FREEDOM LOVERS will be familiar with Mick Hume, one of Britain’s most well-know free speech advocates. He is the author of three books – There is No Such Thing as a Free Press … And We Need One More Than Ever (2012), Trigger Warning: Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech? (2015) and Revolting! How the Establishment are Undermining Democracy and What They’re Afraid of (2017).

This article – Tyranny Of The Minority – is based on his new book Revolting! Part one of this article looked at how – in the light of Brexit and the election of President Donald Trump – some members of the elite are wondering if ordinary voters are fit to make decisions on major issues. Part two continued with this theme as does part three. Interestingly, Hume appears to suggest that the arrogance displayed by the elite goes against them.

As we’ve previously noted, this article originally appeared in the Daily Mail in late February. However, we’ve taken the decision to reproduce it in four sections – as we feel that this is the best way to stimulate debate. Thus, if you have any comments please leave them on the Free Speech Facebook site https://www.facebook.com/groups/1607711629485795/ once you see this article appear.

It goes without saying that there are no official links between Mick Hume, the Daily Mail and Free Speech.

You can read Part 1 of Tyranny Of The Minority here:

http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-free-speech-how-do-we-protect-it-tyranny-of-the-minority-part-1 and part 2 here: http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-free-speech-how-do-we-protect-it-%e2%80%93-tyranny-of-the-minority-part-2

Tyranny Of The Minority (Part 3)

Wolf Hall author Hilary Mantel (left) has compared the bitter EU Remain lobby to Saudi Arabia’s ‘army of erasers.’ Mick Hume (right) is a well-know freedom lover and author of three books dealing with free speech.

Thankfully, not all clever people took this anti-democratic line.

Wolf Hall author Hilary Mantel observed how: ‘As soon as the result was in, millions signed a petition to rub it out and do it again. The bien-pensants suggested the result was not binding, but advisory — an opinion they would hardly have offered had the vote gone the other way.’

Mantel compared the bitter Remain lobby to the ‘army of erasers’ she had encountered in Saudi Arabia, who dealt with things they didn’t like — pork, Israel, women’s equality — by simply removing mention of them from public life.

Interestingly, Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England, observed that the disdain the Establishment showed for those worried about the EU had probably encouraged many to vote Leave — and attacked those who claimed ‘if you even contemplate voting for Brexit, you must be either ignorant, uneducated, stupid or racist.’

The emphasis of many critics of the referendum was on the ‘lies’ of the Leave campaign and how they had led gullible voters astray.

Yet research by the Electoral Reform Society leads to the opposite conclusion — that the majority declined to be swayed or bullied into submission.

They kept their eyes on the bigger issues and voted Leave because they wanted more control over their own lives, UK politics and the country’s borders.

Millions made the entirely rational calculation that these reasons were important enough to support Leave, even if the immediate economic impact was uncertain and might prove adverse. A fall in the pound could be a price worth paying for an increase in democracy and sovereignty.

Yet still their motives are impugned. One of the nastiest tricks of those who lost the referendum was to claim that those who voted for Brexit (and Trump) were racists and xenophobes. In which case their votes should be seen as morally illegitimate.

But the small-minded prejudices actually on display here were those of leading Remainers towards working-class voters.

The sad truth is that to the elite, such people are far more alien than suave Brussels bureaucrats.

Significantly, almost immediately after the referendum result, a new scare started over a reported spree of ‘hate crimes’ against immigrants in the UK. The political elite seized upon these allegations as proof that the Brexit vote had been a demonstration of British racism.

But does anybody seriously believe that 17.4 million UK voters backed Leave for racist motives?

The truth is that Britain today is a more tolerant and anti-racist society than ever before.

• For an excellent review of Trigger Warning click here: https://countercultureuk.com/2015/07/26/trigger-warning/

• To check out a review of Free Speech click here: http://nationalliberal.org/review-of-issue-1-of-free-speech