Editorial: Democracy must not silence views

OPINION: Few things are more abhorrent than the extreme Right and those who perpetuate its thuggish philosophies. Few are harder to deal with in a democratic society.

Three incidents in the past week in New Zealand and Britain demonstrate the constant tension between tolerance and the understandable desire to deny a platform to those who preach intolerance.

The first, the revelation that Auckland Grammar schoolboys felt it appropriate to bow down before a Nazi swastika signifies nothing, despite the brief outcry it provoked. The boys were displaying the casual idiocy of youth rather than making a thought-out political gesture.

The furore has no-doubt ensured that they are now fully aware of the stupidity of their actions, especially in a place that commemorates the thousands of New Zealanders who died fighting fascism.

The arrival in the Hutt Valley of supporters of the far-Right National Front, Right wing Resistance and New Zealand Nationalist Alliance at the weekend is only slightly more concerning. With their truncated version of the Nazi symbol, skinheads and their sparsely-attended parade through Wellington's streets, they succeeded only in demonstrating they are inconsequential and have no support in New Zealand.

An anti-racism campaigner was appalled that a holiday park allowed the groups to stay. However, the alternative – allowing discrimination on the grounds of political belief – would not only be illegal, it would also be a difficult concept for many New Zealanders to swallow.

More difficult to resolve is the debate raging in Britain over whether British National Party leader Nick Griffin should have been given a slot on the BBC's Question Time programme. Those who believe he should not, argue that it gave his whites-only party an undeserved aura of political respectability. They claim 3000 expressed interest in joining the party just before and after the appearance.

BBC bosses argue that, as a state broadcaster, the corporation has to cover all political parties with a national presence – something it judges the BNP to have achieved because, though it has no MPs at Westminster, in European parliamentary elections this year it won two seats with just under a million votes.

The BBC is right in principle and in practice. A principled democracy cannot simply silence views that the majority disagree with.

In practice, Mr Griffin's appearance has simply revealed his politics for the illogical farrago of prejudices they are. He floundered over whether he denied the Holocaust had taken place and defended the Ku Klux Klan as "almost totally non-violent".

Significantly, he is not claiming the appearance was a triumph. Instead, he says he was set up, and that the programme should not have been made with a studio audience from London because it has been "ethnically cleansed" and is no longer a British city.

There is no room for complacency about those who preach the politics of hate, but the way to deal with them is to confront them and expose their policies to the unblinking light of reason. The alternative – pretending they do not exist – simply feeds their conspiracy theories and allows their distortions to grow unchallenged.

- © Fairfax NZ News