Mick Hartley

You don't have to look far nowadays to read a lot of hot air about the limits of free speech. Here's David Cesarani at CiF, in support of laws banning Holocaust denial:

The recent electoral success of the far-right parties in Austria and the detention of the alleged Holocaust denier Gerald Töben in Britain together raise some awkward questions. How should liberal, democratic societies deal with those who espouse antisemitism and racism, who deny the systematic mass murder of the Jews by the Nazis, and who pour vitriol on Muslims and gay people?

Despite decades of "Holocaust education" and the building of Holocaust memorials, 29% of Austrian voters cast their ballot for the heirs and admirers of National Socialism. Although the Austrian government is a member of an intergovernmental taskforce dedicated to promoting memory of the Holocaust and its grim lessons worldwide, at home it cannot even convince its own population to stay away from the suit-wearing inheritors of Hitler's toxic ideology.

He goes on to suggest that laws against Holocaust denial are needed – that "a fractional loss of liberty is a small price to pay" – to prevent the rise of the far righ….and cites the example of a country where such laws are in place, which is now seeing the rise of the far right. The logic is not compelling. 

[T]here are those who deplore Islamophobia, antisemitism, racism and homophobia who simultaneously defend the right of creative figures, and logically anyone else, to cause offence. It would be nice to call this a "principled" stand but it is precisely the lack of any aesthetic principle by which creativity can be judged that has reduced the benchmark of appreciation to breaking taboos and upsetting people.

These attitudes create a penumbra in which Töben and his ilk can operate with impunity.

But a stand in support of of the right to offend isn't based on aesthetic principles. It's a question of free speech. That principle – the principle of free speech – has to be independent of aesthetic judgements, otherwise it becomes reduced to arguments about taste. You have to accept the cruddy along with the worthwhile because ultimately no one's in a position to judge. It's a red herring here, this jibe about breaking taboos and upsetting people - but, with the inclusion of Islamophobia among the list of nasty things to be deplored, it's not difficult to see where Cesarani might want to take the argument when it comes to protecting Muslim sensibilities. 

The idea of Gerald Töben being arrested here and extradited to Germany, merely for expressing opinions  which can readily be shown to be false, strikes me as repugnant. Laws against Holocaust denial are, contra Cesarani, self-defeating, (though no doubt in Germany and Austria's case understandable) as well as being a clear denial of the right of free speech.