I've always been a politics obsessive but, ever since childhood, I've instinctively hated arguments. Lucky for me, then, the invention of Twitter. Comfortable in my echo chamber, I've spent years smugly bouncing around witticisms, safe from encountering anyone who might disagree with me.
It turns out I’m not as clever as I thought. Because, if the political earthquakes of 2016 have taught us one thing, it’s that people have become much too keen on the sound of their own voices, and awfully bad at debating or engaging their neighbours. The fissures in our societies have been displayed as never before, as we realise we understand terrifyingly little about the “other”.
In his final speech as president, Barack Obama lamented that this growing refusal to listen and to engage is in danger of ripping America apart.
Today, in Britain, the art of debating is under attack in many forums. Arguably the silliest manifestation is at university campuses all over Britain, where activists have banned an array of speakers, even the feminist Germaine Greer, because their views violate students’ “safe space”.
But among fully grown adults, the instinct to silence others is also increasing. Last month Milo Yiannopoulos, 32, the British-born right-wing polemicist, boasted that publisher Simon and Schuster had offered him a “wheelbarrow of money” for a book deal. A furious “ban the book” movement rapidly ensued among outraged liberals. The New Yorker even called for a protest campaign using “emails, letters, tweets, phone calls — you name it”. The result? Nothing but more precious publicity for a book that would otherwise barely have been noticed.
“I wonder what free marketing these idiots have planned for me when the book hits the shelves,” was how Yiannopoulos responded .
A report in the JC this month raised another free speech dilemma — albeit on a more serious theme. It concerned the planning of a conference, to be hosted by the University of Cork, which would question Israel’s right to exist, the same discussion that was cancelled by Southampton in 2015. Most supporters of Israel sense, with justification, a more sinister motive for the meeting. A few months ago, I might have supported their calls to ban it.
Now, however, as uncomfortable as it makes me feel, I believe even these views must be challenged head on and debated. As 2016 has shown, refusing to tackle our rivals — however offensive or damaging we think their views are — won’t make them disappear; it will simply boost the sense of conspiracy and grievance surrounding their opinions.
Among populist movements, such as those that saw the Brexit vote, the Trump election and the rise of the French far-right, one of the angriest complaints was that the “liberal elite” fails to listen to the views of people outside it.
In a spirit of fair-mindedness, and out of respect for the important traditions of academic freedom, we must allow the anti-Zionist academics to have their conference and let their arguments be tested and countered.
Shorn of the controversy that censoring them generates, I believe they will get precious little support for their views.
“There is more than one way to burn a book,” Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, observed, as he battled numerous attempts to censor his own. “And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” It’s time to calm down, put away the matches, and start talking to each other to save our fractured societies.
David Byers is assistant editor (property and personal finance) at The Times.
