Jeremy Waldron's review of John Durham Peters' Courting the Abyss (from LRB)
PEN event on Hate Speech 3rd Feb., British Library
Why There Must Be No Free Speech for Nazis (Socialist Worker, Dec. 2007). This article discusses the Oxford Union debate to which Nick Griffin and David Irving were invited.
Dutch MP Geert Wilders' film Fitna which includes very disturbing scenes of violence, incitement to violence and hate speech carried out by Muslim extremists in the name of their religion juxtaposed with verses from the Koran and an anti-Islamisation message is on You Tube in two parts here. Wilders implicitly generalises from what some extremists have done in the name of their religion to the idea that Islam in every aspect is an evil. There is no sense that there could be a moderate Muslim. This is not a balanced documentary treatment. Islam is presented as a ticking bomb within the Netherlands (and presumably elsewhere). This is why this film is so controversial and why the British Government has prevented him from entering the UK despite his being a democratically elected politician from an EEC country. There are also links immediately after this movie to response videos of various kinds.
On the free speech issue here, the easy availability of the video on the Internet means that his rather crude message is not, as yet, censored in the UK. To that extent his freedom to communicate his ideas does not seem to have been radically curbed. In fact the UK Government's refusal to let him enter the country means that many more people will now watch this video in order to try to understand the ban. So indirectly they are increasing the number of people who watch Wilders' movie - which is presumably the opposite of what they intend. Whether the UK Government can now consistently apply the principle on which his ban on entry was made remains to be seen.
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