[bhawks]

|Also worth remembering, it’s probably not possible to listen to Hamas or Islamic Jihad spokesmen on US media.

I must have missed the news where Hamas or Islamic Jihad had established themselves in the US for decades and had been able to get serious electoral candidates into the federal government.

I am not seeing the parallel here between US policies on foreign based Islamic extremist groups and the UKs handling of the IRA.

[bigfudge]

The IRA were literally blowing up shopping centres around the time their speech was restricted (not banned) on national TV. Sinn Fein mps were elected because of our weird fptp system and the extreme concentration of nationalist voting blocks.

I didn’t agree with banning Gerry Adam’s voice and had sympathy with the nationalist cause, but let’s not make out like these were mainstream figures. Adam’s and McGuinness were apologists for people waging war against the British state. I strongly suspect a communist group with similar aims would get short shrift in the US.

Free speech is never absolute. Europe and the US have different mechanisms to protect free expression, but net they don’t end up in very different places.