Freedom Of Speech? The Säuberung (cleansing by fire) was the work of the German Student Union which, on 10 May 1933, under the watchful eye of the Nazi Reichminister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, consigned 25,000 books to the flames in a ritual exorcism of “un-German thought”. According to the logic of the authors of the Open Letter protesting the University of Auckland Vice-Chancellor's refusal to censor Action Zealandia, however, the Nazi-inspired students' actions constitute free speech.
A MURDEROUS, ANTISEMITIC terrorist attack, live-streamed in
chilling imitation of the Christchurch Massacres, has shocked and dismayed the
German nation. Proof, if any was needed, that strict legal prohibitions against
the iconography and language of far-right extremism confers no special
protection against the deadly designs of its adherents. No country is more
assiduous in banning hate speech and Nazi paraphernalia than the German
Republic, and yet, the impulse to murder Jews and Muslims has not been
thwarted.
Sadly, that is not the lesson which the Censorious Left has
been inclined to draw from this latest tragedy. Almost immediately, sophomoric
statements appeared on social-media deploying the horror of the attack against
the defenders of free speech. The latter were accused of supporting the right
of homicidal Nazis to debate their views openly in the marketplace of ideas.
Perhaps intuiting that this accusation was unlikely to be taken seriously, the
Censorious Left’s opted to advance the (marginally) more moderate suggestion
that while the philosophies of the Right may not in-and-of-themselves be
objectionable, exposing vulnerable individuals to their malign influence under
the rubric of free speech could only end with homicidal Nazis shooting up
synagogues and mosques.
But, this line of argument leaves the Left as exposed to
censorship as the Right. If granting right-wingers a platform is a bad idea
because giving free rein to right-wing ideas will only end in murder, massacre
and genocide, then granting platforms to the Left must also be forbidden. If
the logical terminus of right-wing thought is Auschwitz, then the logical
terminus of left-wing thought must be the Gulag. For every Babi Yar advanced by
the anti-Nazis, the anti-Communists can produce a Katyn Forest. Clearly, the
only sensible solution, if society is to be kept safe from all forms of
ideological extremism, is to stop talking about politics altogether!
Except, of course, the Censorious Left has no intention of
allowing itself to be silenced. That much was made clear by the 1,300 academic
staff and students of the University of Auckland who signed the Open Letter
condemning their own Vice-Chancellor’s defence of free speech on campus. As the
anonymous author/s of the letter put it:
“If these posters [pasted-up by the ‘radical nationalist’
group calling itself Action Zealandia] constitute ‘free speech’, the same can
be said of the actions of individuals who remove those that they encounter.”
Clearly, the person/s who wrote those words is no historian.
No one having the slightest acquaintance with modern history would have exposed
themselves so completely to the obvious rejoinder that their definition of free
speech, if accepted, must render its extinction inevitable. Was it not the very
Nazis the Censorious Left purports to condemn who bequeathed the world what is
surely the most compelling depiction of intolerance, intellectual aggression
and censorship ever recorded on film?
The Säuberung (cleansing by fire) was the work of the
German Student Union which on 10 May 1933, under the watchful eye of the
Reichminister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, consigned 25,000 books to the
flames in a ritual exorcism of “un-German thought”. Into the bonfire illuminating
the square in front of the Berlin Opera House, hundreds of radical nationalist
students hurled the works of Jewish, Socialist and Communist authors. As the
burning books cast their grotesque shadows over the crowd, horrified foreign
journalists recalled the words of the nineteenth century German poet, Heinrich
Heine: “Where they burn books, they will too in the end burn people.”
Not that the Censorious Left possesses the slightest grounds
for objecting to this infamous historical spectacle. After all, those German
students were simply behaving in the way recommended by the author/s of the
Open Letter to Vice-Chancellor McCutcheon 86 years later. What else was the Säuberung
but the ritual obliteration of material considered by the staff and students of
Germany’s universities to be offensive and harmful to the wellbeing of the
German volk? In confronting this “hate speech”, they were guilty of
nothing more than exercising – exuberantly and dramatically – their right of
free speech!
Perhaps if the Censorious Left knew a little bit more about
the tactics of the historical movement they so loudly condemn they would be
less inclined to imitate it. Those so outraged by the presence in Auckland of
right-wing provocateurs Cheryl Southern and Stefan Molyneux that they
were willing to frighten the owners of prospective venues for the duo’s public
lectures into refusing them access, were clearly ignorant of the fate of the
classic anti-war film, All Quiet on the Western Front.
At the film’s Berlin premiere in December 1930, Nazi
stormtroopers harangued and jostled the audience as they entered the cinema,
released stink-bombs in the auditorium and called-in real bomb threats.
Goebbels pledged to do the same in cinemas all over Germany if the film – which
the Nazis declared anti-German and offensive to all Great War veterans – was
not withdrawn immediately. Terrified cinema-owners, fearful that people and
property would be harmed, mostly succumbed to the “thug’s veto”. All Quiet
on the Western Front was not scheduled again for general release in Germany
until after World War II.
This is how Nazis exercise their freedom of speech.
Perhaps the Censorious Left should heed the advice given by
the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche:
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he
himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the
abyss also gazes into you.”
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 11 October 2019.
