Michael Savage Case Puts Home Office On A Moral Knife-Edge

The Home Office have stepped up their game against the dark forces this week, publishing the list of banned persons from the UK with reasons. Those they’re excluding are ones Jacqui Smith reckons encourage people getting a bit fighty against certain groups, including a number of Islamic extremists, and also a handful of radical preachers, right-wingers and white supremacists. And Michael Savage, the number three talk show host in America, who says that he’s now looking to file a lawsuit against Jacqui for defamation.

Savage, author of “The Medical Reason Why Liberalism is a Mental Disorder”, is banned under the Home Office’s recently tightened up restrictions and new measures, which allow presumptions to be created around those who “spread hate”. He claims to want some top First Amendment lawyers to represent him in a major international case. In response: I’m looking forward to seeing him try. Trouble is, the reasons stated by the Home Office for Savage’s ban are that he is “considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence”. So the Home Office has accused Savage of trying to get others to act on these extremist views. Which may or may not be true.

Give Savage’s show a listen and it seems likely that at some point he’s advocated some sort of physical act towards some minority – one recording sees him shouting down a woman looking for a sensible discussion on birth control for youngsters: “So what you mean is you were a slut when you were 11?”

On autism: “In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out… They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’”

On lesbianism: “I don’t like a woman married to a woman. It makes me want to puke. … I want to vomit when I hear it. I think it’s child abuse.” On gays: “You should only get AIDS and die, you pig.” On an alleged rape victim: “a drunken slut stripping whore…What kind of system do we have that anyone can scream rape and not have to show her face?… This is all the product of the out-of-control lesbian feminist movement.”

On race: “Intelligent people, wealthy people … are very depressed by the weakness that America is showing to these psychotics in the Muslim world. They say, ‘Oh, there’s a billion of them.’ I said, ‘So, kill 100 million of them, then there’d be 900 million of them’… Would you rather we disappear or we die? Or would you rather they disappear and they die? Because you’re going to have to make that choice sooner rather than later.” In one conversation he alludes to the pointlessness of the abolition of slavery, because then all the black slaves got “jobs they didn’t deserve”. He goes on to ask why the blacks didn’t just release themselves from slavery… his caller states that 25million slaves died, to which Savage responds that he’s just bought into a made up figure by revisionist Islamic historians.  

Unlike others banned, who are on the periphery in radical pockets of racist, homophobic or extremist communities, his reach is enormous – millions of people tune in to listen to his ridiculous fulminating. But he claims he does not condone violent acts, and this muddies the water a little. In response to his ban, Savage said (or probably shouted): “I want to sue the British home secretary for defamation, for linking me up with murderers because of my opinions, my writings, my speaking – none of which have advocated any violence, ever… It’s interesting to me that here I am a talk show host, who does not advocate violence, who advocates patriotic traditional values – borders, language, culture – who is now on a list banned in England. What does that say about the government of England? It says more about them than it says about me.”

The Home Office’s move is therefore on a moral knife edge. On the one side, those banned are riled into expansive and angry rants about defamation and injustice – see the Stormfront racist website, which now carries the banner “British government commissar bans Dan Black and others for ‘thought crime’ while third world rapists and murderers allowed to flood the country”, just above the forum topics which list “lets get racist!” and “why isn’t Obama stupid?” To anyone with half a brain it’s not sound political reasoning, and just shows up the reasons for the decisions made.

On the other side, it does raise the profile of these figures in Britain, which may provide more fuel for their fires, developing support for radical views on our shores – what Sam Leith in the Guardian yesterday explained as: “turning a creepy blabbermouth into a poster-boy for free speech.” 

It’s good to see a hard line approach to extremism, but the potential ramifications are worrying if nobody digs up any genuine incitements to violence from Savage. Leith’s question remains – how does the notion of free speech fit in here? The Home Office’s approach seems to be saying that free speech is all very well, but not when it’s likely to incite dangerous physical actions, and that’s precisely what those banned do. But it’s going to be up to Savage to define the lower limits of this.

Posted by Jennifer Allan in Creative Economy | May 8, 2009 4:25PM |