The International Free Press Society — of which I’m a member, and I never join anything — declares:
The British Home Office has further stated that in barring Geert Wilders from the UK it is stopping “extremism, hatred and violent messages” from coming to its country. The British Home Office is wrong. These things are already there. With this crude rebuff of Mr. Wilders, the Netherlands, and freedom of speech, the British government has all but ensured that such extremism, hatred and violent messages will continue to flourish in British soil, taking root and taking over.
And there is something else. Ideas know no boundaries, at least in what we continue to think of as the Free World. Fitna, Wilders’ writings, news of his political progress in the Dutch parliament: All remain available inside the UK via the Internet and other media. This means that the Home Office’s stated reasons for barring Wilders–to prevent the spread of what it calls “extremism” into UK communities of presumed “harmony”–is not at all what this action is about. In declaring Wilders the man persona non grata, the British government has declared his ideas and his political program to be anathema.
(…)
Therefore, the International Free Press Society calls on the British government to rescind immediately the Home Secretary’s decision to bar Geert Wilders of the Netherlands entry into the UK.
