In one version of the Troy legend, the priestess Cassandra warns the people of Troy of the city’s impending doom and the perils of the wooden horse left to them as a gift. Her clairvoyance was a gift from the god Apollo in exchange for her hand in marriage. When she reneged on the agreement, he cursed her: no one would believe her predictions.
Many contemporary politicians and commentators must feel they have been struck by a similar curse. They warn of the dangers of Islamisation, mass immigration, lack of integration, and overdependence on state welfare. Their words are dismissed for their belligerent tone, unpleasantness, or lack of political correctness – just like Cassandra’s revelations were dismissed for their defeatist and unpatriotic attitude.
Ignoring these ominous prophecies won’t be the calamity it was for the Trojans, but it has done more harm than it has done good. Making certain topics de facto off-limits has had two disastrous consequences.
Firstly, it has engendered frustration and ill will in many moderate voters. The success of rightist parties across Europe shows this. The notorious Freedom Party in the Netherlands is a prime example. Its stance on immigration and integration secured it second place in parliamentary elections, in spite of an agenda that is weak and incoherent on other issues.
This is possible because the issue of immigration is close to the heart of many voters, but established parties refuse to address it. Electorates are like teenagers in this respect. They want to talk to their parents about the things that bother them; and if their parents turn a deaf ear, they will look for someone else. If they can find no one else, they may start acting up.
The formation of militia to defend ethnic Dutchmen (but also Dutch Indonesians, Surinamese and Antilleans) against North-African immigrants is a worrisome example. And Anders Breivik, who murdered over seventy people in Norway, stated in his manifest that it was the air of taboo over discussions of Islamisation that led him to his heinous deeds.
In Breivik’s case – or Bin Laden’s, or the Unabomber’s, for that matter – a deranged mind and a twisted ethical code lead to these atrocities, rather than anger at public debate. Regardless, the frustration felt by a large chunk of the electorate should be reason enough to change the terms of admission for debatable topics. Respecting such concerns is a democracy’s duty just as much as protecting minorities is.
The second consequence of keeping issues out of debate has been that the problems they contain could not be approached, so no solution has been found. The sensitive topics of today – islamisation, immigration, gang culture – encapsulate practical problems which require attention. Ignoring them is not an option. A doctor doesn’t let a wound fester because the prospect of a surgery unnerves his patient, either.
For example, organising remedial classes for immigrants’ children is seen as an insult to their intelligence. Yet they are undoubtedly at an academic disadvantage if their parents don’t speak the native tongue. It is common sense to give them the extra education they need so they can catch up with their native peers. In Ontario, Canada, schools with many immigrant pupils have been receiving extra help and the province is now renowned for its strong education. Those immigrant pupils would not have had the same chances in life if they were denied extra education out of a misplaced sense of egalitarianism.
Although no one in the western world risks imprisonment for speaking his mind, the mindless and reflexive contempt of his peers is a certain punishment. In his On Liberty, the philosopher J.S. Mill warns against the social consequences of using the right to free speech, because their menace mutes people just as well as the threat of harm does. Perhaps even more.
This social menace has been so effective that we are left with half of the electorate frustrated and an array of unsolved and unaddressed issues. And it is strange that we are, because it shows we have lost sight of another important function of the right to free speech that J.S. Mill pointed out. We need to let extremists, bigots or plain idiots speak their mind without interruption or ridicule on television once in a while. Nothing is as effective at exposing the weaknesses in their arguments, the flaws in their reasoning, and their delusional mindsets. But if you never let anyone see these weaknesses, then the attempts at muffling them only gives the impression that they’ve got something sensible to say.
Those who oppose discussing integration, Islamisation or any other sensitive issue do so to keep the wooden horse and its sinister contents outside the city walls. They believe they have left apartheid, Jim Crow states and Nazi Germany out to rot. It would be better if they did not look a gift horse in the mouth, and welcomed these topics for discussion. The actual underlying problems could then be approached; the electorate would be relieved; and the worst of the worst no longer have the loudest voice in these matters.