Time to deal with hate preacher K**** H******
IF the Muslim community is expected to take responsibility for Manchester bomber Salman Abedi, then I feel I must take responsibility for Katie Hopkins. I understand people’s frustrations at giving individuals like this any more publicity than they already have but I’m left with little choice.
As newspapers like The Sun and the Daily Mail, and even broadcasters like the BBC, are willing to give that woman (I refuse to say her name one more time) a platform, the atrociously stupid views she is expressing have to be challenged. But first, a huge well done to radio broadcaster LBC for announcing on Friday that it is cutting ties with this sinister individual after her most recent remarks.
In the latest episode of this hatefilled motormouth’s well-paid self-publicity crusade, she called for a “final solution” in the hours after the Manchester terror attack.
Hopkins quickly deleted the tweet but the damage was already done. She successfully prompted people on social media to link the words “Muslim” and “final solution” in the same sentence, over and over and over again – and effectively played right into the hands of Isis, without any hint of irony, by furthering its cause of creating disunity and disharmony between us and our Muslim neighbours. But it must be acknowledged that it was only possible for her to use such depraved language because sections of our media have played an active role in a process of dehumanising Muslims for years. The pages of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, for example, I cannot defend as a journalist. The way in which Muslims are discussed in this country, the language involved and the multiple examples of inaccurate or false reporting have led us to a point where Muslims have become so “othered” that it is now mainstream to say the unthinkable. A genocide against Muslims is what fills the mind of that woman, and if that is not extremism I don’t know what is. And if we white Westerners are to follow our moral codes without double
standards, then surely it is time to root out this evil from our community – it is up to all of us to report our concerns about the murderous mental state of K**** H****** to the authorities.
An MP died less than a year ago at the hands of a far-right terrorist madman, and so it is vital, for the sake of democracy and decency, that hate preachers like her – who compared refugees to cockroaches not so long ago – are held properly to account.
But that’s not what we do, is it? Instead, her behaviour is rewarded with high-profile media work.
Presumably drooling at the thought of high ratings guaranteed by the outrage ticket, broadcasters have had Hopkins on their screens doing everything from making a documentary about how people with weight problems are just fat and lazy (apparently proven by her deliberately gaining and losing weight in a controlled experiment which bears no likeness to reality), to offering a defensive case for Donald Trump on the BBC when tapes emerged of him boasting about groping women.
The more extremist her language becomes the more some indefensible elements of the British media lap it up.
How easy it is for the privileged to hide behind freedom of speech when they aren’t the ones dealing with the consequences of the inevitable hate crime inspired by their words.
I feel very passionately about freedom of speech, but I do have a line.
When there is a significant risk that the irresponsible use of language is leading society into the kind of dangerous territory where we’re talking about a “final solution”, it’s not enough to shrug shoulders and mumble something about free speech.
And it seems that even a Twitter co-founder may be reaching a similar conclusion about free speech and responsibility.
Following claims made by right-wing US President Donald Trump in the past that Twitter played a role in his success, Evan Williams told the New York Times earlier this month: “I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place. I was wrong about that.
“If it’s true that he wouldn’t be president if it weren’t for Twitter, then yeah, I’m sorry.”
Of course, I’m no more responsible for this hate-filled woman than the UK’s three million Muslims are for Abedi. But I am responsible as a human being, as a member of this planet, to do whatever I can, in any small way, to reject the limited forms of thinking that lead people to harm one another in such indiscriminate, hateful ways.
Hopkins’s brand of extremism is a danger to society, and we must be united in opposing her messages of evil.