Pigdogfucker

“At a time when anti-semitism is on the rise, tolerating Holocaust denial is like allowing a man to shout fire in a crowded theatre” – David Cesarani

Hmm. There’s no evidence that antisemitism is on the rise; this has become a right-wing talking point despite its utter lack of support. Antisemitic incidents fell in the UK last year, even based on figures issued by a very paranoid organisation (and out of 455 ‘incidents’, over 300 featured people saying mean things or printing nasty leaflets. That’s fewer mean things than were said about Ian Blair over the same time period, never mind about the Scousers or the Muslims).

But the really annoying thing is the use of the “fire in a crowded theatre” metaphor. No, this is wrong: if you shout fire in a crowded theatre, you will start a stampede and people will die, but if you say that there was no Holocaust, you will not start a stampede and people will not die. You won’t even start a metaphorical stampede, as might be the case if you were to tell your audience to rise up and kill Jews.

The fire/theatre and kill-the-Jews statements are clearly in the same class. Statements like “there was no Holocaust” or “Mohammed was a nonce” are clearly in a different class. Anyone who uses the fire in a crowded theatre analogy to justify outlawing the latter class of statement is either stupid or dishonest, and should preferably be set on fire in a crowded theatre.