Provocateur

Is Pamela Geller a hero or a villain?  Is she a moral crusader or a crass provocateur?  Opinions are sharply divided.  Many decry arranging a contest to select the best carton depiction of Mohammed as a vile insult.  Others praise the organizer’s courage.

First, let it be stipulated that the contest was intended to be provocative.  Second, let it be agreed that the materials on display offended many Muslims.  Third, let it also be understood that Geller was aware Islamists might resort to violence to suppress her program.

The question is: Was she wrong?  Should she have found another way to make her point?  Geller, of course, insists that she is fighting for free speech.  She argues that no one should be able to censor public expression merely because they are offended.

Meanwhile her critics respond that she was unnecessarily odious.  They say that given the religious convictions of Muslims, representations of the prophet amount to hate speech and therefore should be prohibited.  Some even allege that it is illegal.

Others, such as Bill O’Reilly, claim that it is bad tactics.  They argue that religious insults are bound to alienate people we should be cultivating as allies.  Why gratuitously offend people who have done nothing to harm us?  After all, religious freedom applies to them too.

I would respond with a line of reasoning recently put forward by Alan Dershowitz.  He compared Geller with Martin Luther King.  Both intentionally provoked a hostile reaction in order to promote a moral agenda.  Both likewise sought publicity to disseminate their message.

When King organized protest marches in Birmingham Alabama he was aware that Bull Connor, the city’s commissioner of public safety, had vowed to stop him.  He also knew that Connor was a belligerent man who was prepared to use force to impose his mandate.

Yet King went ahead anyway.  Weeks earlier he had led demonstrations in Albany Georgia, but these did not produce the confrontation for which he had hoped.  The city’s officials were so accommodating that there was no violence and therefore no sensational pictures for the press.

Birmingham would be different—and sure enough Connor obliged.  Television coverage of water cannons and vicious German Shepherds outraged the nation.  This was obviously unfair to peaceful protesters and should not be tolerated.  Hence, just as King hoped, the civil rights movement got a boost.

So why didn’t Geller’s free speech crusade get a similar boost?  Why didn’t efforts to kill her and her colleagues spark widespread indignation?  The answer lies in what she is advocating.  Free speech is not at the top of the list of liberal causes, that is, as long as it is not their speech.

Geller’s mistake was trying to make Muslims look bad.  For those on the Left, these folks are a protected constituency.  Other religions can be mocked with impunity, but because Islamists are regarded as underdogs they must be defended—even when they attack us.

Thus, Barack Obama will not admit that we are at war with radical Islam.  Nor will feminists condemn the subjugation of Middle Eastern women.  By the same token, the media seldom draw attention to the excesses of Sharia law—such as putting apostates to death.  All this is overlooked rather than discomfort people who are perceived as weak.

This, however, is not compassion.  Rather, it is empty-headed arrogance masquerading as moral enlightenment.  Free speech is not a given.  It must be defended.  Once we cast it aside in the name of protecting those who revile it, we many never get it back.

Nonetheless, liberals do not care.  They have promoted political correctness for years.  If you doubt this, try using the N-word in public.  That someone like O’Reilly also puts political considerations above defense of our freedoms is truly frightening.

Edmund Burke warned us that when good people do not defend what is right, evil is bound to triumph.  Have we now grown so complacent that we spurn those who stand up for liberty?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University