Originally posted by HURRICANE 477
We might not agree with what Kilroy said, I don’t even like the man, but shouldn’t he have freedom of speech? There are many arab groups who say extremely questionable accusations but we don’t complain so much about them do we. I would say that the BBC’s action is saying, if anybody says anything we don’t like or agree with, yo’ll have to go. That’s not fair is it?

There is free speech and there is free speech…

As I put before, being a former MP and a TV presenter he should have known better – it is the fact that he was using a position of responsibility that is the reason why it is being blown up like it is. Yes some Arabic groups might have said things that could be regarded as questionable – but then they are desperately trying to gain publicity for themselves and be recognised as the voice of their people.
Kilroy-Silk, on the other hand, is already recognised from being an MP and from his TV program – his job as a columnist is to make people think, not to incite hatred. Imagine he had said ‘blacks’ instead of ‘Arabs’, for example, and that had led to rioting in racially sensitive hotspots and maybe serious injury and possibly death? Would you all be climbing on your soapboxes and heralding him as the voice of reason then?
Personally – and without making any checks – I suspect he made sweeping statements about a huge variety of people that we in the west would lazily call Arabs in the same way that someone who may once have met an over-weight and vocally forthright American from the bible-belt would call all white westerners fat christian fundamentalist loudmouths; or, in the same way, that all Germans are Nazis, all Frenchmen wear berets and striped jumpers while eating frogs legs, all Brits wear bowler hats, drink tea on the dot at 4, and say ‘Jolly good, show’.
And again personally I think that Kilroy-Silk makes victim TV to exploit the suffering and stupidity of the shell-suit wearing percentage of the population – TV would be better off without him and his sort.

Flood.