Christopher has won himself some well-deserved brownie points with his latest Slate piece, Let Them In, in which he affirms the principle that people should on no account be banned from entering countries on account of foul language. This is a view I am in strong agreement with, although applying it to websites is quite another matter.
It comes as a small surprise to me that Hitch has put forth this view, both because he was very mean to Tony Judt when he had his run in with the Zionist mafia a couple of years back, and because he has quite rightly extended the principle to embrace his old nemesis, that "real thug" George Galloway.
True, the Canadians have said the ban was about supporting, not just a terrorist organization — as most of us do that day-in, day-out, by paying taxes — but a "banned illegal terrorist organization," namely, Hamas. However, nobody takes that excuse seriously. The real reason for George being persona non grata is that the Zionist lobby don't like what comes out every time he opens his great festering gob.
Hitch has, like many others in the blogosphere, put his fingers on a delicious irony — that George has himself called on a well-known loud-mouth French politician not to be allowed into the UK, and that he had not been among those calling on the UK Government not to ban an equally notorious Dutch MP.
Galloway has in the past issued his own calls for foreign politicians to be banned from British soil, as in the case of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of France's extreme-right National Front. And he was not conspicuous in protesting in February, when the British government deported Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician whose party holds nine seats in parliament, after the latter's arrival at Heathrow Airport.
In the case of Le Pen, the irony is doubly delicious in that George was actually leading the chorus for slamming the portcullis in Jeam-Marie's face, as this article from the Guardian of 24 April 2004 captures so succinctly:
Calls to ban Mr Le Pen from Britain were led George Galloway, the former Labour MP and cofounder of the Respect coalition, who has insisted that he "should not be allowed to step foot on to British soil at any time".
"If the home secretary allows into this country someone who denies the Holocaust and who is on record as hating all Muslims, he will be siding with the neo-Nazi far-right against multicultural Britain," Mr Galloway said.
The leader of the House of Commons, Peter Hain, yesterday told MPs Mr Le Pen was "seeking to exercise his right to free speech here in a way that he would not be able to exercise his right to free speech if he were to live under the fascist, racist regime that he supports and I think that it is really disturbing that he has been invited".
As Peter Hain is so luke warm about protecting freedom of speech that he can't tolerate the occasional fascist or racist goosestepping across the Channel, then now that South Africa has been liberated from apartheid, I for one wouldn't be the least bit heartbroken if he were to sod off back home. But I digress. Given George Galloway's 2004 stance, I can't help thinking that in being shut out of Canada he has truly been hoist by his own proverbial, and it is big-hearted as well as big-minded of Hitch to have come out in support of not banning opinions as a matter of principles. As Hitch says:
The underlying premise of the First Amendment is that free expression, when protected for anyone, is thereby protected for everyone. This must apply most especially in tough cases that might raise eyebrows, such as the ACLU's celebrated defense of the right of American Nazis to demonstrate in heavily Jewish Skokie, Ill., in the late 1970s. One of the effects of the "war on terror," and of one of its concomitants, namely the attrition between the Muslim world and the West, has been an increasing tendency to make exceptions to First Amendment principles, either on the pretext of security or of avoiding the giving of offense. We should have learned by now that, however new the guise, these are the same old stale excuses for censorship. We might also notice that if one excuse is allowed, then all the others are made "legitimate" also. The risk of allowing all opinions by all speakers may seem great, but it is nothing compared with the risk of giving the power of censorship to any official.
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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