I agree. In fact his belief in the ‘Jewish gene’ marks him as a more obvious – and so less dangerous – loon than the Clash of Civilizations crackpots.

Well done, Dave!

You make some very good points here.

While Sarrazin is clearly not the exactly a liberal there has been a massive overreaction to his visit, very much as was the case for a similar visit by Geert Wilders. I seem to remember that in the case of Wilders the previous government disgraced itself (and provided Wilders with much wanted publicity) by banning him.

I agree 100% that freedom of speech should be the default assumption and we should only interfere with that when there is a real risk of serious disturbance or offence.

“there was this reaction from Unite Against Fascism”

Oh, what a bloody surprise. UAF have repeatedly made it clear that they’re only anti-fascist when it comes to the views and rights of them and their mates.

Will Ken Livingstone be hugging him?

Ah, good old whataboutery again.

There remains a crucial difference between ‘no platform for feminists’ and ‘no platform for the not very nice’

I’m afraid that won’t do, Dave, and I hope by my changing one of your words in the quote above you can see why?

The right to free speech is not a relativist position, it either exists or it doesn’t.

Allow the racists, the fascists, the communists and the feminists to argue their case, then argue back if you disagree.

What are you afraid of?

pagar,

What we are all afraid of – losing the argument. The consequences in most of those cases might be a bit dire…

Unfortunately, you’re right – if we have free speech, we have to have free speech for everyone. Only those who present a provable danger should be banned – and that has to be at the least someone who can be shown to be intent on raising trouble.

Of course, if you have laws against incitement, by all means arrest those inciting violence after they say what they want – that’s the law (good or bad…) and the right of people to get themselves arrested should also exist.

“Ah, good old whataboutery again.”

Eh?

Livingstone is exactly – exactly – like the UAF idiots who only object to anti-semitism or homophobia when it comes from the “wrong” people.

cjcjc – Livingstone is also quite irrelevant to the discussion: you’ve just brought him up because Dave’s article wasn’t conducive to the time and tested art of sentence-long snarking. As his eerie presence will now linger in the thread, however, it’s perhaps worthwhile to note that rather than demand the freedoms of, say, Daniel Pipes be curbed – as UAF might insist – he debated the man. A better tactic, plausibly, than these strident demands for more and “better” authoritarianism.

While he just hugged Al-Q.

Anyway, sorry. No more eerieness.

Few current figures in public life are so widely execrated that Jewish groups and opponents of Islamophobia alike would seek to deny him the chance to address a public meeting at a London campus…

This is dubious, actually. Anti-anti-semitism and anti-Islamophobia groups are among the loudest advocacy groups around, and their concerns tend to align against the foes of immigration. So, in the U.S. it’s not uncommon to find CAIR and the ADL firing at the same targets (without acknowledging it, natch).

This guy must be some sort of star if he can piss of the Jews and the Islamists at the same time.

If he can attack the Christian fundies as well he, may have hit the jackpot.

It’s quite draconian to have called for this event to have been cancelled.
It smacks of a ”Leftie Big Brother knows best” kind of approach.

I think it shows UAF in a bad light, and is why I would have nothing to do with them.
Disagree with Thilo Sarrazin by all means, but causing a meeting to be cancelled because the university feared disorder on campus is quite deplorable.

It would be interesting to question someone like Sarrazin on his opinions.
David Goodhart in Prospect magazine said this of him:

Sarrazin is no right-wing populist in the image of Jörg Haider, the late Austrian politician, or even Geert Wilders, the anti-Islamic leader of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands. Much of the book is a dry compendium of economic and social data. Indeed, I suspect his book is the political equivalent of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time—much purchased but little read.

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/tag/david-goodhart-review-thilo-sarrazin/

He’s no right winger – he’s been a long term member of the SPD, the German equivalent of Labour.

Germany also seems to have a problem that freedom of speech only applies to those saying what the politcial class agree with.

After publishing his book politicians intervened (with dubious legality) to lose him his job in the German ‘Bank of England’ equivalent: and the SPD also acted to throw him out, without following their own due process.

What he has said has been over-stated, there is evidence between a good deal of his statements: like Richard Dawkins, he has reservations about Islam in the west:

He has also said regarding Islam, “No other religion in Europe makes so many demands. No immigrant group other than Muslims is so strongly connected with claims on the welfare state and crime. No group emphasizes their differences so strongly in public, especially through women’s clothing. In no other religion is the transition to violence, dictatorship and terrorism so fluid.”

If you watched Channel 4 dispatches on Monday, showing films of teachers in UK muslim schools kicking and hitting the pupils – violence does seem to linked to Islam.

Shatterface 1 (and others)

Sarrazin’s comments on the Jewish gene, and the Basque gene – he did in fact have evidence for them: the American Journal of Human Genetics.

From wiki:

An uproar was caused at the same time by an interview with Welt am Sonntag in which he claimed that “all Jews share a certain gene like all Basques share a certain gene that distinguishes these from other people.” He subsequently offered his regrets for the irritation caused and explained his source, for instance, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, referring to international media reports on a recent study by Gil Atzmon et al. that appeared in the American Journal of Human Genetics. In 2009, however, he described the Nazi extermination of Jews as “an enormous intellectual bloodletting”, a loss which he claimed Germany in general, and Berlin in particular, has never recovered from.

7. Watchman – “What we are all afraid of – losing the argument. The consequences in most of those cases might be a bit dire…”

Sure but someone of us are also afraid of those laws in the hands of the malevolent. Which of course, from the perspective of many British people, they are already. Think of those laws being used by your enemies rather than your friends and you will see why the risk of losing the debate is the lesser evil.

It is interesting that the research alluded to by Sarrazin (@15) was picked up by the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/science/10jews.html), apparently without negative comment.

Also on the BBC, where a story about the Lemba people of Zimbabwe (who practice several Jewish customs and in their oral history claim common heritage) referred to DNA tests carried out by British scientists which backed up the claim: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8550614.stm

Indeed, the full title of the academic work is (somewhat clumsy): Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry.

It seems absurd to suggest that followers of a religion founded on the idea that the Jewish people are the sons (and, presumably, the daughters) of Abraham, and with numerous scholarly references to the twelve tribes etc. *wouldn’t* have some common ancestry, and therefore, genetics.

Not that this necessarily involves a benevolent or evil (or otherwise) ‘Jewish gene’ but it does partially explain the comment.

On the substantive point, I agree that freedom of expression is (or should be) universal.

@16

“Think of those laws being used by your enemies rather than your friends and you will see why the risk of losing the debate is the lesser evil.”

Isn’t this a pretty good argument for having for example a Supreme Court that can curb parliament when the latter “does a mental” on things like votes for prisoners or setting sentences?

One doesn’t have to necessarily agree with the positions taken by the UK Supreme court or the European courts to see that an over-mighty parliament can be a danger to liberty irrespective of the fact it was elected.

There is a difference between a “no platform” position and a “no free speech” position. You can respect someone’s freedom of speech (presumably within certain criminal limits such as incitement to racial violence or shouting “fire” in a crowded cinema) without yourself having to provide a platform; and you can respect someone’s right to publish their views (at their own expense, and again within the above limits) at the same time as asking a third party not to provide help in publishing those views as a supportive show of disapproval of them. “No platform” is not the same as not arguing against those views if and when they emerge.

First of all Broder ist Jewish.
Second: Sarrazin has French ancestors
Third: Muslims are the most stupid sort of people in the world.
Alone in Greece there are more publications in one year than in the whole (!!!) arabian world.

We do not need any most uneducated immigrants. No state in the world needs this.

@20 German

“We do not need any most uneducated immigrants. No state in the world needs this.”

Didn’t seem to do the USA much harm in the 19th and 20th centuries from what I can see….. a hell of a lot of the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” were uneducated.

As for your casual racism, it might play well elsewhere but it’s hardly likely to be tolerated here.

Galen

I’m 100% in agreement with your response to German’s apparent racism… but… you chose an awful example.

> Didn’t seem to do the USA much harm in the 19th and 20th centuries from what I can see

The world is VERY different now regards skilled/unskilled work.

In overstated terms – there are now no more jobs for the unskilled.

So German is right in that sense – we don’t need an influx of the unskilled.