Monday, 1 July 2013

The scariest quote I've read in a while...



“There is a line in the sand between freedom of speech and the right to use hate speech. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you that right. We live in a democracy and we believe in free speech. People will now quote Voltaire but he never had the benefit of going to the gates of Auschwitz and seeing where unfettered free speech ends up.”

This is from some chap at an organisation calling itself "Hope not Hate". An organisation that clearly doesn't believe in free speech and that has a spokesman who thinks Nazi Germany was a land of "unfettered free speech".

The problem is that government - local as well as national - will not face down these organisations as they campaign for less and less free speech.



Anonymous said...

Freedom of speech, to that idiot, refers to your right to agree with him.

Anyone who argues that there should be a limit put ex ante on what can be said-- not punishing results of the exercise of the freedom of speech, (fraud, libel, slander, incitement to violence etc)-- but some political-discourse version of the Carlinian Seven Words-- such a person is hardly going to allow YOU to decide what those words shall be. Inherent in their call for control, is that THEY will be in control.

And as my mother used to say, "Who died and left you in charge?"

SadButMadLad said...

I keep thinking the name "Hope not hate" is totally wrong for what is in effect a hate group against a different group of people who just happen to have different opinions about what society should be. Have you seen the vitriol HnH have for those they hate?

Anonymous said...

Yes, it is a truly frightening comment. I have little doubt Michael Collins starts many of his utterances with the words, "I believe in free speech but..."

As Miss Geller says, "The nation that gave the world the Magna Carta is dead." Or as good as, anyway. While we harbour such as Abu HAMza (has anyone else seen that irony?) and other unashamed, unrepentant espousers of hate, this country will remain encorpsed, the only life being the rotting of the body.

Radical Rodent