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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Apparently the Nick Griffin/David Irving appearance at the Oxford Union turned into quite a zoo.

Demonstrators broke into Oxford's venerable debating society Monday night, sitting on the debating table of the Oxford Union to protest the appearance of infamous Holocaust denier David Irving and far-right British National Party leader Nick Griffin.

At least 200 protesters chanted anti-fascist slogans and waved placards decrying the appearance of the two.

Irving and Griffin were bundled into the hall hours before the forum was to take place as protesters yelled "Keep Oxford fascist-free; We will defend democracy."

Just minutes before the debate was due to take place, a group of protesters broke through the security cordon around the Union and staged a sit-down protest in the hall.

Several students groups, including the Oxford Student Union and the university's Jewish and Muslim societies, have teamed up with activist group Unite Against Fascism to organize the protest...

Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews is quite right in saying:

..."Generations of students have sought to push at boundaries, often doing so with a mixture of idealism and naivety...Those who issued these invitations doubtless think that they too are testing the limits of free speech, but rather than being daring and original, they are just being dupes. Most of the rest of us see this as a rather immature student stunt which in this case has wider ramifications because of the credibility Irving and Griffin will seek to claim from their involvement."...

But Yair Zivan, from the Union of Jewish Students is wrong to defend the disruption of the event (if that is indeed what he is doing, you never can be sure with the use of the quotes in articles like this):

"We are desperately disappointed that the president of the union has chosen to allow this debate to go ahead...The [union] president seems completely unconcerned by the offense this debate has caused to Jewish students...Democracy does include the right to free speech - so long as that doesn't incite hatred against others - but it also includes the right to tell extremists that they're not welcome and the responsibility to protect minorities...By allowing this event to go ahead, the president has put the welfare of Jewish students on campus secondary to his own publicity seeking and we believe that this will send out entirely the wrong message"...

This is an uncomfortable situation. The invitation and the excuse for it was a ridiculous one, but once the event is ongoing, the mob cannot rule. We may yet reach a point that people like Irving and Griffin are so dangerous that their very presence must be opposed by force, but society is not so fragile that we are there yet. Speech exercised under rule of law, not at the sufferance of a mob, is essential, and ultimately its loss far more dangerous than anything an evening with Griffin and Irving could possibly represent.

1 Comment

Mobs shouldn't rule, but students would have made a more effective statement by carrying placards noting that Irving, having unsuccessfully sued Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for libel because they described him for what he was, was neither a supporter of the right to free speech nor a credible historian.

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