This has been a terrible year for free speech. In January, after the atrocities in Paris, the whole world was ‘Charlie’, for about an hour. Then the violence and intimidation did the job they usually do (though we like to pretend otherwise) and by July even Charlie wasn’t Charlie anymore.
So I was delighted earlier this year when the Free Press Society of Denmark asked me if I would be willing to come to Copenhagen this September to take part in a conference to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the original ‘cartoon crisis’. I have spoken for this excellent group of doughty Danes before, and they have certainly shown more courage than the rest of the European media class combined. Not that they don’t pay a price for their bravery. The person who introduced me the last time I spoke for the organisation was the historian and journalist Lars Hedegaard. A while later a Muslim assassin arrived at his front door and tried to fire two shots at his head. Lars – who despite being in his 70s is as tough as anything – thankfully survived the attack.
Another founder member, who now heads the Lars Vilks Committee, is Helle Brix. It was her committee who organised the meeting on free speech in February this year that was shot up by an Islamist gunman (I interviewed her for The Spectator after that attack). In the meantime, there have been countless efforts to attack Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper which carried the original cartoons, and its editor, Flemming Rose, who commissioned the depictions. Interested readers can watch Flemming and me debating the peacefulness or otherwise of Islam, a few years ago in London here:
Anyhow – Saturday’s event was an important milestone and an important demonstration of force.
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