Sixty years ago we fought fascism with rifles and bombs, now we do it with a vigourous chinwag over cheese and port

David Irving and Nick Griffin are to speak at the Oxford Union after all. Dr Julian Lewis, the Tory MP for New Forest East, and a life member of the OU, has resigned from the Oxford Union in protest. The BBC reports

In a letter to the union's officers and standing committee, Dr Lewis said he was resigning his life membership "with great sadness".

The MP, who studied at Balliol and St Antony's colleges, said the right to free speech should not guarantee access to privileged platforms.

"Nothing which happens in Monday's debate can possibly offset the boost you are giving to a couple of scoundrels who can put up with anything except being ignored," he said.

"It is sheer vanity on your part to imagine that any argument you deploy, or any vote you carry will succeed in causing them damage.

"They have been exposed and discredited time and again by people vastly more qualified than you in arenas hugely more suited to the task than an undergraduate talking-shop, however venerable."

Indeed. The vanity and arrogance of it all is perhaps the most striking aspect of it. For example, this, from the description of the "If you value free speech, then let Griffin and Irving debate" Facebook group:

I say bring it on! I'm confident that Irving and Griffin are wrong, and I'm happy to argue with them publicly, not silence them. Tolerance and truth will always win through. But if we shut them up, we make martyrs of them, and give the world the impression that we have something to hide.

Confident that David Irving is wrong? What courage! I mean, Deborah Lipstadt fought David Irving over libel charges, which resulted in Irving's credibility as a historian being completely and utterly shattered in a court of law, but hey, why let her have all the glory, right? Then again, Lipstadt understands how the mind of a Holocaust denier works. From her blog:

Challenging someone such as David Irving has little to do with intelligence, it has to do with knowing how he is lying and distorting the facts. And as smart as Oxford students may think they are, just because they are at Oxford does not mean they have the knowledge...to catch a liar who distorts and falsifies.

This is really the crux of the matter. You cannot debate with fascists. This doesn't mean that we necessarily need to kill them or lock them up in prison, but we certainly don't need to open our doors to them.

UPDATE: Brian Klug has a very good piece up on Comment is Free about why the Griffin-Irving debate isn't an issue of free speech.

UPDATE 2: Peter Tatchell: "Not offering hate-mongers a platform is not the same as banning them. Hundreds of topical public speakers and first-rate debaters never get invited to address the Oxford Union. They are not being censored."

UPDATE 3: Hak Mao on the threat of violence in Oxford as far-right activists are expected to launch counter demonstrations.