Editors at National Review Online criticize a recent government action across the pond.
The British government has banned Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur from entering the United Kingdom on the grounds that “their presence in the U.K. may not be conducive to the public good.” This is an illiberal mistake that ought not to stand in a free nation and, if intended to suppress the ideas that the pair hoped to share, a strategic error to boot. Between them, Piker and Uygur have millions of online followers. If they cannot speak in the U.K., they will speak to the U.K. from afar.
To put it mildly, we are fans of neither Piker nor Uygur, whose views we consider to be both shallow and grotesque. But, in this circumstance, that is a wholly irrelevant fact. Why? Well, because we are fans of untrammeled political debate, and because untrammeled political debate was the reason for Piker and Uygur’s curtailed visit to the U.K. As the British government has confirmed, the two men were not applying for residency or seeking public office, but hoping to participate in events at the South by Southwest London festival and at the University of Oxford. There are, indeed, a handful of circumstances in which a government might wish to exclude foreigners from its shores, but neither of these rises even close to that level. Britain is the home of Hyde Park Corner, John Stuart Mill, and the Oxford Union. Can it really be the case that there is no room, even temporarily, for a couple of two-bit provocateurs?
Responding to the news, Hasan Piker claimed that the U.K. revoked his visa “at the behest of Israel.” Given how effective and ecumenical a censor the British government has become, this seems highly unlikely. In its current incarnation, the United Kingdom is a place in which atheists are targeted for criticizing Muslims, in which Muslims are targeted for criticizing gays, and in which Christians are targeted for criticizing all of the above.
