Hard Line party leader Rasmus Paludan slammed the Swedish authorities’ efforts to ban the Quran-burning as attacks on freedom of expression, as well as the passivity of the Swedish police that allowed violence to escalate, and pledged further demonstrations. Following the riots that engulfed the Swedish city of Malmö after a group of Danes associated with the anti-Islamic Hard Line party burned a copy of the Quran, its leader Rasmus Paludan has pledged that Quran burnings will continue until rioters learn how to behave in a civilised society. Unperturbed by the bout of riots and arsons involving hundreds of Malmö’s Muslims […]
Freedom of speech
5 posts
It was the letter that launched a thousand tweets. Maybe even ten thousand—many of them, as happens so often on social media, brimming with insults and recrimination. And that doesn’t even account for several impassioned essays, some pro but mostly con, that the so-called “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” has provoked among the self-avowed intelligentsia—a tiny yet purportedly influential group of academics, artists, philosophers and journalists—since it was released on Tuesday by Harper’s magazine. “The controversy surrounding the letter shows the venom that these anodyne statements produced—statements that wouldn’t have been inflammatory ten years ago,” Harper’s Vice President Giulia Melucci […]
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of…a bunch of wealthy blowhards deciding that now, of all times, is the appropriate moment to ask us all to stop being so mean to them on Twitter. On Tuesday, Harper’s Magazine—the musty magazine of choice for musty magnates—published a ridiculous and delusional open letter signed by such luminaries as J.K. Rowling, Bari Weiss, David Brooks, Jesse Singal, and Malcolm Gladwell. The purpose of this screed? Ostensibly, to encourage “open debate.” But upon closer inspection, the upshot appears to […]
MOSCOW—When Russia’s leading contemporary theater and film director Kirill Serebrennikov and his three colleagues went on trial, virtually all of Russia’s cultural elite, nearly 4,000 actors, poets, writers, and directors demanded authorities stop the shameful proceedings. Even the most careful celebrities stopped being careful and made public comments condemning the prosecution. “We tried to sit quietly but they continued to open our wounds with this case.” — Chulpan Khamatova, actress What they realized as they watched this case taking shape was that in Russia today any famous personality can be charged with some sort of cooked-up crime, arrested, and convicted. Dozens […]
Fox News host Laura Ingraham was so upset Thursday night over the backlash New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees has received for saying he’d “never agree” with NFL players kneeling to protest police brutality that she compared his critics to Josef Stalin. A day after Brees supported #BlackoutTuesday, a social media campaign expressing solidarity with George Floyd protesters, Brees was asked by a Yahoo reporter what he thinks about “players kneeling again when the NFL season starts” and what his responsibility would be as a leader. Brees, much as he did when Colin Kaepernick first began kneeling during the national anthem […]