After Mamata Banerjee arrested a professor in Kolkata because he made a cartoon of her – we are now right in the middle of a Fascist movement towards curtailing individual freedom of speech. I saw this coming in 2006 when some Christian groups tried to ban my film Sacred Evil. This is my Essay in Speech written in 2006 : Censorship & Intolerance in The Information Age. And a must read now.
It is a dilemma of the liberal world that in the Information Age suddenly we are threatened by censorship.
In many ways it is the doings of the neo-liberals that has resulted in such a situation.
Freedom is a constant vigil and freedom is not a relative ideal. If you let an inch of your freedoms slip, you will lose all of it. Gradually, if you are lucky, without warning, if not.
Remember the old story about the German shopkeeper : first they came for the communists, i wasn’t a communist I didn’t protest, then they came for the poles, i wasn’t a pole, i didn’t protest, then they came for the Jews, I wasn’t a Jew, I didn’t protest, then they cam for the man down the road, well I wasn’t him so i didn’t protest, then they came for my neighbor and I didn’t protest cause it was none of my business, then they came for me! There wasn’t anyone left to protest!
In the last 20 years, we liberals have stood by and watched the rights and freedoms of many a group of people trampled upon and very often ( to the horror of someone like Jefferson) joined in the chorus demanding the subjugation of such rights.
First it was the smokers, every conceivable inch of space was snatched from from them, they were painted pariahs (forget the fact that from Newton to Russell they were all smokers). People have to stand outside buildings like untouchables to have a couple of puffs. Let’s not get into the righteous garbage about the rights of non-smokers. Yes they have the right to not smoke passively but where is the courtesy of choice. Yes you can build massive areas for non-smokers but the smokers must be given their space too. Why is smoking banned completely from public spaces? Why can’t we provide for their preferences?
Same goes for pornography in India. No one speaks up for it. I go back to the Broken Windows theory…if you leave one broken window in the city, you will find the whole city contracting the disease of apathy and disorder…fix the rights of those whom you might even abhor and only then can true freedom flourish.
What of the recent bit about the revision of ba-ba black sheep in British schools to ba-ba Rainbow sheep? What is that? Do the antiracists know that the poem itself was a protest about the tax on wool during the 13th century, 1 to the local lord, one to the king and the last 1/3rd to the poor little boy down the lane, himself?! Where is color in all this? What’s going on?
Why are the anti-racists fighting the free expressionists…are they racists? Aren’t they supposed to be on the same side?
the liberal west denies one the right to deny the holocaust, you can’t and shan’t be a be a Nazi sympathizer…making us as Nazi as Hitler.
This business of not hurting the sentiments of others is hogwash. the only hurt we should worry about is the physical kind.
Which none of us seem to be able to give up. free expression is bound to hurt sentiment, didn’t Galileo hurt the sentiment of the church? Sentiments are not worth a dime, freedom is. It is the basic right to freedom that gives one the luxury of sentiment.
We must stop ghettoizing drugs, fundamentalism and other so called socially unacceptable behavior… the only thing ghettos breed is violence. Let’s defend everyone’s freedom to be as they choose to be under the Human Charter, even those whose expressions may repel us. And if everyone is confused about what the Human Charter is, let’s draft a NEW BILL OF RIGHTS for the whole world.
Because in the end, people don’t live as groups. People live as individuals. The smallest and most vulnerable minority in the universe is the individual.
We must protect the rights and freedoms of each and every individual and that means we mustn’t gang up against the rights and freedoms of anyone except those who intend to browbeat history back into the Dark Ages. Let’s not champion environmentalists against the entrepreneur, let’s not champion governments against parents rights to raise their children the way they want to, let’s not champion the rights of minorities against the rights of the majority, let’s not champion the rights of those who question the basic human rights and finally let’s not champion the rights of nations, let’s ask at all times for the abolition of all boundaries.
Let’s not forget that History must march on , liberties must progress, let’s not revise our position backwards, let’s not redraw the boundaries of freedom, we fought hard for 10000 years to find the individual his freedom from the TRIBE, let’s not lose it now –
Now, when the Information Age is ready to exalt freedom of expression beyond the wildest imagination of Jefferson when he wrote the Bill Of Rights!!!
Stand Up and Don’t Change Your Views at Gunpoint!