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[Previous entry: "The ICC: the point I forgot to make"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "... Europe?"] 03 May 2003: "Thoughts on freedom of speech"My local paper, the Olympian ran an AP article the other day, "Holocaust Museum Marks 10th Anniversary" (I couldn't readily find the article in the online version, hence the WaPo link). The article kicked off with the following passage: The Holocaust Museum is marking its 10th year with a display on book burning that includes images from a New Mexico town where Harry Potter books were torched by people who said they teach children to become witches.(The WaPo also ran a follow-up, "History That Defied the Flames") My initial reaction was approval; book-burning does carry the taint of Nazi "cultural purification" in my opinion, and it's a negative association I'm all in favour of seeing promoted. Then my beloved wife, Carolyn, commented "So how come you didn't get particularly worked up over those folks destroying Dixie Chicks CDs?" Which was a really good point. So I stopped and thought about it. My initial thought was that, sure, burning Harry Potter books and smashing Dixie Chicks CDs is pretty comparable. Then I reconsidered. You see, the folks smashing the Dixie Chicks albums aren't doing it because they object to the content of the records, they're doing it to display dissatisfaction with a public statement by the artist in question. Nobody's marching on the offices of Columbia Records (or to be more exact, SonyMusic) demanding the Dixie Chicks' entire oeuvre be taken off the market, and the master tapes be destroyed in order to prevent the corruption of future generations. In short, it's not about the material per se. The object of the "standard" book-burning (or any other destruction of cultural artefacts), by contrast, is to deny the rest of humanity access to the ideas contained therein; ideas which those destroying the material deem, for whatever reason, to be evil. The reasons why the intellectual content of a particular artefact is considered evil may vary, of course; the Nazis burnt the works of Einstein and Spinoza simply because both were Jews, whereas—presumably—the members of the congregation of the Christ Community Church of Alamagordo, NM, hold out the hope that J.K. Rowling may yet see the light and repent her sins (in which case, surely, she would want the reminders of her sinful and depraved past destroyed, right?). Be that as it may, the long-term goal in these cases is to restrict the access of the rest of humanity to the intellectual content of the works involved; ideally, the original and every existing copy of the offending works would be destroyed. This applies equally to Nazis burning Einstein, the congregation of the Christ Community Church burning Harry Potter, or the Taliban destroying the statues at Bamiyan. They call it "protection" or "purification"; I call it "thought control." Thus, there is a difference between—on the one hand—the Nazis, the Taliban and the congregation of the Christ Community Church (among others), and—on the other hand—the Florentines who submitted their objects of impiety to Savonarola for destruction and those who got rid of their Dixie Chicks collections by having them run over by a tractor. The latter category consists of people renouncing previously treasured items (and submitting them for collective destruction), whereas the former... well, I won't labour the point. So that is why I don't get as worked up over the destruction of Dixie Chicks CDs as I get over ideologically-motivated book-burnings (or statue-smashings, etc.). That's not to say I'm okay with either (and certainly not with those who organised the collective destructions), but the two processes should not be equated. I should clarify a few points. My personal reaction to expressions on the start of the war along the lines of "I'm ashamed to be an American," or Natalie Maines' remark that she was ashamed that Bush is from Texas, boils down to "Yeah, well, you're entitled to your own opinion, though that doesn't mean you're entitled to agreement; you have to work for that." Conversely, my reaction to the call for the boycott against the Dixie Chicks (which I didn't actively comply with, I just don't like country music, okay?) was "Hey look, they're entitled to their own opinion (though they're not entitled to agreement); you're entitled to your opinion too (but don't expect me to agree with you either)." I subscribe without reservation to the Voltaire line "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it." Of course, in my opinion, Voltaire left some caveats unspoken, such as "But if you try to stop me from saying what I have to say, I'll defend to your death my right to say it." In other words, I'm entitled to my opinion at least as much as you are to yours. And that's why I do get worked up over Nazi/Taliban/Moral Majority book-burnings, because they're an attempt to limit influences on, and thus control, my opinion. And that's why I will unapologetically compare anyone conducting a book-burning to the Nazi party (You don't like being compared to Nazis? Shoulda thought of that before you started burning books. Suck it up). Personal note: an important factor in (western) European political theory, in contrast to American political theory, is that while Americans distrust their government, Europeans distrust their neighbours even more. Thus while the US Constitution dictates what the government can not do to its citizens, European constitutions dictate what cannot be done to citizens, with possible exceptions for the government (if certain conditions are met), but under no circumstances by other legal persons. Thus, the privacy of Americans is safeguarded against the government, but not against, for instance, their employers (e,g, random drug testing). In Europe, the rule of thumb is that if the cops can't do it to you, no-one can. Another note: former Nazi-occupied Europe has a slightly different perspective on history from the rest of the world. Primarily, there is a historical context why anti-Semitism, while it exists (especially as WWII departs from living memory), is not acceptable in polite society. This is in stark contrast to the UK, for example, which goes some way to explaining the blatant anti-Israel bias on the part of most British media. On other issues, the response varies; Belgium, for example, maintained the Nazi-introduced concept of mandatory identification, while for many decades in the Netherlands any attempt to (re-)introduce such legislation could be stopped dead in its tracks with a mere "that's what the Nazis did." |
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