I usually post on Steemit about my hillwalking adventures, or health subjects. But this is me being very opinionated, and so as not to confuse my followers, I'm posting it from my other Steemit account.
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Mark Meechan/Count Dankula apology video
I felt compelled to make a video about free speech. It's been concerning me for some time.
It blew up last week because a comedian and radio presenter in the UK, Danny Baker, tweeted a picture showing the royal couple with a young chimpanzee. Baker later said that this was unintentionally racist.
He intended it as a joke, but he failed to spot how racist it was, and when people were offended, he took it down, and apologised.
He apologised in a very elaborate way. He apologised several times. He apologised to journalists who doorstepped him, and apparently at the time he was a little bit jokey about it, so he apologised again later on.
He was sacked from his job. He was pilloried in the press.
I don't want to be even more divisive about this. I can understand why many people, especially black people, were offended by this, and have condemned him for it.
Too judgemental
While trying to be understanding, on the other hand, I think it has gone too far. It's far too judgemental. The guy has apologised. He's said that he didn't intend it to be racist. OK, some people have said they don't believe that he didn't intend it. But I think there comes a point when you have to say – look, just accept that he's apologised! What ever happened to forgiveness?
You can read some of Danny Baker's apologies in this post.
As I've said, I can understand why people got very upset about this, and are still upset about it. But I think there comes a point where you really have to take someone at their word.
It worries me that as a society we've become so judgemental and moralistic, where taking the moral high ground has become a kind of art form. We seem to almost take pleasure in attacking someone who's begging for forgiveness.
Criminalising humour
This kind of thing happened a few years ago with another man, Mark Meechan, known online as Count Dankula, who released a YouTube video showing that he'd taught his girlfriend's pet pug dog to do a Nazi salute, as a joke. He said some very offensive things in the video.
The joke went down very badly, and not only was he sacked from his job, but he was arrested, charged and fined £800.
When the whole thing first blew up, he made a contrite apologetic video, saying how sorry he was. He said:
"I just want everybody to know that I don't actually believe in anything that I was saying in the video. The whole purpose of it was just to annoy my girlfriend.
"I actually hate racism in any way, shape or form, and I did not expect everyone to see this video. I only thought it was going to be people who knew me and knew my comedy and knows that I'm not actually like that.
"I don't hate anyone. I don't have any ill will towards the Jewish community or anything like that at all. The entire thing was a joke, and that's what it should be taken as."
But he was still taken to court and fined £800, which he refused to pay – he donated £800 to charity instead.
And what was the outcome of all this? This man says he was so left wing in the past that he went on Antifa marches. Now he's announced that he is standing as a candidate for the European elections on the UKIP ticket. Anyone who is British will know that UKIP is a pretty right wing party!
So a man who was on the left wing of the spectrum, who said he had no racist views whatsoever, is now mixing with people who probably do have quite racist or dodgy views.
I just don't understand how pillorying people in this way, people who have apologised and said that they regretted what they did, and that they just made a mistake – how can that be good for anyone? It's just divisive.
Mark Meechan raised £100,000 to appeal the case – and the courts wouldn't allow it! According to his Wikipedia page, a letter from a member of the Sheriff Appeal Court stated that the appeal was "not arguable" due to the nature of the "deeply unpleasant offence".
I'm not a legal expert, but that does not sound like justice to me!
We need more communication, not less
I think this is a very serious issue, because free speech is so important. People say things which I hate, but I do not think they should be put in jail for it. It's different if they are actually inciting people to violence.
I think it goes even further than this, because communication is fundamental to a civilised society.
There is a black man who infiltrated far right extremist groups online. And he made a brilliant TED talk. His name is Theo E. J. Wilson.
In his TED talk, he talks about how he found that the members of these groups were not necessarily evil people – they were just misinformed people.
So his message is that communication is important. It's so important to talk about these issues, and to educate each other.
We're not all right! We have to listen, as well as to talk.
I've always felt that the most civilised societies are the ones that have had the most access to other people. In other words, which have had the most access to communication and the exchange of ideas. That's what promotes human progress.
That is why Europe and Asia progressed in civilisation – because people were able to travel to other countries and meet other people.
It's the communities that have been isolated – maybe they've been in the middle of high mountain ranges, or islands in the middle of the ocean – they're the ones that don't progress (not in this day and age, because we have all kinds of communications nowadays). But in the old days, it was those communities that were isolated and that didn't meet any other people that remained in a more backward state.
So communication is crucial to our progression as human beings, and trying to shut down debate like this is so dangerous.
Another very worrying thing is that many people, even if they sympathise with the person who's being attacked, often don't feel that they can come out in support of them.
They often feel that they too have to lambast the attacked person, even if they have apologised – because otherwise it might look as if they are on the side of the racists. And that is really worrying.
Too scared to speak out
I've been reading this fascinating book, called Travellers in the Third Reich, by Julia Boyd. It's about people who went to Nazi Germany in the 1930s, in the run-up to the Second World War, as tourists or as visitors in various capacities.
And one of the things that some people reported was that in the early 1930s, when Hitler was just coming to power, there were posters everywhere in support of the Nazis. Even people who didn't support the Nazis felt compelled to put those posters up – because they were so worried that if they didn't, they might be accused of being against the Nazis, which was extremely dangerous under that regime.
We're nowhere near that (yet). But I don't want to even think that we could go that way. And I think that when you get to a stage where people are actually frightened to speak out on issues, because otherwise they might be seen as racist; they might be seen as antisemitic, that is a really worrying situation.
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Danny Baker photo
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