Letters | 31 December 2011

Chiller app

Sir: Niall Ferguson (‘On being called a racist’, 17/24 December) says that ‘the freedom of the press does not extend to defamation’. This is an odd idea, but one which Ferguson shares with the governments of those countries in which journalists are routinely imprisoned for insulting the powerful. In England, defamation is a civil offence and claims of libel must be won through reasoned argument, not simply asserted.

He claims that, in the London Review of Books review of Civilisation, Pankaj Mishra accuses him of racism. He says that ‘expressions of racism are now defined as criminal acts in Britain’. They are not. Inciting or stirring up racial hatred is an offence but Mishra does not accuse Ferguson of inciting racial hatred, or even of expressing racism. He draws an analogy between Ferguson’s work and the racist theories of Theodore Stoddard. This may be distressing to Ferguson but it appears to represent an honestly held opinion, based on Mishra’s very different understanding of imperial history.