All entries for November 2004

Banning 'fascists' from the Union

Why are we only voting on whether to ban "fascists and racists" from our Union? I suggest we extend this ban to Marxists as well.

The bourgeois students on campus will be rightly intimidated by the presence of Marxists at this university. The heirs of that bastard ideology have been responsible for many more deaths than fascism so perhaps the word 'intimidated' is an understatement in this case.

In comparison the BNP are not a threat to this university. Our democracy is not so fragile that it will come crashing down at the prospect of a few BNP leaflets being handed out outside Costcutter. Are we really worried about 'fascists' appearing on campus en masse? Are we expecting to wake up one morning to Nazi Storm Troopers parading in the Piazza? Hardly!

Marxists on the other hand are a clear and present danger. They have colonised the student body, the academic staff and already dominate whole departments. They are undermining our democracy by proposing oppressive motions such as the one to ban 'fascists' from the Union. If fascists go then Marxists should follow.

Are students at Warwick stupid enough to believe that we must lose freedom in order to protect freedom?

: 26 Nov 2004 00:15 |  Comments (6) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Free Speech at University

Writing about Blogs, the scope of offensiveness, and the democratic process. from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

That old debate about free speech has finally reared its head here at a university-sponsored website where, with some degree of irony, it is most inappropriate.

The very word ‘university’ derives from the Latin for ‘whole’, meaning everything. Everything, that is, and every point of view. In a democratic society, the role of the university is ideas. Students and academics should be intelligent enough to process any opinion conceived by the human mind and, where it is conceived in error, to correct it. Anyone to whom a simple idea can cause offence is either closed minded or deficient in that rarest of human qualities, empathy.

Racialists are offended by what they see as the colonisation of their country by foreigners. Liberals are offended by the racialist will to keep those same foreigners out. There are two sides to each story and someone will always be offended. Offence is simply the collision of a new and fresh viewpoint with the ingrained prejudices of the person taking it. Anything which challenges prejudice should be welcome, particularly on a university campus!

The only way to measure offence is with the ruler of established and accepted ‘facts’. If we uncritically accept what we already know to be true then we betray both our own intellects and the concept of academia. When we only know our side of the argument, we barely understand that. It becomes, as J. S. Mill wrote, “stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth”.

We are not children and do not need protecting from ‘offensive’ posts. If a blogwriter is wrong, real scholars will not take offence. We will instead accept the remedy of Mr Justice Brandeis and prescribe “more speech, not enforced silence”.

: 10 Nov 2004 00:50 |  Comments (9) |  Close comments |  Report a problem