Silencing is a bad idea

Editorial

A Croatian singer who reportedly draws crowds of neo-Nazi fans is slated to play at Vancouver's Croatian Cultural Centre next week.

The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies (FSWC) drew attention to the concert by Marko Perkovic, who performs under the name Thompson. His public show in Toronto was cancelled after the FSWC raised the issue. To date, the Croatian centre in Vancouver has not followed suit.

"Thompson has been singing for years in Croatia," said FSWC spokesperson Leo Adler in a press release. "One of those songs – titled 'Jasanovic/Stara Gardinska,' which Thompson sang live in Croatia in 2002 – venerated those two infamous concentration camps where at least 90,000 Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croatians were murdered by the Ustashe movement and its Nazi collaborators during World War II."

As a newspaper, we stand for free expression to the greatest extent possible. There may be times when free expression should be curbed – direct incitement to violence, yelling fire in the proverbially packed theatre and so forth – but a concert, however distasteful or whatever the sort of rabble it attracts, would be hard to view as meeting that criteria. And the fact that a "private" outdoor concert by Perkovic in Brampton, Ont., reportedly did take place, without incident, shows the misguidedness of preemptively trying to censor people's actions.

Canada is a free country and the FSWC is certainly free to call for the cancellation of anything they want. But Canada also has hate crime laws and, for our part, we would prefer to see due process take its course.

The Achilles heel of censorship, of course, is that acceptable discourse is defined either by a social consensus or by an elite. Minority opinions are usually represented only when, as in the case of the Burmese government oppressing protesting monks, they are backed up by the armed forces of those who hold minority opinions. In a free society like Canada's, appropriate discourse is determined by a confluence of legislation, case law and social consensus. Blatant racism is socially unacceptable. Incitement to violence or hatred is against the law.

But the danger, even in a free society, is that the acceptance of censorship in the most egregious cases will open the doors to censorship in less egregious ones. We might contend that a song venerating concentration camps is beyond the parameters of acceptable discourse, but next week someone might make the case that criticizing the government of China or Sudan for their abominable human rights records endangers social cohesion in Canada and should be banned. Legitimacy of discourse is always subjective, even in cases we may deem clear-cut. We may succeed in shutting up a neo-Nazi singer, but, by weakening the social interdiction against censorship, we increase the chances that some group will identify our issues as unfit for civil discourse. This is not an academic matter. There are actually political extremists in this country who make the case that pro-Zionist expression is analogous to hate speech. This is a minority position, certainly, for now. But he who lives by censorship dies by censorship and today's victor could be tomorrow's victim.

Beyond these moral arguments stands another, very practical reality. The occasional concert or presentation by extremist groups offers a rare and very important opportunity for society, most notably in the form of media and police, to gauge the extent of these ideas' reach. If an extremist event were to draw 10 or 15 Nazi-uniformed nutbars, it is safe to say our society is not in danger of imminent collapse. Police may identify these individuals and pursue them to ensure they are not plotting violence. The alternative is to force these groups entirely underground, which has the potential to both radicalize them further, if such a thing is possible, and to let society lose track of them, their activities and the degree of their strength.

There is always a better alternative to censorship. The planned concert by a controversial Croatian singer has raised the issues of the Holocaust and its legacy, intolerance, incitement and a raft of other challenges, not least of which is censorship itself. These issues should be dealt with directly and proactively, not through the stifling unpopular ideas.

By profound coincidence, the very night the Thompson concert is slated, Nov. 14, a vigil for Holocaust victims is taking place on the other side of town. Just about the time that Thompson is scheduled to be taking the stage, Hillel students at the University of British Columbia will be finishing a 24-hour vigil during which they read aloud the names of thousands of victims of Nazism, as part of Hillel's annual Holocaust Awareness Week. While some concert-goers may be reveling in the memory of the 20th century's gravest atrocity, students of Hillel will be memorializing and educating their peers about the potential of unchecked extremism. Education is the key to long-term success in challenging dangerous ideas. Wherever horrible ideas emerge, the response should be more talk, not less.

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