Whose freedom?
Sir — A brief reply to Dr Bazarov '(Letters, September 1) who wisely chooses to ignore the point, and dodges behind a smear. I never said that the merit of an argument depends on the racial origin of the person. I said that opinions held by people with Russian names, opinions which seek to tamper with traditional practises in an open society, and indeed, to reverse them, need careful examination to see to what extent, if, of course, any, they are put about to cause confusion and unrest. The Russian leaders practise with a good deal of ferocity what I blandly set out in my first letter.
• To put it another way, the motivation of a political assertion depends, more often than not, on the nationality of the proponent. Thus a Zambian will put an anti-South African and Rhode
sia viewpoint, a Hungarian will put the Russian point of view, and a Russian will put the czarist, imperialist-expansionist view. If Dr Bazarov would deny this, he would perhaps dissimulate about other things. Where has he been since 1917?
The speciouness of the first letter is carried on in his second lengthy, though insubstantial, screed. One wearies of the anti-vietnam war argument. It was simply one of the battlefields chosen by Communism to tie up and sap America — did the Kremlin demur? — and one only wishes that the USA had triumphed.
Dr Bazarov further suggests that it was moral indignation that moved the Sussex students to gag Professor Huntingdon, who actually has the cheek to think that America should have prosecuted its cause in Vietnam with more rigour. Not so, Sussex University is at this moment a hothouse of tedious marxist manipulation. The student body, wet between the ears, contains a core of flawless dupes, who respond to the Kremlin tune like rats to the Pied Piper.
That's all there is to it, really. I only want Dr Bazarov to declare his interest, since there is a suspicion in my mind that his argument about free speech is designed to make us enter into yet another damaging bout of self-examination and guilt.
I particularly enjoyed Dr Bazarov's third sentence, where, referring to the belief that the gagging of Professor Huntingdon was a grotesque meddling with freedom of expression, he wrote: "Obviously, there is some truth in this, but, ..." It's that ' but ' that worries me, and makes me query not only his capacity, but his motivation in arguing for the retrogressive redefining, in one area, of our basic freedoms. I really shall have to say again "Come off it, Bazarov," if he persists with his mouth fulll of unmelted butter in gilding the stooge.
Alastair MacGregor ' Faxton,' Langley Hill, King's Langley, Herts.
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