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Free To Intimidate

Once again, absolutely conventional attacks on Israeli and U.S. policy are presented as heroically original. Once again, it is insinuated that the bravery of those making the point is such as to draw down the Iron Heel. Once again, no distinction is made between private organizations and the public sphere. Mearsheimer and Walt ended up […]

Once again, absolutely conventional attacks on Israeli and U.S. policy are presented as heroically original. Once again, it is insinuated that the bravery of those making the point is such as to draw down the Iron Heel. Once again, no distinction is made between private organizations and the public sphere. Mearsheimer and Walt ended up complaining of persecution because they got a rude notice from Alan Dershowitz! Such self-pity. ~Christopher Hitchens, Slate

Naturally, it isn’t true that the things Mearsheimer and Walt wrote were “absolutely conventional attacks on Israeli and U.S. policy,” since these “absolutely conventional” claims apparently could not find an American publisher and elicited such a firestorm of controversy when made that you’d think that the authors had just murdered a bevy of defenseless, old women.  Charges of anti-Semitism flew fast and furious and a widespread effort to cast the two authors as purveyors of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory commenced.  Ignoring most of what the two authors actually wrote, the voices of condemnation preached us a sermon about how they had said that “the Jews” were behind all our problems, when the article very clearly distinguished between pro-Israel activists of all sorts and the Jewish community in this country.  In any other country on earth, their claims would have been “absolutely conventional,” perhaps considered even rather milquetoast or weak, but in America this was explosive stuff because, as everybody knew, you just didn’t say those sorts of things.  Not publicly, anyway, and certainly not in print!  As if to prove the article’s claims about an atmosphere of intimidation about this very subject, the moral hectoring and intimidation began.  Now obviously the freedom to speak is not the freedom from criticism, as some amusingly innocent people may think, but a decent respect for the opinions of others would require not resorting to ad hominem attacks and making outrageous charges of prejudice in place of a real argument.  Campaigns to intimidate and silence damage the discourse of a free society.  They reflect a basic intolerance for free debate in those who organise such campaigns and they suggest a preference for the rhetorical club with which to bludgeon an opponent rather than persuasion.

The purpose of the campaign in that case was not so much aimed at shutting up Mearsheimer and Walt, who were already obviously unconcerned about being on the receiving end of these charges (otherwise they would not have bothered with the article), but at making sure that few would come to their aid.  Tony Judt did (sort of) in a notable New York Times piece and said, among other things, the following:

Thus it will not be self-evident to future generations of Americans why the imperial might and international reputation of the United States are so closely aligned with one small, controversial Mediterranean client state. It is already not at all self-evident to Europeans, Latin Americans, Africans or Asians. Why, they ask, has America chosen to lose touch with the rest of the international community on this issue? Americans may not like the implications of this question. But it is pressing. It bears directly on our international standing and influence; and it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. We cannot ignore it. 
  

Subsequently, Tony Judt participated in public appearances with Mearsheimer and Walt (who unfortunately have had the bad judgement to play footsie with CAIR, doing themselves and their argument no credit) where they debated the question of the Lobby’s influence with those who defended the relative benignity of its influence or who denied any great influence at all.  The debate had even won pride of place in a recent issue of Foreign Policy.  Obviously, someone had to draw a line somewhere and stop all of this crazy public discussion of something that was supposed to be best left unmentioned.  It is in the context of the last six months of persistent demonisation and lies about Mearsheimer and Walt that we should view the effort to tell the Poles what they ought to do with Judt’s invitation.  Of course no one is actually preventing Judt from speaking elsewhere, and no one claims that he is being prevented from speaking elsewhere.  That isn’t the point.  As usual, Hitchens misses what the point really is.  The principle at stake here is that using pressure and intimidation (with the rhetorical spiked mace of anti-Semitism always just within reach) to derail the speaking engagements of people whose policy views you and your group reject is undesirable and smacks of trying to suppress opposing views by creating a chilling effect on those who might speak out (why take a controversial stance and be bothered with ADL harrassment, or any other kind of harrassment, when it is easier to just go along with the conventional view?) and also seems like an attempt to avoid a frank exchange of ideas.  If there were a marketplace of ideas, this would be like one of the local bosses sending Tony and the boys to give one of the shopowners a “reminder” about who runs the neighbourhood (note that I am probably even now violating the Thought Code by using such a prejudiced, anti-Italian metaphor!).  Typically people in a liberal society do not find it pleasant or agreeable that interest groups dictate the place or time where others can and cannot speak.  The Polish Consulate was, of course, completely within their rights to withdraw the invitation, and I suppose all kinds of people can complain and petition that they cancel such a talk, but the message it sends is hardly edifying and one likely to worsen and deaden the national debate on important questions of policy and politics because there are some questions the self-interested person who doesn’t want to ruin his career doesn’t ask.  Perhaps that is the way of the world, and perhaps that is simply the way things work in the rough and tumble of competing interests, but I won’t blithely excuse the use of intimidation with the lame argument that everybody does it or saying that you can always go somewhere else to speak.  The point is that the quality of the debate shouldn’t be so poor that forcing venues to boot invited speakers is the chief means that their opponents use to stymy or harrass them.  We should be better than that.  Unfortunately, we are not.

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