Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Apparently the Nick Griffin/David Irving appearance at the Oxford Union turned into quite a zoo.
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:
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):
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.
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.