...To Think Free Speech is Dead in the UK

[RockyBayEve]

After 3 free speech advocates American Brittany Pettibone, her Austrian boyfriend and Canadian journalist Lauren Southern are detained by UK border force, barred from speaking at Speakers Corner, deported or barred entry.

The letter one was handed has the most appalling language/grammar. Surely the Home Office haven't stooped quite so low they can't even put a coherent sentence together :/

It's one for Pedants' Corner: embarrassing in every respect.

o the pp that said about news being specifically negative for one demographic, I’d have to point out - isn’t all news negative? Do you want journalists to go pick out good deeds individuals in this demographic have done in the aim to ‘balance it out’? The whole point of news is alerting us to disasters/crimes etc. If one demographic is commiting more of these (terrorist attacks for example) that’s not the journalists fault

If a white person does something to put them in the news, their 'whiteness' is rarely mentioned. If a Muslim person does something, that characteristic is mentioned - often when it's irrelevant.

The whole point of news is alerting us to disasters/crimes etc

Really? It's a whole range of stories that have happened. Yet certain communities only seem to have negative coverage.

I think wanting to avoid race riots in Luton is as much a thinking issue as a feelings issue.

It's interesting that it seems that those that are complaining about suppression of free speech or rather hate speech are offended, which is a feeling.

I'm not offended. I ve listened to a bit of these people now and I'm not impressed.

The point is that old one that eventually those in power might want to shut me up or you.

You are absolutely not being unreasonable. Open debate with people you don't agree with is fundamentally crucial in a democracy. Once the state dictates who and who cannot speak, we are lost. There was a time when slavery was accepted. Proponents of slavery simply couldn't see how society could operate without it; how food would be produced etc. It took, at the time, "radical thinkers" to argue the idea that it was morally abhorrent. And through reasonsd argument and debate eventually the masses came to understand and accept the evils of slavery. Same goes for women having equality under the law. Now I'm not saying I agree with the banned speakers, but I do believe that everyone should be allowed the chance to voice their opinions-and if someone doesn't like those opinions, they should be openly debated. The best argument will win out in the end. I don't agree with abortion, but I would never ban outright someone who wanted to offer their opinion as to why it is a valid choice. An open forum for the debating of opposing ideas is incredibly important. Without free speech, we will live in a totalitarian hellscape.

I don't disagree with that. The most effective way to reduce the influence of the alt right or any extreme is to not give them the oxygen, which I suppose this action has.

However, people with extreme views tend to target the vulnerable and I'm not sure how you manage that. How do you stop people being unduly influenced? I'm inclined to think two of my sister's have been slowly radicalized over the years by a slow drip feed of what they read, the friends they choose and what they self select on Facebook e.g. Britain First. But I may think this because I don't agree with them.

But interestingly whenever I have a conversation with someone of extreme right thinking, they are not prepared to listening to an alternative point of view. It might just be the people I've had conversations with but without exception that's been the experience.

And how utterly patronising, demeaning even, for the government to think that it's own people are so brain-dead that they simply can't be trusted to weigh up an argument and make their own decision about it?! No, they must protect us from thinking about any ideas that contradict those they want to push. Thank you, daddy state, for keeping me safe from the evils of critical thinking and rational discourse!

And how utterly patronising, demeaning even, for the government to think that it's own people are so brain-dead that they simply can't be trusted to weigh up an argument and make their own decision about it?
Tosh. Absolute fucking tosh. Oh, and that statement clearly demonstrates neither critical thinking nor rational discourse.
As for governments making decisions about whether or not people can be trusted, well, I vote so I get a say. Oh, and they're right because if they weren't we the neanderthals that are Britain First et al would not exist.

" neither critical thinking nor rational discourse. "
not sure why you sound surprised about that, if you have read this thread.

The best way to counter an idea that you hunk is inflammatory, dangerous and wrong? Have a better argument. You don't just cut that opposing idea off at the source without it being heard. To do so is an admission that either a.) you yourself cannot critically think and form a decent rebuttal, or b.) you have such a low opinion of people that you think they are unable to reason for themselves, and need the government to spoon feed very specific information to them like a weaning child. And I don't particularly want to have a government in charge which makes decisions based solely based upon fear of riots rather than the abstract merits (or not) of a concept, or thinks that I am unable to handle complex ideas and rebuttals myself.

So, if Lauren Southern had distributed leaflets saying "Trans women are men", this would be classed as provocative and she would be banned from the UK for causing gender hatred. A lot of people on here would agree with her though. And I don't think there is anything wrong with provocative opinions if they promote debate as long as they don't advocate violence against specific groups. Do people not see where this is going. Banning free speech is great until they start banning your ideas because they are classed as being on the wrong side. Then things start to get Orwellian. Look at what happened to Germaine Greer.

Unless speech is advocating violence against a specific group or person, all ideas should be allowed to be discussed and debated and stupid ideas will easily be dismantled using facts and logic rather than emotions.

"Fucking tosh" isn't an argument. But anyway, yes, you vote, so you get a say. That goes without saying. And so do I. And in a democracy even those "Neanderthals" that vote for Britain First also get a say. Whether we like it or not.

I agree with this

A lot of people are all for free speech until it is saying something they don't agree with...

This.

Is it actions as well though that give a picture of whether a person is desirable? Not sure that's the right turn of phrase...

Both Lauren Southern and Martin Sellner travelled to the Mediterranean from Oz and Canada to take part in a mission to prevent rescue workers picking up asylum seekers in trouble. They shot flares at them.
On the balance of probabilities based on past behaviour they are probably considered capable of inciting violence.

However I do think free speech is important but it's the balance of free speech vs hate speech (difficult to define I know). I just remember watching a documentary about what happens in the states and the bile that is spouted under the banner of free speech.

This is why they were banned. They potentially had the intention of stirring up dissent in Luton. I suspect so they could say - there told you so Muslims are awful.

the article doesn't give any example. it just claims that Southern may have intended to distribute racist literature.

If a white person does something to put them in the news, their 'whiteness' is rarely mentioned. If a Muslim person does something, that characteristic is mentioned - often when it's irrelevant.

Sometimes. But sometimes not. Sometimes religion is relevant. Religion is relevant when some white person resists gay marriage, for more likely than not the motivation is religion. You'd see that too.

The 'right' to free speech doesn't support the right to hate speech or incitement to violence.
People pretending that keeping a balance between free speech and extremism is authoritarian are being disingenuous. Extremism is authoritarian.

ffs

free speech doesn't and never has meant being able to spout whatever hate you like, heavily simplified it means a right of the people to protest and get answers from the government

Until people understand that, knobheads like Britain First and Katie Hopkins down to your average slightly racist idiot in the pub will continue to think they have some kind of right to be completely vile and are 'brave' for doing so

If a Muslim person does something, that characteristic is mentioned - often when it's irrelevant.

The muslim characteristic is politicized by both the left and right in many ways.

the article doesn't give any example. it just claims that Southern may have intended to distribute racist literature.

I thought the literature was Pro LGBT, havent seen any racist angle

Until people understand that, knobheads like Britain First and Katie Hopkins down to your average slightly racist idiot in the pub will continue to think they have some kind of right to be completely vile and are 'brave' for doing so

if you don't think the right to free speech includes the right to be vile, then we have different ideas of what free speech is.

The problem with hate speech is that it is rather ambiguous. What makes speech hate speech? Inciting to violence is a good bar, because it is less ambiguous.

Vile speech is also ambiguous.

Op, when was this golden age of free speech in the UK that we have apparently lost?

Free speech...

Free speech isn't a right. It's far more important than that. It's a mechanism by which society is able to examine ideas and pull apart those that don't come up to scratch. Simply put, if you can't tolerate Lauren Southern standing on a soapbox talking about the dangers of immigration, then you're pathetic. Because it means you can't come up with a better argument that convinces people that she's wrong.

As for this whole obsession with the far right. Beyond a joke. Antifa's stock response to anyone holding an opinion that is antithetical to their obscenely narrow worldview is to brand that person a Nazi, regardless of their actual political beliefs. The evolutionary biologist Professor Heather Heying was branded one simply for stating at a public meeting that women and men display different physical characteristics in general (men are on average taller than women was her incendiary statement on that occasion). Anyone who voices the opinion that there might be merit in the idea of admitting that Asian grooming gangs are now responsible for hundreds of thousands of rapes in Rotheram and Telford is a Nazi. Anyone who advocates a limit of 100,000 immigrants a year is a Nazi. Anyone who exhibits political opinions that do not correspond to a liberal agenda is a Nazi, ad infinitum.

As for the notion that there's no such thing as Far Left hatred? The Red Terror, the Gulags, the Great Leap Forward, Hungary '56, Czechoslovakia '68, Xenver Hoxa's Stalinist dictatorship in Albania, Mengistu in Ethiopia, Castro in Cuba, the horrors happening right now in Venezuela, the list goes on and on and on. No coincidence that, Vasily Blokhin, the greatest individual mass murderer in human history, was a committed leftist.

Just listen to the screams of 'Tory Scum' and the accompanying barrage of spittle whenever the hard left confronts its conservative opponents if you want to see unhinged hatred.