Whereas the left once claimed to “fight the establishment”, the left now is the establishment. The modern-day left is absolutely everything that the religious right used to be.
Europe is not an example of a society that we should ever seek to emulate. Europe should serve as, if anything, a warning.
When Salman Rushdie’s controversial book The Satanic Verses was published and a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death was issued by the Ayatollah of Iran, “human rights experts” at the United Nations attacked France for not banning the book, calling Rushdie’s novel an “incitement to racial hatred.”
“It is easy to defend freedom of speech when the message is something many people find at least reasonable. But the defense of freedom of speech is most critical when the message is one most people find repulsive.”
If racists are harassing or threatening people, then such conduct can simply be dealt with through laws against harassment and threats – not through the banning of ideas or opinions.
When you pass laws against “hate speech” you’re giving the power of censorship to those in power.
Europe is repeating the exact same mistakes that it made prior to World War II, right down to attempting to ban and silence the speech of the far-right – and it is, of course, only backfiring in the exact same way that it did during the rise of the Nazis.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
Since when did “the right to not be offended” trump the right to speak freely? Whatever happened to “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”?