Summarised by Centrist
As a member of New Zealand’s Jewish community and former council member of the Free Speech Union, Dane Giraurd cops to calling for an academic at Massey University to be censored amid a fit of rage over comments exchanged on social media for their perceived antisemitic statements .
In “Don’t push hatred underground; expose it” Giraud writes:
“When some Tweeters called out the hypocrisy of my having been a free speech activist who was now trying to cancel a man for speech I didn’t like, I denied this, and even managed to cook up a fair defense of my position. But it was all phony baloney.
Cancelling this man was exactly what I was trying to do – and I was wrong.”
Instead of silencing others, Giraud says he realises that it is better to amplify those claims in order to produce counter arguments to those who may be otherwise influenced.
“To censor is a very human impulse, but it doesn’t make us safer.”
