I’ve been away tramping for a week and was surprised to come back to controversy over whether the Auckland City Council should allow its venues to be used to promote intolerance and race hatred.
And Phil Goff at the centre of it. Goff doesn’t usually surprise me. He’s such a dyed-in-the-wool neo-liberal that his approach on most issues is easily predictable.
But his support for a council ban on the use of its venues for visiting speakers to promote racial bigotry and intolerance is a welcome surprise even if the decision was apparently made by council staff based on security and safety in venues. (Such reasoning by council staff is not valid. If this were a genuine freedom-of-speech rights issue then the council should provide the necessary support for any such event booked at a council venue)
In this case “freedom of Speech” is being used as a cover to promote the denial of freedoms to others based on race and religion. Freedom from fear, freedom from abuse, freedom from racial or religious denigration should be enjoyed by all New Zealanders. For this reason the council should not provide venues for the promotion of race or religious hatred which undermines the freedoms of other citizens.
I was one of those who complained to the Broadcasting Standards Tribunal about the racist stereotyping in Al Nisbet’s cartoon in the Press newspaper a few years back. Nisbet was promoting the view that Maori are lazy dole bludgers who waste their money on booze, gambling and smoking. His cartoon was nasty and vicious for which all Maori feel the backlash.
It wasn’t a denial of Nisbet’s freedom of speech to say the cartoon should not have been published. Nisbet has plenty of other ways to promote his racist views without being given a platform to do so by a major daily newspaper. Similarly for the “white genocide” alarmists whose narrative is based on seeing the “enemy” as those of different races or religions to Europeans. Stirring up hatred and resentment based on race or religion is nothing less than the promotion of fascist ideas.
Having said that I’m not a fan of so-called “hate speech” laws. Such laws will be much more likely to be used against progressive people than the opposite. For example Zionists in different parts of the world are trying to use such laws to close down Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaigns against the Israeli state with the absurd claim that BDS represents anti-Semitism.
We already live in a heavily constrained free speech environment where the views of wealthy and powerful capitalists are predominant in mainstream corporate media.
In this environment progressive New Zealanders must fight for free speech in every arena possible but this does not include defending “rights” of anyone to promote racist or religious hatred which smooths the path to fascism.
Those ideas must be confronted – not appeased.
Once again, this is the same argument that free speech needs to be defended, except in the case who have an opposing point of view, in which case it should be denied. There is no logic in this argument. You can’t say you support free speech at the same time as you support the denial of free speech.
“Well I am personally very skeptical about any kind of regulation of any kind of speech” – Noam Chompsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsdvYbG3U_U
We do not have full freedom of speech and for good reason. If we did then it would be possible to openly advocate violence and harm to other people or the violent overthrow of the government or propose that citizens break the law and resist law enforcement. Or select libertarians as a special breed of people who are clearly genetically inferior and need to be removed from the country by force.
If you attempted to openly encourage citizens to engage in any of these activities you would quickly find the short and the long arm of the law intervening.
There is something called “public order” and it’s enforced explicitly by law and less explicitly via social norms and it requires a level of tolerance and civility to survive. The current libertarian freak show heading to our shores brushes very close to these boundaries with the clear intent of creating race based controversy and the denigration of non-whites.
Dress it up as free speech all you want – it doesn’t hide what these people are about or what they represent and I do not feel compelled to defend their free speech because they do not have a right to say what ever they want without consequence.
Thank you, John. More reasoned than Chris Trottrr’s recent “Free Speech Denialism Is Fascism In Action”, which i found denigrating and tried to marginalise those who disagreed with him.
Yours was a more measured view.
In this case “freedom of Speech” is being used as a cover to promote the denial of freedoms to others based on race and religion.
The council could deny communists access to its facilities for pretty much the same reason (just swap out “class” for “race” and it’s an exact fit). You really should pay some attention to the logic your arguments are based on.
It wasn’t a denial of Nisbet’s freedom of speech to say the cartoon should not have been published.
It’s not a denial of his freedom of speech for you to hold that opinion, no. It would have been a denial of his freedom of speech for officials to act on your opinion though, so it always pays to have a think about what it is that you’re asking for when you say things like that.
Yes. It’s always a good thought experiment to imagine the principles one advocates applied against you by someone who really, really doesn’t like you.
e.g. If I advocate higher taxes on the rich (which I do), can this be construed as hate speech because it is advocating that a particular group of people be harmed?
No one stops you screaming at Jews, Minto
Andy I am not aware of Minto ever screaming at Jews. I am aware of him screaming at Zionists. Andy read up what the difference is – educate yourself!
Oh? So criticising Zionists (not Jews, as you suggest, Andy) is “screaming at Jews”? I thought that was freedom of speech?
Sorry, my bad. I forgot there are multiple rules at play here.
The ancient Israelites were for the most part pagan polytheists who worshipped many gods, only one of them being Yahweh, who was one of the 70 sons of the great god El in Canaanite lore. In fact, Yaweh, the jealous, rageaholic, pro-genocide and pro-rapine deity of storms and agriculture was merely a minor household god of Saul’s household. Most of the Old Testament is a story of how the cult of Yahweh sought to be the premier cult among all others that shared the temple.
At last some clear thinking over at the Daily Blog, after the naive mumbling of Chris Trotter.
Well said John, freedom of speech includes the responsibility to back what you claim with evidence instead of spouting half arsed unsubstantiated diatribe.
If you’re not allowed to hear them – you can’t confront them.
And, while you’re confronting – will you let people HEAR what you’re confronting? Or simply lecture, rant, speak in measured tones to the cognoscenti about Something That Dare Not Speak Its Name?
Should we put frills on the piano limbs?
And – how many people are likely to be infected/affected by this material? Does this have the potential to spread like the 1918 ‘flu pandemic? Or are most people too lethargic? Just a little pimple? Or gas gangrene? Some facts under the froth would be useful, even if long overdue.
We already have frequent racist outbursts in this country – just ask the dairy owners. And we have laws to deal with that. Anyone wanting to turn their misery and envy into action on others is covered by law already. That it comes after the violence is the usual state of things. Preventive measures have yet to work.
And – at the start of the day – what’s this underlying assumption that ‘people’ need protecting from themselves and their Baser Instincts? That superior people who disdain such views know better. Seems like that’s a baser instinct in itself.
Hubris, perhaps?
It is disturbing how little time it takes fo the lessons of history to be forgotten. Those who defend free speech at any cost have presumably forgotten names like Oswald Moseley and Enoch Powell.
When I was 19 I spent a winter on the streets trying to stop a racist country promoting itself through sport. Now we have the far right wanting to promote their racist ideologies through “free speech”.
Liberals are turning themselves in knots to be right and failing. Some of them probably even marched with me. This is why I’m not a “Liberal”
Malcom X once warned “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” I’m still standing [as I did in 1981] and have no illusions about fascists; crypto, friendly or otherwise.
Indeed, Martin. If free speech should be extended to all ideologies, I’m wondering why I protested in 1981.
And why should I have supported calls for the apartheid Sth African embassy and the current Israeli embassy to be closed down?
John;
I usually agree with most you have to say but I think your assumptions of
“promotion of race or religious hatred “ by this couple from Canada are way off the mark.
For further research, please read my reply to Red Buzzard found here;
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/07/11/will-freedom-of-speech-debate-become-our-deplorables-moment/
Cheers.
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