Splinters

As the UK government loses its vote on its Bill to ban religious hatred I am glad, but not nearly so glad as I would be seeing a lot of its other more business-licking agenda Bills being scuppered.

For there is a decent and reputable case for additional protection for Muslims, a sorely abused and scapegoated group in this country at the moment. Good people have campaigned for this. And lets face it having Rowan Atkinson on my side after Johnny English isn't exactly a bonus. But nontheless this Bill, an assault on freedom of expression, is not the way to do it.

Does this mean this mean that France Soir was a heroic defender of free speech in printing its offensive cartoons of Mohammed? Of course not. This was a pissy little rag desperately trying to court as much outrage as possible to increase its dismal circulation. But that`s Freedom of Speech for you. Dickheads, can, will, and indeed should use it. You can deride such behaviour however, without bringing in The Law.

The principle should hold. Okay, so my initial reaction when Holocaust-denying fraud Nazi historian David Irving was arrested in Austria wasn?t exactly sympathetic. Sorry, I can?t help it, I like bad things happening to bad people, and take great delight in demonstrating as such. The thought of Irving suffering still amuses me immensely.

And yet, Deborah Lipstadt is surely right in saying Irving should be released. This is the honest position anyone who believes in freedom of expression should take. Irving is a vile falsifier of history, twisting it to his own degenerate ends. While his is the worst example I could think of, I might apply that to many other more moderate figures, but I don?t want the Law on my side.

This isn't clear cut. I wouldn't want the laws about promoting racial hatred repealed. Where the likes of the vile Nick Griffin clearly use Islam as a proxy for race, they deserve to be hounded to pieces. But surely they should be denounced by people who mean it. The Mail and Express play the same game as Griffin every day. I'm very uneasy about having the Law deciding what can be said in any way. It could so easily go the other way. As a long-time campaigner against Nazis, I used to subscribe to the "No Platform" view. And yet surely, if its the Law that says they haven't got a platform, why shouldn't they deny it to you? Trusting the government with what's "off-limits" is very dangerous. And doesn't it give the racists a martyr status they profoundly do not deserve?

Perhaps the bottom line is the effect of such laws. Austria is the country with the strictest Holocaust denial laws in Europe. Did this result in a decent, non-racist society? Ask Jorg Haider, the nearest thing to an out-right Nazi in government that Western Europe has seen in recent years.