The Internet and a Liberal Society
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It’s one of the great dilemmas of the liberal society - how far do we tolerate intolerance? Two stories over the weekend raise this question - the continuing debate over the BBC’s decision to invite BNP leader Nick Griffin onto ‘Question Time’, and Jan Moir’s Daily Mail column on Stephen Gateley’s death. Channel 4 News linked these together in a piece on freedom of expression, although there is a qualitative difference. Even as a panellist on Question Time, Griffin is subject to questioning and debate by fellow panellists, chairman Dimbleby and the studio audience. If his views are repellent, they can be attacked, challenged and dissected. Jan Moir, on the other hand, has a well positioned newspaper column to express her views, uncluttered by the need to constantly refine or explain them to challengers.
Interestingly, however, the once lofty position of the columnist is being increasingly challenged and attacked, as the internet response to Moir adequately shows. Moir may not have to respond instantly to such criticism, and will doubtless have the luxury of her column to rebut her critics in a more leisurely way than will be afforded Nick Griffin on Question Time, but she has now had to make a response, via a press statement. And actually, that’s why the liberal society can go some way to tolerating intolerance. Because as long as it’s operating properly, with a range of alternate voices, such intolerance quickly runs into the sand of political debate. That it is the internet which increasingly provides the forum for such essential plurality is another reason for all liberals to praise the coming of the last great arena of free expression, good and bad.
The Moir furore is not the only liberal triumph for the internet either. Last week’s extraordinary attempt by solicitors Carter-Ruck to prevent the Guardian from reporting a parliamentary question about the company Trafigura, famously sparked off a host of blogging and twitter responses, all giving far more publicity to Trafigura than they would ever have received if Carter-Ruck had held off, and resulting in a retreat from the gag order imposed by the courts before the afternoon was quite over. So, whether challenging intolerance, or forcing freedom of the press, the internet is increasingly showing its use as a vehicle of the liberal society.
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