So some American fruitcakes make a stupid and offensive film about Islam. Across the world Muslims march. In Libya the US embassy is set on fire and people are killed. Meanwhile in the UK a new report into the Hillsborough tragedy reveals that police lied and altered witness statements.
There is a modest connection between these two events.
First, Islamic outrage. Clearly a lot of people don't understand that in the West people have considerable freedom of action, and if some idiot makes an offensive film that is not the US government's fault. "Ah", say the protestors, "but they let it happen. They didn't stop it". They don't understand that the freedom to practice a religion - Islam, say - is pretty much the same thing as the freedom to make art, however bad and tawdry. Religion is merely one way of looking at the world; other views are available. "Ah", say the protestors, "but Islam is not just a religion. It is the religion, and if you say anything against it you are insulting it". At which point the Western mind slightly loses patience, and thanks the Lord, Allah, whoever, that such folly does not take place here.
Actually, about a thousand people protested outside the American Embassy in London over the weekend.
As for Hillsborough, the subject came up at a party on Friday night. Amidst the universal condemnation of the police, my friend Ewan came up with the following.
"Of course, the thing they never mention is how the people actually died. They weren't crushed by falling masonry or anything. They were crushed by people pushing from the back. Yes, the police shouldn't have opened the exit gate, but they only did that because loads of Liverpool fans were late, and when they opened it they pushed to get in. OK, it wouldn't have happened if the gate hadn't been opened, sure, but the actually deaths were directly caused by fans pushing".
I'm paraphrasing, obviously, but Ewan was articulating a sentiment that I have heard hinted at many times, almost furtively, out of the corner of my ear in conversations about Hillsborough over the years. Ewan's contention was that so widespread was the sympathy for the victims, and so successful the Hillsborough lobby in focusing blame on the police, the stadium designers and the FA (all partly responsible for more remote causes), that the truth about the proximate cause could no longer be mentioned. Anyone who was remotely critical about the Liverpool fans on that day risked the self-righteous ire of an entire city, unable to accept that some of the blame lay with its own. It nearly did for Boris Johnson, and only last week another Chief Superintendent had to backtrack hastily over some comments that, goodness gracious, the conduct of fans at the time didn't make the police's job any easier. Ewan had himself, he said, been putting these points on the Guardian's Commentisfree website, only to find himself banned. Comment is only free within certain Guardian-approved limits, it appears.
In case you're wondering, Ewan is not me; and Ewan is not his real name either. He is a professional person with something to lose and I wouldn't identify him here.
I have no idea whether he is right about Hillsborough (although in the absence of a meteorite having fallen unnoticed on the Leppings Lane End there is certain plausibility about the explanation). Certainly football grounds were unruly places in the 70s and 80s, and attending them was to experience a visceral thrill of physical danger, and not just from the jostling hostility of rival fans: I went to an FA Quarter Final at Oakwell where supporters at the home end were so jam-packed in that getting your arm up to scratch an ear was a major undertaking. It's a miracle there weren't more disasters.
Incidentally although you would imagine, reading the Hillsborough coverage, that football crowds behaved with the same hushed decorum found at a Swiss finishing school on prize-giving day, I distinctly remember fans chanting the N-word when a black player got the ball, bananas being thrown onto the pitch in their direction, and the Barnsley fans singing "You'll never catch the Ripper" at the police. Civilised it wasn't. I don't remember anyone saying, "No, after you old chap".
But whether my friend is right or not about the proximate cause of the tragedy, it's indisputable that suggesting Liverpool supporters might have been partly to blame has become something whereof, to borrow from Wittgenstein, one cannot speak.
In the same way that in some countries you can't say, for example, that Islam is a load of tosh.
The test of ideas is their availability for public scrutiny. Freedom is only possible if individuals are willing to put up with the expression of ideas they don't like. This is worth doing because in exchange you get the opportunity to express your own. The 96 deaths at Hillsborough were a tragedy for the individuals and their families. The death of free speech is a disaster for all.
