Freedom of speech cannot be maintained in a society where nobody ever says anything subversive or inflammatory. … Unless it is resisted, the erosion of civil liberties will continue until there is no such thing as liberty and all opposition to authority will have become crime.
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Like a broken clock, even Germaine Greer, tells it right just occassionally.
But not as often as twice a day.
The point of a quote is that it conveys an interesting idea, or is well-expressed, or both. It is not to give an opportunity for the exhibition of banality.
I do not set up a lamp-post in the hope that dogs will piss on it.
Otto – I clicked on “Comments” and found that you’d taken the words right out of my.. . erm… keyboard, I guess.
The future doesn’t look great for civil liberties. Stalin would have sold his moustache for the kind of technology that authoritarians have at their disposal today. And that’s just kidstuff compared to what’s around the corner.
Yes, well, Germaine gave that quote when defending those who wanted to be rude to the Pope in Australia. But I remember her at the time of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie being far less keen on his right to free speech then and uttering dangerous nonsense about the offence Muslims felt. Easy to be brave when you’re attacking a soft target who won’t use or threaten violence against you.
Heh, Ham.
And C Powell provides a nice case in point!
I think you are being a bit harsh on Ms Greer.
I treat her the way I do Tony Benn; I don’t always agree with what she has to say, but when she speaks I listen.
Damn. Germaine Greer has always been a great influence on my life. That is to say, whatever she said or did I knew I would always be on the right track if I said or did the exact opposite. And she’s just said something entirely sensible. What will I do now?
Ms Greer has been a media whore
oh, since about OZ Magazine, even.
But she will happily admit to that.
She is an honest , if usually deluded person.
But the comparison CC makes with Tony Benn is apt.
On the basics, in the abstract, things like freedom of speech and democracy, they are both very sound.
Just dont let either of them near a real working economy!
FREEDOM cannot survive in any country when the insane libertarians like Greer are constantly exercising their right to offend and insult without thinking about consequences and without bothering to take any RESPONSIBILITY for it…
Subvert! Inflame!
I agree and directly put the kettle on.
So long as she stays over there, and doesn’t come home, I’ll support her right to offend anyone!
Didn’t John Stuart Mill say much the same? Still, I’m sure it needs to be repeated.
To concentrate on the quote, rather than Ms Greer:
She is correct as to the facts. The wrong response though would be to say things which are subversive or inflammatory simply for the sake of it.* As a society and government becomes more totalitarian, more rigid and more irrational, honest and rational speech will inherently become subversive. No one had to be deliberately inflammatory to be labelled a subversive in Stalin’s Russia. To be deliberately offensive in order to secure the right to free speech risks handing ammunition to those who would seek justification to limit that right.
*Ill leave it to others to decide if Germaine practices or advocates this.
C. Powell,
But I remember her at the time of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie being far less keen on his right to free speech then and uttering dangerous nonsense about the offence Muslims felt.
Do you have any source for that? The memory of what people of whom one disapproves said has a habit of amending itself.
I recall a number of right-wingers (who hadn’t yet evolved the received wisdom that Islamism was an existential threat and therefore Rushdie was a brave freedom fighter for criticising it) taking a line similar to Timothy’s during the Rushdie affair: that he was free to do it but that it served him right to get death threats, because he deliberately set out to offend, and had already offended “us”, after all, by being rude about the Queen, the police, Margaret Thatcher; that therefore he should shut up rather than giving excuses for other turbulent wogs.
The Singaporean High Commissioner coincidentally put the case for ‘responsible free speech’ last week, here(Link).
I should clarify: I don’t think that it “served him right” or that he should not have been afforded police protection. I haven’t read the Satanic Verses, and I don’t know if he set out to offend. But if his sole aim was to offend, then I’m not sure he did the cause of free speech any favours. The publication of deliberately inflamatory but otherwise worthless texts (such as neo-Nazi or Holocaust denial literature) does not help the cause of free speech, rather, it increases calls for regulation. One can perfectly consistently defend the right of neo-nazis to publish their views, while acknowledging that the cause of free speech would be easier to defend if they would just shut up.
Once again, I don’t know much about Rushdie, I’m not saying this applies in his case.
Neither had any of the morons who burnt his book, nor Ayatollah Khomeini when he issued his fatwa. The fact that the Ayatollah did not even feel the need to read Rushdie’s book before issued him with a death sentence tells you al you need to know about Islamic jurisprudence.
I haven’t read “The Satanic Verses” either, but I doubt Rushdie’s plan was to offend Muslims. He is a western intellectual, and I can’t see that Islam was particularly important to him when he wrote the book. But I do thank him for alerting me to the existance of the “satanic verses”, which was the bit of the Koran where Mohammed forgot his script, and implied that Allah had three daughters, the moon goddesses. Realising his error, he later declared that the devil must have tapped into his line from Allah and fed him this false information, which does rather raise the question: if the devil could feed him a line on that, how much else of the Koran was dictated to Mohammed by the Lord Satan? Better not ask an Iranian Ayatollah for an answer to that one I would imagine.
how much else of the Koran was dictated to Mohammed by the Lord Satan?
Lots of people died trying to answer that question. Of course the sky fairy saw to it that the possesors of the true knowledge had the best swordsmen.
Guy,
I disagree. Rushdie was no brave freedom fighter. He was a novelist who was brought-up Muslim. He wrote stories for money because he was quite good at it (I really liked “Midnight’s Children” for example) and because of his up-bringing he used a true embarrassment in Islamic lore in one of his books and got a death sentence for his troubles.
The Satanic Verses incident went thusly (if memory serves) Mohammed incorporates a coupla Goddesses along with big Al because he thinks it will suit his audience at the time (they worship them) and this is subsequently deep-sixed because it is obviously shirk (the greatest sin in Islam) so… It’s a problem. Mo later claims that Satan was trying to mislead him (He claimed the good stuff came from the angel Gabriel/Jibrael) so the real problemo for the musselmen is if that’s a load of pony then how do they know the rest of the Qu’ran isn’t also infested with demonic utterings.
If I was a religious man I would be tempted to say all of it is the work of Satan whispering into the ear of a half-baked camel-fucker who had hit middle-age without achieving much, really. He had hairy shoulders you know. It’s in the hadith. If I had hairy shoulders I’d be getting divorced (or waxed).
Does that mean Rushdie’s worth less? Of course not! He has an absolute right to sell his tales. Just as he had a right to work in advertising and come up with the slogan for British cream, “naughty but nice”. That he is intelligent and articulate and an apostate is what really, really pisses the beards off.
John K. You git! You stole my thunder and put it better than I did!
John K: “..and implied that Allah had three daughters, the moon goddesses.”
A nod to the Christian ‘trinity’ perhaps?
Nick M:
That is a gross slur upon the Prophet. No Arab would misuse a camel in that way, they are far too valuable. Mohammed was content to fuck captured slave women and children like any respectable cult leader.
APL:
I think not, the moon goddesses were part of the existing religion of the people around Mecca, and it was a popular move on Mohammed’s part when he incorporated them into his new religion. Unfortunately he then realised that the idea of Allah having three daughters did not sit well with the concept that there is no God but God, so decided that Satan must have made him say it. However, the old moon cult lives on in the crescent moon which is still the symbol of Islam.
Guy: I recall it very clearly. She was on Radio 4’s Any Questions panel at the time and I remember being surprised at her answer because I was expecting a robust defence of free speech and did not get it but did get waffle about how we needed to understand the offence caused etc. I don’t have a recording obviously. What that case showed is that a lot of people grounded their views not on the issue – the right to free speech – but on whether they liked Rushdie’s novel (irrelevant), him (also irrelevant – and there was more than a touch of racism in the comments of some Tories about a foreigner coming here and costing us a lot of money), the Iranian regime, Pakistanis and Muslims (a number of Labour MPs – Roy Hattersley was a prime example – were very keen on buttering up their Muslim constituents even if it meant being on the side of book burners and those who threatened murder). The Rushdie affair should have taught us – but didn’t – a lot of lessons which we’re now 20 years – and far too many deaths – later painfully learning.
John K: “I think not, ”
Oh, Ok.
John K: “However, the old moon cult lives on in the crescent moon which is still the symbol of Islam.”
Also perhaps reflected too in the adherence of the musslemen to the lunar calander?
APL:
Yes, I would imagine the Muslim use of the lunar calendar has some connection with the old moon worshipping religion which was followed in Mecca before Allah and/or Satan started having chats with Mohammed in his cave.
Normally I cant stand Germaine Greer,but in this case she is bang on the money.
Not a particularly well expressed version of a point – distinctly questionable in its implications, but that’s another matter – made many millions of times before and often much better.
The only possible purpose of posting it is to advance Guy’s People’s Front politics. As to who’s using who…