(HAHAHAHAHHA brilliant)
… and frankly maybe it is a topic for a later blog post; I don’t want this post to get bogged down in complicated political discourse (and we all know that when I start talking about politics, the finely balanced and incisive analysis can go on for hours). But just to set the scene a bit more, here’s a picture of the two men in question:
You might not be able to tell, but that picture isn’t actually a photograph. In fact it was originally a WW2 propaganda poster (which explains why David Griffin and Nick Irving are destroying the Statue of Liberty which for some reason is bleeding); and I have cleverly photoshopped it to suit my purposes, for example, by adding the names of the two men in the place of ‘Hitler’ and ‘Mongolian Looking Bloke’. If you look carefully, you’ll also see that I replaced the word ‘PRODUCTION’ on the big spanner with the word ‘DEBATE’. This is because Luke Tryl, the greasy little Head of the Oxford Union who invited Griffo and Irvs in the first place, said that he was confident that Oxford Students would be able to “crush these men in debate” and so I have tried to reflect that viewpoint with the Nazi Beast being scared off by the spanner of Good Debate. I’m not sure exactly what Trylby was expecting, like, some philosophy student to make a really good speech and then both of these guys who have spent their entire life talking this shit to look at each other and then be like “You know what, mate, that is THE BEST ANALOGY that I’ve ever heard in my ENTIRE LIFE, and, wow, I’ve never heard that particular argument put before me so eloquently and I don’t believe it, my mind is totally changed, I’m gonna quit this job, marry a black man and open a kebab shop. In fact, come over here. High five, soul brother, high five.” I don’t know, call me a cynic, but in my imagination, the entire debate was always going to boil down to a bunch of spluttering undergraduates going “buh-buh-but RACISM IS WRONG!” and then the Griffmeister-Jay just reciting a list of facts and figures that don’t make any sense but sound impressive, and then everyone would go away feeling pleased with themselves. Pfft whatever.
Anyway so the situation was that these men were coming to speak about free speech, and like half the university had a massive hissy fit about it and essentially decided to have a protest outside of the Union; then when The Racists showed up they would be Shown The Error Of Their Ways by some students waving placards. I quite like the irony of having a forum about free speech with some people who want to crush the free speech of other people and so the only retaliation of the people who are pro free speech is to attempt to stop the free speech of the people who are anti free speech. Free speech was absolutely the phrase of the moment and I’m not gonna lie, I got fucking bored of hearing it being brought up every ten seconds. Personally, I think that the issue is that Luke Tryl can’t see the difference between ‘oppressing someone’s right to free speech’ and ‘not inviting random lunatics from off the street to speak in front of hundreds of people’… I pretty much think that THAT’S where the issue lies. Right, so I’ve put that one to bed.
Seriously, though: free speech is a big issue. I have thought it through, and on consideration I would probably describe myself as both a hero and a martyr of free speech; because of my adherence and commitment to it, I am forced to just sit back and watch as people post horrible horrible comments about me on my blog. And those hurt, y’know? The anonymous spittle-flecked rantings of someone I don’t know who posts how mean I am on my blog at three in the morning is something that will haunt me to my grave. These anonymous writers don’t know what it does to my ego to see the number of comments steadily ticking up to the highest numbers since February. But it’s bad, I tell you. So you can see that I’ve suffered dreadfully in my quest to uphold free speech, and so I felt personally invested in this debate and I knew that even if I couldn’t get tickets inside the chamber, I would BE THERE OUTSIDE to cheer on/boo (depending on what everyone else was doing). Plus, you know me, I’m a sheep, I’m an experience junky, I just want to be where the action is, so I was like ‘let’s go!’ and then I pushed over a chair to show how rebellious and anti-conformist I am. Matt, who was well up for it, got really annoyed with me and said “Look, if you’re not going to take this seriously then don’t even bother coming” so I had to put on a really stony poker face. In fact I let him go off to the debate first on his own so I wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his new protester friends.
But after a bit, I got bored of hanging around in the bar and so we rolled up. Being out on the streets were bizarre. We’d been warned for weeks in advance that all of Oxford would be in security lockdown, and now the day itself had come. It was very exciting, actually: there was definitely a thrill in the air, a sort of buzzing electricity that said “Something is happening tonight”; the atoms in the atmosphere were glowing faintly and the sky was screwed into a little ball of anticipation; even the trees were holding their breath and the birds had stopped singing. There was also a load of police horses wearing riot helmets and shinpads, which was neat. The real action of course was taking place on the street outside the Union building, which was crammed to the fore with angry people. There was barely space to breathe, and the police had formed a cordon around the outside of the door and had stopped letting people with tickets go in. There was also some guy with a drum who was playing the Macarena or something, which I felt gave the entire scene a quite festive atmosphere. I mean, the reporter on the BBC website summed it up best when he wrote “there was not a gown in sight”. This was true – nobody at all had chosen to dress up in their sub fusc which – as everyone who has never been to Oxford will know – is what we wear seven days a week. We also travel everywhere via punt. Because we are the height of civility. OR SO YOU WOULD THINK. One look at the crowd instantly quashed that idea. This was no time for sub fusc. This was time for angry white people holding these signs that said “UNITE TO STOP RACISM”. The funny thing was that the signs were designed with these stick figure characters on them clutched arm in arm and the only way that the designers had to distinguish the two was to give one of the stick men a square head:
What does that represent? Black people with square heads? Mongoloids? I thought it was weird. Briefly. But really I had no time to sit and ponder as I swiftly got caught up in the moment, what with all the shaking of fists and yelling of GO HOME BNP with the rest of the crowd. There was lots of jostling and whatnot and I’m not joking, at one point someone started a chant that was just ‘oggy oggy oggy oy oy oy’, except in this case it was ‘Nazi Nazi Nazi out out out’ which I honestly thought was one of the best things I had heard in my entire life. It’s a pity that nobody else agreed with me and so we went back with the failsafe OUT OUT BNP. Which was nice.
It didn’t stay nice, though. The thing with large groups of self-righteous people is that after a while, they start to believe their own legend, and then they decide that as they’re all yelling something that has moral superiority, that gives them the right to act like utter penises. So pretty soon people were climbing on the wall and abusing students who were trying to get in to watch the debate; and then they started to stop people going in – “we’re defending our right to free speech by not letting you go in and watch this man speak” and then some other people broke into the building itself and ran up and down playing the piano. The guy on the wall found out and was like ‘I HAVE CONFIRMATION THAT 50 PROTESTERS HAVE ENTERED THE BUILDING’ and then everyone WHOOPED and roared and high fived as though suddenly they were part of some huge anti-conformist letz take down de system rebellion. It was like in Star Wars when they blew up the Def Star and everyone was like chest bumping Admiral Akbar, but in this case the rebellion high command was just a bunch of randomers. Basically it got to the point where I was so sick of everyone acting like dickheads and going on about FUCKING FREE SPEECH that I set about making a small petrol bomb and then I just set fire to the entire street. Luckily my moment of madness was averted by the fact that I didn’t have any petrol or bombmaking equipment, so instead substitute ‘built a small petrol bomb with ‘said “fuck this”’ and ‘set fire to the entire street’ with ‘went to the bar and drank like eight Fosters and then tripped over the stairs’.
Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way pro the BNP (their banter is atrocious and Griffin has a tiny penis). On the other hand, I don’t think that being anti-BNP means you have to be pro-knobhead. I’m sure it’s possible to protest without turning into a utter twat. However, life hasn’t really taught me different. You might not know this, but I am an old salt when it comes to ripping apart authority in demonstration form. I once marched in protest against the jews or something, I can’t really remember , and honestly I wasn’t that impressed that time. Large groups of shouty self-righteous people always piss me off. Protesters, free-palestine guys, anti-animal testing, pro-free speech, hippies, treehuggers and vegetarians. They constantly turn me off the particular issue. If you want me to be pro anything, just show me some protesters and I will automatically support the other side, just because I want to annoy the demonstrators. This is why I’m a member of Seal Clubbers of Canada. Anybody who complains about anything is lame.
The irony of course is that it’s all two sides of the same coin: people who want free speech, people who want free speech as long as it doesn’t offend them, people who write anonymous shit on the internet, people who want free speech as long as it gives them the right to be utter cocks, the BNP and the OUSU, racists and anti-racists… they all believe they’re in the right. But being in the right doesn’t automatically give you the right to do whatever the hell you want. Everyone likes to just sit back and feel self-justified to act like enormous penises and it’s both annoying and headache-inducing. Rights and responsibilities, people.
I don’t even know what I’m talking about now, but I think that I can conclude by saying that I’m pretty much the only entirely blameless person in this entire situation.
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