On Oct. 15, 2021, UK Conservative Party member David Amess was stabbed to death by Ali Harbi Ali, an ISIS sympathizer and cold-blooded Islamist killer. Ali had also stalked Mike Freer, another Conservative Party member who was the terrorist's first target. Freer happened to be away from his office that day and escaped assassination.
Now, two years later, the threats and attempts on his life have driven Freer from office as he announced his decision not to seek re-election. It's called the "assassin's veto" and it's becoming a problem in Great Britain for members of both parties.
Freer's constituency is about 20% Jewish. Whenever he's out and about visiting constituents, he becomes a target. After the murder of Amess, Freer began wearing a stab vest to protect himself.
He represents the same district former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stood for. It's a quiet, middle-class neighborhood with tree-lined streets and green spaces for families. But Freer, a gay Conservative Party member and justice minister, can't take the constant threats to himself and his family.
It isn’t just the near-miss with Ali. Freer said that during his 14 years in parliament he has seen an escalation of abuse, intimidation, and threats. The most recent incident came last Christmas Eve, when his office—the same building once used by Thatcher—was set ablaze in an arson attack that Freer says “melted the phones, melted the computer screens, and caused the ceiling to collapse.” Paul Harwood, 42, and Zara Kasory, 32, have been charged with arson and are awaiting trial. The police have not given a possible motive for the attack but said it is not being treated as a hate crime.
“The arson attack was the final straw,” Freer said when we spoke over the phone shortly after his announcement last week. “It just made me think ‘God, this is all getting too much.’ ”
The "assassin's veto" is alive and well in the UK. Elsewhere, it's a brave struggle to overcome it. The massacre of 11 "Charlie Hebdo" journalists in Paris on Jan. 7, 2015, didn't stop the magazine from publishing more satirical cartoons of the prophet. Indeed, more than 40 publications posted the cartoons to show solidarity with the French periodical.
But it should have been more. And the excuses given by the publications that declined came uncomfortably close to an "assassin's veto" logic.
The argument for “respect” is so uncomfortably intertwined with fear of the assassin’s veto. If we are not careful, the conclusion drawn by anyone who wants to impose any taboo will be “go and get a gun.” Our open societies are already perilously close to the point described in Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance: “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.” I am tempted to argue that, in such moments of violent challenge to free speech, the general norm of civility may need to be sustained by an exceptional act of incivility. Or is there a better way to balance the competing imperatives? Only a “terrible simplificateur,” to borrow a phrase from Jacob Burckhardt, would pretend that these are not genuinely difficult choices.
“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance" is where the left in America is now. Those most likely to posture about tolerance and "diversity" are least likely to practice it. I'd add not recognizing their own hypocrisy is another obvious failing of the left in this regard.
But it's the Islamists who are mostly responsible for generating the assassin's veto. They are far more likely to kill someone over politics than the right-wing anti-abortion zealots or the FBI's favorite bogey-men, the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers. It's just politically more convenient to say the threat is coming from the American right.
Related: Dearborn Named ‘America’s Jihad Capital,’ Mayor and Biden Respond About the Way You’d Expect
In America, Rep. Steve Scalise was shot and wounded during a practice for the congressional baseball game in 2017 by a Democratic Party activist, but that's the only recent politically motivated serious attack on an American lawmaker. If the Israel-Hamas war goes on for much longer, those crowds of Hamas sympathizers may begin to do more than threaten violence.
