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Happening today beneath the surface
French university cancels Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Palestine event
Jean-Luc Mélenchon expressed his 'sadness' in seeing the university cancel the event. Credit: Getty
Happening today beneath the surface
Jean-Luc Mélenchon expressed his 'sadness' in seeing the university cancel the event. Credit: Getty
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SubscribeUgh. Free speech is free speech. Doesn’t matter who it is. Every one of these countries have criminal hate laws.
Quite. Melenchon’s arguments can stand or fall on their own merit.
We must assume that the students and staff at the University of Lille are capable of dealing with competing ideas and accept the concept that meaningful debate is rarely “serene”.
As Patton said, “if everyone’s thinking the same, someone isn’t thinking”.
Might as well just shut the University of Lille down and save the money if you’re not going to allow them to think.
“Gentlemen, you can’t have free speech here; this is a university!”
One wonders why these universities block or disonvite conservative lecturers, speakers and scholars with regularity
These academics don’t punish hostile students who physically threaten and abuse views in classrooms and at events of speakers who are independent to the absurd self defined anti racist or colonialist propaganda ignorant students swallow.
“Gentlemen, you can’t have free speech here; this is a democracy!”
French free speech law is not American free search law with its largely court created application and creation
To safeguard the rights of the people henceforth all public meetings will be cancelled.
What is the lesson taught by closing down peaceful debate because those who oppose the debaters might cause a dangerous disturbance? If you want to shut down your political adversaries recruit thugs to threaten disorder. The rise of the NSDAP in pre-war Germany was fuelled by just such competitive thuggery.
I feel that there is some qualitative difference between tacitly supporting a terrorist organisation that wants to wipe out all the jews in/and Israel – oops I meant ‘to end Zionism’, silly me its so easy to confuse the two – (no doubt accompanied by antisemitic chanting and banners), and some elected politicians discussing different policies on the political spectrum in a democracy that supposedly respects freedom of speech.
No there’s no excuse for this, any more than some of the more extreme elements at the Nat Con event justify the attempt to shut that down. This type of quibbling is the beginning of the end of freedom of speech.
Freedoms are not protected by a document in the UN in New York. They need to be protected in real life and that means making difficult choices. Do you really think the people in Gaza are still living in a democracy since they democratically voted to have no more voting?
What? So you protect freedom of speech by shutting down pro Palestine meetings in France? Que?
Did you miss this bit “no doubt accompanied by antisemitic chanting and banners”? Presumably you are fine with that?
‘No doubt’? What does that mean? Was there or wasn’t there? If so shut down those elements. We don’t close White Hart Lane when opposing fans start hissing, but we might well identify, silence and apprehend those who do.
Surely there’s a difference between free speech & allowing proscribed terrorists a public platform? It’s my understanding that the German police were preventing the latter, not the former.
How do you all feel about the ‘death to America’ chants from pro Hamas protesters in the USA? Again, I believe in free speech but I also think treasonous speech should not go unpunished?