Free Speech Union’s Bigotry Problem

While the Free Speech Union, domain of the loathsome Toby Young, announces the presence of a “Terrific we-the-undersigned letter in [Harper’s Magazine], decrying the new Maoist climate of intolerance”, and continues to push its self-promoting but false narrative that free speech is being eroded, it has a problem rather closer to home.

And that problem is Bigotry. Free speech includes the freedom to express any view one likes: the flip side is that everyone else is free to express adverse comment, including choosing freely not to do business with those whose freely expressed opinions it considers deleterious to business, law and order, or even public safety. Bigotry can be freely expressed. No-one prevents bigotry being expressed, or, indeed, being called out.

In that spirit of free expression, I have to tell Tobes that the list of those associated with the FSU has passed before my inspection and found wanting. Take two of his directors, Doug Murray The K and Nigel Biggar. Murray’s Islamophobic bigotry is well known, as is his bleating that his free speech is under attack. Likewise Biggar, an apologist for colonialism who makes the same protest, before running to the Daily Mail for assistance.

It gets considerably worse when we come to the FSU’s “Media/PR Advisory Council”, where we see the presence of self-promoting TalkRADIO host Julia Hartley Dooda, who the FSU correctly identifies as a past political editor of the Sunday Express. There, in 2006, she penned an article titled “Don’t draw a veil over free speech”.

“I’m bored with Muslims. Bored with being told what I can and cannot say about Islam … the professional Muslim complaints brigade … the rest of us are just tired of having Islam thrust in our faces day in, day out … [The Muslim population] is just three per cent of the country. Yet these days we seem to spend 90 per cent of our time worrying whether or not they are offended about the latest innocuous remark about their religion” she whined.

Had Ms Hartley Dooda said that about Jews, she would rightly have been run out of mainstream journalism. That she was prepared to stand by the article as recently as March last year merely confirms what Sayeeda Warsi said about Islamophobia becoming increasingly “acceptable”. And talking of Islamophobic bigots, Allison Pearson is there too.

Yes, Allison Pearson, who claimed that Muslim girls were not being educated, when 25% of Muslim women aged 21-24 have degrees, as opposed to 21% of Muslim men. The same pundit who claimed “Shamima Begum may have been born here, but she was never British”. She’s just another bigot. And then comes the FSU Pièce de Résistance.

OH WHAT A GIVEAWAY

Further down that list is one name that positively leaps off the page: David Starkey. A bona fide, no-holds-barred, full-on, unequivocal racist. And that just about sums up Tobes’ enterprise: it’s not about free speech, which is not under attack, but about the freedom to be a bigot and remain part of the mainstream. The FSU Twitter feed gives that game away.

“The Free Speech Union has written to the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge asking him to clarify what speech the University regards as protected under its free speech policy. On the face of it, it appears to be one rule for Dr Gopal and another for Dr Starkey”.

Free speech for whites, but not for uppity brown people. Priorities, priorities.

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