Though Cowards Flinch

Just to let you know, Nick Griffin is a legally elected MEP for the North West of England. DEMOCRACY ?????

Yep, tommy, and there were also lots of elected Nazi Party politicans in Germany in the early 30s. What’s your point?

Indeed Tommy just what is your point?

Paul how many are backing the campaign now?

Thanks for adding me to your list. While I’ve been so quiet lately my joining the boycott will be inconsequential, I have always believed fascists should be denied a platform.

Speech has always been carefully regulated. Laws on defamation protect against malicious lies and broadcasters’ are regulated in the expectation that they’ll deal with people fairly. Fascists have always spread malicious lies about those they hate and so made reasoned debate impossible.

A complete ban on fascist views is extreme, but it is a fair given that those views are themselves extreme to such an extent that they threaten others’ liberty — why should anyone enjoy rights they strive to deny others? — and are are often expressed in a manner likely (even designed) to incite violence.

I’ve posted about 3 times in the last year, and would certainly not be voted for by anyone, but you’re welcome to add Provisional BBC if you like – your choice.

I am the main author of the two posts seeking a boycott of the Total Policitcs Blog Awards in the event of the publication of an interview with Nick Griffin. Apologies – this debate is on so many blogs this evening, and I’m so short of time, that I’m forced for now into a standard reply copied across blogs. Here it is:

There’s been a lot of debate in the blogosphere today about the call for a boycott
of the Total Politics Blog Awards, further to the TCF post yesterday. I’ve been out all day, and my TCF colleague Dave has done a great job covering a lot of the stuff on this site and others, so I’ll just follow up wit some comments on what I think are the ain ‘attack lines’ that I’ve seen.

1) Why didn’t we wait to see what was in the interview? (Iain Dale)

Because our protest is about what he represents, not what he says to an interviewer. He will lie.

2) Why didn’t we call for a boycott when the BBC had Nick Griffin on Question Time (Tom Harris)

Because we couldn’t have won that battle. We might not win this one, but there’s a better chance.

3) Isn’t calling for a boycott anti-democratic/against freedom of speech?

No.

We’re simply exercising our democratic right in calling for Total Politics not to publish the interview. We’re not trying to ban the interview; we’re saying that we’re against it bin published, and that if it is published we’ll exercise our democratic right to protest about its publication in as effective a manner as possible.

This is not the same as recourse to the power of the state/law which, for example, banned trade union members from standing/speaking in solidarity

Freedom of speech must include the freedom to speak collectively.

4) Will a boycott be effective?

We don’t know. If we win the argument we win and TP will rethink publication even at his late stage; if we lose, TP will publish it. If Total Politics vote retains its legitimacy in the eyes of anyone who takes any notice, we lose again.

Terry: Paul and Dave want to end private property. I consider this would be catastrophic for the living standards of billions of people across the globe. Should I seek to ban Paul and Dave from airing their views? Once we start dividing up legitimate and illegitimate views we start down a very dangerous road.

Which brings me to a more general point. Mill recognised that the oppression of society was potentially as corrosive of this right as the law itself; so should we. Free speech is more than a legal concept; to be of any use it must involve actual freedom. To say someone is absolutely free to shout at the trees in a field but only free to speak to people subject to various considerations is, in essence, a denial of their freedom to speak if that freedom is to have any substantial content.

Perhaps we should consider how we would judge a pre-internet nation where socialists were prevented from gaining access to any newspapers by the owners, where there were protests and sanctions on any fora which held debate where socialists were able to express their views. I submit we would not consider the freedom of speech in that society to be adequate.

Terry? I meant Stephen. Didn’t mean to conflate you with a drug taking Rugby leage player, apologies.

Who is oppressing society, Barney? Quite the opposite, we’re calling on ‘society’ to exercise its rights of protest. This is a move from within ‘society’ itself, which is itself a form of political engagement and debate. It does not call upon the dead hand of the State to intervene.

No one is advocating the curtailment of the BNPs right to speak to anyone. We’re advocating a publication using its free choice and not publishing an interview. These two things are not the same, nor is the distinction semantic. The right of Nick Griffin to free speech does not include a right for any given publication to repeat, give credence to or otherwise publicize what he says.

As for the shoe being on the other foot, communists are still excluded wherever possible from newspapers etc. ‘Socialist’ is a broad label, which some would apply to certain media darlings, but this group have never been discriminated against. To find the truly excluded, I have to narrow your initial parameters.

It took a movement of two million people and change to get Lindsey German, or John Rees and co, into the news and debating chairs of the mainstream media. Even then, the anti-war movement was routinely ignored, denigrated, sneered at and flagrantly lied about. So let’s not pretend that the bias against ‘socialists’ is a thing of the past. It still exists, in the internet age.

We contend that freedom of speech is routinely curtailed for groups that oppose the established order. What we’re also alive to is the danger that the BNP narrative is not as universally reviled by that order as some might like to think. The right-wing of the Tory Party has always had a darkside, as have those self-same newspaper magnates you spoke of.

The purpose of “no platform” is to balance the field in this regard, and ensure by popular pressure and widespread political engagement – via protests, propaganda, boycotts, public meetings and letter writing – that the BNP and their ideas do not get an easy ride. Which they would almost certainly get, bearing in mind just how close the BNP are to the go-to think tanks of the mainstream press, like Migration Watch.

Apologies. Whilst typing a ghastly grammatical error slipped in: “of society” should read “by society”.

Of course y does not have the right to speak through any one organ. But for consistency one would boycott any organ through which y did speak through.

I never contended socialists/communists/marxists/marxians/leninsts/neo-zizekians… etc do have unfettered freedom of speech. Their continued lack of freedom is to be regretted. My point wasn’t that. It was that we would deem such a state to have inadequate freedom of speech. “Socialist” was, in terms of the logic of the argument, a dummy variable.

To boycott is not to critique a view. It is to push the boycotted publication to not publish such views in the future.

To suggest they get an easy ride is laughable. You only have to watch the vitriol they attract both by the press and by politicians to see they are not getting an easy ride. Sure, these parties do not critique in the most logically coherent manner possible, but the BNP receives substantial scrutiny and attack wherever it goes.

You are correct that to boycott is not to critique – the critique must (and has in this case) preceded the boycott.

In any case, there’s a contradiction in the way the press treat the BNP. Two contradictions, actually. The first is that the party itself gets a rough ride, but from the Daily Mail and certain other publications, many of the assumptions of the BNP are shared by the editorial direction of the paper. Similarly, the policies of repatriation get a rough ride, but these policies are also implicit in many of the articles published.

The second contradiction is that, sure, vitriol against the BNP is widespread even in newspapers like the Sun. But yet the BNP – for such a small political party of limited clout – regularly attract headlines. The appearance on Question Time. This interview. We can’t say that the vitriol means the BNP are getting a tough time of it in such uncomplicated fashion; they are fed with publicity, and in these circumstances, in the context of papers which might laud the BNP were they simply a part of the Conservative Party, all publicity is good publicity.

To say the BNP receives substantial scrutiny is true – but usually this is from minor organs of the Left press, not from national newspapers. What they get is fanfare, hype and a celebrity-politics from the darkside. Like all that stuff about the prima balerina who was a BNP supporter.

I am surprised that it has taken this for many to actively disengage from the TP awards, which were untrustworthy in the first place, cronies biased and also ran by the awful Iain Dale, a moral free blogger of the worst kind.