Don't help white supremacists by fighting their legal battles

OPINION: I'm not against free speech. That would be odd for a comedian. What I'm against is the Free Speech Coalition.

A year ago, when Canadian white supremacist trolls Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern were denied a venue booking by Auckland City Council, the Free Speech Coalition's response wasn't to giggle, or applaud, or high-five. Instead, this brought the Free Speech Coalition into existence. Politically disparate individuals – well-known, educated people – suddenly danced in sync, a flashmob, assembling as if Avengers for the Canadian pair.

Don Brash. Chris Trotter. Stephen Franks. Jordan Williams. Lindsay Perigo. Paul Moon. Ashley Church. David Cumin. Melissa Derby. Rachel Poulain. I hope I didn't leave anyone out.

Literally overnight, these people managed to find each other's phone numbers, incorporate an organisation, hire a web developer, open a bank account, and set up a crowdfunding site – all to raise money to sue Auckland Council over a couple of cackling white supremacists. Overnight.

READ MORE:
* It now falls to private citizens to defend freedom of expression
* RFA 'careful and considered' in barring  Southern and Molyneux
* Auckland Council, mayor taken to court for barring right-wing speakers

To the Free Speech Coalition, a venue cancellation for white supremacists was a moral emergency. It  couldn't think of anything more urgent.

The coalition didn't spend this time making a sandwich for a homeless person. It didn't plant a tree.

It didn't even bake a cake, just so a dog nearby could perk up at the scent. Instead, the group went and bought fresh art supplies to paint a dollar-sign smile on the faces of white supremacists.

In my view, the Free Speech Coalition would have contributed more to society, this entire year, if it had just got in a room, cranked up Pornhub, and gone for it ambidextrously till exhaustion.

Let's talk about free speech. Fine, OK, whatever – racists, white supremacists, Nazis – they probably, maybe, do have the right to free speech.

But don't tell them that. And certainly don't pay a lawyer to tell them that.

Helpful tip: whenever the opportunity arises to be of assistance to white supremacists, look away, cough, and cross the street. That's the least you can do, morally.

It's never your job to give racists useful information. Your job is to make the life of racists as difficult as possible.

If a racist's shoelaces are undone, don't kneel down and do them up. Don't tell a racist they're about to get a parking ticket. Don't tell a racist the wifi password.

If the truth is helpful to racists, lie to them.

Make stuff up. (Exercise your freedom of speech.) Tell them NZ doesn't do free speech. Tell them we only do it in leap years, during certain tidal patterns, and only if you wear the exotic "fern frond of free speech" – a rare fern only found over that steep cliff, over there, which you must approach backwards, on rollerblades, while wearing the "blindfold of justice".

If a white supremacist asks you where to get a good coffee, send them to KFC. 

Whatever you do, don't volunteer, innovate, network, campaign, or crowdfund. Duh.

On TV, Chris Trotter quoted Voltaire: "I find what you say repugnant, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

I say: pick something better to die for. The Amazon is on fire. Kids are hungry. Berms need mowing. My to-do list is a three-volume trilogy, and even so, the financial and emotional sponsorship of white supremacists doesn't quite make the cut.

If you find someone's views repugnant, don't help them plug in speakers and turn up the volume.

If you find someone's views repugnant, don't buy them ink to print out their manifesto.

Don't search for the most repugnant deplorables, to lend them moral support.

Don't make their victory your victory.

Pick a side.

And if the Free Speech Coalition  is offended by this, I look forward to receiving  its crowdfunding.