Warped people

A couple of years ago I said in a discussion forum that I KNEW many people in the former Soviet Union (FSU) who revered the time when Stalin was in charge. They felt, I said, that everything was better then as everything worked, the trains ran on time ...

I was then subjected to a nasty attack by people who said I should crawl back to live with those communists ... Someone pathetically said that he'd worked in an office in the USA where they put together proposals for Aid projects in the FSU so he KNEW that I was a liar. I was even threatened with violence by a student at Oxford University who said that if ever he saw me in Oxford then he and his friends would beat the sh*t out of me. In this latter case, I tracked the lad down and told him that as I worked in Oxford I was in fear of my safety and unless he withdrew that threat and apologised unreservedly I would take the appropriate legal action. He apologised.

No surprise then that I heard the story that someone (I won't name himfor fear of yet more unprovoked attacks on him or me) had said that he liked the artistic and architectrual work of some specific and named people who were Nazis or Nazi sympathisers. He was then forced to apologise because certain groups felt offended at what he had said.

Freedom of speech was something that took centuries to secure. However, there are those who clearly don't understand what it is and how it works. There are those who simply do not understand how to respect it either.

DW