Radical students campaigning on the basis of ‘no platform for racists’ have in the United Kingdom frequently silenced speakers at public events, usually to the benefit of the speakers’ cause rather than their own. The view that only immediate self-defence or the need to prevent a breach of the peace are grounds for silencing someone allows the obnoxious more opportunity to offend their hearers, but it may prove a policy less liable to abuse. Popper’s position was not grounded in any elaborate theory of rights, but in his sense that the enemies of liberal democracy had taken advantage of its
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