More weird 9/11 fallout

Shocking events like September 11 provoke new variations on human weirdness: German faces jail for ‘ironic’ remark . Apparently, someone on an Internet message board said “Yay for killing Taleban POWs” and one Holger Voss answered “Yay 9/11 murderers.” The consequence was that the German police arrested poor Holger, and now he’s on trial for “glorification of a criminal act” and could get 3 years.

Meanwhile, the repellent Michael Moore has been making money in London delivering rants about how the 9/11 passengers were scaredy-cats because they were mostly white. If they had been black the killers would have been crushed by the dudes, who as we all know take no dissin’ from nobody. The article with the Michael Moore story, written by the British Indo-African race-beat journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, also deals with other shocking events that involve dudes who don’t take no dissin’. These dudes have guns to back up their dislikes, and don’t mind using them. Miss Alibhai-Brown concludes that the problems are ultimately the fault of Thatcherism, racism, self-perpetuating cycles, and images and expectations of young black men. So she’s against racism. In the interest of further opposition to ethnic hatred, it seems worthwhile to mention the sidebar to the article, which includes links to online forums debating such lively current topics as “Are foreigners in Israel legitimate targets?”
Posted by Jim Kalb at January 08, 2003 10:21 AM | Send
    

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“Apparently, someone on an Internet message board said ‘Yay for killing Taleban POWs’ and one Holger Voss answered ‘Yay 9/11 murderers.’ The consequence was that the German police arrested … Holger, and now he’s on trial for ‘glorification of a criminal act’ and could get 3 years.” — Jim Kalb

Are there VFR readers who favor the criminalizing of some offensive speech, such as Holocaust denial, or “Why can’t these spics learn to speak English?,” or the praising of what happened on 9/11?

To me it’s one of the worst influences which PC has had on continental Europe, the UK, Canada and, mercifully somewhat less, this country, during the last few decades, and is something for which I feel an almost visceral contempt.

How could anyone not see that to stifle one’s enemy’s speech, aside from just being wrong, is ultimately to stifle the speech of one’s friends?
How could anyone not see that the most certain way to weaken truth-telling is to forbid criticism of it, and the only way truth can thrive and prevail is when all criticism of it is permitted?

If there’s a way in this world to bring back the Nazis (or the Communists, or whoever), it is to not permit them to speak. If there’s a way to be sure that oneself will be muzzled, it is for oneself to muzzle others.

When I saw on C-SPAN not local pols from some big-city Dem-party organization; not some left-leaning opinion journalists; but RESPECTED LAW-SCHOOL PROFESSORS arguing before Congressional committees for the appropriateness of hate-crimes statutes, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

It was a sight I’ll never forget as long as I live.

Posted by: Unadorned on January 8, 2003 7:10 PM
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