“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” So wrote Evelyn Beatrice Hall (although the quote is often misattributed to Voltaire). Her words capture the very essence of what it means to uphold free speech.
Indeed, the whole point of free speech is that even viewpoints that many people find deeply offensive get protection from the law. After several years of debate over cancel culture, I would have thought this was obvious to everyone. But apparently not.
Back in March, the Home Secretary described “non-crime hate incidents” as “Orwellian” and instructed the police to stop recording them. “Suella Braverman orders police to protect free speech” ran the headline in the Times. So far, so good.
Yet three days ago, she penned a letter to senior officers suggesting a much weaker commitment to free speech on her part. “It is not just explicit pro-Hamas symbols and chants that are cause for concern,” she wrote. “I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world”.
A “violent desire”? Is that even a meaningful concept?
And while a chant like, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” certainly could mean that Israel should be “erased from the world”, it could also mean a whole lot of other things. For example, it could mean something like, “Palestinians should have an internationally recognised state”. The job of the police isn’t to engage in mind-reading.
Braverman continued: “Behaviours that are legitimate in some circumstances, for example the waving of a Palestinian flag, may not be legitimate such as when intended to glorify acts of terrorism”. So there may be circumstances where it’s not legitimate to wave a particular national flag? Does this apply to all national flags or just the Palestinian flag?
And how could it be known whether a particular act of flag-waving was “intended to glorify acts of terrorism”? If the flag-waver happened to be shouting “acts of terrorism are glorious”, I suppose it might, but the issue there would be the shouting – not the flag-waving.
Braverman is right to draw attention to intimidation of British Jews by pro-Palestine activists. Such intimidation is wrong and should be illegal. Yet just because many people find pro-Palestine protests at this time deeply offensive, doesn’t mean those protests – including the waving of national flags and the singing of chants that have been around for years – qualify as intimidation.
Interestingly, France has gone even further than Britain, banning all pro-Palestine protests until further notice – a blatant violation of free speech. The reason they did so is obvious: they don’t want a repeat of what happened in June/July, when thousands of young people of mostly Arab and African background rioted for two weeks following the police shooting of Nahel Merzouk.
Which illustrates a point I made earlier this year in article titled ‘The diversity trilemma’. You can pick two out of the following three: social stability, civil liberties, non-selective immigration. If you pick non-selective immigration, as France has done, you can’t have both social stability and civil liberties.
Yet as someone who values social stability and civil liberties, solving the ‘diversity trilemma’ by opting for selective immigration – thereby keeping our civil liberties intact – would seem to make a good deal more sense. Will our leaders reach the same conclusion before it’s too late? It’s not clear they will.
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“That is my take, but make up your own minds by reading the full piece.”
It is behind a paywall.
https://12ft.io often gets you past some paywalls. Works well on Telegraph articles.
Thank you.
By the second paragraph, they are telling us….
“As Tate, who denies the allegations, waits to find out what will happen next, the misogynistic philosophy he has built is still thriving among social media followers. In the real world the effect has been significant.”
They can’t help themselves, and this is certainly not objective. Misogyny is defined as a hatred of women. Tate doesn’t hate women. He has a traditional view of how the sex roles are or should be played out in society. From what I’ve seen his focus is mostly on the man, and taking responsibility for their actions, and playing the provider and protector in relationships. Its a bit old fashioned if you like your men soft and weepy, but it isn’t what ts played to be. That so many leftie educators should want to spend time on making sure that young boys aren’t responsible, self reliant, ambitious or competitive, but rather compliant, and passive says a lot more about them that it does about Tate, imo.
Just expanding the point a little. I think Tate is what we used to call a ‘highly eligible bachelor’. He probably meets a far higher proportion of women, who see their opportunities in, shall we say ‘gold-digging’. Its the same for the wives of professional footballers. Are they complaining about their partners misogynism while they are spending £100k a week, driving Ferrari’s, and up to their firm buttocks in Gucci. It was a similar argument of feminism about the ‘Male Patriarchy’ because a handful of super successful and competitive men have vast wealth, then try to apply that rhetoric to the typical male in a typical marriage with a typical woman.
I know nothing about Tate but my gut tells me that his enemies are my enemies.
As for “man up” and “be a man” I think the behaviours those phrases are aimed at emphasising are generally helpful but it’s unfortunate they are sex-specific. I’m a man so it doesn’t hit me in the way it might hit a woman but to me they say “be stoical in the face of adversity and take responsibility for your own actions”. Possibly at some point in the past the general perception was that those were more typically male behaviours and that may or may not be true. I wonder if we should try to out that behind us and agree that those qualities are generally positive. Btw I’m not denying that males and female females might on average have different tendencies. I tend to think that people should think of themselves as individuals and not worry about their sex, and be strong in themselves, whatever that brings for them.
”Man-up’ a problem phrase? good grief; it is like a 1984 manipulation of language, I wish some of our politicians (male/female/in between) would ‘man up’ and get a few things sorted out.
Not a problem phrase for me – but I suppose it might be for women who could interpret it as implying that those qualities were exclusively or predominantly male. But I tend to think we should not get hung up on such things. But I can’t presume to speak for women.
Why is this unfortunate, ie, why shouldn’t woman be able to man up? The phrase is historical and ultimatively comes from the fact that men were expected to be soldiers/ fighters and women weren’t. How can the fact that this used to be the case possibly negatively affect someone? Any attempt to create or enforce politically correct language is evil.
Yes, indeed – I agree.
Tate has been a psy-op. Stop glorifying him. And don’t underestimate the enemy.
I’m curious as to why you say that. Care to explain further..?
Is that the best you’ve got.? Downvote me because I asked for an expanded answer.? Come on, engage in the discussion. We might learn something from each other…
Don’t know Tate, don’t really care either, but an online (non-Google) search of ‘who is Andrew Tate’ gives you pages and pages of MSM vitriol about him. He’s obviously hit a non-narrative nerve: perhaps one reason they’re so narked is that his classically patriarchal misogyny (where women can actually call themselves women) is getting more attention than wokerati transgender misogyny (where women can’t). That, and encouraging boys to be boys. Allegedly.
classically patriarchal misogyny
Or so. Judging from comments in the Weekly Sceptic podcast (I hate real-time media because I can read much faster than people usually speek), the guy is an ex-kickboxer- turned-pimp with an internet presence for self-marketing. Guaranteed to drive certain people up the wall in anger but otherwise, not exactly a savoury or much important character.
Entirely agree he’s probably a loathsome individual with possible criminal intent, I was just making an – admittedly tangential – point about how MSM rage about his misogyny (it seems to be the point du jour in a lot of headlines) yet are fully embracing of wokerati misogyny. Nuff said: he’s not worth the attention.
Neither, actually, and I’d quite like it if the entire internet stopped trying so hard to make me care about him.
“Some pupils are giving up on studying for exams”. How many more young people are giving up studying for exams or in the worst cases giving up on life because they have been brainwashed by Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion etc. to believe that climate change means that they have no future. Surely these unfortunate victims need a bit of sympathetic “re-education”, or at least being presented with alternative points of view so they can make up their own minds. The same applies to gender confused teenagers who are being brainwashed into taking damaging puberty blockers by woke doctors or groups such as Mermaids.
It’s funny how right on people only call it brainwashing when it involves opinions they don’t agree with, otherwise it’s education or empowerment.
The law states that teachers must not promote partisan political views and should offer a balanced overview of opposing views when political issues are taught
Is the law being followed in schools?
https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2022/02/17/political-impartiality-guidance-for-schools-what-you-need-to-know/