nobody tut-tuts anti-Christian blasphemy. Political leaders should have nothing to say about any time of blasphemy, except that the right to blaspheme or otherwise offend must be absolute.
I do agree with you that papers have no obligation to run the cartoons. But I think that the reason they haven't run them is out of fear, because there's no other good reason not to run them - it's been a major story for weeks and people have to be able to see the cartoons to be informed on the issue. So I think it's rather frightening that so many papers didn't run them - another example of self-censorship in the face of intimidation, in my opinion.
Francis Fukuyama has an interesting article on Slate today about Europe's problem with Islam. I think he makes an important point towards the end: the real problem is that Europe, and the West generally, doesn't have the courage of its convictions. It's been heartening to see so many Europeans (if not that many political leaders) stand up for a free society recently, but postmodernism and multiculturalism have combined into a toxic brew of moral relativism for too long. Maybe this will lead to the re-stating of universal Enlightenment principles, and spark a discussion of what the West stands for in its own societies. I hasten to add that it's not enough to deplore the culture of intolerance, sexism, homophobia and religious extremism that exists in places like France's suburban ghettos without getting serious about providing economic opportunities to Europe's Muslims, and getting away from the racist conceptions of citizenship that too many Europeans still believe in.
And on that note, I will end this long rant.
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