We need offensive opinions more than we realise

Someone’s words causing discomfort is no reason to shut them out and turn them away, writes David Penberthy. And yet more and more it seems that’s all anybody wants to do anymore.

As a free country you would expect that Australia would be comfortable with, and hopefully even proud of, the concept of freedom of speech.

Increasingly, we see evidence that our country is becoming pathetically insecure about being confronted by provocative or offensive ideas.

For the record, I regard Milo Yiannopoulos as a vain and vacuous dingbat. To my mind, this young British pin-up boy for the extreme right combines the fashion sense of the late George Michael with the rhetorical stylings of Joseph Goebbels.

I am also disappointed that the Morrison Government has refused him a visa to hold another speaking tour in Australia. This is because the best way to combat the likes of Mad Milo isn’t to deny them entry. It is to grant them the platform they seek, so they can open their dopey mouths and confirm themselves before the world as laughable, fringe-dwelling weirdos.

As the saying goes, nothing kills maggots like sunshine.

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There was a lesser reported visa scandal a few weeks ago involving a fellow by the name of David Icke. Icke is a former British soccer player who has turned his back on the world of sport to devote himself full-time to the business of talking gibberish.

I regard Milo Yiannopoulos as a vain and vacuous dingbat, but he has a right to have his say. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty

Icke’s thesis — I am not making this up — is that the world is run by a cabal of giant shapeshifting lizards. He believes that Adolf Hitler wasn’t the personification of German belligerence during World War II, but was secretly funded by the Jews to enable the creation of the State of Israel. He also believes that the Jews, those pesky buggers, were the true masterminds of September 11, taking a day off from their core business of controlling the banks, I guess, to knock over the Twin Towers in Manhattan.

David Icke has visited Australia on 10 previous occasions and was set to board a plane last month for another of his weird talks. But the British immigration minister, David Coleman, revoked Icke’s visa just hours before boarding a flight to Australia for his March speaking tour.

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Coleman said Icke posed “a risk to the health, safety or good order of the Australian community or a segment of the Australian community”.

What a load of tosh.

I had never heard of David Icke until this week. I have no memory of Australian society being torn asunder by his many past visits. This is because his past visits have attracted a handful of like-minded nuts at poorly-attended get-togethers in tiny halls. There has been no mass clamour in Australia for David Icke, because the Australian masses are smart and civilised, and can recognise an enormous pile of nonsense when they see it.

Conspiracy theorist David Icke’s visa was revoked hours before he was due to travel to Australia. Picture: supplied

The ABC received blowback after hosting Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson onto Q&A. Picture: Hollie Adams

The tactic of denying these people entry has the capacity to turn them into free-speech martyrs and to make their offensive and dangerous even more enticing to the mentally fragile. In these days of social media and YouTube, there is absolutely zero point banning them anyway, as it means that the few Australians who are drawn to them will end up watching them anyway, while feeling even greater sympathy for them they do now. Others who had no prior knowledge of their views will seek them out for the illicit thrill of it all.

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These nuances seem completely lost on this who were advocating the black-banning of David Icke.

He was scheduled to speak in the inner Melbourne seat of Macnamara but found himself subjected to an orchestrated bipartisan campaign by the Labor candidate Josh Burns and the Liberal candidate Kate Ashmor to shut him down. The campaign was endorsed by the Anti-Defamation Commission, whose chairman Dvir Abramovich described Icke’s ban as “a glorious victory for all Australians who believe in the core values of respect and tolerance.”

The use here of the word “tolerance” troubles me. It seems indicative of a mindset where politically-active people are only prepared to tolerate views that they agree with.

We have even seen two people who have historically been regarded as progressive, feminist trailblazer Germaine Greer and former Labor Premier Bob Carr, denied a platform at Brisbane Writers Week on the grounds they might generate controversy. I saw Carr last week and he said still had no idea why they banned him. This at a place that’s meant to be about discussion and debate. Forget the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Bring on the Festival of Ideas We All Agree With.

Former Premier and foreign minister Bob Carr was uninvited from the Brisbane Writers Festival after his opinions were deemed too controversial. Picture: John Appleyard

We saw that last week with the appearance on the ABC’s QandA program of the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, who has spoke out against the use of legally-mandated gender-neutral pronouns for transgender people as politically correct nonsense. Initially, every mad ABC-loving leftie in the land was up Aunty for the rent for having the temerity to grant platform to the beastly Peterson.

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Hilariously, Peterson then had a bit of a moan himself, poor petal, claiming he had been “set up” by the ABC through its decision to sit him on the panel next to Catherine McGregor, the journalist, transgender advocate and former soldier. By the end of that episode of QandA, the elegant and articulate McGregor had wiped the floor with every other panellist by showing herself capable of listening to others, responding thoughtfully, and not sticking to some doctrinaire, preordained position on matters. Tellingly, she was condemned by some for fence-sitting with her remarks, by those who favour ideological barracking over actual thought.

These days, and to her great credit, McGregor seems less odd for having undergone a sex change than for being open for an uncensored, freewheeling conversation, even with people who abhor her very existence.

@penbo

Originally published as We need offensive opinions more than we realise