My weekly Guardian column:
As an atheist Jew, I find it distinctly uncomfortable to defend the free speech rights of Holocaust deniers. I utterly oppose the inaccuracy, hatred and intolerance that goes with refuting the reality of Nazi crimes against Jews, gay people, Gypsies and many others.
But a truly free society is one that tolerates and encourages strong exchanges of ideas. This includes the most abominable of them, such as those expressed by German born, Australian-citizen, Holocaust denying Frederick Tobin, a… regular bogeyman… wheeled out to justify laws against offensive thoughts.
I fundamentally share the view… expressed by Noam Chomsky… that “acceptable speech” should never be decided by the state, because we “don’t want them to have any right to make any decision about what anybody says.” As a result, “a lot of people are going to say things that you think are rotten, and you’re going to say things that a lot of other people think are rotten.”
Australian academic Clinton Fernandes… furthers… this argument:
“One of the most important points in any discussion about the right of free speech is this: the defence of a person’s right to express certain views is independent of the views actually expressed. Thus, one might defend Salman Rushdie’s freedom to write The Satanic Verses without agreeing with the content of that book – or even needing to read it.”
These issues have all been thrust back into the public spotlight with the Australian government’s desire to… amend the Racial Discrimination Act… (RDA) to,… in their view, expand free and often inflammatory speech. Attorney general George Brandis said last week that, “it is not, in the government’s view, the role of the state to ban conduct merely because it might hurt the feelings of others.”
Tellingly, Brandis has also arguably… given the green light… for intolerance when he said that people “do have a right to be bigots“. Surely the role of any responsible government is to condemn and fight hatred, rather than encourage it.
The… response… from the vast bulk of the left to the RDA alterations has been horror and opposition.… Minority groups are outraged. The Labor party doesn’t support the changes and leader Bill Shorten has urged the Jewish community to… lobby hard… against the amendments (a request he would probably not make to other, equally affected communities because of the… power of Australian groups backing Israel… in influencing both major sides of local politics).
The Zionist establishment, long-time backers of the RDA, have written thousands of words in opposition to the government’s proposed changes, but the irony shouldn’t be lost on us. This is coming from individuals and organisations that routinely petition politicians and media organisations to erect tightly controlled limits on so-called acceptable talk around Israel and Palestine, illegal West Bank colonies and the… boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. They rarely have any complaints when anti-Muslim or anti-Palestinian sentiment is floated in the press.
Unlike those groups, I welcome a robust discussion over the limits, intent and interest of the state in trying to restrict the most offensive speech imaginable – although I do have some misgivings.
I share some of the concerns of learned law experts, such as Andrew Lynch, a director at the… Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law… at the University of NSW, who… writes in the Melbourne Age… that the government has a wilful blindness to the profound power disparity between those individuals or groups who may be offended or hurt by hate speech and those most likely to be using them (such as media personalities or politicians). It’s a position… utterly lost… on cocooned… editorial writers… and also on columnist Andrew Bolt,… who this week praised… his ability to receive an apology for hurt feelings, forgetting that his requests come with the power of the massive corporation behind him. Bolt is… neither a fair arbiter… of how the law should work in relation to hateful speech,… nor in a position… to understand the awful effect that verbal abuse can have on an Aboriginal, refugee, Jew, Muslim, or Greek.
In supporting some changes to the RDA – principally supporting the removal of laws against “offensive” speech – I acknowledge that I’m writing this as a privileged white man who has rarely experienced racial abuse or hatred because of my religion (except my public, journalistic frankness over Israel/Palestine and the “war on terror” has brought constant hate mail and even death threats).
And at this stage, I also have to underline the fact that the vast bulk of commentators pushing for changes to the RDA are also… white and male. It’s impossible to ignore the lack of female, Indigenous and non-Anglo perspectives (there are… some exceptions, such as Aboriginal advisorWesley Aird… and… Sue Gordon, who both back the government’s moves).
As a result, much of the discussion about the RDA is expressed by a political and media class that indulges racism on a daily basis, from theNorthern Territory intervention… against Indigenous citizens to… our treatment of asylum seekers, racial profiling, or our backing of wars in the Middle East. These groups and individuals don’t really care about tackling everyday racism, preferring to distract the public from their own shocking records instead.
None of this means, though, that those of us who have spent years fighting discrimination against minorities can’t feel uncomfortable with current laws that seek to restrict free speech. The RDA has not reduced tangible racism in Australia (if anything we’re becoming less friendly to migrants,… according to a new study) and we shouldn’t look to a state that entrenches racism to legislate against it.
After thinking about this issue for many years, and growing up in the Jewish community I was constantly warned about rampant anti-Semitism, I support this comment by the 20th century American journalist H L Mencken:
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
It may make our hearts sink, but we owe it to our democracy to defend the rights of the most offensive people in our community.