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