All these rights are interconnected, and an attack on one set of rights and the institutions it supoprts is an attack on the others, sometimes in ways which are clear, and sometimes in less obvious ways. Through them all, though, like a steel thread, runs the right to free speech. If this right be weakened, moderated, limited, interdicted or otherwise subjected to correction, then the other rights and their exercise will be correspondingly weakened. So important has free speech been in the intellectual and moral evolution of the West that one is tempted to assert that the West is inconceivable and unsustainable without it. Demands of any kind for controls over the exercise of free speech, however apparently noble the cause, merit the closest scrutiny.
We have already mentioned Bhikhu Parekh, the editor of
The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (2000) and author of
Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (2000). Parekh's starting point in
Rethinking Multiculturalism is the response of Muslims to the publication of Salman Rushdie's
The Satanic Verses (1988), which led to death threats being made against its author. Parekh cites three objections from Muslims to
The Satanic Verses: 'the book gave a totally inaccurate account of Islam and spread "utter lies" about it' (Parekh, 2000, 298-299); that
The Satanic Verses was 'abusive', 'insulting', 'scurrilous' and 'vilifactory' in its treatment of men and women whom they [Muslims] considered holy' (Parekh, 2000, 299); and that
The Satanic Verses 'demeaned and degraded them [Muslims] in their own and especially others' eyes' (Parekeh, 2000, 299). Of Rushdie, Parekh wrote:
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As a Muslim as well as a scholar of Islam, Rushdie owed it to his culturally besieged community to counter the 'myths' and 'lies' spread about them, or at least to refrain from lending them his authority. Instead, he had joined the Orientalist discourse and harmed their moral and material interests (Parekh, 2000, 299).[2]
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Parekh repeatedly demands that whites step out of their culture and confront the benefits of seeing their culture from another perspective, only to condemn Rushdie for the same thing with regard to Islam.
Rushdie's real crime, you suspect, is that he has produced an unflattering portrait. This betrays not just a gross discrepancy between what Parekh demands for whites but what he is willing to accept when writers actually take him at face value.
Who speaks for the 'culturally besieged' white population in Britain today? Very few. Most writers, intellectuals, politicians and, of course, the BBC, relentlessly attack Britain and her institutions: they have no interest whatsoever in the 'moral and material interests' of the white indigenous majority population, the largely silent and vilified majority; they most emphatically lend their authority to demeaning and degrading whites in their own eyes and other's eyes, and enjoy doing it with as much relish as Rushdie did in attacking Islam in
The Satanic Verses.
More fundamentally, Parekh shows a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the evolution of free speech and intellectual inquiry which has been, uniquely, pioneered in the West, and is now under threat from multiculturalism. For example, the defenders of King Charles I would have undoubtedly seized upon Parekh's attacks on Rushdie, arguing that Oliver Cromwell and his fellow parliamentarians should have lent their authority to defending the king, not to attacking him. And what of Charles Darwin? Should he have refrained from publishing
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of the Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) because it would undermine, and has undermined, confidence in the teachings of the Church of England? (Nor is that somewhat politically incorrect sub-title, which these days is never used, exactly sympathetic to the multicultural agenda).
In his discussion of the Muslim reaction to the publication of
The Satanic Verses, Parekh uses the term 'the liberal discourse on free speech' (Parekh, 2000, 305), so highlighting one of the main problems of multiculturalism's response to free speech: namely that there is no Islamic, fascist, Marxist-Leninist, Nazi, feminist, heterophobic or multiculturalist discourse on free speech, just a series of bitter, ideological tirades, all of which reflect the real fear that none of these illiberal 'perspectives' can withstand full, open and critical examination. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao crushed free speech, whereas feminism, multiculturalism and postmodernism operating in the West have sought to demean and to degrade it, such that confidence in the institution is weakened or lost, and politicians can treat it as a ceremonial supernumerary, not something to be defended and taken seriously. Parekh's use of 'the liberal discourse on free speech' masks the relativist agenda of multiculturalism, which it shares in common with Marxism-Leninism and Neo-Marxism. The question begged is that all discourses are of equal worth and that no single discourse, multicultural, liberal, and, one assumes, fascist, nazi or communist, is any better or worse than the other.[3] This sort of moral and intellectual relativism collapses when one takes the time, even briefly, to consider the practical and intellectual achievements of those societies, the West, that subscribe to what Parekh calls 'the liberal discourse on free speech'.
Far too much in Parekh's discussion of free speech is regressive. Thus, he instructs us:
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Political deliberation should therefore be judged not merely in terms of its immediate and tangible results but also its moral, epistemological and community-sustaining role (Parekh, 2000, 307).
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This marks a return to a much earlier stage in the West's intellectual evolution, when too much power was vested in the church and monarchy. Again, had this demand been accepted by sufficient numbers in England's past, then the course of English and world history would have taken a wholly different course from the one it did. There would have been no Reformation. Rome would have been justified in burning Galileo as a terrible heretic whose astronomical discoveries destroyed the authority of the Holy Roman Church. The Industrial Revolution would have been stopped dead in its tracks since it shifted power and wealth from the land to the city and, as many feared, led to demands for greater participation in the political process. Never mind Darwin, and Marx would not have had his day in the court of public opinion to which even his utopia was entitled. And the post-industrial society which relies on computers and other forms of information technology could be rejected because they would lead to automation and the massive loss of jobs in labour-intensive industry.
Parekh's narrowly-focused, short-term, utilitarian limitations on free speech attack the scientific and intellectual enterprise in other ways. That any scientific discovery, many of which raise serious political and moral considerations, be judged 'not merely' but even just by 'immediate and tangible' results shows a lack of understanding of how scientific discoveries become technological applications. Many technological breakthroughs occur years after the discovery on which they are based is made because the full significance was not obvious at the time of discovery. Prime numbers, long regarded as an esoteric branch of number theory, are now proving very useful in encryption software. Applying Parekh's own criteria to multiculturalism, we see that it fails the test and does so very badly. The tangible results in many Western cities have been disastrous, a huge increase in legal and illegal immigrants who are hostile to the host society and have no intention of conforming to the mores and norms of the white indigenous majority and the justified grievance among whites that their country, its history, and its culture can be sacrificed, is being sacrificed, in order to promote multiculturalism and all kinds of benefits which are never demonstrated, just asserted. Multiculturalism does not sustain the white identity: multiculturalism attacks the white identity at every opportunity and for obvious reasons. A strong sense of white identity resists many of the precepts of the multicultural agenda.
In making the case for political deliberation, which in a liberal democracy cannot be divorced from the institution of free speech, Parekh argues, quite rightly, that the crucial element, often missing, is 'rational persuasion' (Parekh, 2000, 307). He notes:
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Political deliberation is practically oriented in the sense that oru aim is to persuade others, to secure their agreement, to get them to see the issue in a certain way. Arguments are an important part of this process but are rarely enough (Parekh, 2000, 307).
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However, from the moment Parekh then attends to the nature of rational persuasion, he moves from "rational persuasion" to "persuasion". Rational persuasion and persuasion represent two different approaches to the same problem.
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[2] Parekh is in good company. Note, in this respect, Article 62 of the Soviet Constitution (1977): 'A citizen of the USSR is obliged to protect the interests of the Soviet state, to assist the strengthening of its power and authority'.
[3] There is an obvious inconsistency in the following attack on free speech and the many assertions which in themselves are not axiomatic: 'Free speech is not the only great value, and needs to be balanced against such others as avoidance of needless hurt, social harmony, human culture, protection of the weak, truthfulness in the public realm, and self-respect and dignity of individuals and groups' (Parekh, 2000, 320). How is 'truthfulness in the public realm' to be reconciled with weakening free speech?