I support Michael Savage's right to speech but unfortunately those rights stop at the border.
Blair, Brown and their anti-Christian government routinely allowed foreign mullahs to proselytise through organisations like Al-Muhajiroun in a mosque down the road from me, without consequences, for years and only ever intervened when they overstepped the mark between expressing hostility to Western / Christian / Jewish values without condoning violence, and directly calling for acts of terror against the West, or against Jews or Christians.
After 7/7, Blair’s two cretinous feminazi stooges, Jack-boot Jacqui Smith and Harriet Harman (queen of the politically correct hence the nickname Hattie HarPERSON) between them ensured that “incitement” was subjected to reductio ad absurdem, in legislation.
Now you can’t even offend gays or Muslims en masse, WITH GOVERNMENT/STATE APPROVAL, on the basis that to do so either indicates institutional support for violence from them, or institutional support for violence against them. The government cannot be seen to endorse the incitement, and government decides who can and cannot come into the country. Therefore the last government tied its own hands as regards Michael Savage.
The key thing there is WITH GOVERNMENT/STATE APPROVAL. I can still express anti-homosexuality in the street. I can still express anti-Islam views in the street. I don’t need their “approval” for that. I would need their approval to do it in a public building, and of course I cannot get it because their own rules prevent them from allowing THEMSELVES to authorize it. That’s why they won’t risk allowing Savage (or Phelps) in until the law’s been changed.
Tories are minded to do just that, but right now they have more pressing priorities. Like stopping the country’s economy going down the toilet.
Our ability to turn nutters away based on what they’re saying AND who they’re going to be saying it to, might be over the top, but conceptually it is perfectly justifiable. Look at it this way:
Fred Phelps has also expressed an interest in coming to the UK to proselytise. He isn’t likely to firebomb a nightclub frequented by homosexuals, even if he’s happy to say that those people deserve to burn in hell. He’s not likely to directly incite a crowd of people to carry out firebombings either. Anyone who did such a thing after listening to Phelps is, what? A domestic terrorist? A lone nutjob?
Like Savage, Phelps should be let in.
That certainly doesn’t mean you can apply the exact same reasoning to an Islamist who wants to come here to preach “Allah hates fags” to a crowd full of West-hating fundamentalists who already believe that homosexuals are legitimate Jihad targets. Those people are just waiting for a mullah to come here and give them the nod of approval to go ahead and actually do it. The Mullah doesn’t actually even have to give an indirect order, to incite a bloodbath.
And that’s the difference.