Dear Darien,
You’re deliberate misunderstanding of the situation shows that what you seek is not true freedom of speech for all, but simply a cutailed ‘freedom’, to be used soley for your, and the BNP’s, own uses. Genuine free speech is the single greatest weapon to be wielded against the racists and bigots who make up the BNP Having extensively researched their manifesto and policies when crafting a paraticular policy for my union, I can quickly and easily see how riduclous, hate-filled, and disgusting their policies actually are. Freedom of Speech means giving me the right to stand up and say that.
Free Speech gives everyone and anyone who disagrees with the policies and methods of the BNP the oppertunity to show them up for the ignorant racists they are. Freedom of speech allows us to ridicule them for their backwards small minded beliefs. Freedom of speech means that every time Danny Lake stands up to spread hate, 100 intelligent people can stand up and call him out for what he is.
What Danny Lake propsed at your campus is not freedom of speech, so don’t dare take such a sacred, fundamental, and ancient principal, and debase it by trying to use it to defend what is by and large a recruitment drive for the BNP. If you, or the BNP, really believed in freedom of speech, there would be no need to have a closed, invitation only event. Denying others the chance to call out Nick Griffin & Danny Lake for the racists they are by ensuring there is no opposition IS NOT FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
Have you heard of a little thing called RedWatch.org? If not I suggest you check it out before you continue your association with Danny Lake and the BNP. The BNP believes so feverently in freedom of speech that it has a whole website dedicated to cataloguing it’s detractors and critics, and providing photos, names, and address so that the thugs can be sent out so attack them. This is the freedom of speech the BNP believes in.
I would happily commend the idea of bringing Nick Griffin onto my campus, but only if there was open debate and questioning of his views, where he had to try and defend his views to someone who disagreed with him. It is disgusting to think that he can be given a free pass to talk to students, and say what he likes without anyone to point out the lies, inconsistencies and tabloid-esque blood libels he perpetrates.
I respected you Darien for having opinions and voicing them, for appearing to have some sound principles, but the more you sympathise with the BNP, the less weight I feel you can give to your other, much more valid, opinions.
How can you hate someone who’ve not met? How can you wish ill of another human being? How can you judge someone simply on their appearance, place of birth, origin or religion? There are plenty of criminal white people around the world for me to use the BNP’s extrapolation methods to call all white people criminals. There is nothing in your DNA, my DNA, anyone’s DNA that makes them better or worse than anyone else. The amount of melanin my skins cells secrete does not impact on any aspect of my personality.
Judge people by their actions, not their ancestry. Fight for true free speech during a time when it is genuinely under threat from an impish desire to mortgage our liberties and freedoms out of fear of terrorism (a by product of civilisation as old as civilisation itself). Do not fall for the buzz words and intellectually vapid chants of the thugs hooligans and racists of the BNP.
Yours Hopefully, your friend,
Chris
