WHY IS THE LEFT so angry with the defenders of free speech? It is almost as if it sees them as a large and very effective roadblock to its plans. What those plans might be we can only guess, but if silencing the objections of free speech defenders is a necessary prerequisite to their success, then we should all be concerned – very concerned. Historically, those most determined to silence dissenting voices have been those whose plans are so radical that massive public resistance to their implementation is politically inevitable. Those formulating such plans may be labelled ``left’’ or ``right’’. But who cares? Such ideological distinctions matter very little when the planners’ predisposition to silence their opponents has already been signalled. To those being denied their freedom of expression it really doesn’t matter if the deniers are left-wing totalitarians or right-wing totalitarians. A boot smashing into your face is a boot smashing into your face. Which foot the boot happens to be on, the left or the right, doesn’t really matter when its shattering your teeth. A more interesting question is the nature of the boot wearers’ justification for kicking you in the face. Presumably there is something more to this sort of political violence than plain vanilla sadism? What are all these ideological boot-boys and girls afraid of? At the root of their fear lies their violent rejection of the childhood mantra: ``Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.’’ For totalitarians of the Left and the Right words can and do hurt people every day. Words convey ideas, and if history has taught us anything it’s that human-beings aren’t just willing to hurt other human-beings in the service of ideas, they’re prepared to kill them. Words wield sticks. Words throw stones. Words drop bombs. Words, and the ideas they convey, are extremely dangerous. Words can inflict harm. That is why words, along with all the other conveyor-belts of human thought and feeling, must be tightly controlled. On the right, the words and ideas which must be suppressed are those that undermine, discredit and demonise the institutions upon which healthy societies are constructed: the family, the nation, God. Words that challenge the traditional hierarchies of race, class, and gender. Words that advocate for the enrichment of the weak at the expense of the strong. Words that encourage disdain for exceptional individuals: geniuses, heroes, saints. Words that threaten the holy institution of private property. On the left, it is the privileging of the speech of the economically, politically and culturally powerful that provides the justification for curtailing their freedom of expression. In a human world containing only two meaningful categories – oppressors and oppressed – the idea that both groups have an equal right to be heard is obscene. The English poet William Blake expressed the paradox pithily in his subversive poem, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: ``One law for the lion and ox is oppression.’’ Or, as my erstwhile union comrade, Rob Campbell, slightly less pithily, opined on the Newsroom website: ``An otherwise powerful person being temporarily denied a platform to deny other identities, from a position of ongoing power, protects freedom rather than excludes it.’’ Does it? In that lofty sentence (could George Orwell have constructed anything silkier?) all I can hear is the dull clanking of totalitarian machinery. Who shall deny this ``powerful person’’ a platform, Rob? Someone even more powerful? Or do you see the task being delegated to a mob of ``other identities’’ armed with the thug’s veto? And just how ``temporarily’’ will that person be denied their freedom? If he or she has ``ongoing power’’, as you suggest, then what is to prevent them denying the oppressed even more forcefully, from an even bigger platform, at the first opportunity? That’s the thing the left forgets about harm: the more you try to protect people from it, the more harm you have to be willing to inflict upon to those who cause it. A society that strictly regulates what people can say, very quickly becomes a society in which fewer and fewer people possess the courage to say anything. If the left is quietly planning to oppress the oppressors, then it should not be surprised to discover that the right, which has much more experience, is not-so-quietly planning a little oppression of its own. Auckland writer and commentator Chris Trotter writes the Reckonings column for the ODT.
