Freedom of Speech: Yes. Incitement to Murder: Never.

“So much for the tolerant left! They won’t even leave Nazis in peace!”

This isn’t too far from the response from some unthinking liberals and plenty of conservatives to the anti-fascist demonstrations that have taken place across the US since Trump’s victory. The consequences of this new policy of safe-spaces for fascism, complete with police protection and ACLU endorsement, were vividly displayed when a pathetic loser from Ohio rammed his car into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather D Heyer and injuring many more.

What lies behind this new impulse to extend the protection of civil society even to those who would dismantle it in the most brutal and violent way possible? Part of it comes from the w-word: White privilege.

In a society overwhelmingly dominated by White people, it’s easy to see how: I’m not high on the list of priorities for the KKK. I’m White, heterosexual, and English-speaking. When the American Nazi Party or the English Defence League go on the march, there’s a rainbow of desired victims, but I am not usually one of them. So of course white liberal society wants to flex its tolerant muscles and say that yes, we are prepared to tolerate Holocaust denial, racism and sexism in the name of intellectual vitality and liberal, Enlightenment values.

The problem with that is it isn’t what most Nazis say.

They don’t just say that the Holocaust didn’t happen; they say that it either didn’t happen, but it should now, or sometimes that it did happen and a damn good job it was, too.

Are we going to really say that as a society we are stifling free speech and human rights and intellectual debate if we say that we will aggressively challenge someone standing up and inciting a crowd to lynch African-Americans?

Before you say that I am advocating Stalinist thought-crime methods, the above argument is my own crude rehashing of the argument put forward by John Stuart Mill on the limits of freedom of speech.:

He said that you may publicly accuse the local corn farmer of being a liar and a thief, but you may not assemble a mob armed with burning torches and incite them to burn down his house.

This translates as: free speech, yes, advocacy of murder, no.

I really shouldn’t have to put it any more simply than that. These torch-carrying sexless freaks in Virginia might make a pathetic sight, but their deadly intent should not be misunderstood.

If you need any proof, ask the family of Heather Heyer.