Allowing racists right to free speech airs this evil to scrutiny

Leftists take it as a given that if you are anti-racist then you’ll be a cheerleader for section 18C. This bit of the Racial Discrim­ination Act acts as a “safety valve” on racially charged bile, and who but the most prejudiced low-life would want such a safety valve released?

In their minds, standing by 18C is the good, anti-racist thing to do, where calling for its repeal is at best socially irresponsible, at worst a racist demand. This is wrong. It’s possibly the wrongest thing now being said by Australian leftists (and there’s stiff competition for that title).

The truth is anti-racists should be at the front of the fight against 18C — for the simple reason that if you want to defeat ­racism, as I do, then you must ­insist racists have full freedom of speech so we can see and know their ideology, and confront it before the public. Leftie rads who love 18C’s suppression of racist speech are failing in their first duty as anti-racists: to shine a light on racism and do battle with it in the full glare of public life.

When I first got involved in leftie politics, in Britain in the mid-1990s, I whiled away my days doing two things: marching against racism and demanding free speech for racists. One day I’d be on the street hollering about racist immigration laws or racist skinhead attacks. The next I’d be back at university arguing against campus censorship of far-Right groups. I saw no contradiction between fighting for ­freedom for racists and fighting against racism. I considered them complementary.

I was determined racists should have freedom, first ­because I think free speech must be defended even for scum and scoundrels. (As HL Mencken put it: “It is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”) And secondly because I wanted to know who these people were and what they thought, all the better that I might morally arm myself to do battle with them.

Censoring anti-racist sentiment deprives us of this right, of this responsibility, to know ­racism. Instead it pushes racists underground, effectively protecting them from our arguments and our anger and allowing their ideas to fester unchallenged.

Leftist support for 18C tells us a lot about how about how illiberal left-wing thought has become. Their love of 18C is motored by a deep distrust of the plebs. So a writer for The Sydney Morning Herald frets that repealing 18C would “give racial intolerance open slather”. They see 18C as a lid on nasty mass sentiment, tamer of the throng. They don’t want democratically to confront racism because they no longer trust the demos. So, with fantastic foolishness, they conspire in the transformation of anti-­racism into an elite enterprise, something done by good officials against the dumb mob.

Their anti-racism is, ironically, driven by dark prejudices of its own: a view of the public as a pogrom in waiting.

Their pro-18C stance also ­exposes a low view of ethnic ­minorities. In the past, us anti-racists insisted minorities were just as capable as whites of ­engaging in public life, and thus should have the same rights. Section 18Cers, by contrast, treat ­minorities as vulnerable creatures, easily harmed by rough ideas. They infantilise them, ­reducing them to moral wards of the state. They repeat the crime of the old racist lobby, viewing certain races essentially as children.

They cannot see the terrible harm anti-racist censorship does to the cause of anti-racism. It disarms the public, preventing us from openly battling backwardness and demeans minorities through questioning their ­robustness. Supporting 18C is the very opposite of anti-racism.

I actually like it when I hear hateful speech, because it ­reminds me I live in a free ­society and because it lets me know how the hateful think and how they might be challenged.

You’re anti-racist? Then get on the streets and demand free speech for racists.