19 Feb 2009 | Uncategorized
Consistency is an often over-rated value, particularly in politics and public life. When we cry ‘hypocrite’, as if in victory, for pointing out the fact that someone is doing something different from what they did before, we often ignore the utter horror of what can happen when people always apply the same principle across the board.
Discussing the ban on Geert Wilders on a radio show last week, I was asked if the Home Office was guilty of ‘double standards’. ‘Not really’, I replied. The problem is not with double standards, but rather a spectacularly bad single standard applied universally.
That single standard has been applied again this week, with the announcement that Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church has been barred from entering the country.
Westboro Baptist Church, for those of you who don’t know, is a tiny organisation of about 70 people (mostly extended family) who have made a name for themselves with their obsessive campaigning against homosexuals and homosexuality. They periodically turn up on British documentaries of the sub-Louis Theroux genre, as your classic kerazee Americans. Sometimes it seems like the church exists solely for the easing of the lives of harassed TV commissioning editors (one gets a similar feeling about White Power pop-singing twins Prussian Blue). Either way, they’re weird, not very nice and publicity hungry –– which now seem to be the criteria for being barred from Britain.
Westboro Patriarch Phelps announced his intention to protest an anti-homophobia play being performed in Basingstoke. Now, Phelps announces his intentions to protest against things all over the world all the time. He has international ambitions – indeed he runs a rather nifty web portal called godhatestheworld.com, detailing his condemnations of various countries, in a manner reminiscent of the Skibbereen Eagle warning the Tsar of Russia that it had its eye on him.
Most of the time, Phelps does not follow through on these threats, and everything goes back to normal.
But not this week. The Home Office, perhaps keen to be seen as consistent following the Wilders debacle, decided to ban Phelps and his daughter from the country. It’s as if the Tsar of Russia had come up with a policy to counter the Skibbereen Eagle’s attentions. This order is, at best, a monumental waste of stationery, and at worst, a further signal of the obsessive narrowing of debate by a government that is increasingly reactionary, authoritarian and short sighted.
But hey, at least they’re consistent.
13 Feb 2009 | Uncategorized
Index on Censorship editor Jo Glanville was a guest on the BBC’s Newsnight on Thursday night, discussing the Geert Wilders controversy.
You can watch it here (five minutes in).
12 Feb 2009 | Uncategorized
This article was originally posted on Comment is Free
How do you solve a problem like Geert Wilders?
The solution certainly doesn’t lie in barring him from entering the country.
Wilders’ film Fitna, for those of you who haven’t feverishly YouTubed it yet, is an unpleasant rant about Islam, and the Islamicisation of Europe. He follows the line that Islam, more than any other religion, is inherently violent. It’s a poorly made, poorly argued, diatribe.
But the poverty of the argument, and indeed the editing, is irrelevant. If we are to defend freedom of expression, then we cannot pick and choose what expression we defend. This point seems problematic for some liberals. Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne has previously – and rightly – argued against prosecution for Holocaust denier Frederick Töben, saying: ‘In Britain, we value freedom of speech too highly to see it sacrificed because of the racist views of an oddball academic.’
No such leeway for an oddball politician. Speaking about Wilders, Huhne said: ‘Freedom of speech is our most precious freedom of all, because all the other freedoms depend on it. But there is a line to be drawn even with freedom of speech, and that is where it is likely to incite violence or hatred against someone or some group.’
This is not in the least bit consistent. But the problem is not with Huhne. The problem is that a man who is legally entitled, as an EU citizen, to enter this country, has been barred from doing do because of his opinions.
This is bad enough, but it is made even worse by what the ban suggests.
I’ve spent the morning, in my capacity as news editor of Index on Censorship, debating the Wilders affair on various radio phone-ins.
Among many reasonable points made by callers, many, sadly, held the opinion that this was another sign of the government giving in to “the Muslims”.
This, of course, is precisely Wilders’ argument –– and it’s an argument that is reinforced by this attempt to censor him (nevermind that his film has been out for almost a year now).
Traditionally, censorship has been used in an attempt to quell dissent and opposition, and in large part of the world it is used against progressive movements. But when we seek to censor reactionaries, such as Wilders, the BNP, or Hizb ut-Tahrir, we allow them to see themselves, and portray themselves, as the dissenters, the truth-tellers. The notion of oppression, of suppression, is now almost essential to any political movement’s sense of self.
Censorship lends an air of legitimacy to arguments that may not necessarily warrant it. In this sense, it is as insidious when used against bad arguments as when used against good ones.
12 Feb 2009 | News and features
Dutch MP Geert Wilders is to be sent back to the Netherlands after attempting to enter the UK despite a Home Office ban.
Read more here
