Islam, anonymity, and Western freedom

At Taki’s website, an author calling himself “Henry Hotspur” has written an article on the 40th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s “River Tiber foaming with much blood” speech. Among other things he calls for, or at least calls for people to consider, the deportation of Muslims from the West. I have posted the following comments at the thread.

First comment

Some commenters here are excited that the author wrote: “Europe can only save itself if it has the courage to consider deportation.” But any number of anonymous commenters at various Web forums in recent years have posted comments favoring deportation of Muslims and other unassimilable aliens. Even some commenters at Lucianne.com and Jihad Watch say the same thing regularly. So what is the big deal about the anonymous author of this current article saying the same? He calls himself Henry Hotspur. Would the brave Hotspur of history and of Shakespeare have hidden under an alias? Did Enoch Powell give his speech wearing a mask? What is vitally needed is not writers hiding under pen names calling for the departure of Muslims from the West, but people saying it under their real names, and then more and more people saying it, and then being willing to defend the position when attacked, as I have been doing at my website, View from the Right, for years.

You could start by reading my 2004 article at FrontPage Magazine, “How to Defeat Jihad in America” then see my article at VFR, “Separationism.” Both can easily be found via Google.

Posted by Lawrence Auster on Apr 21, 2008.

Second comment

My previous comment may have created a wrong impression which I want to correct. I did not mean to criticize people who use pen names. Truly, I have never criticized, and I have never felt critical of, people who use pen names; I know that they have valid reasons for doing so. I said what I said because it suddenly struck me that people in this thread were expressing excitement about something (namely an article calling for deportation) which in fact was not new, given that anonymous commenters, even at mainstream conservative sites, often call for deportation. So the thought came to me that that the real threshold in advancing this issue will be crossed, not when anonymous people call for deportation, but when people—numerous people—writing in their own name call for deportation.

And of course people in Europe are in a completely different situation from people in the United States. Because of the anti-“hate speech” laws that exist in all Western countries except for the United States, anyone calling for deportation of Muslims, as well as anyone making much milder statements, could be charged with a criminal offense of saying things “that may incite people to acts of discrimination.” Notwithstanding the constant invocations of Western “democracy” and “freedom,” the peoples of the West outside the U.S. are at present not free, since they are prohibited from publicly discussing the most vital issues facing their countries. This is why I believe the number one priority for Western patriots in Europe, Canada, and Australia is to repeal their respective countries’ quasi-totalitarian “hate speech” laws, since no movement to save the West from Islamization and mass immigration will be possible so long as those laws remain in effect. I see European conservatives frequently complain about the effects of these laws; but I don’t see many European conservatives say that these laws are totalitarian and totally unacceptable, and that they must be repealed.

I repeat, so long as these laws remain on the books, the peoples of the West are not free and they will be helpless to save their countries.

People constantly say, “What can we do? If we say anything critical of Islam we will be accused of hate speech.” It is true that you can be accused of hate speech for criticizing Islam. But you cannot be accused of hate speech for calling for the repeal of the hate-speech laws.

Posted by Lawrence Auster on Apr 22, 2008.

Third comment:

One other point.

As I said, I do not criticize anyone for using a pen name. If I were living in Europe I would be using one too. But if one is going to use a pen name, it should not be a heroic name like Hotspur. Hotspur, in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part One, is a bold warrior, famously impulsive and unrestrained. Writing under a pen name may be necessary, but no one would call it an act of bravery. Therefore to conceal oneself under the name “Hotspur” is to claim a war-like quality that one has not shown.

Posted by Lawrence Auster on Apr 22, 2008.

- end of initial entry -

Sebastian writes:

As I was the first person to post a reply to that article on Taki, I’d like to add, first, that I did not notice the author’s pen name; I though it was a longer version of an article Paul Belien wrote for the Washington Post. Secondly, it is not only a matter of anti-hate speech laws but of career survival. I practice law at an English law firm that proudly advertises its Sharia Law division and routinely represents characters and families who mean American harm. Already, just using my first name, colleagues assume I have written for your site and others, none of which I mind. But unless one make a living as an opinion writer or has the insulation of a Carl Icahn, it is very dangerous to write even in this country. In fact, as I have said repeatedly, echoing Tocqueville, America exercises a non-judicial conformity of speech that is in some ways worse than Europe’s legal sanctions. I routinely have conversations with Italian and French businessmen who say things about Islam, the left, minorities and feminism that no American male would express to a business associate. Here everyone toes the same line of democratic platitudes about everything: art, music, film, race relations, immigration. I still feel I have more freedom of speech at an Italian dinner table than at a Greenwich country club.

LA replies:

You’re right, it’s other things beyond the speech laws: harm to career, harm to social acceptability, also fear of possible violence from Muslims.

But how is it that you can get away with openly criticizing your employer for representing sharia-promoting Muslims?

David H. in Oregon writes:

LA has remarked that you cannot be prosecuted for hate speech if you call for the abolition of laws prohibiting hate speech. This seems quite logical, but whether it is actually true in, say, the United Kingdom is a different matter. I think a prosecutor might very well have enough of a color of a case to give the defendant an expensive experience.

LA replies:

If they did that, they would have crossed the line to full-blown unfreedom.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 22, 2008 08:29 AM | Send