During the festivities of tonight’s British Comedy Awards, Sacha Baron Cohen made a joke about Borat being unable to attend on account of being otherwise engaged, in Iran, at the Holocaust Denial Conference. Now, I like to think of myself as someone who keeps up to date with world affairs but this was clearly a brilliant joke. Then Michele pointed out that he was being serious….about the conference at least.
After a short period of Internet research (don’t take the piss) I realised that it was true. How this escaped my attention over the past few years of preparation is a mystery, but I can only assume that in the past I’ve seen details and thought it was a bit of sledgehammer satire, and then forgotten about it. You would be justified in the alternate point of view that I’m just a simpleton.
Some people think that racist attitudes should be banned from being made in public. I strongly disagree.
When people are forced to keep their genuine racist attitudes under wraps, they simply lie, and water down their rhetoric. Hey presto, the BNP get a bunch of council seats.
If people were allowed to express their real views without fear then there would become such polarisation that our enemies will become:
- Far easier to spot
- Fewer
How much easier it is to form an opinion on Iran when they start denying the Holocaust. Please don’t think I’m any sort of fan, or even a defender, of Israel, because I’m not. But whether or not Israel as a state has the right to exist is a very different argument to whether a race of people have the right to exist.
I hate religion.