One of the tactics endlessly used by America's right-wing warriors
in their crusade against Islamic radicalism is the pretense that they
are motivated by a defense of core Western freedoms, particularly free
speech rights. Even the most cynical observer has to be impressed by
how much martyrdom-mileage they've been able to squeeze out of Canada's
petty and dangerous (though ultimately dismissed) formal proceedings
brought against Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant for that duo's publication
of anti-Islamic screeds. Levant managed to write a whole self-glorifying book about his plight and continues to this day to relentlessly depict himself
as a modern-day Thomas Paine battling against Muslim censors and their
leftist, free-speech-hating Western allies. Nobody trumps up
self-pitying, self-centered persecutions as well as the tough-guy
warriors of the neoconservative Right.
That said, concerns about
the erosion of free speech rights in the Western world -- as part of a
misguided attempt to suppress "hate speech" and other forms of
religious and racial bigotry and as a way of accommodating the
growing Muslim populations of Europe -- are both legitimate and
warranted. I vehemently condemned Canada's investigations of Steyn and Levant despite finding them and their "ideas" noxious in the extreme, and I oppose with equal fervor
use of "hate speech" laws in Europe and Canada to punish those who
express bigoted views. No matter the motive, attempts by the state to
circumscribe certain ideas as off-limits, prohibited, and sanctionable
are always wrong and dangerous -- period.
But the anti-Muslim Right's parading around under the free speech banner (just like their pretense of safeguarding the rights of gay people
from oppressive Muslim societies) is so blatantly insincere, nothing
more than a means of opportunistically elevating and justifying their
anti-Islamic animus. That fact is conclusively demonstrated by how
selectively self-interested is the application of their free speech
"principles."
The latest controversy seized on by these faux free speech warriors is the gratuitous disclosure yesterday of a list of 16 individuals banned by the British government from entering the U.K.
on the ground that the banned individuals fail to adhere to that
nation's "values and standards." One of the individuals on the list is
right-wing talk radio host Michael Savage, a fact that is causing all
sorts of righteous anger from the neoconservative Right. That
movement's leading political philosopher and intellectual historian -- Jonah Goldberg -- cried out: "it's idiotic and shameful for Britain to ban Michael Savage from her shores." Mark Steyn also wrote a long, impassioned protest against Britain's exclusion of Savage, based on this claimed principle:
The
British Home Secretary thinks that by making public the ban on Michael
Savage she's "naming and shaming" him. But she's shaming only herself
and her country. . . . The idea of ideological enforcement at the border is repugnant to a free society.
That's
such a moving defense of free expression. And the principle Steyn
espouses -- "the idea of ideological enforcement at the border is
repugnant to a free society" -- is one with which I wholeheartedly
agree. Why, then, didn't Steyn and his allies criticize this:
Norman
Finkelstein, the controversial Jewish American academic and fierce
critic of Israel, has been deported from the country and banned from the Jewish state for 10 years . . .
Finkelstein is one of several scholars rejected by Israel
in the increasingly bitter divide in academic circles, between those
who support and those who criticise its treatment of Palestinians. . .
. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said the deportation of
Finkelstein was an assault on free speech.
"The decision to
prevent someone from voicing their opinions by arresting and deporting
them is typical of a totalitarian regime," said the association's
lawyer, Oded Peler.
Both the Haaretz editorial page and Alan Dershowitz (in an interview with me)
denounced Finklestein's exclusion as obviously viewpoint-based -- but
the ostensibly pro-free-expression Right was silent. Why wasn't Mark
Steyn crying out then that "the idea of ideological enforcement at the
border is repugnant to a free society"?
Indeed, exactly this sort
of free speech abridgment is routinely exercised by allies of the Right
and against its enemies, and they either remain silent or actively
supportive. Just two months ago, Canada's right-wing government barred British MP George Galloway
from entering that country because of his views on the war in
Afghanistan and claimed support for Hamas. Along with Savage, British
officials also banned several Muslim preachers who are accused -- just
like Savage -- of nothing more than expressing ideas incompatible
with Britain's "values and standards." The Bush administration
repeatedly detained and then barred
what it perceived to be adversarial foreign journalists from entering
the U.S. But the Free Expression warriors on the Right are silent about
all of that because "free speech" is just another weapon used to
demonize Muslims and justify their animus, not a genuinely held
conviction.
Even now, right here in the U.S., the Patriot Act
explicitly allows the U.S. Government to ban individuals from entering
the country on the ground that the individual "endorses or espouses" --
not engages in -- what government officials believe to be "terrorism."
That provision is a purely ideological exclusion that the State
Department insists allows it to ban anyone engaged in what it deems to
be "irresponsible expression" of ideas.
That provision has been used to bar
numerous individuals (mostly Muslims) from entering the U.S. Most
notably, it is being used still to ban a Swiss intellectual and leading
scholar of the Muslim world, Tariq Ramadan, from assuming a tenured
teaching position at the University of Notre Dame and from accepting
invitations to address various audiences inside the United States --
even though Ramadan had entered the U.S. more than 20 times in the past
without incident, is widely considered to be a moderate Muslim scholar,
and has explicitly and repeatedly denounced terrorism.
The Bush administration baldly acknowledged at first that it was
banning him on ideological grounds, only thereafter changing its story
by pointing to a $1,300 contribution Ramadan made to a Swiss charity
that thereafter was placed on a U.S. government list of organizations that allegedly support Hamas. As Daphne Evitar documented, the ideology-based barring of Ramadan is consistent with a long line of similar exclusions by the U.S.:
Such "ideological exclusion" dates back to the Cold War, the groups note, when the United States refused entry to leading scholars, writers and activists,
including Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Palestinian poet
Mahmoud Darwish, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Italian playwright Dario
Fo, British novelist Doris Lessing and Canadian writer and
environmentalist Farley Mowat.
While numerous groups of American scholars have urged the Obama administration to lift the ban on Ramadan,
and while the ACLU -- an organization actually devoted to a genuine
belief in free expression -- continues to challenge the
constitutionality of Ramadan's Patriot-Act-based exclusion from
the U.S., the pretend Mark Steyn free speech movement either remains
silent or, worse, explicitly endorses
these viewpoint-based punishments. That's because they are perfectly
content with liberty abridgements as long as they're directed at the
right people.
Proponents of speech-restrictive measures always
justify themselves by claiming that their ideological opponents
"incite" or support violence. One of the most important
First Amendment cases in the U.S. -- Claiborne v. NAACP
-- arose out of the State of Mississippi's attempts in the 1960s to
impose civil liability on the local NAACP chapter and its leaders
(including Medgar Evers' older brother, Charles) for allegedly
"inciting" violence on the part of NAACP members through "fiery"
speeches advocating boycotts of white only stores. Identically,
left-wing advocates of hate speech laws claim that those who spout
anti-gay, anti-Muslim or other bigoted ideas "incite" violence against
minorities, while right-wing advocates of similar measures claim that
people like George Galloway and Tariq Ramadan "incite" Islamic
terrorism.
The corrupt rationale for speech restrictions remains the same no matter who is advocating them. But as the Claiborne
court explained in unanimously barring the imposition of liability on
NAACP leaders for the violent acts of its members, to punish ideas
based on the theory that those ideas "incite" violence is to strangle
the concept of free expression.
One either believes in free
expression or one doesn't, and if one does, it means opposing efforts
to circumscribe those ideas with which one vehemently disagrees.
That's always the true test for the authenticity of one's claimed
belief in these liberties. This alleged belief in free expression from
the Mark Steyn Right magically extends only to those with whom they
agree and is easily suspended for their ideological enemies, especially
Muslims and those on the left. So transparently, it's just another
club they cynically wield to glorify their bottomless animus towards
Muslims and aggression in the Muslim world. Only when they begin
waving the free expression flag on behalf of their ideological
opponents will they deserve to have their claimed freedom "principles"
taken seriously.