Oxford union debate
Victorian Maiden has an uncharacteristicly wrong take on the Oxford Union debate, in this blogger’s opinion. She is, unfortunately, in good company.
While it is certainly true that the Oxford Union is engaging in naked publicity seeking, most likely in an attempt to annoy Cambridge, it is not true that they are wrong to give Griffin and Irving a platform from which to speak.
To give such people publicity is not to grant their ideas legitimacy, it is to give them the opportunity to expose themselves for the ignorant buffoons that they are. The solution to “bad” speech is not less speech, it’s more speech. The Oxford Union put two fools on a stage — dangerous fools, I grant, but fools nonetheless — and gave a large group of very bright people the opportunity to witness their idiocy for themselves. Quite rightly, there was also a gaggle of protesters outside to help them along. To echo Charon QC’s comments, it’s better that they face a public grilling and lose, than to win an implicit victory by virtue of the refusal of others to engage with them.
Some people’s ideas are objectionable, and some are abhorrent, but it is the mark of a free society that we allow their expression anyway. No one would claim that these people should be entitled to a platform to air their views, but the inverse position — where they are prohibited, if only by custom, from having any platform at all — would have chilling effects on everyone’s freedom. Short of inciting people to commit criminal acts, anyone should be able to say whatever they like, from wherever they like: if the Oxford Union wish to waste their time debating with morons in a shameless publicity stunt, that’s their business.
It may be stupid, but it’s not wrong.
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November 30th, 2007 at 13:06
Certainly I agree that banning the guesome twosome would be wrong. But they are notbanned - anywhere. That is not the issue. The issue is not whether they can speak, but where.
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?
November 30th, 2007 at 13:33
Yes. Those who do not wish to hear them can vote with their feet: most certainly, no one is obligated to listen.
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?
November 30th, 2007 at 18:56
You can’t fight fascism with fascism, as much as I might find such speeches abhorrent I respect the right of others to say what they will. More often than not banning these people from speaking or actively trying to limit their platform only gives fuel to their suggestions that there is some kind of conspiracy preventing their views from being heard.
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.
February 5th, 2010 at 02:23
Joe…
Check out my domain sometime….