Standing up for Nazis is not freedom of speech

Hurry to the newstands to get your edition of this week’s Spectator Australia, which contains “High Life” columnist Taki’s stirring endorsement of … Golden Dawn, the Greek fascist party. Here’s the endorsement from the UK/Australia’s leading conservative magazine:

“Golden Dawn came into being because of PC, poor Greeks at times getting fewer benefits than African illegal immigrants. Then GD became very popular with certain poor Greeks while it defended them from being mugged by Albanian criminals and drug dealers, and for safeguarding older folk after bank withdrawals. No, Golden Dawn is not house-trained, and many of its members tend to use rough language and get physical. None of them went to Eton, and none of their parents was my playmate when I was a child. But if they were lefties and railed against capitalism they would be treated like heroes, the way Bono, Bianca Jagger and other such untalented rappers and phonies are. Golden Dawn members might need some lessons in social etiquette, but what the bien pensant need much more is to get off the pot and their double standards. Golden Dawn members are mostly labourers, martial artists, cops, security personnel and good old-fashioned patriotic Greeks.”

Yes, the “playing rough” includes axe attacks on migrants and Leftists in the ’90s, vandalism of synagogues, a prominent member jailed for the attempted murder of three political opponents, numerous violent assaults on opponents, and a virulent and obsessive racism and anti-Semitism.

Still, at least someone’s standing up against the liberal elites, Nick Cater-style. UK Spectator editor Fraser Nelson, taking to Twitter, rather pathetically tried to defend publishing the article on the grounds of “diversity”, a bullshit argument. Any editor makes choice; the political right to free speech doesn’t include the right to a platform, or the obligation to lend one, if the opinion is not merely disagreeable, but vile by giving dishonest praise to people with an abhorrent philosophy.

Indeed, Nelson hasn’t always been so willing to encourage diversity — he defended The Spectator’s cancelling of a debate between George Monbiot and Oz moonbat Ian Plimer, after the latter decided to chicken out. The Speccie then ran an evening with Ian Plimer alone, absent all that pesky diversity of opinion. In that respect one of Nelson’s tweets is instructive:

So describing violent fascists as “not polite”, and endorsing them as a possible government for Greece, is on the same level as a disagreement on housing policy? What a wonderful illustration of the Right’s warped moral priorities.

The other interesting aspect of this is the Right’s selective abhorrence of anti-Semitism. Golden Dawn is riddled with literal Nazis, who believe the Jews should have been exterminated — a UK Channel Four embedded journalist had no trouble getting members to talk openly about it on camera. Taki’s endorsement of the party is not his first foray into anti-Semitism, yet the Australian Spectator in particular runs endless articles describing opposition to Israel as “jihadism”, covert anti-Semitism, self-loathing Jews, blah blah blah.

Now such articles run in the same pages as an actual endorsement of neo-Nazis. Will there be any sort of protest from Jewish community peak bodies? Or will they continue to go soft on the Right, because they’re pro-Zionist, even when support for Nazi parties becomes an acceptable opinion in “diverse” Britain? Because that approach worked so well last time.

Australian Spectator editor Tom Switzer — well-known for campaigning for the banning of Italian far Leftist Antonio Negri from speaking in Australia — must be very proud to introduce a magazine with that sort of rancid viewpoint (usually the preserve of upper-class “columnists” in the UK) into Australian life.