Freedom of speech, sometimes

(The Observer; Peščanik.net)

In October 1989, the Muslim Institute organized a rally on the Salman Rushdie case at Manchester City Hall. This was eight months after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie's assassination for his "blasphemous" novel The Satanic Verses, forcing the writer into hiding for decades.

On stage was the Institute’s founder, Kalim Siddiqui, a passionate supporter of Iranian theocracy. The fatwa, he told the audience, was righteous and Rushdie must die. He asked who in the audience agreed with that. Most raised their hands. He went on to ask how many of the audience would be willing to kill Rushdie? Most kept their hands in the air. It was a fiery, terrifying moment, caught on camera and shown on the evening news, and then debated in parliament.

The International Committee to Defend Salman Rushdie, formed after the fatwa was issued, considered whether to call on the authorities to charge Siddiqui with incitement to murder or perhaps to file a private lawsuit themselves. The committee’s chair, Frances D’Souza, was against such a move. Neither Siddiqui nor his followers, she told me years later, were “in a position to carry out the fatwa… They had no weapons, no knowledge of Salman’s whereabouts, and no immediate intent to carry out the threats. So, to use a well-known American court ruling on incitement to violence, there was no ‘clear and imminent danger’ that Siddiqui’s words would be translated into action.” The committee agreed and decided not to file a lawsuit.

Today, such a decision would be astonishing. Attitudes towards incitement to violence have changed significantly over the past four decades. The threshold for sensitivity to this work is much lower. And the perception of incitement to violence is more conditioned than before by specific political views. Both of these trends are visible in two cases that have recently entered the public debate: Lucy Connolly and the Bob Whelan band.

Lucy Connolly has been sentenced to 31 months in prison for inciting racial hatred in an inflammatory tweet during last year’s anti-immigrant riots in England. The riots followed the murder of three girls from a dance school in Southport, England, by XNUMX-year-old Axel Rudakubana. Some rioters attacked hotels housing migrants, believing false rumors about the origin of the killer – who was born in England. “Mass deportation now, burn down all the fucking hotels full of these scumbags, I don’t care,” Connolly wrote in a tweet she later deleted, adding: “If that makes me racist, so be it.”

Bob Vylan, an English punk-rap duo, caused outrage when they led the crowd at the Glastonbury Festival in chanting: “Death, death to the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces).” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the chant, some commentators compared it to the Nuremberg rallies, the police launched an investigation, and the BBC was criticized for broadcasting it.

Neither of these cases reaches the threshold of incitement to violence that D'Souza set in relation to Rushdie, although Connolly is much closer to that limit than Bob Whelan. What such cases reveal is the way in which the expansion of the meaning of incitement to violence becomes a means of increasing control over free speech.

However, many who had opposed Connolly’s conviction and imprisonment welcomed the investigation into the Bob Whelan band. Many who had condemned the “cancellation culture” of recent years celebrated the band’s “cancellation” by other festivals, concert halls and even their agent. The US, which has been critical of Britain’s intolerance of free speech, has revoked the band’s visas for a planned American tour. As Bryn Harris of the Free Speech Union noted, the case “tests the tolerance of the right wing for free speech, many of whom claim to support it, but are now behaving like Mary Whitehouse at a Sex Pistols concert.”

The treatment of Connolly and other anti-immigrant protesters has also led to claims of “double standards in policing.” In fact, as I have written before, “the history of policing is a history of double standards.” For years, the targets of excessive surveillance were almost exclusively black people, Irish republicans, or radical workers. What has changed is that the boundaries of such policing have shifted. Authorities have become more sensitive to issues of race and identity, while surveillance of certain sections of the working class has become more direct.

There is a long list of people who have received harsh sentences for inflammatory comments deemed to be incitement to violence. At a 2006 protest outside the Danish embassy in London over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, demonstrators chanted “Bomb, bomb the UK” and carried banners with slogans like “Destroy those who insult Islam.” The slogans were awful, but no worse than Connolly’s tweet. Four protesters were convicted of “incitement to murder” and “racial hatred,” and received sentences of between four and six years in prison. Such cases rarely attracted the attention of those who now criticize double standards in policing.

It is also not true, as some claim, that the authorities are soft on pro-Palestinian protests. Journalists such as Richard Medhurst and Asa Winstanley have been arrested for their writings. Academic Haim Breshit, founder of the Jewish Network for Palestine, was arrested (and later released without charge) for “hate speech” during demonstrations against Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely. “Palestinian Action” has been designated a terrorist organization for organizing nonviolent protests, including at military airports.

Today, there is much talk about double standards in police work, but not enough about double standards in the pursuit of freedom. As long as we are prepared to defend the freedoms of only some, and not all, we leave room for anyone's freedom to be jeopardized.

(Translation: L. Đorđević)