Free speech? Only if you agree with us

Whether they’re violently disrupting protests against Sharia law or forcing the closure of a pizza shop whose Christian owners don’t want to cater a hypothetical gay wedding, the morally righteous are their own worst enemy.

Protesters from Reclaim Australia behind Anti Racism proesters during a rally by anti racism protesters agaisnt the newly formed anti-Muslim group Reclaim Australia at Federation Square on Saturday, April 4, 2015, in Melbourne, Australia. Picture: Hamish Blair

When leftist authoritarians try to stop people from expressing views they don’t like, all they do is create publicity and even sympathy for causes they oppose.

Whether they’re violently disrupting protests against Sharia law or forcing the closure of a pizza shop whose Christian owners don’t want to cater a hypothetical gay wedding, the morally righteous are their own worst enemy.

If you watched the ugly, foul-mouthed violence and flag-burning of the so-called anti-racists who disrupted peaceful rallies of a hitherto obscure group of protesters named Reclaim Australia, you would automatically have sided with the victims of their abuse.

You may not agree with the Reclaim Australia crowd that Australia has a problem with minorities who “are trying to change Australia’s cultural identity.” You may not agree that halal certification of food in Australia should be banned, that Sharia law should be illegal, and the burqa forbidden. You may not agree that schools should teach “pride in the Australian flag and anthem”. You may not agree with mandatory ten-year jail terms and deportation for anyone who carries out female genital mutilation.

You may be optimistic, as I am, that Australia will absorb Muslim migrants just as well as it has absorbed other groups and that Australia will be stronger for its hybrid vigour.

But that doesn’t mean that those who think differently shouldn’t air their views without being punched, kicked, spat on, showered with police horse dung, abused and intimidated into going home.

That’s what happened on Saturday when rallies around the country planned by Reclaim Australia to protest Islamic extremism were assailed by mobs of Socialist Party activists, unionists, anarchists, Abbott-haters and assorted other disgruntles.

These tolerance police claimed to be acting virtuously as enemies of racism but in reality they are part of a well-organised campaign of rolling civil disruption whose ultimate goal is to destroy the capitalist system.

In Sydney, police did a good job of keeping most of the so-called anti-racists apart from the 200 or so Reclaim Australia supporters in the rain at Martin Place.

But in Melbourne’s Federation Square the clashes between the two groups were so aggressive, they made headlines around the world.

Footage shows both sides pushing and shoving, but it was the so-called anti-racists who initiated the violence.

They linked arms in Melbourne to form a barrier to stop people, including several speakers, from joining the Reclaim rally. They didn’t want to pose a counter view, but to stop the rally.

“We’re not interested in holding our rally somewhere else … this is dangerous to allow hate speech to occur on the streets of Melbourne,” Socialist Party candidate and union organiser Mel Gregson told reporters. “The streets of Melbourne are not the place for anti-Muslim ideas.”

What is she so afraid of? A bad idea expressed out loud is a lot better than a bad idea suppressed and forced underground where it festers and gains power.

Exposed to criticism, ideas can be held up to ridicule, countered with better ideas. If they are bad ideas, the good sense of the Australian people will reject them. That’s the whole point of free speech.

Max, who describes himself as an “average middle aged bloke” went to the Reclaim rally in Melbourne with his three-year-old in a pram, because he wanted to hear what the speakers had to say about Islam.

His entrance to Federation Square was blocked by “vile youths spitting and abusing passers-by and those wishing to attend”.

Pushed and shoved, and fearing for his child’s safety, he never made it to the rally, and vented his spleen online instead.

“It was up to me to make my own opinion of what was to be said.”

And that is the whole point. All that the pseudo anti-racists achieved was to put Reclaim Australia on the map in its very first outing. Now the name is known around the world.

Pauline Hanson, who spoke at the Brisbane rally, made her name precisely the same way. Her fringe One Nation party gained enormous kudos and public awareness in the 1990s when violent socialist protesters attacked its supporters, bussing in rent-a-hooligans to bash elderly people.

Hanson became a martyr and a political force overnight. Every violent protest drew new recruits to One Nation. Disgusted by the behaviour of her opponents, the silent majority chose her side, even if they didn’t agree with her views.

Similarly, when anti-homophobia zealots tried to shut down a pizza shop in small town Indiana after its Christian owners told a reporter they would not cater a hypothetical gay wedding, the backlash was immediate. The public donated US$842,000 in 48 hours to Memories Pizza owners Crystal and Kevin O’Connor, who now say God rewarded them for their stance.

This is what happens when the totalitarian left tries to impose its will in a democracy. It will never win because reasonable people recoil from such closed-minded bigotry.

Originally published as Free speech? Only if you agree with us