This obviously polarises the "sides" involved because nobody gets to hear how the other half feels. Surely the way people can best get on with each other (and I'm sure we all want that) is to try to understand what it is about us that might be pissing people off - perhaps then taking the points on board and doing something about it. Art is able to express this by de-personalising the issue.

It is important to remember that those who would incite others to hatred do not create the hatred - they simply turn the existing xenophobia, mistrust and fear that is in all of us - and focus this into hatred, in order to use it and us.

If a State is seen to be protecting certain sections of the population (even if this is being done for the very best of reasons) and coming down heavily on others - this does risk providing the very ammunition that can (and will) be used to incite hatred, against those the State may be trying to protect.

Artistic freedom of expression is what we are talking about. It should always be born in mind that in order to express views in this form - there are many hurdles that have to be first overcome. In the case of of a play for example - the first thing you have to do is convince the theatre that the play can be a sucess and then to try and ensure that folk will pay to come and see it. So for the play to reach the stage that this one got to - it is likely that many compromises will have already been made to the author's original concept (the process is similar for all other forms of artistic expression).

Folk who seriously consider that this play should have been further ammended at this point and who blame the author for not doing so - to enable the mob to be called-off - should remember this.

I suggest that our best protection from the sort of artistic production that Wolfgang fears is our taste. Shit does not taste very nice (not that I am speaking as an expert on eating this) and most of us would not chose to eat shit - no matter how attractivly it may be packaged.