Way to beat far right is to engage – and expose their dangerous views

The flaw in Nesrine Malik’s argument for denying far-right propagandists a platform (Liberals – stop speaking up for hate speech, 22 March) is her failure to address how else the mass of us who oppose those with such unacceptable views can turn voters away from supporting them if we do not engage with their facile and untenable arguments. Attempts over many years to ignore them and simply to excoriate them has led to the present dangerous situation. They must be taken on in debate at every opportunity. If those who believe in liberal values are not able to expose the dangerous consequences of the hatemongers’ arguments, then they ought not to be in politics.

The best current example is France. For over 30 years the mainstream parties tried to deal with the odious Front National by ignoring or attacking it. Over that whole period its vote steadily increased. But when its leader, Marine Le Pen, was taken on by Emmanuel Macron in televised presidential election debates, she visibly crumpled. It is no accident that today the Front National is in disarray, with a much-criticised change of name and a reduced status in the polls. The lesson should be urgently learned.
Michael Meadowcroft
Leeds

• It is as well to be wary of protagonists who describe their own view as the “correct one” when offering a critique of an alternative premise. Lenin’s writings are awash with “correct” admonishments of “incorrect” heresies, a tendency that lately seems to be creeping into wide-ranging liberal democratic discourse. Nesrine Malik similarly supposes her own view, in her castigation of well-meaning liberals, to be the correct one. She also misinterprets John Stuart Mill when she highlights his contention that a struggle always occurs between the competing demands of authority and liberty; that we cannot have the latter without the former. In this she fails to elaborate on Mill’s view of where authority should come from; apparently assuming its imposition from above.

In a representative democracy, authority is generated by its citizens, who enjoy universal suffrage and, as a result, hold the power of recall over those mandated to exercise it on their behalf. In Mill’s time, such a franchise was still some decades off. Although there is never room for complacency, the struggle he refers to has, in modern times, been largely resolved. However, this casual and rather nebulous interpretation of On Liberty allows Malik to play fast and loose with the concept of freedom of speech and imply a simplistic, blanket solution to the myriad and often complex problems encountered in search of the democratic ideal.
Brian Wilson
Glossop, Derbyshire

• Nesrine Malik is wrong to suggest that free speech is overvalued in countries like the UK. Unless a speaker is expected to advocate violent or illegal acts or there is very powerful evidence that their appearance will result in unrest, banning that person is censorship, nothing less. There are hundreds of examples of free speech being curtailed in the supposed interest of “decency” or preserving public order, not least the gradual but inexorable slide of Erdoğan’s Turkey from a position of relative openness to one of unbridled tyranny. Is that really what she wants?
Roger Fisken
Reading, Berkshire

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