Well, you have to say one thing for Ken Livingstone, the trendy racist mayor of London, at least he acknowledged, or anyway implied, the existence of the Holocaust by comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard. That’s something of a plus these days, although that doesn’t stop me from regarding the mayor as less than pond scum. Still, I have to agree with david t at Harry’s Place that the way to deal with these maunderings is not via the guilty finding of the Adjudication Panel of England but by the ballot box. (links at Harry’s) However… and it’s a big HOWEVER… Mr. Livingstone has been around for quite a few years now and neither the bien-pensants over at Harry’s nor their allies have done a damn thing about it via rational argument or free elections. In fact, the trend seems to be going solidly in the other direction. Ken Livingstone is the Mayor of Londonistan now and serving his constituency quite well. I’m sure they don’t find him the least bit anti-Semitic, just factual (except for that silly blunder about the existence of the Holocaust). So it’s all well and good to be high-minded about the Ken Livingstones and the David Irvings of the world, but where does that leave us? I wish I knew the answer to that because we have crossed the line from what the Chinese call “interesting times” to plain, ordinary bleak ones.
UPDATE: Livingston has apparently been suspended for a month.
The argument that racist politicians should be dealt with by the ballot box doesn’t sound very convincing. It depends on assuming that people would be motivated in their voting to prioritize this issue over all others, and even that they recognise and oppose racism in the first place. The vast majority of the letters Livingstone got supported him. Of course, he has not revealed how many of those letters included overtly anti-semitic sentiments.
As one of the counsel at the Ajudication Panel argued:
Kim Moorshead, for the panel’s Ethical Standards Officers, said: “Mr Livingstone is not just a private individual.
“He chose to run for office. He signed a code of conduct. There are consequences.”
Livingstone has arrogantly invariably assumed when making a whole series of slurs about Jews-as-zionists that he can get away with it by grandstanding to the crowd.
He now tries to defend himself on the grounds of “free speech”. But he signed up to a document committing himself to treating all with respect– and that includes reporters from newspapers he doesnn’t like and Jews he disapproves of.
I support free speech, and the antidote to the Red Kens of the world has to be vigorous public ridicule.
What’s the alternative – hate speech laws? Free speech zones? A mandatory code of conduct? Censorship? Who gets to decide what speech is permissible?
Write to the papers, blog, support his opponent, shame his supporters. Too bad Britain has no guarantee of freedom of speech.
Ken Livingstone has done worse in terms of bringing his office into disrepute, the #1 example being his endorsement of homophobic, suicide bombing advocate Sheik Al-Qawadari as a “moderate” and his pathetic attempt to impugn MEMRI’s honesty and scholarship via the witless Guardian journo Brian Whitaker’s “Selective MEMRI” article. Then, there’s his defence of suicide bombing and terror against Israeli targets because he thinks there is no political solution available to the “Palestinians”, which is pure bunk; it’s there, they just won’t accept it. His denegration of the Jewish journalist is just one more example of the conduct of a typical British Arabist (they exist on both sides of the political spectrum).
The problem is that no credible candidate has come forward to oppose him, although you’d think this shouldn’t be such a big problem.
So, no, Mark D — this isn’t about freedom of speech — in fact what Livingstone said about the reporter was quite defamatory (suggesting he acted like a Nazi) and therefore not protected speech — it’s about Livingstone’s fitness to hold office. Livingstone isn’t financial corrupt, but his fitness to ensure the safety and security of a city that has been twice attacked by Islamofacists, leaving over 50 people dead and he has an obvious hostility toward one of the city’s religious minorities. His “anti-Zionism” really does cross the line over to “anti-Semetism” — despite his token statement that Israel has a right to exist — he’s just not as open about it as his friend the Sheik.
ìWhat’s the alternative – hate speech laws? Free speech zones? A mandatory code of conduct? Censorship? Who gets to decide what speech is permissible?î
The British, in principle, categorically reject the very concept of our First Amendment Rights. Thatís why David Irving was able to harass Deborah Lipstadt. The citizens of Great Britain need more free speech—not less. Pandering to the politically correct crowd is what got them into this mess! Restricting speech will only worsen the problem. ìVigorous public ridiculeî is indeed the more appropriate response.
There is nothing new about Livingstone offending particular groups. Throughout the IRA’s campaign, which included many deadly bombings in London, he defended them and called on the government to abandon the British of Northern Ireland. Of course there has always been a lot of Irish nationalist votes in London and few willing to base their vote on opposition to Irish nationalism. Plenty of US mayors, governors, and legislators also supported the IRA. Did they do it because of bigotry towards Ulster Protestants or the British in general? I doubt it. Let’s face it, as the PM of Singapore said recently in a multiethnic society democracy is really just an ethnic head count. Today in London anti-Zionists must outnumber pro-Zionists. Eventually Muslims will outnumber Jews in the US too. Ken Livingstone may be just the beginning.
Davidt at Harrysplace asked me to post this here for him
I>Mr. Livingstone has been around for quite a few years now and neither
the bien-pensants over at Harry’s nor their allies have done a damn
thing about it via rational argument or free elections.
Oh come now, Mr Simon. That’s not fair.
We pride ourselves on our very full, and robust, coverage of Ken
Livingstone and his zany antics.
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/cgi-bin/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&s
earch=livingstone
No bien pensants we. We’re “Muscular Liberals” aka the “Decent Left”
I disagree my friend, I think these times may be more interesting than we think.
How shall Europe deal with unpopular statements? Shall they jail people for what they say? Shall they discipline people for their comments? Or, will they begin to accept such garbage as acceptable?
I find it interesting that comparing people to Nazi’s has happened on numerous occasions, even here in the States. From poor old GWB to Michael Moore, the slur Nazi has been bandied about without thought.
People should think about what they say… but it seems in today’s society, people may be more concerned about Saying something loud and shrill, than saying something useful.
TedM — the problem is that there exists no “decent Left” or “muscular Left.”
Instead PC, Multi-culti nonsense, and Folk Marxism (caste system of oppressed versus oppressor groups) allows anti-Semitism as mainstream expressions of the Left. If “oppressed groups” like Muslims and Palestinians embrace anti-Semitism (which they do) then every Leftist MUST also embrace this in “solidarity” or at the very least excuse it (which in fact they do).
The solution is political. Drive Leftism out of the public square and into the dustbin of history; and embrace classical Lockean liberalism based on individual rights, and responsibilities, and the social contract between the individual and the state.
If the Labor Party was nothing but a pathetic rump (like the Greens in America) and the center of politics was center-left to center-right, people like Red Ken or Galloway would not exist.
“… the way to deal with these maunderings is not via the guilty finding of the Adjudication Panel of England but by the ballot box.”
Well and good if the people of London see things your way, which is not the case.
As for Irving Melanie Phillips has a good post:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001602.html
” This is surely the point. Context is everything. Irvingís statements are not a simple matter of gross historical error. They are not even merely an expression of prejudice. They are an active incitement to hatred of the Jews.
Thatís why, as Cesarani also says:
He went to Austria at the invitation of a far-right student group to peddle his lies and spread his neo-Nazi message. Under these circumstances, the Austrian authorities were not only right to act, they were almost under a compulsion to do so.
And it is why Irving was also on his way to Iran to put his neo-Nazi lies at the service of Ahmadinejadís genocidal intention to write the Holocaust out of history and thus pave the way for a second Shoah.”
” The concept of ëHolocaust denialí is unfortunate, because in itself it muddles the issue and lends itself to the argument that freedom of speech is threatened. It would be far better to prosecute the Irvings of this world under the much clearer laws against incitement to racial hatred and incitement to violence. Unfortunately, such laws are rarely used in Britain because of the supine nature of the prosecuting authorities ñ but that is another story.”
We tend to only see things from our own perspective and thus lose sight of the other side of the coin.
The utterly delightful and exceedingly wise Zorkmidden over at Discarded Lies wrote the following comment about Irving the other day. It doesn’t have the same infallible logic of the Melanie Phillips argument (see above), but it does resonate very deeply at an emotional level – at the emotional level of a European Jew at any rate:
Laws Against Holocaust Denial
Free speech, even if it hurts. Spoken like a true American. Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, columnist for Scientific American and author of “Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?” believes that David Irving should not have gone to jail because no one should be imprisoned for expressing dissenting views or saying offensive things. I agree with Mr Shermer and I believe that free speech and freedom of opinion is the most important freedom we have in the West.
America is marked by the absence of a certain guilt that Europeans have inherited, the guilt of killing Jews simply because they’re Jews. People sometimes compare the Holocaust to the persecution of the Native Americans but I don’t believe they’re comparable. Europeans conquered America and treated the Native Americans as a people defeated. There was no blood libel, there were no beliefs that Indians killed Jesus and there was no inherent hatred of them. Fear perhaps, but not the pathological hatred that Europeans had for Jews.
The same principle of freedom of speech that Voltaire defended so eloquently, was used in Europe to demonise a group of people to such an extent that hundreds of thousands of children and babies were purposefully rounded up and gassed to death for no reason other than their Jewishness. I would like to believe that European countries passed laws against Holocaust denial because they’ve finally felt shame and guilt for the centuries of pogroms and persecution which culminated in genocide and they cannot deny any longer that this has really happened. The laws against Holocaust denial are a reminder of what we’re capable of doing to our fellow human beings, to our neighbours and friends.
It’s a very easy process for Europeans to forget the Holocaust, they can simply never mention it. I grew up in a city that was predominantly Jewish before the war and I didn’t know that when I was growing up. My house was in a nice neighbourhood that was part of the Jewish ghetto before the war, but I didn’t know that either. I learned about my country’s Jewish history when I came to the States. What does that say, that I learned our dirty little secrets only as an adult and from overseas?
We weren’t taught about the Holocaust. No teacher mentioned it in our glorious Greek history, in our fights against Romans and Persians and Turks and Germans, Jews were never mentioned, not as heroes and not as victims. Yet thousands of my fellow Greeks had been deported and murdered in Auschwitz, girls who had attended the same prestigious school as I, neighbours who had lived in the beautiful villas that now housed Ministries and Prefectures.
If no one remembers our past actions, what’s to keep us from repeating them? Europe is steeped in Jewish blood and we should never deny the truth of this. These laws are a reminder to ourselves.
As an American, I think David Irving should be free. As a European, I’m glad to see him in prison.
http://discardedlies.com/entry/index.php?12532_laws_against_holocaust_denial
Well, cynic, I’ll give “Melanie Phillips” credit for at least addressing those like me who think Americans and Europeans should treat speech offensive to many Jews (and their supporters) the same way that we treat speech offensive to many Muslims (and their supporters):
“This is why the comparison that has been made with the Danish cartoon controversy is simply grotesque…The cartoons were a political protest against clerical fascism and intimidation. Irvingís utterances are the handmaiden of fascism and an attempt to incite racial hatred.”
Like I said, marks for chutzpah and pulling no punches, but somehow I doubt that many people will find this distinction to be persuasive.
Much, much more likely that European governments and voters will respond to Muslim charges of a double standard by consenting to banning speech that certain Muslims judge to be an “incitement to racial hatred and incitement to violence.”
This is fighting the last war, not the current one, and it’ll backfire on people trying to stand firm against the Jihadis.
“This is fighting the last war, not the current one”
I do not believe that anti-Semitism in Europe is the last war. Anti-Semitism may have mutated in Europe, at least in part, from an attack on the individual Jew into an attack on the collective one, but the dangers are just as acute. The Islamofascists are stabbing us in the front while the gentile nations of Europe are stabbing us in the back, or standing aside with their usual indifference in any event.
Roger Simon also makes a good point. It’s all very well suggesting that the truth and not law should battle lies, but when it comes to defending the interests of the Jewish people few are willing to speak up. I would also remind you that despite your belief in the American way of doing things, it was not that many decades ago that the inflammatory speeches of men like Father Coughlin, which poured flames onto the already raging fires of anti-Semitism in the U.S., not only kept America out of the “Jewish war” until it was almost too late (for the Jews and the world), but also prevented her from doing anything very much at all for the drowning Jews of Europe even when she had eventually been bombed into taking action.
Jews and gentiles are facing the same enemy. They also faced the same enemy during World War II. That did not prevent those very same gentiles from betraying the Jews at every twist and turn to this putative enemy. They are doing the very same thing once again. Enemies to the left of us, enemies to the right.
A point I made elsewhere:
I’ve always thought it very odd that while few object to laws on defamation which protect the individual so many are opposed to similar laws which protect millions of people. After all, the results of a defamation can be far worse for the latter than for the former. Falsely accusing X of being a thief or a murderer will probably only adversely affect X and his/her family. Falsely accusing an entire people of similar and worse things can end in genocide.
Let’s be clear, this is not a case of holocaust denial nor is it a case of free speech.
It’s case of intimidation, pure and simple.
First Ken Livingston is a man with power, a government official.
Second, the person he tried to intimidate was a reporter.
Had the reporter insulted the Mayor and been suspended from his paper because of it then it would have been a case of free speech.
Third, Ken got what he deserved and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Let’s remember that Mayor Ken supported the ban on cartoons portraying Muhammad and that he supports measures to protect Muslims from hate speech.
For Mayor Ken to now cry free speech is hypocritical in the extreme.
Me thinks the Islamics have so infected out thinking that we can’t reason clearly about these issues.
Roger:
Will Red Ken stop spouting his hatred of Jews because of this suspension/ No. He will just word his slurs more carefully so as not to break the law but his words and thoughts will continue to be vile. he either embraces the filth that he spews out or it helps him at the polling booth. Ken is a symptom, not the cause. The Holocaust denial crowd will never be stopped by putting them in prison for their ugly words. And eventually these speech laws will be turned against those who wish to battle these morons. The Irvings and the Livingstons of the world will take these punishments and turn them into a plus. they will say “The authorities. who we all know are under the control of their zionist masters, are trying to shut me up. But I will not bow down to these villians and I will continue to speak truth to power.” I have no problem with libel laws and I know that the libel laws in Europe protect the skin head,jihadist pigs who wallow in this slop. I enjoy and cherish the right I have to call these slugs slugs in the most violent fashion that language allows. I do not wish them to suffer violence physically, but I want to retain the right to drop all notions of civility when talking about these fine examples of human waste and I do not want any restrictions on my ability to express my feelings about these “people.”
Kevin Peters,
This isn’t about Holocaust denial. Ken Livingston didn’t deny the Holocaust. He intimidated a reporter.
He is the one who tried to deny the freedom of speech to a member of the press.
Ken Livingston who is now yelling freedom of speech is the one who believes in censorship.
I have not followed this case closely so I won’t try to pretend that I have the entire story. And just to make sure that my last post wasn’t clear enough, I think both of these men are pond scum. But the one post that describes Red Ken’s crime’s mentioned that RK was “unnessarily insensitive and offensive” to this reporter. If there was an attempt to strong arm this reporter or if RK threatened violence I say lock him up for attempted battery. But “insensitive and offensive” sounds like speech to me. The left always comes out ahead once these P.C. hate laws are instituted. Soon, some British Tory will be locked up for calling some Muslim suicide bomber a terrorist. He will be charched with being insensitive. Or if they call the practices of some radical Muslim(lets say the attempts to keep female children out of school) a ugly 15th century practice that is being brought back to destroy the progress of the last 6 centuries they will be hauled up before some court of sensitivity of language and be read the riot act. Look what a minority of faculty members at Harvard did to Summers over a few mispoken words. I am not trying to defend RK or Irving. I am trying to protect myself. My previous post was not a great example of writing but it is what I felt in my heart and I had to type it down. And it was not sensitive and I hope it was offensive to Irving and Red Ken. They will never read it but if they did I wouldn’t want them to be able to haul me in front of some court of inquiry. And if they were standing in front of me I would want to be able to say it to them without fear of breaking some language code. Everytime Irving is hauled into court he gets free publicity for his hate. I am not saying we can ignore him. And I don’t think we want to even engage him in debate. He lost the debate years ago and he will not stop pretending that he won until the day he dies. If the papers want to write about him they can say that he is a disgraced Holocaust denial lunatic who lives in a free world that grants him the freedom to be a drooling idiot so that people who have valid contributions to make to the world can do so without having to edit themselves for fear of breaking some sensitivity law.
“But “insensitive and offensive” sounds like speech to me.”
It does to me too, Kevin. This is why I don’t like the case was handled. It makes the left wing Islamo sympathizing Stalinist Mayor of London look like a victim of free speech.
However, I am not going to deny that I liked the outcome. “If you can’t get them for murder get them for income tax evasion.”
I also hope the Brits abolish that stupid committe on insensitive speech. The regular court systme in England should be able to handle an extortionist like Mayor Livingstone.
Should, but then the British didn’t take action against the scummy Muslim fascist demonstrating against the cartoons and yelling for the death of the publishers.
How would you proceed against Muslim dressed in suicide bomber’s costume calling for the death of the infidels?
Is that too just a case of free speech?
Just a thought for all of us “colonists”(especially the SoCal ones) to think about, what if instead of the Mayor of London making “racist” remarks,it was an LA cop?
Then what would your thoughts be?
Scribe:
I am not a lawyer but if you call for the murder of someone then you are treading on ground that I would have no problem cracking down on. Just as you can’t call for the murder of the President. And if a cop says something that might indicate that he can not perform his job of enforcing the law in a fair manner then depending on where his comments were made, ie if he made the comment as he was arresting the object of his hate and if there was a question that his racism bled into how he performed his duties. But if he made the comment at a private BBQ, then no I would not go after him, even if I don’t particularly admire that type of talk. But politicians, journalists, teachers, and other proffessions where the communication of ideas are the cornerstone of those professions should be given wide latitude for their speech, even if they are morons.
Kevin,
“But politicians, journalists, teachers, and other proffessions where the communication of ideas are the cornerstone of those professions should be given wide latitude for their speech, even if they are morons.”
I agree in principle. However, when a politician becomes a “leader” then he has responsibilities the rest of us don’t have.
In this case, we are speaking of a public figure, and leader, who has himself endorsed censorship. In other words is one of the leaders in GB who has endorsed the rules by which people play there. Now that he has been caught in the punitive web he helped spin he is crying foul.
This is what I say to Mayor Ken Livingston:
“Too bad, Mayor Ken, you made your own bed, now lie in it you Stalinist lying sack of horse manure.”
Next: let’s see if they can’t get Galloway, another Stalinist peice of work.
I spent 26 years in the USAF willing to die to protect the right of every bigot, moonbat or moron to spew stupidity, filth or hate. The most offensive speech is most in need of protection. If I toiled those 26 years in vain, losing many brothers and sisters in arms in vain, I may begin to see the viewpoint of the militias, most of whom merely want us to follow the cotton picking constitution. The USA has moved far to the left in my lifetime. For instance, I don’t think John Kennedy would please the Democrat party these days. If the move to the left continues, there’ll be a revolution, led by those who remain armed, with return-to-the-constitution attitudes as well as firearms.
Larry;
Thank you for your service. I watched a show on c-span a year or two ago that was featured a N.Y.C. bookshow. One of the booths they showed was from a New York bookshop that speciallized and glorified the World Communist movement. The works of Mao, Stalin, and every form of filthy Communist apologist literature was proudly sold and promoted. There has probably never been a greater collection of lies and hate for humanity assembled in such a small space. Go to any major campus in America and you will see students who wear the symbols and spout the propaganda of regimes that murdered millions of innocent humans and committed more human rights crimes in a 80 year period then had been perpertrated in the previous 200 years. There are American Proffessors who claim that the North Korean government is the legitimate government of the peole of Korea and that blame the Human Misery that has been carried out by the Kims on capitalism. And then there is Chomsky. All of these people make me want to vomit. And it pains me that the MSM and the cultural elite do not heap the same scorn and derision that is properly given to the followers of Hitler. In fact some of these idiots are held in high regard. But I do not want them shut down or legislated into oblivion, even though I think the world would be a better place if their demented thoughts and writings no longer blemished this planet. Unless these fools resort to violence or help fund other people to carry out their dreams of world revolution they must be left alone. And I know if any of these people gained places of authority they would clamp down on the rights of free expression in a heartbeat. It is already happening on Campuses all across America. So even though these two bobo’s deserve what they are getting it sets up a dangerous precident. I am sure that Muslim nations all across the world are looking at the speech codes of Universities in America and copying them so they can point to them as they crush free speech in their own countries.Actions can be punished. Direct calls for physical violence against others can be punished. Calls for violent overthrow of legitimate governments can be responded to. Drooling morons need to be allowed to say what they want.
I assume it is possible to compare the Adjudication Panel with the “Committee of Public Safety.” Both were a good idea shown to have gone amuck. Both were cases of getting what you aks for.