Roger Scruton: thoughtcriminal?

Nov 8, 2018 by

by Fraser Myers, spiked:

Back in 1985, when Roger Scruton was caught smuggling blacklisted books into communist Czechoslovakia, he was expelled from the country and placed on the government’s Index of Undesirable Persons. In supposedly liberal Britain, in 2018, the renowned conservative philosopher has become ‘undesirable’ once more.

Buzzfeed News claims to have ‘uncovered’ comments which are ‘Islamophobic’, ‘homophobic’ and ‘anti-Semitic’ in Scruton’s articles, books and speeches. Theresa May is now under pressure to sack Scruton from his unpaid role as a chairman of the ‘Building Better, Building Beautiful’ commission, which advises the government on housing design.

Most of the comments deemed ‘controversial’ by Buzzfeed are simply an expression of his well-known conservative leanings. Those expecting a salacious Access Hollywood-style tape will be sorely disappointed. All are considered statements that he has made as a matter of public record. They include a Telegraph column from 2007 in which he opposed gay adoption; quotes from a Radio 4 programme, in which he disagreed that homosexuality is ‘innate and guiltless’; and a Spectator column in which he claimed that the authorities in Europe are ‘hiding the sexual crimes of Muslim immigrants’. He is also accused of being friends with Hungarian PM Viktor Orban.

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