It is worth returning to Channel 4’s decision to have President Ahmadinejad deliver its alternative Christmas message. Predictably, those who have attacked the decision have been accused of opposition to free speech—just look at some of the comments on the Skimmer’s post.
But this criticism misses a crucial distinction: there is a difference between allowing free speech and providing a platform. For example, I oppose criminalising Holocaust denial on the grounds that it is best to defeat these absurd and offensive theories in open debate and that people should be allowed to say what they want, short of incitement to violence, however wrong what they say is. But I would never give a platform on Coffee House to a denier. Voltaire did not say, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I’ll build you a platform from which to say it.’
Channel 4’s decision to invite Ahmadinejad to present the alternative message also, I think, demonstrates how few people have grasped who he really is. The people at Channel 4 must still see him as a bit of a laugh, someone who succeeds in annoying the Bush administration and the Israelis, rather than as who he really is: a man who has ordered the death of British troops, is keen to wipe Israel off the map and who supports the hanging of homosexuals and the oppression of women. Let us hope that in we wake up to who he and the Iranian regime really are in time to rally the political and diplomatic will necessary to stop Iran from going nuclear.
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