These are a few paragraphs from a challenging article by Salil Tripathi in the Index on Censorship. Tripathi believes it is wrong to exclude the right wing, unltra-Nationalist, British National Party from a current affairs program on the BBC. He lays down a difficult challenge, but one I am sympathetic to. I believe that civil rights and those First Ammendment rights are absolute, and that is why I struggle every time there is a call for a boycott of a media outlet or establishment for giving a forum to a person or group for the views they promote. Hate speech that can lead to violence must not be tolerated, and that is hard to define, but the line between the two is not very clear. How do we define it and what is acceptable?
The BBC has said it “may” invite Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party (BNP), to appear on its flagship current affairs programme, Question Time.
The BNP is a legal political party in Britain. In June, it won nearly 943,000 votes in the European parliamentary elections. Its 6.1 per cent share of the vote cast was nearly three times what the Scottish National Party got, and only two percentage points less than the Green Party’s tally. Imagine the furore if leaders of those two parties were kept out of a talk show because the chattering classes decided that they represent only marginal views.
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But it is ridiculous for anyone to think that you can defeat the BNP by silencing them. A sinister thought, when silenced, only gets wider currency in the subterranean world where everything “establishment” is viewed as a conspiracy. Sunlight is the best disinfectant; the mutually contradictory positions within the party’s platform would evaporate under that glare.
via Index on Censorship » Blog Archive » No platform won’t work.
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