Ian Boyne, Contributor
ON AUGUST 5, 2005, one of the oldest Western democracies, Britain, slid further along the road of the erosion of free speech when Prime Minister Tony Blair, stung by recent terrorist bombings in London, announced sweeping new measures which would see the Government having the power to close down Muslim mosques and deport people who, in its opinion, are "extremists". Blair also stunned many persons by banning the non-violent but polemically militant Hizb-ut-Tahrir (party of liberation) political party. This is a party which explicitly forbids the use of violence against innocent civilians, and which in its 50-year history has used non-violent political protest to oppose domination and oppression.
Blair said in his August 5 press conference that "we will consult on a new power to order closure of a place of worship which is used as a centre for fomenting extremism, and will consult with Muslim leaders in respect of those clerics who are not British citizens to draw up a list of those not suitable to preach and who will be excluded from our country in the future."
Everyone will agree that no one should be free to incite violence against others. But everyone knows that the matter of "hate speech" is very subjective and is often invoked to suppress freedom of expression and dissenting views. Once governments have sweeping and discretionary powers on which religious message and messenger is acceptable, then we have crossed a dangerous threshold.
One journalist asked Prime Minister Blair an interesting question at the August 5 press conference: "You are talking about closing down websites, you are talking about closing down places of worship, you are talking about expelling Imams (Muslim ministers). Aren't you exactly falling into the trap that people believe Al Qaeda are setting for western governments?"
RESTRICTING CIVIL LIBERTIES
I accept the proposition that in situations of emergency, states are in their right to restrict certain civil liberties. But these restrictions need to be for a limited duration and every attempt must be made to ensure that the emergency does not evolve into the norm and that the paradigm is not shifted to a state of emergency mode. In a book just published, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, Professor Michael Ignatieff, makes a brilliant case for the curtailment of certain rights under extreme circumstances, such as faced by the West now with terrorism. His is a carefully nuanced, balanced exposition of the lesser evil thesis which is at pains to emphasise that the curtailment of any democratic freedom should be done with utmost caution and delicacy.
The danger to free speech is not so much that certain rights are abridged in times of emergency in the face of terrorism. The more pernicious threat is that there is a growing culture of suppression of free speech under the guise of arresting "hate speech" and promoting tolerance. The ethic of tolerance is being promoted in the most intolerant way.
One of the principal areas in which this is seen is in the over-reaction to the decades of polemic against homosexual behaviour. Rightly rejecting the abuse of the human rights of homosexuals - including their right to life - many persons have swung to the opposite extreme by wanting to outlaw any type of opposition to homosexuality at all. Even legitimate opposition to homosexuality is being labelled 'homophobia', which is perhaps the biggest conversation stopper today. Any opposition to the homosexual lifestyle, any view that homosexuality is wrong ethically, is immediately dismissed in some circles as necessarily narrow-minded, bigoted, prejudiced and mere 'hate speech'.
It has gone so far that a minister of religion was sentenced in Sweden because he preached a sermon calling homosexuality an 'abomination', which is how it is described in the Bible. In Canada preachers have been taken off the air, not for inciting violence against homosexuals, but simply for stating their conviction that homosexuality is a sin and a way of life which God frowns on.
Now, whether you accept that the Bible is any authority on ethics or not, or whether you believe that the Fundamentalists are idiotic is totally beside the point. A democratic society which cherishes free expression must allow even the idiots to have their say. On many university campuses - of all places - you can't speak freely against homosexuality or feminism without it being considered 'hate language'. Gone are the days when free speech was threatened only in places like Cuba, North Korea and other communist countries. Today in the 'great democracies' of the United States, Canada, and Britain following suit, the right to spread your own views freely is under attack.
Granted, freedom of speech has never been absolute. This is understood and accepted and even the great libertarian John Locke acknowledged this. But more and more the spirit of intolerance is growing and there is increasing impatience with dissent. Today you dare not go against the politically correct versions of speech.
ILLIBERAL DEMOCRACY
While racism and sexism should be abhorred, I believe people should be free to publish what I would consider racist and sexist views. Let all ideas contend in the intellectual marketplace. And I believe that even dangerous ideas should not be suppressed. The view that 'dangerous ideas' should be suppressed is what drives Islamic fundamentalists to issue fatwas (death sentence) to heretics like Salmon Rushdie, and what led the Eastern European communists to control the press and ban non-communist political parties; and it is what drives Christian Fundamentalists to want to impose a theocracy on the rest of us.
The Islamic Jihadists are driving the West even further along the precipice of illiberal democracy. Western democracy has always been flawed and inadequate, focusing narrowly on civil liberties and political rights while denying economic and social rights to large numbers of people, but the war against terror is driving Western states to be even more repressive.
In his August 5 press conference, Tony Blair made reference to the new grounds for deportation just published that day. According to Blair, "the new grounds will include fostering hatred, advocating violence or justifying or validating such violence." Notice that 'fostering hatred' is entirely separate from advocating or justifying violence perpetrated.
Someone can just arbitrarily decide what message, what platform and what speech is 'fostering hatred'. Someone speaking against British imperialism or decrying past acts of injustice under British colonialism could be classified as a person 'fostering hatred'.
DANGEROUS ERA
Someone speaking about the horrors of transatlantic slavery could be said to be 'fostering hatred' and could have his free speech annulled. Speaking against the use of power and privilege by the capitalist class could be considered 'fostering hatred' against a class of persons and therefore constituting hate speech. We are in a very dangerous era.
In another context, speaking against homosexuality and declaring that God will punish homosexuals - which is a conservative interpretation of Scripture - can be considered hate speech against a certain groups of persons and this speech could be censured. I note the headline in The Gleaner on Thursday, 'Sumfest Penalised for Sizzla's gay-bashing'. The article mentioned that Red Stripe was withholding some funds from the Sumfest promoters "as a punishment for the homophobic lyrics used" by Sizzla. I hope that means that Red Stripe was objecting to any violent lyrics directed against homosexuals, and not that Sizzla was being penalised for speaking out against homosexuality.
It is Sizzla's democratic and artistic right - as it is Capleton's, Beenie Man's and Bounty Killer's - to attack homosexuality, to oppose it vehemently and to 'blood it' in terms of polemically raging against it. The gay lobby cannot have the right to dictate that any artiste or any individual speak no word against homosexuality. Engage people in a debate, attack the anti-homosexual views, but don't try to suppress or to use money power to squelch anti-homosexual polemic. Oppressed groups themselves have a tendency to become monstrously oppressive and exploitative once they have power.
The same Protestants who fought against Catholic oppression and abuse became abusive of fellow Protestants, and political revolutionaries who gain state power after years of repression and exploitation become the new oppressors.
Some of the most bigoted, narrow-minded and anti-democratic people I know are Christians. Left to them you would have to fallow the particular quirks and idiosyncrasies of their denomination. I shudder if these theocrats were to have power in Jamaica. I would not want to live in any state where Fundamentalist Christians have power.
Tolerance, respect for pluralism and a democratic spirit are largely absent from many Christians. One Catholic layman strongly protested to TVJ because a guest on 'Religious Hardtack' expressed the view that the Catholic Church could be the Beast of Revelation. Left to this dictator, no view unfavourable to the Catholic Church would be published.
When Mutaburuka and Christine Hewitt came on television recently and attacked the stories in the Bible and the biblical God, an angry Christian woman called to say the station should not carry that programme in a Christian country. God save us from these totalitarian Christians!
Homosexuals must have the right to expound their views in the media, just as anti-homosexuals must have the right to oppose them. It is a shame that homosexuals cannot show their faces on television in Jamaica for fear of being killed, harassed or victimised.
Conservative Christians must be free to attack feminism and homosexuality just as feminists and homosexuals must have the right to air their views. But today Scandinavia, North America and Britain are being swept by the politically correct, anti-free speech movement under the guise of correcting past wrongs and prejudices. About 1.3 billion human beings in China do not have unrestricted Internet access and a free press, while the West, led by the United States, turns a blind eye. The Islamic world is profoundly anti-democratic, with many actively persecuting Christians, Hindus and Bahais. The U.S. puppet regime in Saudi Arabia outrightly bans Christian churches.
In Jamaica we have refined narrow-mindedness, partiality and intolerance to an art. It is a most difficult environment in which to do serious intellectual work, but we must never give up.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyne1@yahoo.com
