The Freedom to Dissent

Have you seen the Munk Dialogue with Douglas Murray, Natasha Hausdorff, Mehdi Hasan and Gideon Levy on the question: Is anti-Zionism antisemitism? There was even a moment when Murray denied his infamous The Spectator piece in which he claimed one could even take the opportunity to clear out Gaza from all Palestinians. He wrote on 14th October last year: "The Israelis will respond as they see fit – it isn’t for non-Israelis to give them advice. Maybe Israel will cut off Gaza and starve Hamas out. Maybe they will have a full-scale military operation to rescue the Israeli captives. Or maybe they will finally put an end to this insoluble nightmare, raze Hamas to the ground, or clear all the Palestinians from that benighted strip. A strip which Egypt owned but nobody wants." (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/britain-must-stand-up-against-those-who-support-hamas/)

Personally, I stand with Matthew Paris when he wrote a little later in the same The Spectator on the 4th November: "I have been disturbed by the language from my fellow columnist Douglas Murray. I read with admiration Peter Oborne’s cry for conciliation from the Christian quarter of Jerusalem, but Douglas’s effort to dial up the righteous anger needs to be taken head-on. There are moments in history to dial down, and this is one of them" and "Douglas complains we’re extending the right to free speech to people who would not extend it to us. To me, this is the acid test of your belief in freedom. It’s why I’ve consistently opposed laws against ‘hate speech’, including violently, even provocatively, hateful speech against people like me. I had thought of Douglas as a fellow critic of the cancelling of unwelcome opinion. His turn-around is curiously un-self-aware."

Personally, I've argued all along that if one starts labelling now states that deny even the most unalienable rights like the right to the freedom to dissent to policy and propaganda voiced by its government as being good, democratic and decent, well, I think that it's time to voice ones dissent even more stronger. The first of the four freedoms since the end of World War II is the freedom of speech and expression afterall, and that counts everywhere in the world. The second is freedom for every person to worship and believe anywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear. I'm actually frightened today by people like Douglas Murray who really do know better. It feels like there's again nothing learned from history. That we're sliding as a society back to the total adoration of the leader to follow and the ideal state to have.