Check out my domain sometime….

It is far better to give them a platform and challenge them in public on their views. That is only fair and right in a democracy. It’s a slightly different issue when you get into publishing in certain journals. For instance I don’t think Irvine should be published in History journals because what he does is not up to a sufficient academic standard to be touted as even a potential theorem in a peer reviewed journal.

I’m not suggesting that you’re advocating a ban, persay, I’m saying that if, by custom, we never provided platforms to people with unpalatable views, it would amount to the same thing. You do seem to be saying that, out of a sense of propriety, no one should offer to engage these people in debate at all.

If Griffin et al sought to hire a village hall in order to host their own debate, would you propose that the hall’s administrators turn them down? If you were the landlord at a pub in which they were having a rowdy conversation, would you kick them out? If you were a police officer at speakers’ corner, would you arrest them for causing “alarm, harassment and distress”?

Where do you draw the line?

300 people heard one of them. Millions and millions of people know they were invited to speak by the Oxford Union. The risk/benefit analysis produces only one result.

Also entirely missing from this analysis is any attempt to empathise with those who feel threatened and upset. Is providing a platform (which is what has actually happened) really more important than thinking about those who do not want these morons banned but do not want to hear them either?