Sunday, June 07, 2015



The main threat to free speech comes from the Left

Brendan O'Neill, editor of "Spiked" says:

So, Holland’s Muslim-baiting MP Geert Wilders wants to demonstrate his terrorist-defying commitment to free speech by showing a clutch of cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad on Dutch TV. Wilders is right, of course, to assert the importance of free speech. But, like too many decent liberals in the West, Je Suis Charlie badges on their lapels, he is wrong about where the threat to free speech comes from.

As I wrote in a recent editorial, it's too easy to blame Islamist hotheads, or indeed feminist firebrands or daft students, for free speech's imperilment, too simplistic to hold a discernible 'them' responsible for our free-speech problem.

Because the real threat comes from within mainstream Western society. It comes from those, the liberal and respectable, who have turned a blind eye to the censoring and shushing of un-PC or inappropriate speech, those who have given a tacit thumbs-up to the idea that if expression causes offence or 'hurt', it should be shut down. It's this, the liberal, acceptable betrayal of liberty, that poses the greatest threat to free speech. Mocking Muhammad is just a childish distraction.

Via email

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some truth there.

Anonymous said...

The article is pointing at liberals which is mostly correct. To be more specific the liberal press is culpable for relinquishing the press's role as the public watchdog. Instead they have become a cheerleading section for the favored liberal politicians who refuse to stand up to muslim aggression. They continuously look the other way when our "leaders" talk tough but do NOTHING. Exhibit A is president Obama.

Anonymous said...

What else can you expect when most of the media so called journalists have been trained by very socialist professors in universities infested with pc compliance departments. The key to restoring Western society is to root out the hard core socialists that brainwash students to the point where they are no longer able to think outside the group mindset. In universities there is no longer free speech only accepted speech, an attitude that has pervaded Western society to the point where even the most hardened feminists are afraid to criticise Islam. Islam is the emperor's new clothes.

Bird of Paradise said...

Why else do liberals want speech codes for everyone but themselves