I realise that for many the recent #DayForFreedom event in London on May 6th that I wrote about previously was a bit of a non-event, given it received almost no coverage in the mainstream media, but I have paid a fair amount of attention to it, particularly the media response before and after the fact. For me, the UK in 2018 is like staring into a crystal ball at what Australia will be like in the very near future, unless politicians and people with a public profile speak out candidly and urgently against creeping political correctness and the thought police.
Rather predictably, the same old leftist columnists have come out in the past week and declared the #DayForFreedom event a bit of a wash-out. In the case of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, favoured amongst the BBCommunististas and Guardianistas, she goes as far as to declare that the Right has weaponised Free Speech, warning Liberals to ‘fight back’.
I chuckled at this article as, despite the cloying sense of moral outrage that she confects, it’s just desperate and inaccurate. Everyone’s a fascist in the UK now, especially all of the men, women, grandparents and children that attended.
This, though, from a woman who has made a career out of attacking, demonising and politicising the British white working class and British values in general, once declaring that she hoped “white middle class men would just go away” on British TV. [psst … Yasmin … that’s now considered hate speech by your rules, love].
Indeed, a very quick Google search for instances where Brown derides or criticises the UK’s horrendous notion of free speech each time she or anyone else in the UK feels criticised or insulted, yields dozens of articles written over the past decade, all of which have one common thread – she loathes the idea that Britain embraces free speech, particularly as it pertains to anyone who hurts her feelings or objects to her vapid opinions.
I had to laugh again though at the hypocrisy of this article from 2012, written about a British baroness at a pro-Palestine meeting who at the time was misquoted as saying she thought Israel would soon cease to exist. Brown of course through her place in the media leaped to the speaker’s defence in the face of anger from the Jewish community, defending the baroness’ right to free speech, even quoting from Salman Rushdie: “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
What a strangely coherent sentiment, I wonder between which Anglophobic notion Brown lost it?
But what was really pleasing to me – and something that I hoped rather than thought would happen – is that the general public is fed up with this stuff, and Brown’s article was met with complete derision on Twitter.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA pic.twitter.com/teJbxgNsiY
— ONCE GREAT BRITAIN #FREESPEECH 🇬🇧 (@Paul_T8319) May 10, 2018
It is a gloriously patriotic, irreverent and sarcastic response from a mixed bag of wonderful citizens and reminds me of a time not too long ago when the idea of taking the piss and rightfully calling out someone’s bullshit wasn’t considered a hate crime.
I know this is only a tiny little moment in the Culture War, but it’s important to celebrate these things. The Left gave up the idea of free speech a decade ago, replacing it with appropriate speech; while I still can in this country, let me exercise mine and suggest that leftist ideologues like her deserve all the flak she gets.
