Bruno Waterfield: suppressing debate is eroding our democracy

From a free speech activist assassinated in America to a Jewish conductor cancelled in Flanders, our democratic traditions and freedom are in peril.

You didn’t have to agree with Charlie Kirk, the American MAGA activist, assassinated last week to see his “vir-tu”, his lived belief that politics is the highest of activities for all and that it is rooted in the contest of ideas and free speech.

He believed in the power of argument – “prove me wrong” – thrashed out in debate, the battle of ideas in the public square, with words not weapons as the foundation of freedom.

Free speech is the real rock of our civilisation because it brings us out of our private lives and concerns, into the world, into relations with others, not in a war, as kill or be killed, but in the common, open endeavour to fight for the truth, what ought to be. He rebelled against the closure of the Western mind in the retreat from, which had tipped into open hostility against words, speech and ideas on many of the university and college campuses of America – and Europe.

With the equation of words and argument to violence, force and coercion returned to the public square to settle the contest of ideas in the name of protecting the vulnerable from offence, regarded as a violation or violent assault.

From cancel culture on one end of spectrum to assassination on the other, it has been truly appalling to see justifications of Kirk’s murder as the logical outcome to his politics, seen as a repellent and fascist cause of offence by the bien-pensants.

If words do violence to us, then logically – implacably – force will be used to settle arguments, to resolve contests in politics with the techniques and applications of coercion, from pressure (the threat of losing a job), to bans and, ultimately, to destroy individuals.

“When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil and they lose their humanity,” he said in a quote that has, rightly, become famous.

Inevitably, comparisons have been made between Kirk and Horst Wessel, the Nazi paramilitary, killed in 1930, to resurrect the spectre of fascism, in that abuse of history that we are so familiar with. In this world view, which accepts many of premises of fascism itself in the name of antifascism, Kirk’s political practices, his free speech, is regarded as a form of dangerous, radical activism that triggered violence, which is seen as always immanent in contested politics.

Kirk was the opposite to Wessel, or for that matter the Nazi thug’s Stalinist KPD killers, his combat was fought with words, ideas and the intellect not fists, boots or bullets. Tragically his murder will be used to make the case for an end to argument, to reinforce the prejudice that political disagreements are rooted in dark instincts beyond the control of any individual and, thus, beyond the power of reason.

For cancel culture and the new culture of coercion, look no further than Ghent, where a Jewish conductor of a German orchestra has a concert prohibited because he would not denounce Israel.

Lahav Shani’s performance was to be “one of the artistic highlights” of the Ghent festival but the organisers canceled him because he would not, as an Israeli, as a Jew, denounce Israel as a Nazi “regime”.

 

“We cannot provide sufficient clarity regarding his attitude towards the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv,” said a statement. “Given the current inhumane situation, which is also leading to emotional reactions in our society, we do not consider it advisable to proceed with this concert.”

Here, Shani’s very presence, his existence as Jew, an Israeli at the head of an orchestra is seen as dangerous – making music as perilous to order as Kirk’s free speech – unless he denounces his nation, Israel.

This disgraceful act of antisemitism, one that is truly pro-Palestine in the Hamas sense of what that means, was not some outlier, or freak event but is the pet project of a government minister in Belgium’s federal coalition government.

Free speech is the real rock of our civilisation because it brings us out of our private lives and concerns, into the world, into relations with others.

Caroline Gennez, a Flemish socialist culture minister, is utterly unapologetic and proud at an act which is a national disgrace. “Ghent Festival of Flanders can count on our support,” she boasted, praising her ban on Jews who “refuse to unequivocally distance themselves from the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv” – that is to say the democratic nation state of Israel.

There is – thankfully – something of a furore over the affair. Bart De Wever, the prime minister, of a typically dysfunctional and poisonous coalition that includes Gennez’s party, has decried a ban that “tarnishes the reputation of Flanders and the country as a whole”. “It’s quite unheard of that artists should have to substantiate their opinions in writing. That seems to me the opposite of artistic freedom,” he said.

He is right. Yet Gennez is still the Flemish culture minister.

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She is not upholding our civilised tradition and practices of freedom and art, often hard fought for, but is a crusader for the new culture war orthodoxy of closure, of coercion and unfreedom.

The concert remains cancelled at a Ghent festival that has thrown a spear at the heart of European culture and civilisation.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Maghrebi.org. Bruno Waterfield is one of the longest-serving newspaper correspondents in Brussels for The Times. He has been reporting on and commenting about European affairs for over 25 years, first from Westminster and then from the capital of the EU. You can find more of his work on European affairs on his Substack: @brunowaterfield.

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