Not Far Right, So far right.
The Independent blog (once a newspaper, today they're a far-left blog) have decided that Brendan O'Neill is far right because he has spoken out in favour of free speech (even by Nazis who he obviously hates) and he was on the winning side in the Brexit debate.
This is a long Facebook post by Brendan O'Neill, the editor of Spiked. He asks people to share this and, because many people don't have a Facebook account, and don't want to visit that godforsaken site, I'm republishing his post here so I can share it.
I will write at greater length when I get more time, I reposted a video I made about a similar fight over Tommy Robinson and the EDL being called far-right. Nothing much has changed.
Brendan O'Neill on Facebook writes
So, here's a story for our times.... I hope you will take the time to read it.
A couple of weeks ago, the Independent published a comment piece that referred to me as part of a "trend towards (far) right-wing politics". Yada yada. This is par for the course in our shallow times. Terms like "far right" and "fascist" have been completely stripped of their meaning and are now used merely as insults against anyone who deviates from liberal-elite thinking. Nonetheless, I thought I'd push back for once. So I wrote to the Independent's comment editor and complaints manager and said it is untrue that I am far-right, it is a hurtful lie, and they should publish a correction. What happened next was extraordinary.
In their first reply to me, they denied that the piece referred to me as far-right. Clearly I am dumb, because, as they explained, the piece was actually making a "more subtle point about a trend of discourse... [with] which you are associated... that is moving 'towards' (far) right-wing politics". Ah! So it wasn't calling me a fascist... it was just saying there is a trend of discourse that I am associated with that is moving towards fascism. Pure word soup. I asked if they really expected me to buy this crap. In response they said "[we are] discussing your complaint further and will get back to you". Five days later they did, and things started to get really bizarre.
In their second reply, they seemed to have decided that the piece was, after all, referring to me as part of the far-right and they implied that it was correct to do so because there is evidence that I "support far-right speech, causes and campaigners". Wow. What is this evidence? Brace yourselves. "[Y]ou have supported... the Brexit Party", they said. Yes, that's right: a supposedly serious newspaper thinks that if you support the Brexit Party you are tantamount to a fascist. The five million people who voted for it, the working classes who cheered it on -- fascists, all of you. Of course they couldn't give me a single example of a far-right policy proposed by the Brexit Party. That's because the Brexit Party only had one policy -- leaving the EU. If wanting to leave the EU makes one "part of a trend of discourse that is moving towards far-right politics" blah blah blah, someone really should have told Tony Benn.
Days passed between the Independent's increasingly odd emails. No doubt they were deploying interns to search for something -- anything -- that might prove that I have far-right sympathies. They found something eventually. The smoking gun. The evidence. I was informed that they had discovered proof that I "support far-right speech, causes and campaigners". What was it? An article I wrote for spiked in August 2017 titled 'Why Nazis must have freedom of speech'. "It is well documented that you have made a case for Nazis and the far right to be granted free speech" and this confirms that you are part of "the legitimisation of and trend towards far-right politics", they told me. I actually couldn't believe what I was reading. I could not believe that something so fucking stupid (excuse my language) was being said by someone who works at a newspaper.
I asked if they had bothered to read my article on Nazis and free speech. Because if they had they would have spotted that it is an ANTI-Nazi article; that it refers to the far right as "unhinged”, “racist” and “hateful" and condemns their "racialised self-pity" and "conspiracy-theory thinking"; that it says Nazis must have free speech precisely so that we can know their arguments and get better at exposing and defeating them. Clearly they hadn't bothered to read it. They just saw the headline and thought: "Ah, he likes Nazis." The intellectual laziness of this is staggering.
Their use of this pro-freedom, anti-Nazi article as proof that I support far-right speech and campaigners also raised a more serious question: do people at the Independent really think that supporting someone's right to free speech means supporting what they say with their free speech? If they do, then they have seriously lost their way as a liberal newspaper, because it is a key part of the liberal outlook that you should support freedom even for those you disagree with.
So, with my patience wearing thin at this point, I pointed out to them that my belief that even Nazis should enjoy freedom of speech was actually shaped by Jewish activists, in particular people like Ira Glasser and Aryeh Neier of the American Civil Liberties Union. These two heroes of freedom defended the right of American Nazis to speak and to march in public. Neier even wrote a book about it: Defending My Enemy. I asked the person at the Independent if Neier, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who devoted his life in America to defending civil liberties, was also a fascist? Did his defence of free speech for fascists mean that he supported fascist ideas? They gave no reply to this question. Nothing. Just silence in the face of the simplest of philosophical questions.
More days passed. Clearly they were having difficulty finding anything that shows I "support far-right speech, causes and campaigners". So I thought I would assist with their research. I sent them some of my old articles, on why I oppose all forms of racial politics, why I think white nationalism is grotesque, why I am worried about the return of eugenicist thinking in certain circles, and so on. I also sent them an essay I wrote on the evils of fascism. Will you now add a correction to the article you published? Their response was as clear as it was shocking: no. So the Independent will imply that you are far-right on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, and when you provide evidence to the contrary they will not back down. That is not how a newspaper should behave. It is intellectually dishonest and immoral.
Please consider sharing this. I actually think it's important that people know how systematically the slur of "far right" is used to demonise people who simply hold views that the chattering classes disapprove of. Dissenting writers, people who support the Brexit Party, Jews who support free speech, those of you who detest the far right but still think they should have the freedom to express themselves... you are all fascists.
