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May 08, 2009

Why I am not a free speech absolutist

I am less alarmist than some in the blogosphere at the state of right-of-centre European politics. For the most part, European conservatives seem well to the left of the Democrats (perhaps including even the current administration). Wets and squishes, in other words. As to the supposed "right wing extremists" on Europe's right, excepting a post-Soviet-basement-Nazi fringe element, they mostly appear to believe everything the average Labour party supporter believed forty years ago.*

That said.

What is David Duke doing in Prague? If the KKK thinks it has an audience in New Europe, there is sufficient reason to pay close attention, if not yet perhaps for alarm.

Duke, a visiting U.S. citizen, had been scheduled to give lectures in Prague and Brno over the weekend to promote his book, My Awakening. He was arrested by a team of at least 30 masked policemen at a Prague restaurant on suspicion of denying the Holocaust, and was later released and given a midnight deadline to leave the country.

Good. David Duke has the right to say what he likes in the United States. The Czech Republic is under no obligation to entertain him.

* Except for having adopted more contemporary views about gender and sexuality. These days, of course, expressing the views of the Labour party of the 1960s is likely to land you in front of a human rights tribunal. But that is another story.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at May 8, 2009 10:27 AM