Interview stagnated. The Institute of Ideas does not believe that this is it, or that everything has been resolved. Whether you are a conservative or a revolutionary you need to have a frank political exchange of views.
most of the people that have been found guilty of extremist activity have not been anywhere near a bloody mosque and in fact accuse the Mosques of being too conservative…
Where do you think the line is between Free Speech and Incitement?
It was meant as a hypothetical example…
I do not think that there is a line. Incitement used to be a very narrow legal category that would describe for example if I advertised in a paper for someone to murder my husband, then met them and gave them the money and told them where my husband was, and they would go and kill him, I haven’t got a husband but just as a sort of image. That was a very narrow definition, an understandable legal term. Incitement now seems to be used to describe the act of persuading someone. I don’t think that this should ever be forbidden. It implies that audiences are entirely passive and without the capacity to make decisions for themselves. It is a very dangerous category because it removes the distinction between thought and action, words and deeds. People have to make their own decisions as to whether they are convinced by an argument or not, even if that argument is trying to persuade them to go out and plant bombs. How do you react to the criticism that Free Speech requires an equal platform where all the arguments can be weighed up objectively. In reality rhetoric and socio-economic context plays a very important role in persuading people round to an idea. Thus in Mosques for example where only Muslims can enter you have a closed context in which only one side of the argument could be expressed, and persuasion towards extremist ideas is therefore easier and can be dangerous for society? I think you have to be very careful, it would appear to be that
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Yes, I know but there are caricatures that get set in stone. I do believe in religious freedom and I do not think for a minute that priests should be monitored by the state and told what they should and shouldn’t say, and the same goes for Mosques. People should be
Claire Fox drives the Think Tank that is the Institute of ideas.
able to go to these places and hear whatever they want. But you are absolutely right; if you go to a BNP rally your unlikely to get an antiracist campaigner being invited onto debate. However, instead the debate has to be a social one. People are not completely isolated exposed to only the ideas of this closed community. Therefore, the only way that these things can be resolved is to have as many different voices as possible available in society so that people can make an informed decision. You might say that you don’t want them to hear certain ideas, but who are you to decide, and how do you know they are not going to decide that you’re one of the voices they
don’t want to hear. I don’t mean debate in terms of the Cambridge Union with a motion etc, I mean debate in terms of a wide variety of opinions fighting for your attention in the public realm, and I think there are too few of them in general anyway let alone with increased censorship. How would you respond to the suggestion that Free Speech has to a certain extent served its main purpose in terms of creating practical and agreeable orthodoxies such as anti-racism, rights for women and tolerance in general. As a result Free Speech is grinding to a halt in our society, and until you have new things to debate one is merely irritatingly slowing down the whole progress by debating topics which seem to already be conclusively resolved? I think that is a reasonable way to look at it but I do not think that we have the best ideas of all time. There is an assumption there that you know you have won the argument. Free Speech is about finding the truth and in order to do this one needs to have a wide and open debate. I’m not a relativist but obviously there is some contestation as to what the truth is, and it is also the case that different historical circumstances and different social circumstances throw up new demands on you. I can’t ever imagine a time when you can say right it’s closed now; it (debate) is finished. You might say we are all anti-racists but I don’t even believe that. I don’t think that the problem of racism has been resolved. Anti-racist etiquette is in place, yes, but the immigration controls, for example, which are the material basis for why people are treated like second class citizens are absolutely still in place. Just because you’re not allowed to say something horrible about someone doesn’t mean that the problem is resolved. Racism is a political point of view. It’s not one that I agree with, but it’s got
VIVID 3rd Edition May 2008