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This is the post I wasn't going to make, at all, being made in the middle of the night, because now it's on the national news and I am enormously, enormously pissed off. As everyone who's talked to me in the last two days knows. In brief: Oxford Union president Luke Tryl has invited Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP (note for non-Brits: the British National Party is a racist, fascist, extremist right-wing political party) and David Irving, convicted Holocaust denier, to speak.
(The Oxford Union is a very old, very well-respected debating society in Oxford - it's not officially affiliated with the University, but almost all of its members are students here. It's hosted such people as Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, and Bill Clinton. Speaking there confers legitimacy, in other words.)
The history is long and convoluted, but as said before, it's on the national news: on the Guardian, on the BBC. The row started at the beginning of term, and has been going on ever since. On Friday, they held a referendum - following much controversy - about whether or not to rescind the invitations. I was fresh from a Cold War tute, wandering through college when a couple of historians whom I know slightly bounced on me with placards and said, "Have you voted?"
"No," I said, trying to hold off the spiel, and failing; they immediately started on the first line:
"You know, it's not a free speech issue..."
"YES!" I yelled, much to poor Liam's surprise. "Yes, yes, yes, I AGREE WITH YOU."
And because it was very cold, and I was very angry, I took a placard and helped them out for twenty minutes or so. It was freezing, but it's amazing how righteous anger can keep you warm.
Well, here's the spiel. It's not a free speech issue. I believe in freedom of speech, passionately, fervently, believe in it every day of my life. I believe in free speech in the cold and the wet, I believe it when the sun's going down and you have an essay to do and you're still out there with your placards, I believe in the right to grab people at a doorway and say, "Have you thought about how it's not a free speech issue..."
I believe, also, that I am a human being, a free autonomous individual, and that I have the rights conferred on the individual by the liberal democratic state. And Nick Griffin does not believe this. There is no starting point for debate with someone who doesn't believe you have the requisite personhood for debate.
So when I believe in Nick Griffin's right to free speech, I believe in his having to stand in the cold and the wet, with passing cars splattering dirty puddle water over him, while he acts on this right. I don't believe in the Oxford Union inviting him in, giving him central heating, wine and an audience, effectively indicating to him that his opinions are worth more than the crap on someone's shoe. That's my money, too, that's paying for it - I am, to my considerable discredit, a member of the Union - and this is just so very wrong.
Also, thank you very much, Cherwell, for publishing an opinion on free speech (that I can't find a link for - anyone?) that is so drenched in unanalysed privilege that made me angry all over again. Free speech, it babbles on about. And then it says - paraphrased here; really, I would like the exact words, if anyone has them - that the presence of Griffin and Irving is no physical danger to students in Oxford.
Well. Quite apart from anything else, they're wrong on that - thousands of protesters are expected, and Balliol, bless them, have democratically ordained that their usual scheme is to be extended tomorrow (the day of the debate), and anyone feeling unsafe anywhere is to take a taxi home and be reimbursed by the college.
But. More than that. Physical safety, yes, okay. All right. But how arrogant do you have to be, to leave the nuances of that unexplored? Maybe I've as little chance of getting attacked on the street tomorrow as I do any day. But here I am, thinking about it. Here I am, going to sleep at night thinking, there are far-right groups in Oxford tomorrow, oh dear. And why should I have to think that? Why? See above where I'm a human being, where I deserve to feel safe every second of the time in my home city, where white people don't have to worry about visual indicators and I do. How dare the Union blithely invite RACISTS into my city, so safe in their straight white male privilege that they don't have to think about the consequences of what they're doing? I am not straight, white or male, and I have no uncomplicated identity, no simplicity or belonging - but I am an Oxford student. No one is allowed to contest the basis upon which I'm here, at this place and at this time. How dare they take the one thing that I have all of my own, my home, and compromise that?
(And here's the ironic thing: two years ago, I would have been as angry as this, but a mass of inchoate rage rather than remotely coherent. That's what PPE has done for me.)
It has not been a good term for not being white.
(The Oxford Union is a very old, very well-respected debating society in Oxford - it's not officially affiliated with the University, but almost all of its members are students here. It's hosted such people as Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, and Bill Clinton. Speaking there confers legitimacy, in other words.)
The history is long and convoluted, but as said before, it's on the national news: on the Guardian, on the BBC. The row started at the beginning of term, and has been going on ever since. On Friday, they held a referendum - following much controversy - about whether or not to rescind the invitations. I was fresh from a Cold War tute, wandering through college when a couple of historians whom I know slightly bounced on me with placards and said, "Have you voted?"
"No," I said, trying to hold off the spiel, and failing; they immediately started on the first line:
"You know, it's not a free speech issue..."
"YES!" I yelled, much to poor Liam's surprise. "Yes, yes, yes, I AGREE WITH YOU."
And because it was very cold, and I was very angry, I took a placard and helped them out for twenty minutes or so. It was freezing, but it's amazing how righteous anger can keep you warm.
Well, here's the spiel. It's not a free speech issue. I believe in freedom of speech, passionately, fervently, believe in it every day of my life. I believe in free speech in the cold and the wet, I believe it when the sun's going down and you have an essay to do and you're still out there with your placards, I believe in the right to grab people at a doorway and say, "Have you thought about how it's not a free speech issue..."
I believe, also, that I am a human being, a free autonomous individual, and that I have the rights conferred on the individual by the liberal democratic state. And Nick Griffin does not believe this. There is no starting point for debate with someone who doesn't believe you have the requisite personhood for debate.
So when I believe in Nick Griffin's right to free speech, I believe in his having to stand in the cold and the wet, with passing cars splattering dirty puddle water over him, while he acts on this right. I don't believe in the Oxford Union inviting him in, giving him central heating, wine and an audience, effectively indicating to him that his opinions are worth more than the crap on someone's shoe. That's my money, too, that's paying for it - I am, to my considerable discredit, a member of the Union - and this is just so very wrong.
Also, thank you very much, Cherwell, for publishing an opinion on free speech (that I can't find a link for - anyone?) that is so drenched in unanalysed privilege that made me angry all over again. Free speech, it babbles on about. And then it says - paraphrased here; really, I would like the exact words, if anyone has them - that the presence of Griffin and Irving is no physical danger to students in Oxford.
Well. Quite apart from anything else, they're wrong on that - thousands of protesters are expected, and Balliol, bless them, have democratically ordained that their usual scheme is to be extended tomorrow (the day of the debate), and anyone feeling unsafe anywhere is to take a taxi home and be reimbursed by the college.
But. More than that. Physical safety, yes, okay. All right. But how arrogant do you have to be, to leave the nuances of that unexplored? Maybe I've as little chance of getting attacked on the street tomorrow as I do any day. But here I am, thinking about it. Here I am, going to sleep at night thinking, there are far-right groups in Oxford tomorrow, oh dear. And why should I have to think that? Why? See above where I'm a human being, where I deserve to feel safe every second of the time in my home city, where white people don't have to worry about visual indicators and I do. How dare the Union blithely invite RACISTS into my city, so safe in their straight white male privilege that they don't have to think about the consequences of what they're doing? I am not straight, white or male, and I have no uncomplicated identity, no simplicity or belonging - but I am an Oxford student. No one is allowed to contest the basis upon which I'm here, at this place and at this time. How dare they take the one thing that I have all of my own, my home, and compromise that?
(And here's the ironic thing: two years ago, I would have been as angry as this, but a mass of inchoate rage rather than remotely coherent. That's what PPE has done for me.)
It has not been a good term for not being white.
