Given all the words spoken about free speech in the past week or so, it would be easy to leave the matter behind and move on to something new like our quarantine system. But as the son of a World War II veteran who fought fascism and spent the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp, it would dishonour him to let some of the absurd and dangerous arguments go unchallenged.
Pre-war Nazi Germany taught us that fascism does not spring up overnight. It gathers momentum over time as good people feel too intimidated to speak up, or decide that to do so would give fascists the notoriety they crave.
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Craig Emerson is managing director of Emerson Economics. He is a distinguished fellow at the ANU, director of the Australian APEC Study Centre at RMIT and adjunct professor at Victoria University’s College of Business.
