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A positive outcome from an ugly situation

November 7th, 2007 issue

Like many people in Prague, we’ve been having conversations about a right-wing group’s inflammatory attempt to march through the city’s Jewish quarter on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. One of them was with a Czech friend who wanted it stopped.

“Such things shouldn’t be allowed,” he said.
We took the opposite position and replied, “In the United States, we would say that freedom of speech is absolute and you have to allow such things, no matter how offensive the speech.”
“That’s because you didn’t have concentration camps in the United States,” he said.
True enough. The United States does, however, have the Ku Klux Klan. While there’s no comparison between the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime and the KKK, the core idea of both groups is essentially the same: systematic racial hatred that can be used to justify any human rights abuse, up to and including mass murder.
The present-day controversies also have strong parallels. Periodically the last vestiges of the KKK decide to have a rally or march, which starts a flurry of legal action. In the end the group is almost always permitted to hold its event, which gets huge and hugely expensive police protection. That’s partly to protect free speech, but more a matter of maintaining civil order. Left unprotected, marching KKK goons would be attacked by angry citizens, black and white, igniting an uncontrollable chain of violence.
Still, we’re not suggesting the Czech Republic follow the example of the United States. Every country has to make those decisions for itself, and our friend’s point is well-taken: There’s no way someone born and raised overseas can ever fully appreciate or understand the psychic scars that World War II left on Europe.
At the same time, in a true democracy, questions regarding free speech and freedom of assembly arise regularly and are never easy to resolve. Invariably, the person or group pushing for those rights espouses a point of view that the majority of society finds repugnant. This is the acid test: whether the enduring belief in democratic principles is strong enough to weather temporary controversies and, more to the point, guarantee the rights of people whose only real message is hatred and ignorance.
It’s easy to be optimistic that society’s better instincts will win out if you’re from the United States, and, in that respect, we certainly understand fears that evil will flourish and grow — as it has in the past. But, in that spirit of optimism, we offer unalloyed interviews from both sides of the controversy this week, with the aim of letting readers decide for themselves. In our reading of the conversations, it’s clear which side has the weight of history and ideas on its side, and which has no ideas at all, other than a vague sense of nationalistic discomfort and an adolescent sense of provocation.
While it’s too early to say that the controversy has produced a positive outcome, it’s certainly moving that way. A distasteful action was proposed that triggered a useful discussion and a positive community response scheduled for Josefov and Old Town Square this weekend. Violence is always a possibility, but at the moment it seems more likely that what will happen Saturday is a reaffirmation of values and principles important to everyone, no matter what their race or nationality.
As for the handful of miscreants, they are free to say what they like. And we are free to ignore it.


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