RUTHFULLY YOURS

I fought the thought police, and I won

Final thought: We could do with some courage on this side of the Atlantic, too, where the pressure to shrivel the bounds of public discourse to an ever narrower conformist pap is (for the moment) less statist but just as relentless.

The latest European heresy trial ended yesterday with the acquittal of Lars Hedegaard. I wrote about the background to the case last week, and, while I’m glad that Scandinavia’s great warrior for free speech will not be rotting in a Danish prison, I’m inclined to agree with Tundra Tabloids that the verdict of the court in Fredericksburg is something less than a ringing victory for the principle of freedom of expression.

Lars Hedegaard, in his own statement upon acquittal, sees the court’s decision this way:

As my ancient forefathers, the vikings, would have said: It is always good to fight. It is better to win.

My detractors – the foes of free speech and the enablers of an Islamic ascendancy in the West – will claim that I was acquitted on a technicality, namely that the judge in the Court of Frederiksberg resolved that my supposedly offensive comments on the violations against little Muslim girls were not intended for public dissemination.

Re the last part, that’s correct. The judge acquitted the defendant supposedly because Mr Hedegaard had been unaware that his “racist” and thus criminal remarks about Islam’s treatment of women would be released to the wider public. Nonetheless, Lars denies that this means he got off on a technicality. Instead, he sees it this way:

The judge chose the way out provided by my capable counsel.

However, the public prosecutor has been privy to the circumstances surrounding my case for a year – and yet he chose to prosecute me. Obviously in the hope that he could secure a conviction given the Islamophile sentiment among our ruling classes.

My acquittal is therefore a major victory for free speech.

I have no doubt that the massive support I have received from freedom fighters around the world has been instrumental in securing my acquittal.

I think that’s closer to the truth. In my own case in Vancouver, Maclean’s and I were acquitted for political reasons. Under British Columbia’s pansy-totalitarian “human rights” code, we were clearly guilty. But the troika of kangaroos understood that they and their grubby little racket couldn’t stand the heat of convicting us. So they decided discretion was the better part of valor, and let us get off scot free in order that they could get back to terrorizing non-entities with non-deep pockets far from the glare of publicity. Likewise, under Denmark’s law as written – a law in which truth is no defense – Lars is also clearly “guilty”. But, as in Vancouver, the system couldn’t withstand the scrutiny that a conviction would have brought. So the judge decided to acquit the defendant for political convenience and hope that the next boob dumb enough to question the received wisdom of the benefits of mass Muslim immigration would be some obscure rube with no international megaphone.

As for the “major victory for free speech”, the broader Danish – and Scandinavian, and European – culture is as antipathetic to this most fundamental western value as ever. As Mr Hedegaard put it in another recent interview:

We have very few journalists and very few mainstream media who would really take on the fight for free speech.

Hey, tell me about it. Nevertheless, this is an encouraging verdict, because it shows how easily the statist enablers for Islamic imperialism crumble to dust when you shine a light on them. That’s why it’s important to internationalize these cases – to emphasize that Ezra Levant is Elisabeth Sabaditsch Wolf is Geert Wilders is Lars Hedegaard. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali says, we have to spread the risk, so that the Islamic supremacist thugs understand that they will have to kill us all. So it is a victory, if not for free speech then at least for the western resistance. As Lars’ statement concludes:

The battle for freedom is far from lost.

Courage!

Final thought: We could do with some courage on this side of the Atlantic, too, where the pressure to shrivel the bounds of public discourse to an ever narrower conformist pap is (for the moment) less statist but just as relentless.