Join the Fun

I've been humming and harring about posting re: Nick Griffin on Question Time. As I've noted here before, QT has abandoned any political lucidity and has all-but descended into a popularity contest. Who can make the cheapest point? Who can garner the most applause? It's sad really, coz poor old Dimblebee does his best, bless him. The anti-fascist protest that led up to, and continued during the broadcast, attacking the BBC's decision moreso than the personality of Griffin (Griffindor or Slytherin?), was absolutely moronic. One can sort of understand why providing a public platform or a megaphone for a fascist organisation is a questionable undertaking, but in the interests of free speech, freedom of expression, balance, and proportional representation, any independently-minded broadcaster would feel compelled to let them have a go, even if they're going to be booed, heckled, and shot down at every junction. These demonstrators have no idea of the damage they inflict upon the very ideologies they espouse. It's this kind of cameo liberalism that gives itself a bad name. You, like me, probably run kicking and screaming from the label, liberal, and who could blame us? A similar episode took place two years ago when Griffin was invited to debate David Irving at the Oxford Union. Irving denies the extent of the Holocaust. He denies Hitler was aware of much of the Holocaust, and he holds the allied forces accountable for the number of dead and dying in concentration camps at the end of the War. Protesters gathered at the time, accompanied by none other than George Galloway, to demonstrate against that debate, and they stormed the room half way through to stage a sit-in. They all make a fatal error. As if we, the public, are unable to defend ourselves against persuasion, or unable to form our own opinions or evaluate evidence. To call these protests a matter of elitism is not, I think, a stretch.