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Connexions Quotations
Kenan Malik
Quotes
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Far from according respect, the multiculturalist censor treats people not as autonomous beings
but as incapable victims needing special protection. The result is an auction of victimhood as every group attempts
to outbid all others as the one feeling most offended.
- Kenan Malik
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The notion of giving offence suggests that certain beliefs are so important or valuable to certain people that they should be put beyond the possibility of being insulted, or caricatured or even questioned. The importance of the principle of free speech is precisely that it provides a permanent challenge to the idea that some questions are beyond contention, and hence acts as a permanent challenge to authority. This is why free speech is essential not simply to the practice of democracy, but to the aspirations of those groups who may have been failed by the formal democratic processes. The real value of free speech, in other words, is not to those who possess power, but to those who want to challenge them. And the real value of censorship is to those who do not wish their authority to be challenged.
- Kenan Malik
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Of course, many of those who give offence are not progressive at all, but bigots &ndash racists or homophobes. But people must be as free to offend against liberal orthodoxies as against reactionary ones. Free speech for everyone except bigots is not free speech at all.
- Kenan Malik
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The very fact that we talk of ideas as ‘offensive’ is indicative of the political shift that has taken place. There are many ways of disagreeing with someone’s views – we may see them as irrational, reactionary, or just plain wrong. But to deem an idea ‘offensive’ is to put it beyond the bounds of rational debate. Offensiveness is an affront to an entrenched tradition, a religious precept or one’s emotional sensibilities that cannot be erased by reasoned argument. It is a notion that sits well with the moralising, emoting, often irrational approach to politics that we all too often see today.
- Kenan Malik
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